There are moments in music when a voice doesn’t just sing—it claws its way out of the speakers and grabs you by the collar. The year is 1965. The air in a smoky Belfast club is electric with the tension of young men who have nothing to lose and everything to prove. And then it happens. A snare drum rattles like a nervous heartbeat. A bassline coils in the shadows, waiting. And when that nineteen-year-old opens his mouth, the sound that emerges is not youthful—it is ancient, weary, and utterly alive. This is the moment Van Morrison first announced himself to the world, not as a boy from the streets of Belfast, but as a force of nature. The song is Here Comes The Night, and it still hits like a fist wrapped in velvet.
Few records capture the exact crossroads of an era like this one. It stands at the intersection where the raw, blues-drenched swagger of the British Invasion’s first wave collides with the sophisticated, heartbroken pop-soul that would define the decade’s second half. For Them, the Belfast rhythm and blues band built around Morrison’s ferocious talent, this was their defining commercial moment. The single climbed to No. 2 on the UK charts and reached No. 24 in the United States. But numbers tell only a fraction of the story.
The track’s DNA carries the fingerprints of two worlds. On one side, the rough-edged garage-band ethos of a group still learning to harness its own power. On the other, the polished Brill Building sensibility of legendary producer Bert Berns, the man who co-wrote Twist and Shout and Piece of My Heart. Berns wrote Here Comes The Night and produced the definitive Them recording—only his second session with the band after Baby, Please Don’t Go. The result was a perfect collision: New York pop-craft meeting Belfast grit, professional polish applied to a profoundly unprofessional sound.
The track’s brilliance lies in how it frames a profoundly intimate sorrow within a kinetic, pop-song scaffolding.
The arrangement is a masterclass in controlled chaos. It does not roar; it skips, a nervous dance of drum and maraca that hints at a runaway train. A rapid, muted guitar riff circles constantly, providing tension without release. Listen carefully, and the layers reveal themselves: the session reportedly included a young Jimmy Page on rhythm guitar, his professionalism anchoring the track even as the band’s core intensity threatens to tear it apart. The mix is bright, almost treble-heavy, lifting the darkness of the lyrics. The lead vocal is the song’s hurricane. Morrison adopts a surprisingly clean, pop-inflected tone for the verses—a restraint that makes the inevitable chorus explosion devastating. When he hits that titular line—Here comes the night!—the voice shreds, a cathartic burst of true R&B anguish. A simple piano part, often played by session man Phil Coulter, adds soulful punctuation beneath the relentless rhythm section. The song never settles, alternating between tight, jittery verse rhythm and the broader, open feel of the chorus. It feels like someone trying desperately to hold a secret while the world closes in.
For those who rely on high-fidelity playback, the track remains a fascinating test for modern premium audio equipment. The dense mid-range of the 1960s recording, full of natural compression and tape saturation, retains a visceral impact that sterile modern masters often lose. You can feel the air in the room, the sympathetic vibration of the amplifiers.
The power of this specific piece of music lies in its narrative universality. It is about a man dreading the end of the day because he knows the darkness will bring the unavoidable, aching memory of his lost love. I know someone who plays this song every time he is forced to move his piano lessons to a different slot—because it captures that specific, petty anxiety of disrupted routine. Trivial, perhaps, but it speaks to the song’s capacity to soundtrack all forms of modern dread, from the existential to the merely inconvenient. That frantic energy is not just about love; it is about anticipation, the knowledge of pain approaching.
Another listener once described hearing it in a nearly empty train car, traveling away from someone important. The syncopated rhythm became the beat of the rails, and Morrison’s scream of Here comes the night! was the unholy whistle of the engine pulling them further away. The sonic details—the brittle cymbals, the taut bass string—lend themselves perfectly to such cinematic associations.
Here Comes The Night cemented Van Morrison’s reputation as a vocalist of extraordinary, almost frightening power. It set the stage for the solo career that would explore both deep R&B roots and the transcendental folk-jazz territories he would ultimately claim as his own. Bert Berns later signed Morrison to his solo contract with Bang Records, a relationship that—though short-lived and turbulent—yielded immortal results like Brown Eyed Girl. This single is more than a 45-rpm artifact. It is the sound of an artist finding his voice, a brief, perfect storm of American-bred pop craft and Belfast-bred musical grit. It holds a permanent place in the canon—the moment the band Them peaked, and the moment Van Morrison first signaled his inevitable, solitary ascent. Press play again. Let the anticipation build.
Listening Recommendations
- Lulu – Here Comes The Night (1964) An earlier, more straight-ahead pop-soul take released before Them’s version, showcasing the song’s excellent core melody.
- The Animals – Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood (1965) Shares the same dramatic tension, minor key anguish, and R&B-to-pop crossover success of the mid-sixties.
- The Yardbirds – For Your Love (1965) Another British Invasion hit with a deceptively sophisticated arrangement, using key rhythmic shifts to build dark glamour.
- The Rolling Stones – Tell Me (You’re Coming Back) (1964) Captures a similar blues-driven, slightly world-weary lyrical perspective anchored by a driving, melancholic beat.
- The Small Faces – Itchycoo Park (1967) Features the distinct sound of a late-sixties British group mixing soul sensibility with emerging psychedelic production techniques.
- The Spencer Davis Group – Keep On Running (1965) A high-energy, R&B-based British single that shares the urgency and raw vocal power found in Van Morrison’s performance.