Van Morrison before he’s gone
Van Morrison was 26 when he made the cover of Rolling Stone.
It’s Sunday, August 30. As I write this, Van Morrison is performing before thousands of people in Ireland at a music and arts festival called The Electric Picnic. The following is a series of random notes drafted as if for the kind of career retrospective we might encounter upon his passing. A preemptive obituary, if you will. Don’t worry. As all those Irish fans are finding out, Van Morrison is still quite alive.
His latest gig(s)
ELECTRIC PICNIC – Van Morrison is scheduled to perform this afternoon (August 30) at a massive outdoor music gathering called The Electric Picnic at Stradbally Hall in County Laois. It sells out in minutes, features dozens of acts, and attracts 80,000 fans. Van was added to the line up at the last minute, increasing the average age of the performers by multiple decades. No one is expecting Van to be anyone but Van. Even tough it’s been around for years and often features Irish oldies acts, Van has never performed at the Electric Picnic. How the crowd will react is anyone’s guess. But Van won’t care. He’s got a set of gigs coming up in London. that will take him to 2027. As he titled his live album back in 1975, “It’s too late to stop now.:
Dolly Parton and Van Morrison would seem to have little in common
We learn a lot more about a famous person’s life once it ends. Drawing that final breath gets us to focus on who they were, what they did and why we care. For a few minutes. Or, as in the case of Dolly Parton, for a few days.
Which got me thinking about Van Morrison.
Dolly was 80. Van turns 81 tomorrow. Dolly had to postpone and then cancel a “residency” in Las Vegas a few months ago. Van begins his “residency” at a London venue in September. Both came up in hard times. Both have sold millions of records. Both have written hundreds of songs. Both are worth millions. But while Dolly is universally loved, Van isn’t. His music may be, but let’s face it; the man has said things that make many people angry.
For example: On a podcast for hardcore music fans called A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, the host, a fussy Brit named Andrew Hickey, introduced Episode 125 in 2021 with a warning. “The Van Morrison we talk about is more controversial now than he was during the period were looking at (late Fifties early Sixties)... Van Morrison has been in the headlines the last few weeks for promoting dangerous conspiracy theories about Covid and has also been accused of perpetuating anti-Semitic stereotypes. No positive comments I make about the Van of 1965 should be taken as any kind of approval of the Van of 2021.”
The truth of the matter is, Van was a handful in 1965 too.
Van’s Six Essential Songs
GLORIA - With all due respect to those who consider Louie, Louie the greatest garage band rock and roll song ever, it isn’t. This song is. Gloria by Them.. It was the B side on Here Comes the Night and eventually made it to #71 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966. So what? Every rock and roll band should learn the chords and growl the lyrics like Them once did. Van quit Them shortly after recording Gloria and went on to become his own man and one of the top solo acts of all time.
BROWN EYED GIRL – His first solo album was “Blowin’ Your Mind” and Van hated the title and psychedelic cover art. He was a critic of all drugs but alcohol. But this single from the album is his most popular ever. Our grandchildren are familiar with it. It wasn’t mentioned in 1967, but his reference to young girls was weird. (From 500 Songs, “Songs which hint at attraction to underage girls are more controversial now than during the period we’re looking at.” That would be the 1960s.)
MOONDANCE – Did you hear this one on KINK FM? Portland’s underground rock station was only two years old. Moondance was in what is called heavy rotation at FM stations across the country. AM Top 40 radio was losing listeners left and right to FM stations playing Moondance. The guy who sang Gloria was back with a sophisticated, Celtic, and soulful sound.
DOMINO – Here's one that AM radio could play. It was the hit sinle off his fourth album – His Band and the Street Choir. One critic called it “a superb example of white R&B.” The same critic called Van the Greatest White Soul Singer of all time.
HAVE I TOLD YOU LATELY – His version with the Chieftains won him a Grammy. First Lady Laura Bush said it was her favorite song ever. Her husband (43) was a fan too, but Van turned down their invitation to perform at his second Inaugural.
DAYS LIKE THIS – This became the theme song of the Good Friday Agreement. Not that Van ever had a word to say about the peace process. An Irish woman named Miriram O’Callaghan, a big star on national broadcaster RTE, was very excited about interviewing Van years after its signing. “There was such a sense of celebration and relief, and the unofficial peace anthem for the peace process that everyone was singing and playing all over the world that day, was Van Morrison’s song Days Like This. It still reminds me of that joyous moment.”
