Van Morrison: Egotistical and Brilliant
This article originally appeared Circus, June 1970
VAN MORRISON has finally begun to get his due. Finally is a pretty strange word to use with someone who is not yet twenty-five, but that is only a reflection of our new world, not of Morrison's talent or depth. Because in performing and on record, Morrison gives the impression, above all, of someone who has paid his dues.
Paying dues comes in many forms and Morrison has made the rounds. He was born in Belfast, North Ireland and quickly developed into an egotistical, self-contained, intense, brilliant teenager among whose interests was American rock and roll and particularly the blues. This is easily deducible from Morrison's early work. His image, and his personality have always been intangible but explosive, hard to get to but obvious – for his music is his life and his life is making music.
Morrison is an incredible perfectionist, who chooses only the finest musicians to work with, who imposes his taste on the world, who ignores his audience because he is too busy concentrating on his music, and who gets away with it because beneath it all he is a genius of song. His most recent album, and the one which is making him a household word for good is called Moondance and it is by far his best. The selections still have those blues and rock influences, but he has assimilated them so they sound like he invented them. His music is not folk or rock or country or blues or any simplistic hybrid thereof. It is Van Morrison music. And his poetry, which started, like Dylan's, on a somewhat pretentious level, has mellowed into magnificence. In fact, what with his Irish background and tousled red hair, and mysterious self-involved manner, he more resembles Dylan Thomas than any other mere rock musician.
Like the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and the Animals, rock became a way out of the day to day boredom of everyday life for him, a boredom which otherwise may have been filled with endless barroom fights.
Most rock stars from England became interested (obsessed might be a better word) with the tremendous amount of tumult that they created here. They were first astonished and then delighted with things like groupies and screaming teenage crowds. Morrison has always been more interested in being an artist, a position which might have held him back were not his music so fine and his personality so explosive.
Who is Van Morrison anyway? He first hit the public scene in 1964 during the long lost "British Invasion" of that Beatle maniacal time as the lead singer of a group called Them. Them was a very big success in England and had a couple of hits here too although they never received the kind of publicity that some of the other British groups gained. The group mostly produced mainly sloppy bluesy rock and roll songs which were centered around Morrison's extremist vocals. Though he was the only cause of the group's success, he was also the main reason for its problems. He was impossible to deal with for almost everybody. He was unswerving to record company producers who tried to change his music, carrying his art like a torch that had been sanctified. He also found it hard to recruit back up musicians whom he approved of. He looks back on those days without affection.
"Rock groups were really treated like pigs in those days," he relates. "Nobody but us had long hair, and we were all very young – it really got to be a drag a lot of times but we pulled through the bad times and tried to enjoy the good ones – I'm glad it's over though."
Despite the problems, the group made both artistic and musical history with their rendition of 'Gloria', which became an instant standard. Also successful for Them were 'Mystic Eyes' and 'Here Comes the Night', both of which Morrison wrote. On those records, Van shows his ups and downs. At worst, the band sounded disorganized, imitative and ridiculous. After all, they weren't the only group attempting blues and the influences were bound to show. But on those tracks where the band stayed quiet and together, and Morrison's voice got a chance to sing and tell a story, they leave a mark on the consciousness which isn't quickly forgotten. Van's interpretation of Bob Dylan's 'It's All Over Now Baby Blue' stands out as possibly the best recorded version of that song.
The group sold a lot of records, but failed to build much momentum because of the continuous change of personnel. Morrison is so infested with a belief in his talent that he has always found it hard to put up with the nonsense that musicians have to go through. His devotion is more like that of a jazz musician or a poet than a pop star, but his songs, even then, were highly danceable, playable and loveable. Even then, he was an enigma.
Them finally broke up for good following a bad experience on their first and last trip to America. They were booked by a promoter who had the group fly to the west coast, then ran with the money, leaving them once again down and out. But equally devastating was the music's slow development. Van simply hated to compromise.
Morrison then teamed up with Bert Berns, a music businessman who has written a couple of songs with Van and who owned Bang Records, a small New York based record company. He wrote and recorded 'Brown Eyed Girl' and released it under his own name, no longer part of a group even as a leader. 'Brown Eyed Girl', a bubbly, summer of love ballad, became an international hit and a million seller which provided him with his first bit of freedom.
He promptly dropped out of the money-making rock scene altogether, living off writers royalties from his few hits for the next three years, while he lived in the country in upstate New York, getting his musical and poetic head together. He still had problems with people trying to rob him, a problem which plagues all artists in the music business jungle, but the money coming in was enough to keep him going and that was all he wanted – just so he could relax and really do what he wanted.
After two years, when his name had faded from most everyone's mind, he released his first album in his new bag. It was called Astral Weeks, on Warner Bros. and it was a totally new direction. It was lightly backed, melodically subtle and lyrically flowery. He became a bard, a singer of love songs, a mysterious lost soul instead of an angry young man with the blues. His voice still sounded fine, but the poetry was too subtle for most, and the music too airy. Despite a myriad of critical acclaim, and a tremendous response from his peers, Morrison found little mass public acceptance to Astral Weeks.
It was then back to work. He played from time to time, but spent most of his hours writing, performing, and above all, perfecting his music.
Morrison's voice, not pleasing to all, is a kind of slightly broadened Jose Feliciano with an added range. Comparisons or influence finding is possible but not too meaningful. His influences include everything and therefore mean nothing. His style is merely a channelling of his immense energy. Even the words become secondary to the blinding light of his voice and soul.
On the Moondance album, the Dylan-like liner notes tell a fable of an ancient artist, obviously representing Morrison, who was given a great gift, but who kept it to himself and charged money for it. His wife becomes ill and the artist, after every possible medicine has been tried, sings to her, which cures her. However, after she is cured by his gifts, she sadly asks her lover, "But who will ease your pain, who will save you?" and the question stays unanswered.
