The Healing Game

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The Healing Game
The Healing Game cover
Studio album by Van Morrison
Released March 4, 1997
Recorded 1996
Genre Folk Rock
Rock
Length 53:38
Label Mercury
Producer Van Morrison
Professional reviews

All Music Guide 2.5/5 stars link

Rolling Stone (Not Rated) link
Van Morrison chronology
Tell Me Something: The Songs of Mose Allison
(1996)		 The Healing Game
(1997)		 The Philosopher's Stone
(1998)

The Healing Game is an album by Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison, released in 1997.

Contents

[edit] Reissue and remastered album

In June 2008, Exile/Polydor will release this album as part of batch two of the four catalogue reissues of Morrison's albums dated from 1971 through 2002.

[edit] Recording history

The album was recorded in Dublin Ireland. The cover features a threatening looking Morrison with Haji Ahkba alongside looking like he is one of his bodyguards.

[edit] Songs

The title song "The Healing Game" is about the tradition of Belfast street singing. Van Morrison in Q magazine said, "People find it incredible when I tell them that people used to sing and play music in the street. I think there's a whole oral tradition that's disappeared." The song, "Rough God Goes Riding" is taken from a W. B. Yeats poem "The Second Coming" with its figure from the Apocalypse "rough beast". Leo Green's saxophone follows Morrison's voice like a twin brother. In "Waiting Game" he is "the brother of the snake" which Brian Hinton says refers to both his lost friend, Jim Morrison aka The Lizard King and the Garden of Eden. "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" follows the children's book, The Wind in the Willows closely and Paddy Moloney plays uillean pipes with Phil Coulter on piano. On "Burning Ground" the singer relives a common scene from his childhood when jute was shipped to Belfast from India.[1]

[edit] Reviews

Famed music critic Greil Marcus was favourably impressed with the album and wrote a review which stated: "Morrison dominates each song on The Healing Game - but the word song seems much too small here. Like the rough god he sings about, Morrison is astride each incident in the music..."

[edit] Track listing

All songs by Van Morrison

  1. "Rough God Goes Riding" – 6:19
  2. "Fire in the Belly" – 6:34
  3. "This Weight" – 4:37
  4. "Waiting Game" – 5:56
  5. "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" – 3:53
  6. "Burning Ground" – 5:38
  7. "It Once Was My Life" – 5:10
  8. "Sometimes We Cry" – 5:14
  9. "If You Love Me" – 5:01
  10. "The Healing Game" – 5:16

[edit] Bonus track (2008 CD reissue)

  1. "At the End of the Day"

[edit] Personnel

[edit] Charts

Album - Billboard (North America)

Year Chart Position
1997 The Billboard 200 32

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Hinton, Celtic Crossroads, p.333-336

[edit] References

  • Hinton, Brian (1997). Celtic Crossroads: The Art of Van Morrison, Sanctuary, ISBN 1-86074169X

[edit] External links

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