You've Got the Power

For the James Brown song, see You've Got the Power (James Brown song).

For the Esquires song, see The Esquires.

"You've Got the Power"
B-side to "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)" by Van Morrison
Released	July 1972
A-side	"Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)"
Recorded	Late winter/spring, 1972 Pacific High Studios, San Francisco The Church, San Anselmo, California
Genre	R & B/soul
Length	3:37
Label	Warner Bros. Records
Writer(s)	Van Morrison
Producer(s)	Van Morrison

"You've Got the Power" is an outtake from Van Morrison's 1972 album, Saint Dominic's Preview. It was released as the B-side to "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)" in 1972.

Composition

The song features the same personnel as on "I Will Be There" from Saint Dominic's Preview, but with Tom Salisbury on Hammond organ as well as piano and Jules Broussard doubling up on flute. Biographer Peter Mills commented that "The ensemble performance on 'You've Got the Power' is a mighty-sounding thing, righteous and powerful in its proclamation." The song uses staccato organ over the horn section.^[1]

The song contains lines from two other previously released Morrison songs: "Sweet Thing" and "I've Been Working". The line, "Baby with your saint like smile" was originally used at the end of "Sweet Thing" just before the song faded out. "Set my soul on fire" was first used in "I've Been Working". There is also an out-take, recorded in 1969 from the Moondance sessions, entitled "Set My Soul on Fire".^[2]

Highlights

"You've Got the Power" was to feature in a compilation of outtakes called Highlights in 1977, but the album was never released. Clinton Heylin says "The fourteen-track album Warners compiled only included two songs that pre-dated Hard Nose the Highway: 'I Shall Sing' from Moondance sessions and a 1972 non-album B-side, 'You've Got the Power'."^[3]

Response

Peter Mills has said that this song is "one of the best examples we have of Morrison's voice working in a fully integrated way with the superb band that blasted on to the concert stages in the 70s".^[1]

Personnel

Van Morrison - vocals
Jack Schroer - alto saxophone
Jules Broussard - tenor saxophone, flute
Doug Messenger - guitar
Tom Salisbury - piano, Hammond organ
Bill Church - bass
Gary Mallaber - drums

Covers

Roy Head on Dismal Prisoner

Notes

1 2 Mills. Hymns to the Silence, p.162-163
↑ Heylin. Can You Feel the Silence?, p.519
↑ Heylin. Can You Feel the Silence?, p.314

References

Heylin, Clinton (2003). Can You Feel the Silence? Van Morrison: A New Biography, Chicago Review Press ISBN 1-55652-542-7
Mills, Peter (2010), Hymns to the Silence: Inside the Words and Music of Van Morrison, London: Continuum, ISBN 978-0-8264-2976-6

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