Composition
"Snow in San Anselmo" is the opening song and features the backing vocals of the Oakland Symphony Chamber Chorus. Morrison says the song is, "just a sketch on when it snowed in San Anselmo. It's about the images that were happening when it was snowing there for the first time in thirty years."
"Warm Love" was released as a successful single and was also a favorite concert performance in the 70s. It featured the catchy line, "and it's ever present everywhere, Warm Love."
The title song, "Hard Nose the Highway" is explained by Morrison as: "the theme running through the whole song is 'Seen some hard times' which I have 'Drawn some fine lines' which I definitely have, and 'No time for shoe shines' when you're trying to make a living."
"Wild Children" is actually about the post-war children growing up in other countries and getting their images—from American anti-heroes such as those portrayed by James Dean, Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger and playwright Tennessee Williams.
"The Great Deception" is according to biographer, Richie Yorke: "One of the most stinging indictments from any observer, let alone a rock artist, of the tragic hypocrisy of so many participants in the sub-culture, in particular the big-time rock stars of this era."
"Being Green" is the first non-original composition Morrison had included on any album for Warner Bros. so far and was taken from the popular American children's TV show, Sesame Street, which he must have watched with his young daughter, Shana. He says about his interpretation of the song, "That was just a statement that you don't have to be flamboyant. If somebody doesn't like you just because you're a certain thing, then maybe they're seeing the wrong thing."
A reviewer said about the ten and a half minute "Autumn Song": "I can't deny that it's the funkiest song about the splendors and moods of fall that has ever glided through my ears."
The ending song, "Purple Heather" is the traditional "Wild Mountain Thyme" written by F. McPeake as a variant of Robert Tannahill's "The Braes of Balquhidder", and re-arranged by Morrison.
Read more about this topic: Hard Nose The Highway
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
“Since body and soul are radically different from one another and belong to different worlds, the destruction of the body cannot mean the destruction of the soul, any more than a musical composition can be destroyed when the instrument is destroyed.”
—Oscar Cullman. Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? The Witness of the New Testament, ch. 1, Epworth Press (1958)