| Bulbs | |
| Cover: | bulbs.VM.jpg |
| Type: | single |
| Artist: | Van Morrison |
| Album: | Veedon Fleece |
| B-Side: |
|
| Released: | November 1974 |
| Recorded: | March 1974, Mercury Studios, New York City, United States |
| Genre: | |
| Length: | 4:19 |
| Label: | Warner Bros. |
| Producer: | Van Morrison |
| Prev Title: | Ain't Nothing You Can Do |
| Prev Year: | 1974 |
| Next Title: | Caldonia |
| Next Year: | 1974 |
"Bulbs" is a song written by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. It was the only single to be taken from his 1974 album Veedon Fleece, with a B-side of "Cul de Sac" for the US release and "Who Was That Masked Man" for the UK release.[2] [3]
"Bulbs" was first recorded with different lyrics at the recording session for the 1973 album, Hard Nose the Highway, released in 1973.[4] After the first recording session for Veedon Fleece, "Bulbs" was re-cut at Mercury Studios in New York City in March 1974, along with "Cul de Sac" to give it a more rock feeling. According to Jef Labes this was "cause he (Morrison) didn't feel they had the right feeling... It was me, Van and a bunch of other guys that he'd never played with."[5] Bass player Joe Macho had previously played on the 1966 Bobby Hebb hit song "Sunny".
"Bulbs" has been described as "a pleasant, catchy country ditty, a Dire Straits song before its time" by biographer John Collis.[6] As with many of Morrison's songs, "Bulbs" does not have a clear story line, but in part focuses on immigration to the United States as in the lines:
She's leaving Pan American
Suitcase in her hand
I said her brothers and her sisters
Are all on Atlantic sand
Record World called it "Something like a performance from his Astral Weeks days with a graft of pedal steel" and said that "Van benefits from a renewed powersurge."[7]
In an interview with Morrison, Tom Donahue said, after he had listened to "Bulbs": "You always make great noises. The other things you do in songs beside the words."[8]
In a Stylus Magazine review for the album Veedon Fleece, Derek Miller says of the song:[9]
"Of course, the best and most immediately memorable song on Veedon Fleece is "Bulbs". Coming about as close to laying down a groove as he does on the album, the song quickly makes dust of its acoustic start, leaping headstrong into a Waylon Jennings' style bass-roll, rump heavy and plush, pianos shimmering and fingerdense."
Morrison performed the song on the German television show Musikladen on 13 November 1974.[10]
The title might come from the lines:
And her batteries are corroded
And her hundred watt bulb just blew
or the repeated chorus:
.. she's standing in the shadows
Where the street lights all turn blue
A live performance of this song is featured on the 1974 disc of Morrison's 2006 issued DVD, Live at Montreux 1980/1974. Morrison used a stripped-down band on this Montreaux Jazz Festival appearance consisting of: