Mention Van Morrison and the normal person of a certain age will think of one of two songs, either "Moondance" or "Brown-Eyed Girl"...neither of which would dare show up as low as 480 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Nooooo...
THAT honor is reserved for "Into the Mystic," which I didn't recognize by title, so I had to do a teeny-tiny search on YouTube.
Two things I need to say about listening to this song for the very first time:
1. Man, I need to listen to more Morrison.
2. Man, I have no idea what this song means.
It's good to find out that I'm not alone on my second point. Morrison didn't even know what he was singing about:
"People say, 'What does this mean?' A lot of times I have no idea what I mean. That's what I like about rock & roll -- the concept. Like Little Richard -- what does he mean? You can't take him apart; that's rock & roll to me."
I submit that there's a different expectation of understandability between "Wop-bop-a-loo-mop, alop-bam-boom" and "Hark, now hear the sailors cry. Smell the sea and feel the sky. Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic."
Of course, it COULD be a song about embracing one's foibles and not being weighed down by minor failures along the road of life, if only "mystic" was a typo for "mistake".
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