Tupelo Honey - Background

Background

Prior to the Tupelo Honey recording sessions, Morrison had recorded demo tracks in Woodstock for an upcoming country-and-western album. Some of the tracks planned for this album would appear on Tupelo Honey, but other more traditional country songs like "The Wild Side of Life", "Crying Time" and "Banks of the Ohio" were later deleted. Morrison decided to move from Woodstock when the lease on his house expired and the landlord wanted to move back in. He explained to Richard Williams in Melody Maker that the release of the documentary film, Woodstock, in 1970 had altered the quaint character of the community: "Everybody and his uncle started showing up at the bus station, and that was the complete opposite of what it was supposed to be." In April 1971, before he began recording on the planned album, Morrison and his family moved to Marin County, California, where his wife Janet Planet had family living close by. Morrison's guitarist at the time, John Platania, told biographer Steve Turner that Morrison "didn't want to leave, but Janet wanted to move out West. He was manipulated into going." The Morrisons' new home was in a rural setting situated on a hillside close to San Francisco amid redwood trees. With the move, Morrison abandoned the idea of a full country album and exchanged some of the intended material for songs he had written earlier.

At this point in time, Morrison was under pressure by Warner Bros. Records to produce chart singles and two albums within a year. His previous album, His Band and the Street Choir, had been released in November 1970. In an interview with journalist Sean O'Hagan in 1990, he described this period as being in contrast to the laid back atmosphere pictured on the album cover: "When I went to the West Coast these people weren't that available so I had to virtually put a completely new band together overnight to do . So it was a very tough period. I didn't want to change my band but if I wanted to get into the studio I had to ring up and get somebody. That was the predicament I was in."