Van Morrison

Perhaps too educated or too introverted to belong to the school of rock music, Van Morrison was one of the most significant artists of the 1970s.

Taking the cue from the most abstract songs of Bob Dylan and Tim Buckley, from psychedelic and progressive rock, from the Celtic bards and the soul singer, Van Morrison invented a new kind of singer-songwriter, one who uses the basic components of folk, country, jazz, and rhythm and blues to compose songs that are deeply personal and even philosophical. His greatest works are in fact complex, cleansing compositions that resemble “suites” more than classic pop songs.

Morrison’s style throughout his career ranged from the dilated mystic-soul of Astral Weeks to the baroque psychedelic-jazz of Moondance, and everywhere in between. Through his experimentation, he was seeking a form of expression that was both tragic and elegant. The mature style of his difficult moral exercises varies between the different emotions he tries to portray. Sometimes the music is confused and disorganized, a sign of the artist’s acute inner torment. Sometimes the music is dreamy, floating on improvisation and free form instruments, illustrating a shaman in a trance. At times, his music can stray to sanguinity, tenseness, or flamboyancy, all in the best tradition of cathartic soul music. In all of these cases, whatever is stimulating his emotion is in urgent need of being let loose. His musical search is a search for a new wisdom, rooted in tradition and in communion with nature.

Van Morrison’s roots lie in the mystical folk of Celtic legends. Tedious preparation allowed him in each of his albums to use the best poetry and jazz. Through endless musical toil, he created atmospheres full of mystery and streams of consciousness, which his supple voice masterfully dominated. His songs, created by masterful orchestration and laborious efforts to keep a consistent scene, have become the standard for the most serious American songwriters.

Van Morrison is also the artist who created a body of work most closely melting the guttural moans of the blues singers with the free prose of James Joyce and the flowing artistic consciousness of William James.

While always remaining on the border between popular music and art music, Van Morrison chiseled enormously sophisticated arrangements with intense and reckless vocals. He often gave the impression of trying to stubbornly create a masterpiece, a work so complex and deep that it would finally deliver him to posterity. Although he achieved this, he risked sounding self-indulgent and pretentious.

Morrison began as the lead singer of Them in Belfast (Northern Ireland) from 1964 to 1966. They were one of many white rhythm and blues bands of the era. Before Them he played guitar, harmonica, and saxophone in a combo of jazz and rhythm and blues.

In 1967, after splitting with Them, he moved to New York and found immediate success with the dream Brown Eyed Girl (produced by Bert Berns). The album Blowin' Your Mind (Bang, 1967) was released with Morrison’s consent, and shows him as an artist still slightly awkward. At this stage, his model seems to be an angrier, more proletarian Ray Charles. His first stream of consciousness song, T.B. Sheets, the last song on the album, proves that he wants to go beyond simple rhythm and blues, and reach into the realm of the introverted composer, high-class vocalist, and cunning arranger. At this point, these qualities are not yet blended, as if Morrison had not been able to prove the theorem, but only state the postulates.

The following summer, Morrison moved to Boston, and began seeking an almost magical solution to the aforementioned puzzle. Aided by a handful of jazz musicians, he recorded an acoustic themed album, entitled Astral Weeks (Warner, 1968). At times romantic, mystical, and impressionistic, this disc makes extensive use of elements of both folk and jazz. The eight pieces within are song-poems, at the same time sophisticated and suffering, and always intensely colorful. In reality, this collection of songs is a diary, an ambitious experiment of meditative and introspective music. Each song is a jumble of tormented emotions, a steam of images. Morrison’s cohorts are all experienced jazz musicians, who help him weave a carpet of velvety, twisted sounds (flute, vibraphone, bass, violin), while Morrison ennobles the soul tradition with the intermittent forays of his voice. The album was arranged by producer Lew Merenstein, who created the ultimate "chamber folk" experience.

