Van Morrison: your views please

Xpost, I like that version of Comfortably Numb. It’s not particularly joyous of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GqszEwXPlc

new album three chords and the truth out 10/25. first album of all original compositions since keep me singing

new song is gorgeous

speaking of pink floyd and van morrison. doesn't wish you were here sound like the guitar intro of almost independence day?

And they both sound like Moonlight Mile.

New song is lovely - the gentle huff and wheeze of a pair of bellows returning to rest.

Interview with Ted Templeman about co-producing Van in the mid-70s. Van being a mentor?

https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/rock/8531986/ted-templeman-interview

new album stands up with all of his recent original work, really awesome

That interview was great.

Last album was pretty good, will give this one a listen.

There was an interview with him in The Guardian recently. It didn't go well:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/oct/31/a-duel-with-van-morrison-is-this-a-psychiatric-examination-it-sounds-like-one

"I look him in the eye and tell him that I am not trying to psychoanalyse him, that his music has simply meant more to me than any other throughout my life. There is something that moves across his face but I could not name it. 'Aehhh,' he breathes. "Well, shall we end it there?" I say, and stand and shake his hand. As I do I look at (his) notepad. In the top left hand corner he has drawn an angry rectangle."

I always wonder if interviewers treat interviews with notoriously stiff interviewees as a badge of honour, along the lines of Lester Bangs' series of interviews with Lou Reed. There's a comment on Mark Prindle's website to the effect that Lou Reed perked up if you mentioned pinball machines - he apparently had an encyclopaedic knowledge of pinball machines - and I wonder if Van Morrison has a secret hobby that is the key to building a rapport with it. Perhaps he is secretly an expert on Cookie Clicker, or the XCOM games, or perhaps he has a massive Transformers collection.

I can find no evidence on the internet that Van Morrison toured Japan in the late 1970s, around the time that Diaclone first came out, but Wavelength was popular and with the funds he amassed from that record he could easily have gone on a toy-buying spree. Wikipedia's article on that record contains the word "butt". I think the cover photographer was trying to make him look sexy, and amazingly it almost worked. I'm heterosexual, but I can appreciate why ladies might have found 1977-era Van Morrison attractive.

One of the comments on The Guardian's article mentioned an interview he did with Spike Milligan for Q magazine back in 1995:
http://www.raubenheimer.nl/spikevan.html

It's not much more illuminating, although they obviously got on together. "I can't mix my personal stuff with the job, so I just talk about my job. I'm not interested in selling myself, I just sell my records, my music. So I have to censor everything I say, 'cos if I don't, they just use it against me" he says.

The Guardian's inteviewer points out that two of his management team stayed in the room in order to ensure that everything remained on-message, and I wonder if they were scared he was going to blurt out something racist? He's in his seventies, old people are notoriously off-message.

Also, who would have thought that a broken <br> tag in October 2001 would have made my words go small in 2019.

he's never a good interview, i just think he's a very guarded person who also deeply dislikes all non-music-making aspects of the record business

See you soon on the 'notably infected and/or fallen thread':

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/aug/25/van-morrison-blasts-covid-gig-limits-pseudoscience

He don't pull no punches.

Inbox: "Van Morrison to release three new anti-lockdown protest songs". The lyrics are... 😟 pic.twitter.com/uLQhYTH2na

— Stuart Dredge (@stuartdredge) September 18, 2020

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/EiL7J9yXYAMr7sx?format=png&name=900x900

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/EiL7J90X0AA9gXi?format=png&name=900x900

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/EiL7J91WsAEN1ec?format=png&name=900x900

Even disregarding the message, that is a remarkably crude assortment of doggerel from the same guy that brought us Astral Weeks.

