The air is thick, cool, and smells faintly of damp pavement. You’re driving home long after the streetlights have won their battle with the sun. It’s that hour—the one where memories feel less like recollections and more like immediate, visceral presences. Then, from the warm, slightly fuzzy speaker of an old FM dial, it arrives: a sound both utterly familiar and suddenly, startlingly fresh. A rattling snare, a bassline that coils and waits, and then that voice—a voice that seems to have lived decades by the time the singer was nineteen.
This is the entryway to Them’s 1965 single, “Here Comes The Night.”
It’s a piece of music that stands at a crucial, energetic intersection. It is the bridge between the raw, blues-drenched beat of the British Invasion’s first wave and the sophisticated, heartbroken pop-soul of the latter half of the decade. More than that, it is the defining hit, commercially, of a brief, brilliant moment in Van Morrison’s nascent career.
Context: The Belfast Boy Meets the Bronx Master
Before the mystical landscapes of Astral Weeks or the sun-drenched swagger of Moondance, there was Them. A Belfast rhythm and blues group, built from a fluctuating lineup but anchored entirely by the ferocious talent of a young Van Morrison. “Here Comes The Night” was released as a standalone single in March 1965, later appearing on the US version of their debut album, Them.
The track’s fate, and much of its sound, rests with one man: the legendary American songwriter and producer, Bert Berns. Berns—co-writer of “Twist and Shout” and “Piece of My Heart”—wrote “Here Comes The Night” and, crucially, produced Them’s definitive recording. This was only the second Them track Berns produced, following “Baby, Please Don’t Go,” but it quickly became the first of his own compositions they would record.
The resulting sound is a perfect collision: the rough, garage-band ethos of the Irish group colliding with the glossy, New York Brill Building sensibility of Berns. It’s a professional polish applied to a profoundly unprofessional sound.
The Sound: A Drummer’s Skip and a Guitar’s Sting
The arrangement is a masterclass in controlled dynamics, starting not with a roar but with a nervous energy. It’s built on a restless, skipping beat, a frantic dance of drum and maraca that hints at a runaway train. The main rhythmic drive is propelled by a rapid, muted guitar riff that circles constantly, providing tension without releasing it entirely.
Listen closely, and the layers reveal themselves. The session was reportedly stocked with talented players, including a young, in-demand Jimmy Page contributing to the rhythm guitar track. This professionalism anchors the track, even as the band’s core intensity threatens to tear it apart. The texture is both gritty and sharp, mixed with a bright, almost treble-heavy quality that lifts the darkness of the lyrics.
The lead vocal, of course, is the song’s hurricane. Morrison initially adopts a surprisingly clean, almost pop-inflected tone for the verses, a restraint that makes the inevitable chorus explosion so much more effective. When he hits that titular line—“Here comes the night!”—the voice shreds, a cathartic burst of true R&B anguish.
This sudden shift in vocal dynamics is mirrored by the instrumentation. A simple, effective piano part, often played by session man Phil Coulter, adds a soulful punctuation, providing harmonic depth beneath the relentless rhythm section. The song never truly settles, alternating between that tight, jittery verse rhythm and the broader, more open feel of the chorus. It feels like someone trying desperately to hold a secret while the world closes in on them.
“The track’s brilliance lies in how it frames a profoundly intimate sorrow within a kinetic, pop-song scaffolding.”
For those who rely on high-fidelity playback, the track is 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 can be lost in overly sterile modern masters. You can feel the air in the room, the sympathetic vibration of the amplifiers.
Micro-Stories: The Universal Dread of Sunset
The power of this specific piece of music lies in its narrative universality—a theme that transcends the era’s sound. It’s 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. It’s a trivial connection, sure, 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 isn’t just about love; it’s about anticipation, the knowledge of pain approaching.
Another listener I know once described listening to 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.
The single became Them’s biggest hit, climbing to a high point of No. 2 on the UK charts and hitting No. 24 in the US. It cemented Van Morrison’s reputation as a vocalist of extraordinary, almost frightening power, setting the stage for the solo career that would explore both the deep R&B roots and the transcendental folk-jazz territories he would ultimately claim as his own. The producer, Bert Berns, would later sign Morrison to his solo contract with Bang Records, a relationship that, though short-lived and turbulent, yielded immortal results like “Brown Eyed Girl.”
“Here Comes The Night” 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 cross-over 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 a sense of 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, yet 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.