Slim Slow Slider

Oh, for fuck's sake johnpauljones86, why does every bloody song on this flamin' website have to be about smack? Use your imagination, son- perhaps the horse is a metaphor for the girl's pride. Junk isn't everything, mate.

You can spend alot of time trying to tie specific meanings to the songs on Astral Weeks, pinning places and metaphors together, trying to create a narrative storyline and ahcieve a definite understanding. Fact is though, youre never going to achieve a satisfactory result because Morrison wrote some of these peices as a 'stream of consiousness' not 'even thinking about what he wrote' (Ritchie Yorke, Van Morrison Biographer) whilst others were 'composites...of conversations...movies, newspapers, books' and are 'totally fictional' (Van Morrison, NPR Interview).

I think a better approach to understanding the works is to ditch the narrative, like you would when reading a non-linear books (Ulysses for example). Feel the words, feel the music, and derive your meaning from that. Approach it a bit the way you would a dream - things are not what they seem, but they are exactly what they feel (to each person individually).

"The songs are poetic stories, so the meaning is the same as always–timeless and unchanging. The songs are works of fiction that will inherently have a different meaning for different people. People take from it whatever their disposition to take from it is." (Van Morrison, to Randy Lewis).

Sadness. It seems that she has in fact a drug addiction( i believe heroin specifically because of the white horse, metaphor, and the fact that ireland had a very bad heroin problem). Not only that she has left Van for a richer man( who also happens to own the stereotypical love-gone-bad mobile, the Cadillac). Maybe shes been revealed to be shallow and only interested in money and was lying the whole time. or maybe wants the richer man to pay for her drug habit.? who can say. but the last lines are the most disturbing of the album. He reveals that she is dying. Is she dying on the inside, by becoming more and more unloving and interested in greed (remember the avarice from the first song?!?! a ha, is that the connection? ((Avarice- love of money,greed))? or is she dying physically, from the heroin or something else? we never know . but what we do know is that he is still in love with her dispite it all and her pain is still his pain. This album is to me one of the single greatest works in modern music. if not the best. It has a quality unique to Van and only Van of 1968.

"Earthly bliss is transient as is earthly life itself, and we are helpless to do anything about it. Astral Weeks' last note is a cacophony of Morrison slapping the body of his guitar, Davis snapping his bass strings, and Payne forcing stray, ugly notes out of his sax. Suddenly, everything is in shards."

Also, Ireland has a very bad heroin problem? 1- it's no worse than most countries. 2- Ladbroke Grove? That's in London, boyo. Get your fucking facts straight before you start wanking off, mate.

for the record, "every bloody song on this flamin' website" is not about smack. in fact, very few are.

The late great Lester Bangs said this album was written at a time when Morrison's girlfriend was dying of tuberculosis. There is some kind of free form, stream of consciousness throughout the album though. This song is the last on the album and it's about her dying. The rapid thumping at the end could be the sound of a coffin being nailed shut or, and this what I prefer to think, it could be a bird taking flight. The name of the album "Astral Weeks", I believe, is about those days of looking at the stars and knowing that they, at the very least, are permanent. All else might be transitory but the stars remain. I imagine him smoking out on a porch, fulminating and looking at the stars because he wouldn't smoke in the house with her lungs so compromised. Kind of a William Carlos Williams thing.