Van Morrison: One Night in Nashville
Friday May 5th @ 10:00 PM
VAN MORRISON: ONE NIGHT IN NASHVILLE marks Morrison's first television performance in over 20 years and his first live performance in Nashville. Filmed in black and white at the hallowed Ryman Auditorium, Morrison sings songs off of his current release, Pay the Devil, and delves into country music's rich repertoire. The legendary star also sits down for an exclusive interview with CMT's Chet Flippo.
NEW YORK -- With all due respect to artists like Bob Dylan and Neil Young -- names that are normally invoked as examples of 1960s rock stars who have stayed productive and boldly reinvented themselves in middle age -- it's possible to make the argument that no one of that generation has aged better than Van Morrison.
Morrison, 60, still releases albums once every year or two, and there are some revelatory moments on all of them. He has branched out into Celtic folk (1988's "Irish Heartbeat"), jazz (1996's "How Long Has This Been Going On"), skiffle (2000's "The Skiffle Sessions") and country (2000's "You Win Again" and this year's "Pay the Devil").
Live, he's more uneven: If you catch him on a bad night, it's possible to come away with the impression that he's just going through the motions. But judging by his Monday night show at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, he's still capable of putting on a great show.
His burnished baritone voice was in top shape, and his solos on harmonica and saxophone were brief but explosive. His 10-piece band was sharp, and the sound mix could not have been clearer. The setlist offered a good balance of hits ("Moondance," "Brown Eyed Girl," "Jackie Wilson Said"), semi-hits ("Crazy Love," "Bright Side of the Road") and more obscure material.
The show had plenty of meditative, mid-tempo numbers like "Wonderful Remark" and "They Sold Me Out," but there was a jaunty, swinging feel to "Back On Top" and "Bright Side of the Road" and a '50s pop flavor to "Stranded" and "Magic Time." "Call it nostalgia, I don't mind," he sang on the last.
With a fiddle and a pedal-steel guitar weeping behind him, Morrison sang several songs from "Pay the Devil," as well as "I Can't Stop Loving You," one of the signature country-crossover hits by one of his idols, Ray Charles.
At different points in the show, he scatted like a jazz singer, or grunted like a bluesman. Despite the variety in the musical trappings, he stayed true to Charles' spirit throughout the night, attacking each song like a soul singer, playing with the phrasing for dramatic effect, adding improvised runs, and frequently building to an emotional release.
He stretched out "Real Real Gone" with a bit of Sam Cooke's "You Send Me." He also added an obscene line, for comic effect, to "It's All In the Game"; playfully stammered a line like a drunk in the "Pay the Devil" number, "There Stands the Glass," and goofily yelled out "All right everybody, let's do-si-do," during another "Pay the Devil" song, "Playhouse."
Moments like these were rare, though. For the most part, he conducted himself in a businesslike manner, standing still at center stage and curtly nodding at band members to trigger solos. During "Moondance," his rapturous tribute to "the night's magic," the back curtain was illuminated with star-like lights, but that was it for visual enhancements.
The only disturbing thing about the show had nothing to do with the music. The tickets read "7:30 p.m. sharp!" and that's when the music began. There was no opening act, though Morrison's band played a number by itself, before he came on. The show was over at 9:12, which might be a record for an evening rock concert at a large New York theater.
It's no sin to be punctual -- better right on time than an hour late. But since 99 percent of rock shows do not begin at their stated times, many fans were not ready to go at 7:30, and throughout the band's introductory number and Morrison's first few songs, they stumbled around in the darkness, looking for their seats.
You could debate if this was fair to them. But it certainly wasn't fair to the people they were stumbling over.
Roger Catlin: Van Morrison in New York
Albums come more regularly from Van Morrison than tours do. In fact, he’s never toured as extensively as his colleagues, choosing instead to go out with a band across Europe and playing a handful of select dates in the U.S.
Boston and San Francisco were longtime stops for him in this pattern, since he spent time living near both places. But Monday, he played a teriffic show in New York as well, a sellout that was barely noticed at the Theater at Madison Square Garden especially when overshadowed by the behemoth Billy Joel Tour that Swallowed the East Coast in the bigger arena, marking another date of a record 11 next door.
As predictable as a Billy Joel show must be by now, Morrison’s shows are rare enough to be packed with surprises every time.
This time, to coincide with his new album focusing on American country-western, “Pay the Devil,” he assembled an accomplished band with a fiddle and Cindy Cashdollar on pedal steel guitar, lending authentic flourishes. But with his keyboardists, guitarists and backup singers also managed to put together sparkling versions from way back in his impressive 40 year catalog, including such favorites as “Moondance,” Wild Night,” “A Wonderful Remark” “Jackie Wilson Said” and yes, even “Brown Eyed Girl.” At this rate, he could have thrown in “Gloria” or “Here Comes the Night” for a kind of lifelong retrospective dating back to his days in the Belfast rock band Them.
