Van Morrison - Astral Weeks

Released - November 1968

Genre - Folk Rock

Producer - Lewis Merenstein

Selected Personnel - Van Morrison (Vocals/Guitar); John Payne (Flute/Saxophone); Jay Berliner (Guitar); Richard Davis (Double Bass); Warren Smith, Jr. (Percussion); Connie Kay (Drums); Larry Fallon (Conductor/Orchestral Arrangements)

Standout Track - Astral Weeks

I mentioned in my last review, of the Mothers of Invention's We're Only In It For The Money, that Frank Zappa was one of my major new musical discoveries this year. The other is Van Morrison, although in the latter case it's already tipped over from "discovery" into "nascent obsession." I've been aware of Van Morrison for a long time, thanks to the ubiquity of his hit 1967 "Brown-Eyed Girl," which is a great song but caused me to always assume that the rest of his discography consisted of further lightweight, R&B-inflected pop. I bracketed him into the same part of my mind of the likes of Rod Stewart - enjoyable pop-rock singer-songwriters who would probably be fun to listen to but probably lacked much depth or insight to be really worth my time. It was only after my friend Adam talked a lot about being a big Van Morrison fan that I decided to pay him more attention - Adam and I don't always see eye-to-eye about music (he's a big fan of Fugazi), his taste usually at least tends towards the interesting, so I felt my preconceptions about Morrison might be wrong. I listened to his two landmark albums, Astral Weeks and Moondance, on a trip to South Africa earlier this year and enjoyed them massively (they're now inherently caught up with exotic ideas about travel, as albums you listen to on holiday tend to be) - they were both hugely enjoyable and deeply interesting. I started making a few furtive steps further into Morrison's work, but it wasn't until I read Greil Marcus's book Listening To Van Morrison, in which he expounds his understanding of what seems to be the central, spiritual ideology at the heart of the man's music, that his work really grabbed me and wouldn't let me go.

For me to really, totally invest in an artist, there tends to be more going on than just my enjoying their music, there tends to be some sort of identifiable stance that artist takes towards music and to creativity that speaks to me in some way. When I became obsessed with Tom Waits, I was fascinated by his insistence on doing things his way - his stubborn insistence on making obscure jazz-influenced records that everyone ignored for ten years until the lack of appreciation they received caused him to erupt in an explosion of creativity in the 80s that finally made everyone realise what a genius he had been all along. When I became obsessed with David Bowie, I was fascinated by his need to totally reinvent himself and his work every time he won a new audience of fans, discarding those he had won over and forcing them to accept whatever new version of himself he presented them with next. Van Morrison's philosophy on music, as explained by Greil Marcus, and this is without wanting to sound too fatalistic about it, but seemed to chime more specifically with my own approach to creativity than any other musician I'd listened to. Music has always been the art form I go to first to create a mood, rather than literature, film, poetry or whatever else - part of the reason why I always get annoyed with music that puts lyrical brilliance ahead of musical innovation is that there's something in the combination of music and words that can more immediately conjure up a mood or a feeling or a memory than any other artistic endeavour. There's something immediate and inexpressible about the way music affects a listener emotionally, that's not subject to reason or logic or anything quantifiable. Marcus suggests that Morrison's music is very much about trying to find those isolated, inexpressible moments, to let the music explore the space that surrounds it and try to find the perfect match of sound and word and note that grasps something inside of you and transforms it into a feeling, rather than necessarily following any strict logical progression either lyrically or musically. Marcus also explains that Morrison's writing often taps into the Celtic spiritual idea of the "yarragh" which, if I remember right, is a sort of guttural, spiritual essence that exists inside a person or inside the earth and lies there to be dug out of the ground or coughed out of a throat. Morrison himself has said that he stops working with words as soon as he's written them, and from that point on they just become sounds with which to find something more ephemeral and elemental, hence his famous vocal affectations of growls and grunts that snarls that find their way into his singing - he attempts to distort his own voice in order to find something new and surprising within a song he already knows well.

All this is perhaps over-analysing things, particularly considering the whole point of Van Morrison's music is to pursue elemental, transcendental moments in the listening to the music itself, but it provides a bit of a context as to why he quickly became such a fascinating figure to me, and feels particularly necessary prior to discussing an album so iconic as Astral Weeks. Prior to establishing himself as a solo act, Morrison had been the frontman of the R&B band Them, who had a string of minor hits in the mid-to-late 60s (including "Gloria," which would later be covered by the likes of the Doors and Patti Smith). After Them disbanded due to disagreements with their manager at Decca Records, their producer, Bert Berns, brought Morrison over to America to record an album for Bang Records, which turned out to be his underwhelming debut, Blowin' Your Mind! The album includes "Brown-Eyed Girl," which is of course a classic, but by and large consisted of uninspired blues and R&B numbers that showed little promise of coming from a particularly insightful or innovative musical mind. There followed a series of contractual and legal disputes with Bang, and while these were being resolved Morrison began experimenting by playing with acoustic musicians including flautist John Payne, writing new material that better suited his own questing, spiritual ideas about music. Having rediscovered a new sense of urgency and excitement in his music, Morrison signed with Warner Bros, fulfilling his contractual obligations to Bang Records by recording a series of short, deliberately terrible nonsense songs for them, and set about recording Astral Weeks.