The title track is a cascade of internal sounds: Morrison’s voice tells a story almost without singing. The instruments are angry and sick, dreamy and melancholic, with a bass marking the dense and obsessive rhythm. The flute and petulant violin languidly dart around in turn, and the end of the song dissolves in a soft breath. Upon superficial inspection, the song could be classified as the typical “Latin Soul” of Berns, but there are too many elements out of place. The Caribbean tribalism is appeased into a resigned shuffle, the gospel yearning is taken by the wrath of street thugs, the swinging accompaniment adapts to a free-jazz mold, and the chorus is repeated aimlessly and endlessly. Beside You is a gaunt and lonely nightmare in the style of Tim Buckley. It is shouted in a cry, stretched and deformed while paranoid instruments vibrate freely and discreetly. Morrison’s voice fluctuates crazily in their chaos, but with a hysteria that is unlike Buckley. The melancholic harpsichord in Cyprus Avenue creates a fairy landscape that appears and disappears behind a lazy and seductive misty vapor. It has a velvety mixture of flute, violin, and bass that carries the music through a galloping cascade of mirages. The harpsichord urges, the voice writhes, and the violin and the viola imitate that of the LSD inspired John Cale. Ballerina is typical of the almost minimalistic harmonic technique of the disk: the romantic vibes are repeated endlessly around the mystic recitation of Morrison’s history; the violin, trombone, and the flute gradually creep, and each comes to counterpoint the vibraphone. Polyphony pushes the vibraphone to complicate its pattern, and its aforementioned partners adapt themselves to its new pattern, so that the song generates an imperceptible growth of sound. Madame George is the most relaxed and tender track on the disc, and it summarizes the dreamlike, romantic, articulate and bright language of Van Morrison. The song’s story is cradled in ethereal flute and violin duets. It is dilated by a form of slow motion psychedlia, elevating the song up to a kind of mystical stasis. But, the most rarefied song is the closer, Slim Slow Slider, whose stunning developments of jazz flute prove it to be a final short aphorism.

The next disc, Moondance (Warner, 1970), reaffirms that Van Morrison was in the midst of an excellently creative artistic season. The songs here are shorter and more relaxed than on Astral Weeks, and the accompaniment is more organic, compact, and straightforward. The artistic expansion due to free-jazz and psychedlia found on his second album are banned in favor of more well-mannered soul arrangements. The 12 man ensemble on this record is less classical that the previous and much more “rhythm and blues” (the “horn section” predominates over the “string section”).

This is certainly the hardest and most melodic of Morrison’s work, thanks to the immortal chorus of And it Stoned Me (an epic piano cadence, counterpointed by romantic sax), Caravan (a solid syncopated boogie), and Glad Tidings (which uses the saxophone to make a melodic counterpoint). This record is also the “jazziest,” especially with the swinging atmosphere of Moondance (with a liquid piano, ethereal flute, and scratchy sax), and Crazy Love, which is composed of the gentle caress of the night.

The total soul of the record does not overwhelm every song, as Morrison created several masterpieces in other musical contexts: see the nervous rhythm and blues of Into the Mystic, the rhythmic gospel of Come Running, the shuffling blues of These Dreams of You (with harmonica and clavinet, and a jazz saxophone solo), or the classical dance of Everyone (with baroque harpsichord and medieval flute).

Completing the record’s smorgasbord of genre (always held together by the backdrop of soul) is Brand New Day, suspended in space by nice touches and breaks and poignant vocal delusions. This song acts as something of a return to the previous record; it is an impressionistic sketch of heavenly, soft snowfall on a series of beautiful notes.

More quiet and introverted, the atmosphere of Moondance has much less to do with the spiritual nightmare of Astral Weeks, and it is in fact altogether more musical.

All of the songs on this record are arrangements composed with the utmost care, using extensive instrumentation, the vocal support of a women’s chorus, and leveraging a rhythm section infused with fierce rhythm and blues and soul. The compositions are concise and terse, almost lapidary if one takes into account the harmonic complexity. The singer’s style is fluid, intense, and passionate. His voice is seen ever-searching for emotional balance on a thin wire, moving from faint depression, to nervousness, to spirituality and mysticism. Here, the English progressive song finds its point of maximum sophistication, and Morrison qualifies as the greatest aesthete in soul music’s history.

The “perfect” style that Morrison struck on Moondance found the most supreme compromise between progressive and pop music to that date. After the album, Morrison, living in California, lost the acrobatic stylistic balance of the early albums and, until at least 1974, his experiments were disappointing. A few songs, however, proved to stick out better than the rest: Domino (one of his classic rhythm and blues numbers), found on His Band and the Street Choir (1970), and Tupelo Honey and I Wanna Roo You from Tupelo Honey (1972), which casts an eye on country and pop. The album Saint Dominic’s Preview (1972) was slightly better, boasting Bernie Krause on synthesizer (in Almost Independence Day) and containing Jackie Wilson Said (another classic rhythm and blues), the long Listen to the Lion (worthy of Astral Weeks), and Almost Independence Day. The somber Snow in San Anselmo and the long Autumn Song were not enough to redeem Hard Nose the Highway (1973). Morrison, now the effective “owner” of the Caledonia Soul Orchestra for backup during tours, ranged between the smooth falsetto of Curtis Mayfield and the hoarse shout of Wilson Picket. Throughout his career he has proven to be the only white man able to compete with such black vocalists, but at this point in his career he seemed to have abandoned the abstract folk-jazz projects of Astral Weeks.