Like Bob Dylan, with whom he toured in recent years, he’s not particularly chatty with the audience, remaining an enigmatic figure on stage, in a suit, large brimmed black hat he might have purchased from the Hasidic section, and glasses. His voice was in top shape, and he enjoyed his signature style of repeating a phrase into near scat stratospheres.
When he sang the Ray Charles standard “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” it tied it all together by echoing so authoritatively the artistic giant who had first melded soul and country so well. But he did more than echo Brother Ray’s version; he echoed his approach by holding to the lyrics and emoting them to a degree that made you hear them anew.
-JAY LUSTIG
www.setlist.com
Theater at Madison Square Garden - New York, NY
Back On Top, Real Real Gone > You Send Me, Stranded, My Bucket's Got A Hole In It, Sold Me Out, Magic Time, Bright Side Of The Road, In The Midnight, Wonderful Remark, Moondance, There Stands The Glass, Precious Time, Streets Of Arklow > Pull Punches Push River, Crazy Love, Playhouse, I Can't Stop Loving You, Jackie Wilson Said, Brown-eyed Girl, All In The Game > You Know What They're Writing About, And The Healing Has Begun
Wrong songs, wrong room for Van Morrison www.suntimes.com
Wrong songs, wrong room for Van Morrison
April 25, 2006
BY DAVE HOEKSTRA Staff Reporter
Now, here's a country tear-jerker: soul legend Van Morrison mailing in honky-tonk songs in a cold barn like the United Center. That was the unfortunate scene Sunday night when the Belfast Cowboy set up shop to promote "Pay the Devil," his debut for the Lost Highway label.
Backed by a band that included piano, organ, pedal steel and fiddle (but no horns), Morrison sang traditional country like "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It" and Webb Pierce's "There Stands the Glass" with the brevity of last call. Van the Man's restless approach to his country songbook indicated something better was down the line.
His "Pay the Devil" songs might have stood up in the intimate setting that breeds great country music -- and original tour dates had Morrison in appropriate settings like the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville (where the mayor proclaimed him an honorary citizen of Music City) and the Masonic Auditorium in his beloved San Francisco. But the United Center? In March, Morrison told Billboard magazine he is not a "big-gig act."
I took it all in from a third-level seat ($69.50 a ticket in Section 334) that was closer to Bobby Hull's retired number banner than it was to Van. From my seat, the sound was unintelligible; the band, which numbered between eight and 13 people, was undistinguishable. I think that long-haired person on dobro and steel guitar was the great Austin, Texas, player Cindy Cashdollar, but from my vantage point it could have been Edgar Winter. I also figured promoters would partition the United Center to make the venue feel warmer, but I was wrong. The venue was filled to about three-fourths capacity.
Even Morrison slam dunks like "Bright Side of the Road" and "Precious Time" suffered through a distorted country-tinged filter -- although Cashdollar (formerly of Asleep at the Wheel) brought a colorful Western swing sensibility to "Moondance," and Morrison nailed the cresting ballad "Stranded," which became a tribute to all of us on the third level. Morrison also drew from his "Veedon Fleece" songbook for a minimalist take on "You Don't Pull No Punches but You Don't Push the River."
Morrison finally began to click when he picked up an acoustic guitar to launch an ambitious journey through "Celtic New Year." His dramatic vamping was immaculate, and subbing a fiddle for horns made perfect sense. By this time, Morrison had performed for an hour, which marked the end of his regular set.
He upped the ante for his encores, beginning with a sluggish Caribbean version of "Brown Eyed Girl," a song covered more passionately these days by Jimmy Buffett. Morrison accented the Tommy Edwards soul hit "It's All in the Game" with a splendid sax solo and then paid passionate tribute to Chicago blues with a gritty version of Muddy Waters' "Hoochie Coochie Man." He roared to a finish with a grungy take on "Gloria" that also would make Chicago's Shadows of Knight proud.
It was obvious Morrison enjoyed these chestnuts more than the country music. I've seen Morrison in all kinds of weird incarnations, playing with Linda Gail Lewis and a throwaway pub band, as well as his 1979 "Into the Music" show at the Park West, when he sang with his back to the audience. Sunday night I longed for those days.
dhoekstra@suntimes.com
www.setlist.com
United Center - Chicago, IL
Keep Mediocrity at Bay, Real Real Gone > You Send Me, They Sold Me Out, Magic Time, Bucket Got a Hole In It, There Stands the Glass, Stop Drinking, Bright Side of the Road, Stranded > Don't Look Back, Moondance, Streets of Arklow > You Don't Pull No Punches But You Don't Push The River, Precious Time, Tear Your Playhouse Down, Celtic New Year, Healing Game, Brown Eyed Girl, All In The Game, Help Me, Hootchie Cootchie Man, Gloria
As his ardent fans have long known, Van Morrison can be, shall we say, difficult BY ROSS RAIHALA
Pop Music Critic
As his ardent fans have long known, Van Morrison can be, shall we say, difficult.
