No. 042 - Van Morrison’s “Caravan” changed my life

Fateful friendship, heart-shattering loss, and the farewell concert clip that Joe Kubler returns to time and again

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This Song Changed My Life is an independent music publication featuring essays from people all around the world about the songs that mean the most to them. Created by Grace Lilly, supported by readers.

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• 10 min read •

Content warning - this post alludes to suicide

Here we go…. AND THE CARAVAN IS ON ITS WAY!

Danny opens his laptop and pulls up YouTube.

“Have you seen The Last Waltz?”

Admittedly, I hadn’t.

As a life-long music-lover, there will always be the gaps of greats — those artists or records I know are canonical, but just haven’t gotten around to checking out yet. I feel like those gaps are intentional: seeds lying in wait for the right catalyst to awaken in one’s life.

I’ve known about The Last Waltz since my pre-teen days of reading Rolling Stone magazine. It’s the final performance of The Band, it’s directed by Scorsese, it’s got cameos out the wazoo...  Still, this is the first I’d really ever watched of it.

Danny says, “You gotta see this performance. Look what Van does to The Band.”

La la la la la la la… 

Van Morrison wears a burgundy sequined jumpsuit. He’s got this thirty-something transitioning into middle-age look. His hair is thinning. Is that a bit of a bald spot? He seems heavy-set, stout — maybe a few years away from a decent gut. His clothes seem tight. This is the look of someone grasping on to some youthful prime. As quickly as this notion registers, it disappears from thought.

What a powerful voice.

He’s putting everything into this. His life, his soul. This isn’t his band, but he sure acts like it is.

And the woman tells us of her ways (say it to me)…

Danny and I were always romantics at heart — I think this is what forged our relationship to begin with.

Though it blossomed once we attended the same college, we met years before while still in high school. We attended different schools, and he was a grade above me, but it took one shared glance between us to know we should be friends.

We both loved music and music journalism; we would have been called hipsters by our peers in high school, but it was this love that brought us both to see The Unicorns play at the Echo Lounge in Atlanta one fateful June in 2004.

A then-unknown band opened for them that evening, our first time hearing the phrase “Arcade Fire.” Little did we know how heavily they would imprint on our lives and culture for the next decade. Little did we also know how heavily we would imprint on each other even more.

What we did know, after one shared glance, is that we were the best dressed underage kids in this club.

We were lucky enough to live in a time where thrift store shopping meant having the ample gamut of 70s corduroy, 80s Lacoste, and 90s Bugle Boy. Then and there, that was enough for us to exchange compliments — and more than enough to kindle a friendship.

And the caravan has all my friends. It will stay with me until the end.

Two-and-a-half years after our chance encounter at that show, Danny and I would reunite in college not only as friends, but as members of a larger friend group, a community, and a loose and unofficial fraternal disorder we loosely called “the boys.”

I think Danny and I both loved the idea of being part of a ragtag group of friends. If I were to guess, it probably came from our mutual delight in the narrative tropes of goodhearted miscreants à la The Breakfast Club or The Outsiders.

Regardless, we ended up with a group that could best be described as a bunch of wildcards.

We were contemplative and chaotic, creative and restless. We were all artists, writers, musicians — but we were also undergrads with a thirst for adventure, whether that meant scouring the town for a party while ripping up political yard signs, lying to campus police about smoking in the woods, pouring honey over a crowd of unsuspecting dancers (Danny’s special), or passing out after locking yourself in the only bathroom at a rave (my special). 

Turn up your raw-dio  And let ‘em ‘er and  let ‘em ‘er and let ‘em hear the song

He would deny it, but Danny was the coolest of all of us.

Danny not only dressed better than anyone else, he just looked better. His shaggy hair, mustache, and wire-frame glasses alone would have exuded enough literary charm to captivate the entire English Department (and it did). Nevermind his effortless style (though it was efforted — I’d often remark how jealous I was that he could shop from the kid’s section at thrift stores where the vintage selection held more offerings; he felt beleaguered by his height).

Danny was a talented writer and poet, who had a relaxed sophistication to his style and voice that I so often envied.

Danny also loved music and musicians. He would voraciously read biographies of famous bands and artists — mostly from the 60s and 70s — the real classic, classic-rock types (Dylan, the Stones, The Mamas & the Papas). He played a bit of guitar and piano, but he wouldn’t call himself a musician.

Being cool is a relative quality.

For Danny (perhaps for all of us) there was something inexplicably cool about being a musician. And we were all musicians, at least to him.

We played in bands together, performed shows, went on tours; but not Danny. Danny was an avid supporter of his friends and their music, but he was never in a band. While he was not at every show we played, he was at the best of them.

He made them the best.

Danny was not a performer, not in the traditional sense, but he did not need to be on stage to move a crowd. His mere presence dancing within it could change the course of a show. 

… and we can get down to what’s really wrong… I long to hold you in my arms… so I can… I can feel you…

Every time I hear this line, I return to Danny’s living room, when he opens the laptop and starts showing me this performance.

It’s hard for me to return to that time, let alone pinpoint an exact timeline.

It was during the summer of 2020, at the height of the pandemic.

Danny was struggling before the world broke, but the lockdown took a different toll. His immune system was already compromised, something he had been dealing with for a long time but only recently began opening up about, even to close friends.

It had been over a decade since we left college and began to drift apart.

We would communicate and see one another sporadically, but when we did, it would always pick up just where it left off. There was never animosity, just internal acknowledgement that the practicalities of life beckoned us elsewhere.

After moving in and out of different towns on the east coast, we finally found ourselves living within 5 minutes of each other again for the first time in years, only for a world crisis to upend all good intentions a few months later.