Finally, back in his native Ireland, Morrison was able to channel his original “pastoral” inspiration of his prior masterpieces into a new introverted work, Veedon Fleece (Warner, 1974). Although it does not reach the levels of lyrical greatness, this album contains delightful serenades such as the passionate Country Fair and the long and vibrant You Don’t Pull No Punches. The mood of the album is quiet and rural, as if Morrison was seeking refuge from the urban alienation that came with his fame. The exotic Streets of Arlow and Linden Arden seem to float towards Heaven.

It's Too Late to Stop Now (1974) is a live album.

Morrison returned to California after just a few years of rest and began to play cocktail lounge jazz and rhythm and blues. Period of Transition (1977) shows his return with a great pomp of short rhythm and blues songs (The Eternal Kansas City, Heavy Connection, It Feels You Up, Flamingos Fly). Only Cold Wind in August weaves anything near his old web of emotional vision.

Morrison’s artistic renaissance, though, was yet to come. Later albums would portray the honest and sometimes brilliant craftsmanship of Morrison dealing fervently with more and more challenging themes of almost biblical proportions. Sadly, though, no trace of the roaring heat of his youth would remain.

Wavelength (1978) is a bit relaxed and dispersive; the instruments range from big band staples, to synth, to accordion. He harks back to the formal perfection of Moondance in the festive soul of Kingdom Hall, moved to possessed reggae in Venice U.S.A., danced to martial, invocative emotion in Take it Where You Find It, and shivered in the disco of Wavelength.

Morrison found confidence and inspiration (in the religious sense) on Into The Music (Warner, 1979), an erotic and mystical song cycle. With a mini-folk-jazz orchestra (comprised of Toni Marcus, Mark Isham on trumpets, and myriad female voices) Morrison creates mature and complex polychromatic harmonics from contaminated honky tonk (Bright Side of the Road) to commercial rhythm and blues (Full Force Gale and Stepping Out Queen) to the folk elegy (Rolling Hills and Troubadours).

The four ballads of the second side are some of the transcendental peaks of Morrison’s music. These songs float in a free-form manner, and, reminiscent of Buckley’s, Morrison’s voice flips and tumbles over a broad area of registers, while the musicians create a thick but resigned sonic background.

In Angeliou, Morrison flies on the wings of an intense emotionalism, and it is one of his vocal gems, composed of the whispers and laments of lovers, alternating with a crystal fluidity. And the Healing Has Begun is an incredible epic, and displays the more aggressive side of Morrison’s now mature vocalism, capable of giving the charge of a gospel fervor. You Know What They’re Writing About, the closer, is the album’s most mournful ballad.

Henceforth, his records are not easy collections of songs, but rather spiritual diaries in which the soul is torn apart by the universal themes of life and death. The music goes together more and more recklessly.

A Common One (1980) is anything but as bright as his previous works, as it dives into the more rarefied mysticism. The painful When Heart is Open stands alongside the ravings of Tim Buckley, and is perhaps the most haunting and withdrawn songs in Morrison’s catalogue. The fifteen minutes of Summertime in England act as a last confession before the spasms of death.

Beautiful Vision (1982) is too pastoral in its intent; it is as wordy as a book of sermons. But, it is also the best arranged (and most jazzy) since Moondance. Seemingly with his eyes closed, Morrison created the elegant ballads of Vanlose Stairway, Beautiful Vision, She Gives Me Religion, and Dweller on the Threshold.

Inarticulate Speech of the Heart (1983) is perhaps his most cerebral disc, inspired by the theosophy of Scientology. It is mostly instrumental, and torn between a fusion of jazz and Celtic folk. That mixture hovers majestically in the eponymous gospel chant, repeating ad infinitum the manifesto “I’m a soul in wonder…” William Blake and John Donne (Rave on, John Donne) are his favorite poets.

Sense Of Wonder (Mercury, 1984) was not pervaded by the visionary symbolism of the previous album, and instead returned to his favorite subject of Celtic dream blues: the wonders of love and the complex mysteries of the human soul and nature. Sense of Wonder, with gospel vocal counterpoints, rhythm and blues, and doses of Tupelo Honey, is another page in his diary of existential suffering. Tore Down a la Rimbaud continues amid symbolist poetry. Many of the songs are beautiful instrumentals (Boffyflow and Spike and Evening Meditation) related to Celtic folklore of magic and antiquity.