So for his Saturday night gig at the Target Center, that meant a strict start time of 7:30 p.m., no encore and a set list comprised largely of songs unknown to those who don't keep close tabs on Van the Man's ever-expanding catalog. (The guy's got more than three-dozen albums under his belt, and he releases a new one every year.)
For nearly the entire 90-minute show, Morrison stood motionless in front of 7,200 people, moving only when he turned his back to the audience during frequent solos from his 10-piece backing band. And as he was clad in a black suit, black hat and Bono sunglasses, it was impossible to glean even a hint of expression from his face.
One could say his body language was that of someone doing long division while waiting for a bus to go to the dentist's office.
But whenever he opened his mouth, it was — to borrow Morrison's own phrase — magic time. At 60, his voice is every bit as rich, gorgeous and supple as it's ever been. If anything, he sounds more comfortable with his pipes than he did 10 years ago.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, he saved his most passionate vocal performances for his newest material. On the road to promote his new country disc, "Pay the Devil," Morrison hit most of the album's high points, shaking off studio-based stuffiness in the process.
His fiery takes on Rodney Crowell's "Till I Gain Control Again" and his original "Playhouse" were worth the price of admission on their own. He also dipped into last year's "Magic Time" for the title track, "Keep Mediocrity at Bay" and "Stranded," a new number that fits in nicely with his best-known classics.
Speaking of his hits, he played a few with something approaching contempt.
During an extended "Moondance," he let his trio of backing singers handle most of the lyrics and actually walked off stage for part of the song. He introduced "Brown Eyed Girl" with a sneering, "Here's the money shot," and trudged through one of his most joyous numbers, "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)," at a pace best described as funereal.
But as long as he's still got that voice, Van the Man can be every bit as difficult as he wants.
Critic Ross Raihala can be reached at rraihala@ pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5553. Read more about the local music scene on his blog, "The Ross Who Knew Too Much," at www.twincities.com.
Another perspective on Minny:
Review sent in from Scott Wooldridge
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Van Morrison Review
A review of the Van Morrison concert on April 22 in Minneapolis follows. The Minneapolis Star Tribune also printed a (much shorter!) review:
http://www.startribune.com/1374/story/387612.html
At the last minute, I was fortunate to stumble upon a ticket to the Van Morrison concert at the Target Center April 22. I've been a very big Van Morrison fan for a long time, but have never seen him perform live. A combination of Van's reputation for being a temperamental and inconsistent performer, my ambivalence toward big arena shows, and a general lack of opportunity have kept me away from Van shows in the past. But when this chance presented itself, I simply couldn't talk myself out of it.
Which is a lucky thing. For all Van's "difficult artist" rep, he still can be an inspired performer, and for parts of the evening Saturday, he was nothing short of dazzling. He impressed me with his saxophone, harmonica and guitar playing, but of course what everyone came for was his singing, and he remains one of the most exciting live vocalists working today.
Things started slowly; maybe glacially would be a better word. Van came out blowing on the harmonica, but was not exactly a ball of energy. The first song was "Keep Mediocrity at Bay," from the album Magic Time, and some of the crowd knew the song well enough to sing along. (Not me.)
From there Van moved squarely from a mid-temp shuffle to a slow ballad. "Way to fire up the crowd," I thought, but as things turned out it was not a bad strategy; start slow and build momentum.
Van's new album is a collection of old country songs with a few originals thrown in. It's not bad. I've always enjoyed hearing Morrison interpret other people's stuff, and even though R&B and jazz are obviously his first loves, he's clearly had an affinity for C&W too. The problem with the album is that there is a certain sedateness to it. "What he really needs to do," I kept thinking upon hearing it the first time, "is kick these songs in the butt a little."
So it was fun to hear him play the songs live, because that's exactly what he did. "Blue Diamonds," from early in the set, was one where his performance was both looser and edgier than the album version.
The first half of the set moved on, sometimes very good, sometimes kind of bland. Van's band is excellent--as you would expect. The pedal steel/dobro player was very good and made a nice contribution to the overall sound. However, some of the solos--especially in the first half--seemed gratuitous. It's not really necessary to have a guitar solo followed by a fiddle solo followed by a piano solo...
