Page "Astral Weeks" Paragraph 18

The third and final session, in the evening on 15 October, produced four more recordings that completed the album — " The Way Young Lovers Do " " Sweet Thing ", " Ballerina " and " Slim Slow Slider ".

Davis expressed to Rolling Stone that there was a " certain feel about a seven-to-ten o ' clock session " and that " the ambience of that time of day was all through everything we played ".

Both " Sweet Thing " and " Ballerina " were originally scheduled for the session, but the search for a ' closer ' consumed a considerable amount of time.

They attempted ( and rejected ) a number of songs until Morrison suggested " Slim Slow Slider ".

" I don't think we'd ever done live ," recalls Payne.

" had a book full of songs ...

I don't know why he decided to do it ... And we were first doing it with the drums, with Richard Davis and Connie Kay and the guitar player and the vibe player and me and Van — all of us were playing.

Then I started playing soprano sax on the thing, and Lew said, ' OK, I wanna try it again.

Start again.

And I want just the bass, the soprano sax, and Van.

'" It was a successful take, but it also came with a very long coda, prompting Merenstein to make a large cut during the editing process.

Many of the tracks on Astral Weeks would be subjected to edits ( mainly to tighten the performances ), but the one on " Slim Slow Slider " was easily the most substantial.

" I would estimate three, five minutes of instrumental stuff ," says Payne.

" We went through stages we got to be avant-garde kind of weird, which is what you hear after the splice-all that weird stuff we're playing — but there was a whole progression to that.

" According to Merenstein, before he cut it, the coda " was a long, long ending that went nowhere, that just carried on from minute to minute ... If it had relativity to the tune itself, I would have left it there.