Background
Written by Mike Batt for Watership Down at the request of director Martin Rosen,, the song relates to the transition into death highlighted by the close shave of Hazel, a rabbit character in the film, when he is shot by a farmer, and then, years later, when Hazel (then Hazel-rah) finally departs his body and enters the world of spirit.
The song was immensely successful in the United Kingdom, staying at number one in the British charts for six weeks in 1979, selling over one million copies, becoming the biggest selling single of that year in the UK. It has sold 1.2 million copies. However, it did poorly in the United States, failing to reach the Billboard Hot 100. However, it did reach #27 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.
Read more about this topic: Bright Eyes (Art Garfunkel Song)
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)