Perhaps the best song on Van's new album is "Till I Gain Control Again," written by Rodney Crowell. On the album, the track is brilliantly sung by Van right up until the very end, where he loses a little control himself, resorting to some guttural scats that dont quite work. But he clearly connects to the song, and Saturday night it was like a light bulb came on when he sung it. Part way through the song, Van uttered one of his most famous phrases: "turn it up!"although it appeared he was talking to the soundman rather than quoting "Caravan." But clearly he was into the music more from this point on. He ended the song with a "yeah!" as an exclamation point.
Van and band then rolled into a good singalong; "Precious Time Keeps Slipping Away." And then Van pulled out the biggest surprise of the night, for me anyhow, when he played "Streets of Arklow" from his Veedon Fleece album. He segued seamlessly into the chorus of the next song on that album "You Don't Pull No Punches but You Don't Push the River." During these two songs, Van played some bluesy guitar licks and generally sang like a man on fire, at one point he even testified: "You got to get right with the river!" For me this was the highlight of the night.
But for a lot of people, the next song possibly topped it, a lively version of "Bright Side of the Road," featuring Van's wonderful Louie Armstrong impersonation. During much of this song, the crowd was on its feet, and Vans sleepy beginning of the night was long forgotten.
Another potential highlight of the night came a few songs later, when Van suddenly launched into the opening of "Jackie Wilson Said." This drew another big cheer from the crowd, but Van's lounge-jazz take on the song was a bit deflating. It was almost like he was a little tired and needed to coast a bit. Just a guess, but it certainly didn't have the fire of the original. Van's sax solo was great, though.
Not long after "Jackie Wilson," Van and band played "Brown Eyed Girl." And although many people were very happy to hear it, this was the low point of the concert for me, because Van reverted back to his "difficult artist" persona when he announced the song by saying, "Here's the money shot, or the cum shot, or whatever they call it."
That's pretty much an exact quote, folks, and although it may have gone over the heads of many people there, I thought it was insulting to his audience to a) introduce a song that way, and b) play a song he obviously didn't want to. A friend of mine, who has been to many Van Morrison concerts, said after the show that Van is kind of trapped, because he knows many people are counting on hearing that song but of course it's long since become boring for him to play it for the six gadzillionith time.
Still, I was pretty put off by the comment. It just seemed, I don't know, juvenile.
It didn't take long for Van to redeem himself, though, because he next played "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," the Bob Dylan composition that Van redefined when he recorded it with Them. The version Saturday night was basically the Them version, and I marveled at how Van can still sing that song and hit all the high notes that he did in '67 or whenever it was he recorded it. Van's voice is a little less nasal now and a little more husky, but it was astonishing to hear him, in a live setting with no studio tricks, hit those high notes and sing the song so flawlessly.
The night ended with "It's All in the Game," Van's classic rendition of an old pre-rock and roll era love song. The arrangement was powerful and emotional, as Van and the band took turns upping the energy of the song. We heard, "Ladies and Gentlemen, Van Morrison!" from the guitar player a few times, as Van stalked off the set in glory, and then it was all over.
No encore, much to the shock and dismay of some of the audience around me. I wasn't surprised; I had read enough about Van to know he doesn't always feel like doing them. But the show had been great, encore or not. Van Morrison had delivered an amazing--if sometimes aggravating--night of music, and I felt lucky to have witnessed it.
www.setlist.com
Target Center - Minneapolis, MN
Keep Mediocrity At Bay, Stranded, They Sold Me Out, Big Blue Diamond, Magic Time, Days Like This, Stop Drinking That Wine, Moondance, In The Midnight, Jackie Wilson Said, You Know Me Better, Precise Time, Gypsy Road, Bright Side Of The Road, What Am I Living For, Playhouse, Brown Eyed Girl, It’s All Over Now Baby Blue, E: All In The Game > You Know What They’re Writing About>rainbow 65 > Make It Real One More Time,
£48m
Ulster-born Kiera is No 2 in showbiz rich list
By Lisa Smyth
21 April 2006
The Belfast-born granddaughter of comic Charlie Chaplin has been named as the world's second richest entertainer.
The Sunday Times Rich List claims Kiera Chaplin, is worth £30m. behind violinist Vanessa Mae in the section for entertainers under 30.
Aged 23, she has a 30% stake in Limelight Films, and has also earned thousands of pounds from acting and modelling.
She is also president of the firm behind webforjetset.com, which helps the super-rich source the must-have helicopter, Ferrari, or reliable bodyguard.
The 18th annual Sunday Times Rich List, the definitive guide to wealth in Britain and Ireland, is published in a 104-page supplement. The list is based on identifiable wealth - land, property, assets such as art and racehorses, or significant shares in companies, and excludes bank accounts - to which the paper has no access.
Aged just 29, former Boyzone frontman Ronan Keating has been ranked 11th with £10m, level with Hollywood A-lister Keira Knightley (21), Ulster model Jamie Dornan's ex.
Songbird Katie Melua (21), who spent part of her childhood in Belfast, is 19th with a £5m fortune.
