Released August 1979 Label Warner Bros. Records | Length 7:59 Writer(s) Van Morrison | |
Recorded Spring 1979, Record Plant Studios, Sausalito, California Genre Celtic
Folk rock
Pop rock | ||
"And the Healing Has Begun" is a song written by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison and recorded on his 1979 album, Into the Music.
Contents
Recording and composition
"And the Healing Has Begun" was recorded at the Record Plant Studios in Sausalito, California in spring 1979 with Mick Glossop acting as engineer.
Biographer Brian Hinton calls it the central song in the album and perhaps in Morrison's whole career: "It starts just like 'Cyprus Avenue', no coincidence as the line about 'songs from way back when' hints, and with a walk down the avenue (of dreams), to the sound of a haunted violin. A song of full, blazing sex as well as revelation. The healing here is like that in Arthurian myth, the wounded King restored through the action of the Holy Grail, but it is also through as graphic a seduction, almost, as the original live version of "Gloria"'.
Author Clinton Heylin concludes that "what makes the song, and indeed Into the Music work is its self-awareness. Gone is the awkward self-consciousness... It is replaced by a newly assured tone, born of a genuine awareness of what he (Morrison) was attempting."
Personnel
Covers
Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová covered the song in the 2006 musical film, Once (Collector's Edition of Original Soundtrack). The Waterboys live performance in 1986 is one of the tracks on their album, Live Adventures of the Waterboys.