No Guru, No Method, No Teacher (1986), which marks an official return to his Celtic roots, refines the practice of spiritualism into calibrated pop-jazz arrangements. The elegies are even more intense and deep (In the Garden) without sacrificing the heat of the rhythm and blues (Ivory Tower).

Poetic Champions Compose (1987) pushes his obsessive personal odyssey through a maze of pantheistic mysticism through a catalog of intense folk phrases, permanently expanded through an emotional trance and unable to reach a climax of pathos. His lyrics here are more and more enigmatic; they are the Christian equivalent of a Tibetan guru. The transcendental spirit of this period is shown in the refined instrumental work in Spanish Steps and Celtic Excavation.

At this point, Morrison worked his way to the opposite end of the beginning of his career, from black soul music to white European folk music.

Van Morrison's artistic career plunged again with Avalon Sunset (1989), a lushly arranged collection of gospel hymns (Whenever God Shines His Light On Me), tender pop ballads (Have I Told You Lately That I Love You) and depressed soliloquies (I'm Tired Joey Boy), and Enlightenment (1990), a nostalgic collection that downplays the spiritual component in a manner reminiscent of Al Green (Real Real Gone) and emphasizes the personal component (In The Days Before Rock 'N' Roll).

Nostalgia is also the supporting beam of the double album Hymns To The Silence (Polydor, 1991), whose sermons are musically eclectic but lyrically self-indulgent (and plain verbose). His singing is as creative as ever, although the songs are full of Van Morrison-ian cliches. He loses some of his emotional power in the jazzy Some Peace of mind and So Complicated, and the gospel-pop of By His Grace lacks pathos, but he is touching and almost scary in Why Must I Always Explain, I'm Carrying a Torch and I'm not Feeling it Anymore Morrison is looking back (to his past) and forward (to the afterlife), but he seems to be always sinking in endless reminiscences even when his vocal acrobatics is close to grasping a dimension or two of eternity (the nine-minute Hymns to the Silence, the ten-minute Take Me Back) or his instrumental setting borders on chamber music (Pagan Streams, On Hyndford Street). He lands back on Earth with the serenade It Must Be You.

His senile nostalgia peaked with Too Long In Exile (Polydor, 1993), an album of favorite covers.

Days Like This (Polydor, 1995) harks back to his more conventional cocktail-lounge ballads (Melancholia, No Religion), despite the nine dreamy minutes of Ancient Highway.

After the collection of jazz standards How Long Has This Been Going Home (Verve, 1996), The Healing Game (Polydor, 1997) returned him to his usual themes and sounds, and in particular to his metaphysical visions (Rough God Goes Riding, Burning Ground). At the same time it boasted a friendlier sound, whether in the solo acoustic folk of Piper at the Gates or in the sophisticated pop-soul of Sometimes we Cry and The Healing Game, with even an excursion into doo-wop, It Once Was My Life.

The Philosopher's Stone (Polydor, 1998) compiles unreleased tracks and rarities, including two of his most exuberant numbers, Naked In The Jungle and Laughing In The Wind.

Back On Top (1999) is a superficial sampling of his career's styles. Goin Down Geneva and Precious Time frame the album into a nostalgic tribute to the vintage sounds of boogie woogie, rhythm'n'blues and rockabilly. Two relatively upbeat and catchy numbers (Back on Top, New Biography) seem to invite to have a good time, while The Philosopher's Stone (an allegory for the artist's quest for inspiration) rehashes his melodramatic pop/gospel/soul technique and Golden Autumn Day is the extended philosophical poem "du jour". The album's best and worst can be found in the three ornate pop serenades of In the Moonlight, When the Leaves Come Falling Down and Reminds Me of You, which bring back nightmares of 1960s' crooners but do, admittedly, innovate the genre. Morrison recycles themes of personal nostalgy, indictments of the music business and confessions of existential insecurity.

Down The Road (2002) is very light fare. There are no "deep" compositions and the sound is often as engaging as lounge-music. One is reminded of Louis Jordan's good-hearted shuffles. Except for the funky Down the Road, the album cruises in that low gear (Talk Is Cheap, Whatever Happened To PJ Proby, All Work And No Play) that ultimately sounds as intense as supermarket muzak. Morrison displays his skills at arranging in the way he employs Jazzy rhythms and horns in Evening Shadows and Hey Mr DJ, and Steal My Heart Away is one of his trademark vocal miracles; but these few moments of lucidity are not enough to justify such repeated nonchalance.

