listening to van morrison sing 't.b sheets'. it's a tortured song about a man who's trying to leave his sick and dying girlfriend, and desperately looking for excuses to get out of the room. tortured, and unmerciless. van sniggers nervously, mumbles fake consolations, promises to 'send somebody around later....with a bottle of wine for you, baby / but i gotta go'. pleads, with a break in his voice, 'open up the windows...and let me breathe'. the fear resonates: 'as the sunlight shines through the crack in the window pane...numbs my brain'. 'the cool room', he almost weeps, 'is a fool's room.' guilt, cowardice, claustrophobia, all haunted by the memories of love.
how dramatically rock music changed in the first decade and a half of its journey. and what a long, long journey it is from 'let me be your teddy bear' to this song. such a short time, and such a long distance travelled...from the energies of a new kind of dance music to the unprecedented lyrical dignity and depth that the best music of the mid-to-late sixties managed to achieve. dylan, with his 'historic break' with folk music, had something to do with this, certainly. but what else was changing, what made songs like this possible? no answers here and now, if ever. to quote van, 'i got to go.'