Cyprus Avenue
| "Cyprus Avenue" | |
|---|---|
| Song by Van Morrison from the album Astral Weeks | |
| Released | November 1968 |
| Recorded | September 25, 1968 |
| Genre | Folk rock |
| Length | 6:50 |
| Label | Warner Bros. Records |
| Writer(s) | Van Morrison |
| Composer(s) | Van Morrison |
| Producer(s) | Lewis Merenstein |
| Astral Weeks track listing | |
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"Cyprus Avenue" is a song written by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison and included on his 1968 album Astral Weeks. In performance it was a concert highlight and closer for years to come and would end with Morrison's command, "It's too late to stop now!" (a quotation from his song "Into the Mystic") as he stalked from the stage. A dynamic 10-minute version with the usual stop-start ending was included on his 1974 live album It's Too Late to Stop Now.
Built on a basic blues structure with an unusual arrangement, the song was recorded at the Astral Weeks sessions on September 25, 1968 at Century Sound Studio with Lewis Merenstein as producer. The strings and harpsichord were overdubbed a month later.
Calling it the central song of the album, Allmusic described it as "a chamber-music hybrid of folk-blues, jazz, and classical music, and over it Morrison sings a meditative memory lyric about his adolescence in Belfast, Northern Ireland." On the Astral Weeks recording, Morrison's vocals are backed by his acoustic guitar, Richard Davis on acoustic bass, along with flute, harpsichord and strings.
According to Roy Kane, who grew up with Morrison in Belfast, Cyprus Avenue "...was the street that we would all aspire to — the other side of the tracks ... the Beersbridge Road had the railway line cut across it; and our side of it was one side of the tracks and Cyprus Avenue was the other... there was an Italian shop up in Ballyhackamore, that's where all the young ones used to go of a Sunday... we used to walk up to the Sky Beam for an ice cream or a cup of mushy peas and vinegar... We used to take a short cut up Cyprus Avenue..."
Morrison told biographer Ritchie Yorke that along with "Madame George" (which also references Cyprus Avenue) the song came to him in "a stream of consciousness thing", "Both those songs just came right out. I didn't even think about what I was writing."
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