Belfast Telegraph Interview With Van

Belfast Telegraph:
Van Morrison has hit out at the modern record industry, claiming almost 100% of the people behind the business know nothing about music.

The elusive singer also criticised much of today’s pop music, saying that many frontmen couldn’t sing, but were drowned out by loud bands.

The Belfast man was speaking in a rare interview with the Daily Telegraph, ahead of a series of UK dates featuring his entire |Astral Weeks album.

Morrison also spoke about his reasons for taking the critically-acclaimed album on the road now - 40 years after its release.

I was never really into pop music, as such. It bored me, and it still does.

Citing “audience demand” as the main reason behind his decision to perform Astral Weeks live, Morrison said: “I haven’t really played with any of the original musicians since then and I thought it would be more like ... you know, a live situation. I never played live with any of the people who were on the original recording. I’ve never done the orchestrations for the songs.

“At the time there was no money to do this from anybody, |including the record company. Plus, it keeps coming up, this recording keeps coming up — in top tens and polls and various things. There’s a demand for it from the audience. That’s enough for me.”

Morrison, who produces his own material and runs his own record company, said less people in the industry now knew about music and that the industry, as it had been, was now finished.

“You can bet 99.5% of the record business knows nothing about music,” he said.

“You can bet on that now, where you couldn’t 30 years ago, because there were more people who did know music in the record business, right?

“The beginning of the end was when a lot of those guys sold out, like Atlantic Records.

“That was the beginning of the end. It’s now the end. We’ve probably gone past the end of the |actual record business as it was, or what it was supposed to be. We’re on the other side of that now. It’s minus.”

On the subject of current music, Morrison was equally dismissive.

“I was never really into pop music, as such. It bored me, and it still does.

“I was brought up in a household where there was good music — there was jazz and blues and really good stuff to listen to.

“So rock and roll was something like, ‘Yeah, I’m a teenager and I dig rock and roll’.

“Rock music to me is a con with the record companies. Rock music has got more people that say they’re singers that can’t sing, with loud bands to drown them out because they can’t sing. It’s about selling an image. Most of it I can’t relate to. I’m coming from another place.”

Astral Weeks was released in 1968 and since then, has been placed on numerous lists of best albums of all time.

The 1995 Mojo list of 100 Best Albums ranked it as number two, while it received number 19 ranking on the Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time in 2003.

Described by Morrison as being an album of “trance-like explorations”, Astral Weeks has become a cult favourite with his fans.

On November 7 and 8 last year, the former Them frontman performed two concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

He will perform Astral Weeks again at the Albert Hall in London on April 18 and 19, before moving onto Bristol and Cardiff in June. As yet, no dates have been organised for Belfast.
-Maureen Coleman