https://youtube/watch?v=xdaNz5APlh4T.B. Sheets was recorded on March 29, 1967 at A & R Recording Studios In New York City with Bert Berns as producer. Morrison had intended to record it in one take, but there were two takes recorded that day.[1] There is a long-standing, but perhaps apocryphal story of Morrisons emotional state during the songs recording. Michael Ochs, in the liner notes for the 1973 album T.B. Sheets, wrote that after T.B. Sheets was recorded, the rest of the session had to be cancelled because Van broke down in tears.[2] Likewise, according to John Collis, Morrison could later joke about this song. I’m writing T.B. Sheets Part II now, he said in 1972. Keeping the same riff, the same groove. However, it’s on record – though the story could be exaggerated – that after laying down this track he broke down in tears, unable to continue the session.[3] Composition[edit] The story as told in the song takes place in a room where a young girl lies dying of tuberculosis and is visited by the story-teller. The overwhelming pain and guilt he feels leads to a desperate feeling of wanting to escape from the enclosed room smelling of death and disease. The Allmusic review states, The listener is placed in the room. Although somewhat disturbing, it certainly describes the term realism with one bold masterful stroke.[4] John Collis described the songs meaning as: First of all, the singer chides the terminally ill invalid for crying. It aint natural, he says. The woman cries all night and the observer, trapped in the death room, is embarrassed and helpless. Later in the song, the sun bouncing off a crack in the window pane numbs my brain,...And then theres the crushing claustrophobia of the sickroom - Let me breathe, he demands of the woman whose breath is failing, bubbling in cheesy lungs. There is a street below, a street shell never walk in again, and he is getting desperate to be down there, to rejoin the living, because the cool room is a fools room.[5] Brian Hinton described the songs music as: Here is a Dickensian tale of death and decay in a big city. Organ and drums go free form, then a stately groove, fitting Vans voice like a garrotte, led by nagging lead guitar. Vans harmonica hurts the ear, then hes like a terrier, lecturing his girlfriend, Julie about it not being natural her staying awake at night, dying.[6] T.B. Sheets was the opening song and featured prominently in the 1999 movie Bringing Out the Dead, directed by Martin Scorsese. A Paste review by Steve Labate commented on the theme of the song: T.B. Sheets is one of the most real songs about death you’ll ever hear. As life saps steadily from the singer’s beloved, tuberculosis-ridden Julie, there is no trite drama, no nostalgic sugar coating or grand deathbed epiphany, but rather an Is That All There Is? fatalism—a mild, detached, slowly-suffocating bleakness. The sunlight shining through the crack in the window pane numbs my brain, Morrison moans over a skittering Hammond organ.[7]
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 19:08:20 +0000
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