The following is the first of two articles I am now posting here about the music of Van Morrison that I’ve published in the Falls Church News-Press, this one on June 19, 2003.
There is little dispute that, except for Bob Dylan, few people have had more influence on the development of music the past 30 years than that pudgy little Irishman, Van Morrison.
“Van the Man” made a rare appearance on this side of the Atlantic last weekend with shows in New York and Boston. He performs routinely across Europe, but avoids the U.S. His last appearance in Washington, D.C., was in September 1990.
Still, the audience at the intimate theatre at Madison Square Garden last Friday night was treated to one of The Man’s very best shows. Since the late 1960s, when he broke from Them to launch his solo career, Morrison has been known for blowing hot and cold at concerts. Last Friday, it was agreed among a number of his truest fans that he’d never been better.
In his late 50s by now, the little man with the mighty big voice was as sharp, clear, powerful and carried away as ever he was 30 years ago when this writer saw him perform at least a dozen times in the San Francisco area, and even had a chance to interview him.
His mastery of the improvisational blues style has matured so much over the course of the years since, that he truly has grown better and better with age.
Even so, it’s hard to know what chemistry puts him over the top on any given night. Is it the intimacy of the venue, the appreciation of his fans, or both? It definitely has something to do with the interaction between artist and audience. Watching a video of a live Van Morrison concert in Germany in 1999, his music was good, and the audience was responsive. But it was nothing like last Friday night.
He peaked with a 15-minute version of “It’s All in the Game,” and you know Van is happy when he closes with very extended versions of his biggest “pop” hits: “Brown-Eyed Girl” and “Gloria”
Over the past decade, especially, he’s taken to linking up with the monumental blues greats of bygone eras, pulling out of virtual retirement John Lee Hooker, for example, and learning, performing and recording with him for a number of years before Hooker’s death in his 80s in 2001.
Last Friday, Morrison had another blues legend, Solomon Burke, in tow to open and do a couple songs together. Solomon needs to sit down most of the time, but that didn’t slow their music. As he always has, himself, Morrison simply stands at the microphone and belts out his stuff. Clad in a buttoned up dark suit jacket, a bowler hat and sunglasses, he steps back only to go to town with his sax, harmonica or acoustic guitar.
He provides extensive opportunities for others in his band to solo, as well.
Morrison writes almost all his music when he’s not doing native Irish stuff like “Danny Boy.” Songs he’s written that others have made famous often surprise you, too, like, “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?”
He has over 30 albums in release, and each new one is as good as the ones before. His career has not yet peaked and will carry him into his 80s as it did in the case of Hooker.
A little-known fact about Van Morrison is that he convened his own conference on the philosophy of music in London in the late 1970s.
There are many situational references in his lyrics based on personal life experiences, some small but memorable, such as being “behind the stadium” with his brown-eyed girl, hanging out with Madame George (in yours truly’s personal favorite album, “Astral Weeks”), sitting in a café watching it snow in San Anselmo or listening to the fog horns blow in San Francisco. One album, “Too Long in Exile” has a long song about bad experiences with recording industry moguls that could explain why he tends to avoid U.S. venues to this day.
This writer had an opportunity to interview Van Morrison as a writer for a San Francisco area counterculture newspaper in 1971. Arranging the interview with his agent, my friend and I found our way one grey afternoon to a small club in Marin County (across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco). Walking into the empty club wreaking of stale cigarette smoke, we heard Morrison and his band rehearsing the opening chords of “Caravan” from his “Moondance” album (you know, the heavy piano-led downbeat, “duh duh, duh-duh-duh-da-duh, DUH DUH.”
Spotting us coming into the room, he immediately cut off the rehearsal, and came over to sit at a small table with us.
He was so friendly and open that I couldn’t help telling him a short account of when another friend and I were hitchhiking a couple months earlier in Springfield, Massachusetts, and were picked up by a guy sporting a white fir coat driving a 1954 Ford.
This guy introduced himself as Georgie Leonard from his group, Georgie Porgie and the Cry Babies, and said he was heading for a show that night in Buffalo, New York. We were headed in the same direction, so we jumped in.
It was near-blizzard conditions that December 1970 day, so Georgie had to drive slowly and was sure to be late for his concert. But he still insisted on going out of his way to drop us at the University of Buffalo, where we hoped to find a place to “crash” for the night. “Don’t worry, the girls will cover for me,” he said.
We got out at a dorm on campus, and checked the bulletin board. Much to our happy surprise, there was a flier advertising a Van Morrison concert that very night in the gym.
Asking directions, we trekked across the snow to the gym, and could hear the music as we approached. The show was coming to an end, so we just walked in. We stood on a grandstand and watched an encore. That was it.
Anyway, Morrison loved hearing my rendition of this little true story. Later, his agent said Morrison read and liked the story I wrote about him, too.
About a year later, Morrison released his “Saint Dominic’s Preview” album with lyrics all about the year he’d spent in San Francisco. At the opening of one song, the words went, “Well, it’s a long way to Buffalo, and a long way to Belfast city, too.”
I’ve always taken that as a little acknowledgment of the story I shared with him. Because that’s the way he is.
