Van Morrison - Brown Eyed Girl

First performance: 04/03/1988

Coverinfo

Bruce covered the song 14 times at full ( soundchecks included ) and once as a snippet:
 
1988-03-04 - DEAN E. SMITH STUDENT ACTIVITIES CENTER, CHAPEL HILL, NC
Fascinating Soundcheck of some great 60' s tracks:
 
     
 
1994-08-20 - MARZ AMERICAN STYLE, LONG BRANCH
Joe Grushecky

1995-10-17 - THE STONE PONY, ASBURY PARK
Joe Grushecky

1995-10-19 - ELECTRIC FACTORY, PHILADELPHI
Joe Grushecky

1995-10-20 - NICK'S FAT CITY, PITTSBURGH
Joe Grushecky

1995-10-24 - PARK WEST, CHICAGO
Joe Grushecky
 
1998-03-02 - NICK'S FAT CITY, PITTSBURGH
Joe Grushecky
 
1999-07-09 - HOOLIGANS, LONG BRANCH
Joe Grushecky
 
2002-11-02 - TRADEWINDS, SEA BRIGHT
soundcheck
 
2009-11-03 - TIME WARNER CABLE ARENA, CHARLOTTE, NC

2011-11-04 - SOLDIERS & SAILORS MEMORIAL HALL & MUSEUM, PITTSBURGH
Joe Grushecky
Bruce and Patti, along with Lisa Lowell, perform with Timepiece (Patti's brother Mike Scialfa's band) at a private party for friends. Bruce mainly played guitar but did provide lead vocals on "Oh, Pretty Woman" , "Born On The Bayou" and "Brown Eyed Girl". 
 
 
"The first ever performance in Australia of "Brown Eyed Girl" is by sign request of some Australians dressed up as characters from TV show The Honeymooners. They are called up the stage to join and even play the piano. Along with "Brown Eyed Girl"
 
 
 
  • Snippet
during MARY'S PLACE
 
2002-12-05 Air Canada Centre, Toronto, ON
 

Songinfo

"Brown Eyed Girl" is a song by Van Morrison. Written by Morrison and recorded in March 1967 for Bang Records owner and producer Bert Berns, it was released as a single in June 1967 on the Bang label.
 
 
 

Other cover versions

Bruce on the artist

 
Springsteen was a huge fan of Van Morrison's old garage band Them (best known for "Gloria") in the 1960s, but it wasn't until he saw Morrison in concert sometime around 1971 that he truly understood the man's genius. He found the combination of organ and horns intoxicating, and the influence on his first two albums is unmistakable. If you don't believe that, listen to Morrison's "Domino" and Springsteen's "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" back to back. Van's 1968 masterpiece Astral Weeks became a particular obsession. "It was like a religion to us," Steve Van Zandt said in 2005. They even brought Morrison's bass player Richard Davis into the studio to play on Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., and Born to Run.  
 
 
Van Morrison - Madame George (1968): The previous tracks helped to lay down the foundations of the figure who would become Bruce Springsteen - the rocker. But once he’d started on his artistic journey, other influences began to emerge:

"Astral Weeks was an extremely important record for me. It made me trust in beauty, it gave me a sense of the divine. The divine just seems to run through the veins of that entire album. Of course there was incredible singing and the playing of Richard Davis on the bass. It was trance music. It was repetitive. It was the same chord progression over and over again. But it showed how expansive something with very basic underpinning could be. There’d be no New York City Serenade if there hadn’t been Astral Weeks."
 

Lyrics

Hey, where did we go?
Days when the rains came
Down in the hollow
Playin' a new game
Laughing and a running hey, hey
Skipping and a jumping
In the misty morning fog with
Our hearts a thumpin' and you
My brown-eyed girl
You, my brown-eyed girl
Whatever happened
To Tuesday and so slow?
Going down the old mine
With a transistor radio
Standing in the sunlight laughing
Hiding behind a rainbow's wall
Slipping and sliding
All along the waterfall, with you
My brown-eyed girl
You, my brown-eyed girl
Do you remember when we used to sing
Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da
Just like that
Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da, la te da
So hard to find my way
Now that I'm all on my own
I saw you just the other day
My, how you have grown
Cast my memory back there, Lord
Sometimes I'm overcome thinking 'bout
Making love in the green grass
Behind the stadium with you
My brown-eyed girl
You, my brown-eyed girl
Do you remember when we used to sing
Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da
Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da, la te da
(Bit by bit, by bit, by bit, by bit, by bit)
(Sha la la la la la la, la te da, la te da
Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da, la te da
(La te da, da da da da da da da da)