Recording and Composition
"Glad Tidings" was the final song recorded on the Moondance sessions from September to November 1969 at the A&R Recording Studios in New York City with Elliott Scheiner as engineer.
Van Morrison gave the origins of the song's composition, remarking that "Glad Tidings" is about a period of time in which I was living in New York. A friend of mine wrote me a letter from London and he'd written on the envelope 'Glad Tidings from London'. So I wrote 'Glad Tidings' from New York - and that's where I got the idea.
Allmusic describes it as a "brisk shot of R&B, worthy of any Stax artist or sounds that were emanating from Muscle Shoals during the mid '60s, with a bopping bass line, lively horn section, and rock-steady groove." The review goes on to say that "The horn section delivers the song's main melodic hook, punching up the chorus with accent lines supporting Morrison's infectious harmonies."
Brian Hinton, in reviewing the song notes that "Glad Tidings" seemed to be addressing some of the issues that Morrison had experienced a few years before with Bert Berns and the record label Bang Records: "businessmen talking in numbers, people who interrupt 'when you're in trances', strangers who 'make demands'.... even the opening line and closing line, 'and they'll lay you down low and easy', could be either about murder or an act of love."
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