Van, his second wife Michelle Rocca and Bill Clinton in Belfast after a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in 1995.
Van’s brand of neutrality
He left for America in 1966 as the Catholic civil rights movement was first coming together in Belfast. He has managed to stay out of The Troubles. Then and now. He remembers as a kid in East Belfast telling some Protestant bullies who were harassing him that he wasn’t a Catholic. When he told them he was a Jehovah’s Witness they harassed him anyhow. That he picked up his love of American music from his father’s record collection would indicate that his dad wasn’t one to attend meetings of the local Orange Lodge. His mom was a tap dancer as well as a sometimes attendee at the Kingdom Hall. He doesn’t sing rebel songs and he doesn’t march on the Twelfth of July. But he has no doubts about what he is. Irish. (“I was never part of the Brish Invasion. I’m Irish.” 1965)
Buckingham Palace. Van become Sir George Ivan Morrison of County Down, NI.
But what about his Knighthood?
Twenty years ago he was knighted. The British hand out various honors to distinguished subjects of the Crown, of which there are literally thousands. Some get initials to put after their names – OBE or CBE - signifying this and that. But only the most distinguished get to add three initials before their names: Sir. (Or four if you’re a woman: Dame.) So, on February 4, 2016, Prince Charles made it official at Buckingham Palace whe he did the sword-on-the- shoulder thing, knighting SIR GEORGE IVAN MORRISON of County Down “for services to the Music Industry and to Tourism in Northern Ireland." There is now a quartet of rockers who are Knights: Van, Elton, Mick, and Paul. (For the record. David Bowie turned down a CBE, George Harrison reportedly rejected an OBE because Paul McCartney got the higher honor and Keith Richards, who was never offered anything, called Mick’s Knighthood a “disgrace.”)
Van the outspoken anti-vaxxer
Van released an album of songs in late 2020 protesting the lockdown of the music industry. Remember when? Suddenly, all the stuff about him being obstinate, stubborn and ornery was back in play. But this time it was serious. He was telling people to resist efforts to fight the pandemic. "I call on my fellow singers, musicians, writers, producers, promoters and others in the industry to fight with me on this. Come forward, stand up, fight the pseudo-science and speak up." Eric Clapton join his crusade.
In his own words
Rolling Stone 1976 - “I think Astral Weeks is a classic,” Van says. “It’s revolutionary, it was completely original. Moondance is classic. It’s the first time that anybody had assimilated things that way. Not coming from the ego place now, but the way I did it was classic. I put things together that nobody’s ever put together like that before. I’m proud of that.
“Success, to me, is not album sales. It’s being happy with what I’m doing. Every artist, of course, wants the album to sell … But what’s important to me is just being able to sit here and dig everything for exactly what it is, and feel good about it. To sit here and look at the Pacific Ocean and think, “That’s okay, that feels good,. ”
Rolling Stone 2005 - "If it weren't for guys like Ray (Charles) and Solomon (Burke), I wouldn't be where I am today," he says. "Those guys were the inspiration that got me going. If it wasn't for that kind of music, I couldn't do what I'm doing now."
Acceptance speech when he was inducted tot h Songwriter’s Hall of Fame 2016 - “For 53 years I’ve been in the business—that’s not bad for a blue-eyed soul singer from east Belfast.”
His conversation with Prince Charles when he was Knighted 2015 - “He was just saying, was I still writing?” Van shared. “And he said, ‘You’re not going to retire any time soon?’ And I said, ‘No, I’m not, I’m going to keep it going while I can.’”
Unknown - What’s the point of being successful if you can’t do what you want to do?”
Final words
Critic Ralph J. Gleason in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1970 - "He wails as the jazz musicians speak of wailing, as the gypsies, as the Gaels and the old folks in every culture speak of it. He gets a quality of intensity in that wail which really hooks your mind, carries you along with his voice as it rises and falls in long, soaring lines." Gleason once quoted a remark by John McCormack, the Irish tenor, to the effect that what made a great singer different from a merely good one was "the yarrrrragh in your voice."
Creator of FM Underground Radio Tom Donahue - “He’s got the voice and lyrics that remind you of generations of hard times and misery and that kind of black Irish soul.”