Out of a job and dealing with my own health problems, I was clawing myself out of my own depression when I received a call from Danny.

The situation was dire and he needed me immediately. 

I SHALL REVEAL YOU TO THE WORLD!

Danny suffered from Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and he was in great pain.

I am by no means an expert on the subject, but I know he never received the care he deserved. Maybe remedies do not exist and I am ignorant of the science. Maybe there is something to be said for how he felt, as a brown man, treated in the American healthcare system. Or maybe there is a critique of the system in general. I don’t know.

I do know that if someone is suffering and they are handed, by a doctor, an option to not just alleviate but end all suffering — as well as joy, peace, comfort, laughter, and every other element of the human condition — then we are failing not just that individual, but humanity itself. 

TURN IT UP!

Each time I see Danny that summer, he is looking worse.

He knows but I don’t.

I actually do, but I cannot admit it to myself.

It becomes harder and harder to spend time with him, and I start to become upset with myself for not being able to be there with him. The guilt spirals, and it becomes difficult to even respond to texts.

I will never get the chance to respond to his last one. 

So you know it’s got soul!

In the days following Danny’s passing, I return to that night the summer before.

One of the hallmarks of our friendship was sharing media with each other, whether it was the collected poetry of Richard Milhous Nixon, the world of Arthur Russell, or the humor of Steve Harvey. If either of us recommended something to the other, it was a mandate to check it out.

The last thing Danny showed me, and one of the last joys we shared, was this performance by Van Morrison and The Band. 

“And the caravan has all my friends. It will stay with me until the end.” I can’t get this line out of my head. What was Danny trying to show me?

This song: a group of friends on the road, gaining wisdom from wandering women (Danny always had a love interest, no matter where he was in life), and, most importantly, turning up each other's radio so we can hear each other's song.

There is a longing Van expresses, something insatiable, which can only be expressed through music. It’s the epitome of soul.

I keep returning to this song to return to Danny.

It’s a beautiful and joyous bop, but it brings me to tears.

Eventually, I start to sing along, loudly.

It becomes critical that I learn this song. I start recording myself along with YouTube karaoke versions. Eventually, I feel confident enough to go out and sing publicly at Dr. Fred’s Karaoke, a local staple where Danny and I cut our karaoke chops. (One of the many unique and singular joys in the universe is seeing Danny sing “I Touch Myself” by Divinyls.)

I imagine that we, “the boys,” are the caravan. We meet women, we fall in love, we learn, we long, we have music and we have each other.

Every time I get to the line, “I long to hold you in my arms,” I think of Danny.

Turn it up now one more time, oh Lord! One more time!

Returning to The Band’s version, and how it changed my life, the notion of a farewell performance really hits me.

Van Morrison, for the record, was never a member of The Band. The Band brought in several well-known guests for their final concert as a group, yet by the end of this performance, you feel The Band is the guest in Van’s world.

Like many great tracks, there are countless subtle musical flourishes to be discovered upon re-listening. (Levon Helm hitting the cowbell every time Van sings “Turn on your electric light” has to be one of my all-time favorites.)

The best moments, though, come towards the end of the song.

The Band is jamming along in a groovy pocket. Van keeps peppering in quietly, “So you know it’s got soul.” The horns reprise Van’s “la la la’s” from earlier when Van, raising a fist to the air, yells, “TURN IT UP NOW!” All of the sudden the horns are blaring and every member of The Band elevates their performance to maximum effort. 

Is this the end?

“PLAY IT ONE MORE TIME!” Van screams.

The camera cuts to members of The Band, who are beaming with joy.

“Look how he’s cracked every member of The Band,” Danny says.

He’s right. The Band belongs to him now. And yet Van is also being moved by The Band into some higher plane of musical mana. The energy is mutual, cyclical, and spirals out from each performer. Every musician on stage is smiling; they’ve surrendered control to one another.

It almost seems like too much, but Van doesn’t want to let it go.

With the last remaining energy, he coaxes The Band on.

“Play it one more time!” Van yells, kicking his foot in the air, and they keep playing.

“One more time…”

If Van could, he’d keep going.

Finally, he thanks the crowd and walks off stage — but not without one last kick.

The guitarist says, “Van the Man,” and every time I hear this, I say to myself, “Dan the Man.” ◆

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About Joe

Joe Kubler is a musician, writer, and engineer based in Athens, Georgia. His work focuses on the relationship between art and technology, and he is an advocate for the accessibility and open-source use of AI tools.

Instagram @cgi.joe

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It happened every day for over a week

Each morning before my eyes were even open, I had the same song stuck in my head: Harry Nilsson’s “I Never Thought I’d Get This Lonely.” It crept in without hesitation and made itself comfortable, my unannounced little guest.

I couldn’t help but laugh. For a song with such a sad title, I somehow managed to have the only funny part of it wedged into my mind — the last sixty seconds.

If you’re not familiar, it ends with Harry scatting with growing intensity until his voice crescendos into manic, animal-like shrills. It’s wild and childlike and it always makes me smile.

That same small section played over and over in my mind. It was the strangest thing. I couldn’t figure out why it kept happening.

But every morning, bam! There was Mr. Nilsson “Da, da, da, da…”

I started getting used to it, looking forward to it almost. It became an excuse to play the song loudly on my speakers. I’d sing along as I made my coffee, shampooed my hair in the shower, giggling at the absurdity of it all. It was very Emma Stone and “Pocketful of Sunshine.”

Then one day, without warning, it switched. I could hardly believe it. I knew this day would come eventually, but I had no way of knowing when this momentous shift would occur.

I woke up to a new song, one I couldn’t place…

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