What's Wrong With This Picture? (Blue Note, 2003) is a little redundant after so many years of ruminations, but still offers moment of true enlightenment, but his autobiographical paranoia, that obsessively analyzes the life of a celebrity, leads to a ponderous concept album within the album (Too Many Myths, Get On With The Show, Goldfish Bowl, Fame) that is hardly interesting to anyone outside the Morrison family.
What's Wrong With This picture is typical of the mature Van Morrison, an impeccable juxtaposition of soaring chamber orchestration (driven by the warm buzzing of a bass clarinet and culminating in a swirl of violins) and soulful melody (reminiscent of countless Broadway show tunes, and sung with the tone of the veteran Las Vegas entertainer). It is more about elegance than passion, and aging gracefully (as a vocalist and arranger). Evening In June echoes the Latin-tinged pop of the Drifters enhanced with bebop solos of the horns.
One waits in vain for this mood to crystallize into Moondance-style melodic abstractions. The closest Morrison gets to his magnetic masterpiece is Once In A Blue Moon, a sprightly piano tune punctuated by lively saxophones and propelled by an almost frantic cha-cha rhythm. Astral Weeks is evoked by the intriguing combination of fast syncopated rhythm, paradisiac violins and elegiac mandolin in The Little Village.
But the lazy, bluesy slow-stomping Too Many Myths and the languishing Frame, instead, confirms that this is Morrison at his least spiritual and most material, earthly, bourgeois; a professional of Smoky, nocturnal atmospheres. Which is more of a distraction than an attraction: one ends up appreciating more the fervent surges of gospel-y organ that sweep the jazzy mediocrity of Gold Fish Bowl, the Al Kooper-ian organ flourishes and horn fanfares that sustain Get On With The Show, the "hard" sound (sounding almost like Colosseum) of the swinging, dancehall-oriented Whinin' Boy Moon, etc. In fact, one does not appreciate the atmosphere as much as one appreciates the details. This is carefully scored and performed music, and, in a sense, musicians' music: music for connoisseurs only.

Magic Time (Geffen, 2005) does not introduce any new element in Morrison's astral introspective folk-jazz. His paradigm is unlikely to ever change, and his metaphysical ballads (Magic Time, the waltzing Stranded) seem destined to reenact his personal calvary till the end.

Pay The Devil (Lost Highway, 2006) continues to struggle within the fundamental contradiction of his mid-life crisis: music that aims at being so profound but ends up being perceived as pleasant background.

Keep It Simple (2008) became Morrison's first album ever to enter the Billboard's Top 10 by recapturing the relaxed atmosphere of the folk-soul muzak of Tupelo Honey.

Astral Weeks Live At The Hollywood Bowl (Listen To The Lion, 2009) documents 2008 live performance of the Astral Weeks album.

The bulk of Born to Sing - No Plan B (2012) consists of anti-capitalist rants performed with a jazz combo (Van Morrison himself on alto saxophone, Paul Moran on keyboards, Alistair White on trombone Chris White on tenor saxophone and clarinet, Dave Keary on guitars), among them the piano-based shuffle Going Down to Monte Carlo, the bluesy Pagan Heart and If in Money We Trust.

Duets (2015) were reinterpretations of some of his songs with the likes of Steve Winwood, Mark Knopfler of Dire Strait, Taj Mahal, Natalie Cole, George Benson, Chris Farlowe of Colosseum, Bobby Womack, etc. Keep Me Singing (2016) contained mostly originals, except one blues cover, but only a couple of songs (Every Time I See a River, Look Beyond the Hill) stand out. Roll with the Punches (2017) contains mostly covers of blues, soul, gospel and jazz classics, and its pop counterpart Versatile (2017) mostly covers of pop classics (from Cole Porter to George Gershwin), performed by a jazz combo. You're Driving Me Crazy (2018) was a collaboration with jazz organist Joey DeFrancesco that contains a few blues and pop covers but mostly Morrison compositions, notably Evening Shadows (Troy Roberts on tenor sax, drummer Michael Ode, Dan Wilson on guitars). The Prophet Speaks (2018) is a blues album with a handful of Morrison compositions, notably the nocturnal The Prophet Speaks. Three Chords & the Truth (2019) contains all-new original material, notably the metaphysical Dark Night of the Soul and revisions of his typical folk-jazz style like March Winds in February.