Ivory Tower (Van Morrison song)

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"Ivory Tower"
VanMorrisonSingleIvoryTower.JPG
Single by Van Morrison
from the album No Guru, No Method, No Teacher
A-side "Ivory Tower"
B-side "A New Kind of Man"
Released1986
Recorded1985
Genre Celtic, Folk rock
Length3:34
Label Mercury Records
Songwriter(s) Van Morrison
Producer(s) Van Morrison
Van Morrison singles chronology
"Tore Down a la Rimbaud"
(1985)
"Ivory Tower"
(1986)
"Got to Go Back"
(1986)

"Ivory Tower" is a song written by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison and included on his 1986 album, No Guru, No Method, No Teacher . The song was also released as a single with the B-side "A New Kind of Man", from his previous album A Sense of Wonder . It charted at No. 21 on the US Mainstream Rock Tracks in 1986.

Contents

Clinton Heylin writes this about the song "A chorus about how tough 'It really must be/ To be me, to see like me, to feel like me' threatens the spirituality self-effacing mood he had previously maintained." [1] Biographer John Collis takes the same viewpoint by saying "Ivory Tower, totally breaks the mold – it's an r'n'b shaker just like those produced by the Van Morrison of old, though now he suffers from self pity: "Don't you know the price I have to pay/Just to do everything I have to do..." [2]

Billboard said it is an "upbeat r&b boogie." [3] Cash Box said it is an "outstanding and blustery return to form for the brilliant and visionary Morrison." [4]

Personnel on original release

Notes

  1. Heylin, Can You Feel the Silence?, p.395
  2. Collis, Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, p166
  3. "Reviews". Billboard. 9 August 1986. p. 73. Retrieved 4 August 2022.
  4. "Single Releases" (PDF). Cash Box. 9 August 1986. p. 9. Retrieved 4 August 2022.

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