Songfacts®:

• Irish poet Paul Durcan, who co-wrote this song, provides the spoken vocals on this track. In 1988 Durcan wrote: "Myself, if I was Minister for Education, I'd bring in a new curriculum in the morning and top of my list would be Kavanagh and Morrison. All of Kavanagh and Morrison - not my selection or Saint Augustine's selection or Barry McGuigan's selection or Dean Martin's selection but the entire oeuvre and let the audience (students are a free audience - not a concentration camp of suitable victims) pick out what they like and what they don't like." (from "A Celebration of Van Morrison," May 1988 issue of Magill)
• Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967) was an Irish poet who in a 2000 poll by The Irish Times was rated the nation's second favorite poet behind W. B. Yeats.
• This song lists singers who influenced the youthful Van Morrison including Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. He also refers to Radio Luxembourg to which thousands of British and Irish teenagers in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s would tune in to on their primitive radios, despite the poor reception, because it played the pop music they wanted to hear.
• Ray Charles evidently is a hero of Van Morrison. in this song he refers to Ray Charles as "The high priest." Van Morrison has referred to Ray Charles in other compositions of his. In "These Dreams of You" from Moondance (1970), the lyric goes, "And Ray Charles was shot down." Also in "Got to Go Back" from No Guru, No Method, No Teacher (1986), some of the words are "I used to gaze out my classroom window and dream, and then go home and listen to Ray sing." >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Edward Pearce - Ashford, Kent, England, for all above