Morrison has since been somewhat dismissive of Astral Weeks, saying it didn't deserve all the retroactive acclaim that was poured upon it (it sold poorly and to savage reviews on its release, and only began to gather critical acclaim some months and even years after it came out, being remembered as a sort of obscure, collector's item by the time Moondance came out in 1970). To be honest, I slightly agree with him - I think in its best moments it's absolutely sublime and sees Morrison truly connecting with those incredible moments he was in search of, but it's not my favourite album of his, and not his most consistent - there are moments where, by his own admission, the songs would benefit from more variation in their arrangements. But when it works, it works incredibly well.

The record was overseen by jazz producer Lewis Merenstein, who was keen to work with Morrison after hearing the early version of the title track and being reduced to tears. He brought in a group of jazz musicians who had previously worked with the likes of Charles Mingus, including bassist Richard Davis and guitarist Jay Berliner, keeping on Morrison's previous collaborator John Payne on flute. Morrison, a naturally introverted and insular man, had never worked with jazz musicians or in a jazz setting before, but simply closed himself off in a separate booth and told the others to play whatever they felt like feeling after hearing his initial versions of the songs. The result is an album that pulls wonderfully in two different directions, anchored by the folk-soul of Morrison's actual melodies and tunes and acoustic guitar parts, and dragged off to fascinating new territory by the more free-form jazz sensibilities of the bass, the flute, the horns and Berliner's counter-guitar part. Despite all the overt praise that Morrison fans seem to heap upon "Madame George" as the album's high-point, for me it has to be the breathlessly brilliant title track. With its light percussive beat, and insistent rhythm it feels like it soars through its seven minutes, Payne's flute floating and diving through Morrison's guitar part, and over it all is the man's questing, wondering, awestruck vocal dealing out dreamlike imagery - that initial proclamation of "If I ventured into the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dream" is one of the most evocative vocal passages I've heard and instantly Morrison acquits himself as a poetic lyricist equal to Dylan. The difference is that, whereas Dylan often feels like he treats his own verses with reverence, here the words themselves feel less important than whatever Morrison is feeling while singing them. The track "Astral Weeks" is a beautiful quest in pursuit of the sublime, its closing, still insistent but quieter moments slowly dying down into silence as Morrison repeatedly sings "In another time, in another place."

"Madame George" is another wonderful high-point, though, just not as good as "Astral Weeks" in my opinion. A violin twirls and swirls through Morrison's sinewy, snarling vocals as he narrates the character study of the ageing, broken transvestite Madame George (initially the song was called "Madame Joy," hence why that's what Morrison actually sings, but the title was changed after he recorded it). "Sweet Thing" is another of my favourites, which almost recaptures the similar sense of breathless exuberance as "Astral Weeks," crafting images of a pastoral paradise while strings soar alongside Payne's flute. Davis's nimble bass-playing takes more of a lead role here than on "Astral Weeks," and it feels like on this track Morrison opens things out to the rest of the band more than anywhere else on the album. Some of the other tracks, for me, feel a little too samey - "Beside You" and "Cyprus Avenue," for instance, tread a similar, slow, slightly plodding path, though that doesn't make them outright tedious, they just lose some of the excitement conjured up by the album's best moments. But all is forgiven for the album's closing track, its most understated masterpiece - the bleak lyricism of "Slim Slow Slider" is totally at odds with its fairly optimistic, pleasant melody, as Morrison sings, with apparent acceptance and peace, "I know you're dying, and I know you know it too" - quite who he's singing too or why isn't clear, and just as the song seems to be closing in on answers, the whole thing stutters into silence with a clatter of percussion and a squawk of saxophone. It's an incredibly beautiful and haunting piece of music, and the perfect way to close this album which has explored musically exciting territory and occasionally closed in on sublime emotional moments of real weight.

As said, "Astral Weeks" was released largely to indifference at the time - it sold poorly and was criticised for being slow and pretentious. It was only as the year drew to a close that critical consensus (spear-headed by Greil Marcus, no less) began to be kinder to it and as months and years went by, it slowly came to be remembered as an iconic cult classic. It came to be beloved by a diverse range of musicians, from rock singers like Bruce Springsteen, to hippie folk singers besides, capturing such a range of emotional feeling and musical styles. Morrison would later be fairly dismissive of it, feeling its iconic status overshadowed a lot of what he tried to do on subsequent releases, but there's no denying that for most of its runtime it's one of the most transcendentally powerful pieces of music he, or anyone, ever recorded. Warner Brothers Records were understandably keen to try and make something a little more commercial next time around (no singles were released from Astral Weeks due to the contractual requirements of Bang Records, though it's tough to know which of these lengthy jazz-inflected tunes would have worked as a single anyway), so on his next album Morrison would condense the same diverse compositional styles and spiritual themes into more radio-friendly songs, resulting in the excellent Moondance.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Van Morrison.

1. Astral Weeks

2. Beside You

3. Sweet Thing

4. Cyprus Avenue

5. The Way Young Lovers Do

6. Madame George

7. Ballerina

8. Slim Slow Slider