U2 are top of the Irish entertainers list, with £469m.
Belfast cowboy Van Morrison has a £48m fortune, while Cork comic Graham Norton has £24m putting them at 143rd and 247th place respectively overall.
Anti-poverty campaigner Bob Geldof is fifth in the Irish entertainers' list with £35m.
Learning the Ways of Life With Lester, Van and a Bum
There’s a reason I’m bum-fixated — and it’s not just because of my always-inescapable liberal guilt. Bums (yes, I say bums; not homeless, transients, derelicts or vagrants — not because I think any less of them, but because I like the word) have fascinated me with the ideas of both freedom and bondage that come with utter destitution. However, when I met some of the bums of New York City, my fascination was transformed into something else entirely.
The bums of New York seem more immediately desperate than the bums of California (open sore-baring bums of south Berkeley notwithstanding). Here, you can respond to their “Can you spare some change?” with vocal or tacit refusal, or, if you’re that kind of person, with the “pretend you don’t see ‘em and keep on truckin’” plan. In New York, bums don’t cotton to that kind of shit. They’ll follow you for blocks, asking you again and again for a little help, or, at the very least, to recognize that they’re walking alongside you. No jokes-for-change there, folks.
It all started on the plane to New York City for spring break. Flying somewhere above America’s bread-basket, I found some interesting insights in an essay about Van Morrison’s 1968 sophomore album Astral Weeks. Written by Lester Bangs, the genius drug casualty/tragic hero of rock criticism, this piece caused me to listen to the album — really listen — for the first time in years. (I actually paid real money for the CD sometime in high school, but tossed it into my overflowing “boring” pile when it was immediately less accessible than Moondance. You should not do this.)
The thing about Astral Weeks-era Van Morrison that I didn’t realize until Bangs made it so obvious to me is that here, unlike any of Morrison’s other work (his best song, “T.B. Sheets” is excepted, but more about that later), he faces one of the greatest questions of existence felt by those born not into poverty: facing those less fortunate than yourself, and deciding exactly how to feel about it.
My first and most memorable experience with the bums of New York happened on West 116th St. and Lenox Avenue — which, as it turns out, is actually called Malcolm X Boulevard — inside the rapidly gentrifying borders of Harlem. Trying to hail a cab for our group of six after a horrifying Senegalese dinner (stick to Ethiopian, I say) I heard a weathered female voice call from somewhere alongside of me, “Hey, can I talk to you?”
Being in a hurry, I tried out the “keep on truckin’” plan, only to get back a “Hey! I’m talkin’ to you! Don’t you hear me? I’m standin’ right here! You trying to ignore me?!” The rest of my friends kept on a-truckin’, but I was instantly ensnared by this most basic request for interaction — the recognition of another person’s existence. Fifty cents later, I was tearfully informed that she had buried two of her sons, that she was “attending” Columbia, that she just wanted to know everything there was to learn and that one day, she hoped that she could see Europe, especially Paris, but probably never would.
Instantly I felt love, sadness and pity — the only reason I hadn’t been to Paris was because I was too lazy to buy a ticket, and here I was taking in this bum’s home turf, on a holiday. Of course, she was a complete liar, as my native New York friends would later tell me; but, really, does lying about her dreams just to net a handful of pocket change from some passing rube make her situation any better?
Van Morrison is faced with this overwhelming sense of sympathy in “Madame George” on Astral Weeks, where he sings about looking into the face of a downtrodden transvestite hassled by street kids and run off by the cops, and is so taken by his love of this tragic figure that he’s got to take the next train away — it’s just too much for him. “T.B. Sheets” is even worse. Faced with the slow death of his girl, Morrison can’t handle being beside her sickbed any longer. He’ll send her some wine later, he says, turn on the radio, whatever she wants — he’s just gotta get away from there. He can’t fucking take it. When he’s faced with the overpowering love/horror of existence, Morrison can only turn away from it, passionately knowing that he doesn’t know how he should feel.
Bangs’ interpretation is what kept ringing in my brain after my own Madame George experience: “You’ve got to hurt until you feel like a sponge for all those other assholes’ problems, until you feel like an asshole yourself, so you draw all the appropriate lines. You stop feeling. But you know that then you begin to die.” I thought, I can either let the misfortune of others eat away at my existence until I can no longer live for myself, or I can pass right on by, and be one of those fuckers that doesn’t care about anything except themselves. Either way, I’m fucked.
That’s why I finally understand why Morrison’s breathy vocalizations and manic emotion are at their most striking on Astral Weeks and “T.B. Sheets” — because he asks this question, and, like me, he has no answer.
