29

Van Morrison

1945–

 

Van Morrison was born George Ivan Morrison in Belfast city, Northern Ireland, on 31st August 1945.  The imaginative roots of the musical developments of his later career owe much to the unique nature of that post-war, industrial city.  During WWII American soldiers had been based in Northern Ireland and had made a great impression, reinforcing in local minds the style, dash, and vivacity of the American way of life.

      His musical interests owed a great deal to his father George's interest in American music, especially jazz and the blues, of which he owned a huge collection of imported records.  His mother Violet too was an opera and jazz singer, and his early tastes were formed by their repertoire.  The young Van was reared to the sound of recorded American music of a kind the national radio did not provide in those days.

      Largely self-taught, he learned the saxophone and the guitar while still a schoolboy.  In 1957, he joined a skiffle group, the epitome of do-it-yourself garage music, called Deannie Sands and The Javelins, playing in local clubs.  He left school at fifteen, learnt the tenor sax, and became a member of the Monarchs, a showband that played largely for Saturday night dances in small halls.   The showbands then provided a touch of glamour and glitz, but would be swept away by the relentless rise of American rock and roll.

      The band moved away from the usual fare of the showband scene towards rhythm & blues and soul.  With this group Van toured Scotland, England and American army bases in Germany.  While in Germany he was offered and played the part of a jazz musician in a film.  The Monarchs recorded one single before going their own ways.  By now Morrison had developed his talents not only as a singer, but also as saxophonist and harmonica player, the two instruments that later gave many of his compositions their unique sound.

      Back in Belfast he opened a music club called the R&B Club and together with another Belfast group he formed a band called Them in 1964, which played in the club.  Them toured in England in 1965, and had two hits, one of which was 'Here Comes the Night'.  Already Morrison had developed his active dislike of the pop music and showbiz hyperbole, a distaste that still lasts.  These singles were produced by Bert Berns, a leading American record producer.

      In 1966 Morrison was invited to tour Europe with a group of musicians that included not only Bo Diddley, but also Little Walter, from whom he learnt a great deal about harmonica technique.  In May 1966 Them toured in the USA, part of that British 'invasion' that included The Beatles and the Rolling Stones.  They issued an album, Them Again, with a classic interpretation of Bob Dylan's 'It's All over Now Baby Blue'.  While in California they played with the emerging group the Doors, who later recorded a version of Morrison's 'Gloria'.

      Back in Europe Van found himself worn out by the constant work and travel and simply went back to Belfast, where he tried to recoup himself, writing and planning what to do next.  The band broke up in 1967, but Morrison decided to go back to Boston, where he worked again under the influence of the producer Bert Berns.  From this period came 'Brown Eyed Girl', and the follow-up album Blowin' Your Mind, which appeared without his sanction.  Though material on this album was mixed and hurriedly issued, one of the songs was 'T.B. Sheets' in which the free flowing imagery of so many later songs made its first appearance.  This hectic period came to an end with Bert Berns' death.

      During a year of occasional live sessions, Van set to work on a new album, Astral Weeks, with the support of a set of talented jazz musicians.  The album is now recognized as an important landmark in modern popular music.  Moondance in 1969 confirmed the range of his talent, establishing elements that would persist in his work over the following years.  Several others followed, including the disappointing Hard Nose the Highway, though this was succeeded by the mesmeric It's Too Late to Stop Now, and by Veedon Fleece in 1974.  Then followed a period of silence in the mid 1970s, the result perhaps of the mixed reactions to these albums.

      Curiously, though his music and singing has its special intensities, Van Morrison never quite made it into the class of mega-rock star.  Perhaps this was as well, for his unique style comes from somewhere else, in the social and literary background of Ireland.  After his prolonged absence from the scene he returned to recording in 1977 with A Period of Transition.

      Van returned to Europe, at first to live in London, later still moving back to Ireland for long sojourns.  As a young man in Belfast it had been the attractions of American music that had set his course.  Actually living in America turned his mind back to Ireland and Irish music.  The influence of this could be heard on Veedon Fleece (1974).  Morrison never again lost touch with his Irish background, and from 1974 onwards there was a conscious combination of Irish elements into his work, in the choice of instruments such as the uilleann pipes and the use of Irish artists such as the Chieftains, with whom he recorded Irish Heartbeat in 1988, and in playing the Belfast Opera House.  His later albums began to reveal a sense of almost Celtic mysticism, with religious and literary references much in evidence.  From 1974 quasi-religious themes entered his songs, with evocations of Romantic poets such as Blake.  Some critics attempted to link him with the cult of Scientology, denied in the title of his 1986 album, No Guru, No Method, No Teacher.

      His song 'Days Like These' has become part of the Ulster landscape, and was used by the government to support advertisement for the peace process.  But that is the sort of thing that affects one's standing in the eyes of a younger audience, some of whom dismissed anything after It's Too Late to Stop Now, and speak with greater reverence of another Belfast group of the period, the Undertones.  Such is the price of fame in the music business, however great a name a singer makes.

      Van Morrison's varied adaptations of music from the disparate sources of modern rock and roll, as well as the literary dimensions added to later albums, make an absorbing body of work, one of the most distinctive produced by an Irish musician.  His varied output is well represented on his 1998 double CD album The Philosopher's Stone - an allusion to that mystical substance sought by the alchemists of old that was supposed to turn the dross of daily life into the gold of art.  For his steady admirers, retained through a sustained stream of regular and appreciated albums, Van Morrison remains a unique and influential artist, a distinctive and exhilarating performer, an enigmatic icon of Irish music.