“The Way Young Lovers Do” by Van Morrison

"The Way Young Lovers Do" turns up on the second side of Astral Weeks, Van Morrison's second solo album, cut at Century Sound Studios in New York in September and October 1968. Morrison wrote it, sings it and strums acoustic guitar, but the lilt comes from the session men around him, rolling in triple time: jazz veteran Richard Davis phrasing his double bass the way no rock player would, Connie Kay on drums, Warren Smith on vibraphone, John Payne on flute and Barry Kornfeld on guitar. Lewis Merenstein produced.

Morrison told Ritchie Yorke it was simply a song about young love, then laughed like a man keeping a secret, and some listeners catch something uneasy stirring under its sweetness, though Greil Marcus, writing in Rolling Stone in 1969, dismissed it as a weak, jazzy cut that sat awkwardly on the record.

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