Van Morrison: Seeking the man inside
The famously secretive and irascible Van Morrison is - grudgingly - prepared to have a conversation. So, has he mellowed? Maybe a little, reckons Paul Sexton
Published: 07 April 2006
The lobby of the Grand Hotel in Brighton may not match the bustling splendour of its 1930s celluloid namesake, but the human traffic is constant as I sit waiting for Van Morrison - or at least a summons from his manager. Idly observing passers-by, I notice a short, balding man in a cardigan passing unnoticed into the lift, and muse for a moment on the mild coincidence of seeing someone who vaguely resembles Van Morrison's slightly shifty-looking brother. When the realisation dawns of who it really is, it comes with a kind of respect that one of the most revered and significant songwriters of the rock era has still not blown his cover after more than 40 years of fame.
Morrison's ability to maintain oil-and-water separation between his creative persona and his reluctant public self is almost as fabled as his prodigious recorded oeuvre. It's all the more singular in an era in which a star could be constructed and forgotten again almost before the Belfast bard had got out of the lift.
Private to the point of clandestine about his personal affairs, Morrison has rarely allowed even a chink of light to shine into that domain. For all his known dislike of commentators reading anything into his album covers, one rare glimpse came on the cover of 1995's Days Like This. It pictured him behind customary dark glasses, walking the dogs with his longtime partner and a former Miss Ireland, Michelle Rocca. By the standards of a professional recluse, it was almost a Hello! magazine moment.
More often, he has issued "keep off my land" warnings to would-be sensationalists, his acerbic disposition in stark contrast to the often elegiac grace of his body of work. "If they didn't really know me way back, how can they know me now, in any respect?" he wrote scathingly in "New Biography" from 1999's Back On Top.
The Irishman's appetite for isolation is matched only by his undimmed motivation to keep on working. Since emerging as the teenage engine of the tempestuously short-lived beat band Them in 1963, he has averaged close to an album a year, and at 60, continues to play live with disciplined regularity.
Journalists' war stories about failed attempts to get something meaningful on tape with Morrison have peppered his career, and his celebrated wilfulness has been experienced not just by the media but by fellow musicians. One tale has him in a long, late-night, post-gig barroom exchange of views with a member of his band, who argued his ground on a particular point until weariness got the better of him and he told his employer at last that he agreed with him. Momentarily taken aback, Morrison is said to have paused for a second before snapping: "Well, in that case... you're wrong!"
Salman Rushdie once wrote of meeting Morrison late one night in Bono's living room, after which he was "treated to the rough edge of the great man's tongue". With admirable understatement, he further observed that Van "has been known to get a little grumpy towards the end of a long evening".
Morrison's unambiguous disdain for the trappings of his profession gave him particular notoriety in 1993, when he became the first living inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame not to show up for his award. But, for all his continuing reluctance to take part in anything as crassly commercial and downright meddlesome as an interview, I sense in his demeanour that Morrison has mellowed at least somewhat.
I last met him 20 years ago, during a grudging promotional round for No Guru, No Method, No Teacher. That album, its title inspired by his campaign to discourage writers from intellectualising his work, signalled an artistic renaissance and a reconnection with the wider world after years of perceived introspection - even if that was the judgement of critics.
Then, Morrison was at pains to tell me, almost in self-justification, that he was "jaded". When I asked, like some cheap shrink, how long he had felt this way, he said: "Since I was 18." That was the age at which the son of a Belfast shipyard worker, born two weeks after VJ Day in 1945, had formed Them.
The media, it seemed, were largely held to account for such mental fatigue, with their relentless overinterpretation of his output and insistence on prying into personal circumstances that he deemed irrelevant to the work. He gave me the impression of pining for the innocence of his teenage years in Northern Ireland, when "there was nobody saying that [the work] was anything," and he had left school at 15 to chase dreams dangled in front of him by the mystical blues of Leadbelly and Sonny Boy Williamson.
"I'm basically an introvert, and that's OK," he continued in that 1986 meeting. "For a long time, people used to tell me what they thought Van Morrison should be like, and all this nonsense. At the time I used to listen to practically everybody. Now I don't listen to anybody."
In the intervening years, the tireless nosiness of the fourth estate has not exactly endeared us to him. The date and location for this meeting changed five times in as many weeks. But now, with a recording and concert turnover that would embarrass many musicians half his age, the self-confessed workaholic has arrived at an easier accommodation with the expectations of his profession.
The reason, it seems, is a sheaf of reviews for Morrison's new country-themed album Pay the Devil more consistently positive than any since the expressive outpourings that produced No Guru, Avalon Sunset and other albums in the second half of the 1980s. Even the title of the new album registers his acceptance of the obligations of his job, and the need to "keep on rolling from town to town," as the song says. "It's the old folklore saying about 'the devil to pay'," he tells me.
He's settled gingerly on a hotel sofa, still in his cardigan and seeming more vulnerable without his dark glasses. "The reality of doing this is, it's not free," he goes on. "There's a price to pay for doing it, same as everything's got a price."
