Songs
The title song "The Healing Game" is about the tradition of Belfast street singing. Van Morrison in Q magazine said, "People find it incredible when I tell them that people used to sing and play music in the street. I think there's a whole oral tradition that's disappeared." The song, "Rough God Goes Riding" is taken from a W. B. Yeats poem "The Second Coming" with its figure from the Apocalypse "rough beast". Leo Green's saxophone follows Morrison's voice like a twin brother. In "Waiting Game" he is "the brother of the snake" which Brian Hinton says refers to both his lost friend Jim Morrison (known for writing about "The Lizard King"), and the Garden of Eden. "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" follows the children's book, The Wind in the Willows closely and Paddy Moloney plays uillean pipes with Phil Coulter on piano. On "Burning Ground" the singer relives a common scene from his childhood when jute was shipped to Belfast from India.
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Famous quotes containing the word songs:
“When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget.”
—Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894)
“Music is so much a part of their daily lives that if an Indian visits another reservation one of the first questions asked on his return is: “What new songs did you learn?””
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“What wondrous love is this
That caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul”
—Unknown. “What Wondrous Love is this!” L. 3-5, Dupuy’s Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1811)