Nobody, no, no, no, no, nobody stops me from loving you baby
So young and bold, fourteen-year old
Baby, baby, baby

indeed!

man’s a cunt, always has been

ulster prod in backward opinion shocker

Ulster prods treated as generalised monolith on ilx shocker

King Billy was a cunt as well

this is one of my favourite thread titles

Ulster prods treated as generalised monolith on ilx shocker

― Master of Treacle, Friday, September 18, 2020 11:18 AM (thirty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's tough at the top

he's just testing the water for his new album, 'a period of transmission'

I knew he was a curmudgeonly asshole, but didn't realize he was such a moron.

yeah it blows

If I ventured in the slipstream
Between the ventilator of your dreams
Where unworn mask rules retract
And the ditch into which I drop'd
Could you find me?
Would you close-a my eyes?
To lay me down
In silence easy
To be buried in
To be buried in

No more celebrities telling us, telling us what we are supposed to feel

Take your own fucking hint, Ivan.

Fuck me, those lyrics.

The new normal, is not normal

If memory serves, he complained about the plaque attached to the house he was born in, in Hyndford Street in Belfast. I've walked past it many times. A tiny plaque. Such a massive dick.

as i said itt or some other van thread, it boggles the mind how such a dick could have made such incredibly joyous music.

i'm pretty sure van was into scientology at one point so this anti-science stupidity is maybe par for the course

He was born a Jehovah's Witness.

He gave thanks to L Ron Hubbard on the liner notes of Inarticulate Speech of the Heart

No more celebrities telling us, telling us what we are supposed to feel

Van Morrison was ever thus:

Did you ever hear about the rock and roll singers
Got three or four Cadillacs
Saying power to the people, dance to the music
Want you to pat 'em on the back

greil marcus has a story about a dude who saw van morrison in a bar and got up the nerve to approach him to tell him how much his music had meant to him, and van's response was "why do people feel they have to tell me these things?"

Well, I want to make love to you tonight
I can’t wait ’til the morning has come
but i can't cos you've got a facemask on
And that means you're a fake science drone

I can't remember if this was suggested in Clinton Heylin's bio or some other book, but does Morrison actually have a clinical psychological disorder?

Anyway, going back to his days in Them, he was known to turn into a complete asshole, and I got the impression it wasn't consistent - he would just enter these moods. You can kind of see this in his interviews of the past decade, where he becomes inexplicably hostile to some and very cheery open to others (for example, his last newspaper interview with an Irish reporter, where he's not only in good spirits, but is dutifully following social distancing and thorough handwashing).

For what it's worth (nothing), my friend heard from someone who worked with him that he's on the autism spectrum.

Oh yeah just picked up Hot Press last week cos it's a Van special.
Not looked at it much so had probably missed reference to the new material.
I love Them and think at least the early solo stuff is great.
Does this colour that stuff any more than any previous behaviour from him?

I thought he was brought up as Christian Scientist in a Prod area of Belfast. So probably head wrecked already.

I had a dream last night that I was escorting Van around an identified British city (I think it was Winchester). He was dressed in the classic Dexy's dungarees and pheasant feathers get up and had a guitar slung across his back. He was most genial. That is my Van dream.

He didn't mention vaccines once, thankfully.

A hip genial Van is alas only a dream

Let's discuss his album closers.

Man, I absolutely love "Purple Heather."

Feeling like Almost Independence Day as we wait

Starting to think ‘ No Guru No Method...’ is amongst his best albums...the 80’s new agey production has aged beautifully

There's a good mix of heavy statements and lighter envois here. Lewis Merenstein made a good choice clipping the "Amen" coda off of Slim Slow Slider; if they had kept it, it would have been one of the worst endings to a great album ever. I would definitely have Street Choir and Midnight Special flip places on this list.

I don't know if your exploration of Van has come to an end at 1995, but 97's The Healing Game is definitely worth your time, even Greil Marcus thinks so.

I love how "Glad Tidings" starts off almost like a Krautrock song.

ICYMI this long series of posts from One Band One Week was a good read about Van, Belfast and a bit of Irish history.

https://oneweekoneband.tumblr.com/tagged/van+morrison/chrono