Nevertheless, once again Morrison has dug deep to make the emotional investment, and once again it has its reward in the music itself. Devil gathers a dozen covers of venerable country tunes recorded by the aforementioned Williamson, George Jones and the lesser-celebrated Nashville mainstay Webb Pierce, and mixes in three of his new compositions of sympathetic hue.
It's a successful marriage. The country mantle fits as snugly as those he has assumed on albums of jazz, skiffle and blues in the past decade or so; so comfortably as to make a nonsense of the fact that Morrison recorded the album in Ireland with his regular band and that, until a launch concert at the Ryman Auditorium last month, he'd never even been to Nashville, never mind played there.
"I've done some country stuff before in the Seventies, it just didn't come out," he says. "On Tupelo Honey, a couple of songs on there were straight country - 'When That Evening Sun Goes Down,' 'Starting a New Life' - and 'Tupelo Honey' itself is very country. So it's nothing new, writing in this way."
That "new life" was the one he had started with his American wife of that time, Janet Minto, then known as Janet Planet and the mother of their daughter Shana, who has recorded with him. Morrison met Janet when he was just 21 and set up home with her in Massachusetts, and then Woodstock. Tupelo Honey was released in 1971, by which time Morrison was a true transatlantic darling of the burgeoning album-rock scene.
More widely appreciated in America at that time, he had already scored not just hit albums but two Top 10 US hits, with "Brown Eyed Girl" in 1967 (absurdly overlooked in the UK then) and 1970's "Domino". But Astral Weeks, which went on to become his defining work for many, was cold-shouldered on its 1969 release. No less a journalistic eminence than Nick Kent derided Morrison's vocal performance on the record as sounding like "José Feliciano's stand-in".
Musing further on the sonic ingredients of his later work that were consumed by George and Violet Morrison's boy as a 1950s youngster, he adds: "We tend to forget that when I started, there wasn't a lot of electric music going on. If someone had an electric guitar, that was a major event. And that was a bit later on. So it was country/skiffle, folk music; but it was all under the same umbrella, it was all acoustic music.
"Then there were people like Louis Prima, which was a different take on rock'n'roll, rhythm and blues. Johnnie Ray was like the backdrop for everything I can remember, hearing his music on the radio and people playing it on 78s during that period. And a lot of people were playing country then too."
Warming to the safe subject of his favourite records, he is informed and informative. Touching on his cover of "More and More", Pierce's 1954 country chart-topper penned with the prolific writer Merle Kilgore, he confides that it was "probably the second song I ever learnt. It goes that far back." He has also revisited Hank Williams's much-covered "Your Cheatin' Heart", and other songs closely associated with the ill-starred legend, such as "My Bucket's Got a Hole In It" and "Half As Much".
George Ivan Morrison's Belfast education into the mysterious allure of country and western was fully rounded, even if it didn't manifest itself until later. That was after his parents had bought Morrison his first acoustic guitar and he'd corralled a bunch of fellow 12-year-olds to form the skiffle outfit The Sputniks, and then played with Deannie Sands and The Javelins. Tentative steps into soul, rhythm and blues came next with an Irish showband called The Monarchs. Now also wielding a saxophone, he left school, qualification-free, to tour with them, choosing day jobs that would fit snugly around their rehearsals.
That led to the formation of Them, now regarded as one of the most authentic R&B-injected beat combos of the era. Apart from their hits "Baby Please Don't Go" and "Here Comes the Night", * * Morrison's imagining of the hugely influential "Gloria" while still a teenager - a new wave classic before there was such a phrase, and manna to thousands of garage bands - showed a precociousness built on an exhaustive musical upbringing. "I was lucky. The music was in my household, my father [an avid collector] had the records. He also had jazz records and blues and gospel, so I was born into this situation. I call it being brainwashed in the right way.
"There was a guy who lived in my street that played all Hank Williams stuff, but I seemed to zone in more on Webb Pierce, Ray Price, Faron Young, these kind of people. Also Tennessee Ernie Ford, his earlier stuff, which was a mixture of boogie-woogie and country."
It seems that a lot of the narrators from this phase of Nashville's history are heroic, politically incorrect failures, I point out - particularly the benign drunk in another Pierce hit, "There Stands the Glass" and the comically abject loser in George Jones's 1965 single "Things Have Gone To Pieces", written by Leon Payne.
"There's a lot of that heroic failure in country music. These are things that are common to a lot of people, because it's working man's music. It's very similar to blues, and they probably have the same source, actually. Like John Lee Hooker said, 'Blues is the truth,' and that can apply to most of the lyrics of country music. It's addressing the truth, it's very straightforward.
