Sneak of the Week: Dave Morgan, “You’ll Never Get to Heaven”

A secret Britrock hero casts a Beatles-besotted eye toward paradise.

If it didn’t have somebody else’s name on it, you’d be hard-pressed to prove that “You’ll Never Get to Heaven” wasn’t an outtake from George Harrison’s early ‘70s hanging-out-with-Dylan phase. From the spiritual slant of the lyrics to the gentle country-rock amble (the track’s locomotion level is the textbook definition of “loping”) and the invitingly weedy vocal, it could very easily be taken for a tune that The Quiet Beatle cooked up with Bob in the latter’s Woodstock basement.

Dave Morgan might not have crossed paths with the Fabs, but he was involved with two of England’s finest post-Merseybeat/pre-punk bands. He wrote a couple of great B-sides for The Move (“Something,” not to be confused with George’s tune, and “This Time Tomorrow”) and worked as a touring musician with ELO in the ‘80s, as well as adding harmonies to their Secret Messages album.

But most notably, this Britrock journeyman began his long string of solo recordings with Morgan in 1971. It’s a great lost album of the era, alternating between rockers and acoustic ballads, and likely to connect with Badfinger and Beatles lovers, but it fell through the cracks of time, possibly because it was never reissued until its 50^th anniversary. And tucked away at the very end of the album lies arguably its finest tune.

The real masterstroke of “You’ll Never Get to Heaven” (which has nothing in common with the Dionne Warwick hit of the same name) is that, like so many great songs, it can be taken more than one way. If you’re only listening with half an ear, you could take the tune for some sort of sleazy come-on, as the singer invites his addressee to cast aside their shoes, their coat, etc., because “paradise is near,” and as the chorus repeatedly reminds us, “You’ll never get to heaven with them on.”

Seeing as how it was, after all, the ‘70s, when infinitely sleazier concepts found far more success than this tune, you might be forgiven for taking that interpretation of it. But if you lean in even just a tad closer, other, more high-minded meanings will quickly come to mind. As the song moves along, Morgan advises, “lay down your pride,” and “throw away your chains [and] whatever else remains.” Soon it should become pretty clear that he’s talking about divesting yourself of whatever weighs you down and keeps your soul from flying free and achieving what Zen Buddhists call satori.

Considering that some of Morgan’s latter-day songs slipped in some Christian spiritual themes, this interpretation seems exponentially more probable. And if you’re feeling bold, you might even take it a step further, fancying the song as some kind of advice about how to leave this earthly plane behind when the time arrives to move on to the great gig in the sky. Whichever meaning you land on, the tune itself remains equally irresistible.

-Jim Allen

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