Van Morrison
Van Morrison has recorded for six decades and made one of the strangest records ever to become a standard. Born George Ivan Morrison in Belfast in 1945, he was the son of a shipyard electrician whose enormous record collection — blues, gospel, jazz, Lead Belly, Ray Charles — was his education. He left school at fifteen and toured Europe with a showband. He formed Them in 1964, which produced Gloria and Here Comes the Night before collapsing in disputes over money. He signed a solo contract in New York that he later described as exploitative, produced the hit Brown Eyed Girl in 1967, and found himself contractually trapped; he is said to have discharged an obligation by recording thirty-one improvised nonsense songs in a single session. Astral Weeks, recorded in two days in 1968 with jazz session musicians who had not heard the material, is eight long songs with almost no fixed structure, acoustic bass, flute and strings, and words that circle Belfast childhood and transcendence. It sold almost nothing and is now routinely placed among the finest albums made. Moondance the following year was accessible and successful, and he has released more than forty albums since, moving between R&B, jazz, Celtic music, gospel and skiffle. His concerns are consistent: memory, place, silence and religious experience arrived at through repetition rather than statement. He is famously difficult with audiences and interviewers, and his pandemic-era records attacking lockdowns drew wide criticism. He was knighted in 2016. He has said repeatedly that he does not remember making Astral Weeks and does not much want to discuss it.
- Lived: 1945 CE – ?
- Nationality: British
- Roles: writer