"But country songs are tongue-in-cheek, and they're meant to be. Something like 'Things Have Gone To Pieces'; there's a bit of comedy in there, so even when you have George Jones singing it, there's always that twist."
Unsurprisingly, Morrison has no truck with modern, cookie-cutter country, churned out as if from some central factory and paranoiacally conservative in every sense. Indeed, he readily admits to being entirely out of step with all modern trends. "I was never a great fan of rock music, even from the very beginning when the word originated. And even before that I wasn't a big fan of pop music. Actually, most pop music today I hate, I can't stand it. My tolerance for rock music, the way it's being interpreted, the instrumentation, the loudness... it doesn't get through to me.
"So I'm going back to a time before all that. My musical sources come from way, way before any of this stuff existed. I'm coming from a more archaic, atavistic kind of source. It's almost pagan, almost folk-music tradition before rock'n'roll, before electric. Like Ewan MacColl singing with a finger in the ear. I'm like anybody; I just do what I do and I like what I like.
"I still collect records. I'm always finding more stuff. A lot of it, luckily, is coming out on CD. Also, when I was a kid I couldn't afford it. It was a big thing for me to get a Bo Diddley EP or something."
Watching Morrison in concert at the Brighton Dome later, his body shape in his uniform of hat, shades and suit reveals someone more comfortable with his public self than the figure who used to stand with his back to the audience. We've come some way from the early solo gigs of the late 1960s, when he would reportedly stop singing if he heard the audience talking, and make up riffs on the spot that even the band hadn't heard before.
Here, half a dozen of the country songs integrate well with a selection of mainly recent catalogue material. He offers a fresh, imaginative arrangement of his inescapable theme song "Moondance" and a pleasingly jaunty "Cleaning Windows", his affectionate 1982 appreciation of those days of odd-job innocence in Belfast. The song makes it clear just how much he missed that pre-"jaded" era of low expectations, as he carried his ladders down the street past the bakery and went home to listen to Jimmie Rodgers in his lunch break.
How, now, does he choose set lists from such an immense repertoire? "The band have to know a lot of songs," he says. "It's just what I feel is right at the time that I'm going to call, and the band know enough that I can call any one of 50 songs. That doesn't always happen, because of the flow on stage. You've got to keep it moving, so it's hit and miss, really. I only know the first couple of songs, and from then I just call them out."
Morrison feels more of a sense of obligation towards his best-known songs than you might imagine. "Of course you do in certain situations, especially with bigger gigs, but I'm not really a 'big gig' act. Some of the larger places outdoors in summer, I feel obligated to play [the hits]. I feel like they want more of the known stuff, so I just do it, or more of it.
"If you get into introspective blues stuff, or something where you're stretching out a bit, large audiences don't respond to this, so you have to give them what they want, basically. It's why I don't do bigger gigs, actually."
His itinerary seems to be an endless tour to match Dylan's, but he begs to differ. "I don't really tour. This is another misconception. I stopped touring in the true sense of the word in the late 1970s, early 1980s possibly. I just do gigs now. I average two gigs a week. Only in America do I do more, because you can't really do a couple of gigs there, so I do more, maybe 10 gigs or something there."
Off the road, he's an anonymous everyman, listening to his record collection, walking and watching television. In 1992, Morrison was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of Ulster, and said later that if he was offered a position there, he would take it up immediately.
Even if he has had more than his fill of being overanalysed by the media, Morrison clearly has a strong sense of his own place. "There's people who work on songs, and craft songs," he says, "and they're thinking about every line.
"There's poets who do that, and there's the other kind of poetry they call the romantics, which comes from a different place of being in touch with nature, so that's kind of where I'm coming from. If there's any sort of lineage in this, it's people like that. Or in Ireland - Patrick Kavanagh, or Joseph Campbell, these kind of lyricists.
"It's more like an instinctual thing; that's where the song's from, rather than sitting down and thinking more intellectually, like Seamus Heaney. He's a very intellectual poet. I'm coming from the other place."
If he can't stand media scrutiny, I wonder how on earth Morrison deals with the presumably sycophantic inquisitiveness of his diehard fans. "I think fans just take it as what it is," he says. "There's an interview with Ray Charles where somebody said, 'Why did you pick these songs, how do you do it?' and he said, 'Well, I listen to the words and if I like the words, I do the song. It's as simple as that.'
"If you write a song, you feel, 'I'm going with this lyric'; there's no hidden things. I mean, maybe there were people who [did] write these mystery things; to me, a lot of that is the Sixties mythology. There was a period where everything, no matter what it was, was mythologised. But I think most people just take it as what it is, and - more importantly - how does it affect you? What emotion do you feel, at the end of the day?"
'Pay the Devil' is out on Exile/Polydor. Van Morrison plays UK shows in May and June, including Hampton Court Palace on 15 and 23 June
