1981 Interview With Van 

by Paul Vincent

From the February 12, 1982 issue of

BAM: The California Music Magazine (issue #123)

Originally Transcribed by David Chance For The van-the-man.info website

Audio available from KMEL archives here.

Van & Paul Vincent November 13, 1981

The following interview took place at KMEL-FM's San Francisco studios in mid-November of last year. Although we don't, as a rule, reprint radio interviews, we were so impressed by the rapport between Van and KMEL jock Paul Vincent that we thought it would be fun to share this rare glimpse of Van Morrison with our readers.

Paul Vincent: How different is it being Van Morrison the artist now as opposed to Van Morrison the artist in the '60s?

Van Morrison: I think now there's a lot less emphasis on art in the music business. It's completely different. When I started there were more people like me. Now there are fewer people doing creative stuff, writing songs or whatever.

PV: Is it difficult separating music from "the business"?

VM: Yeah it is, because the business is like a fixed system now. It's gotten that way because of econimics, I guess.

PV: How do you cope with that?

VM: Well, in some way you've got to compromise. If I really did what I felt I wanted to do, it might be sort of inaccessible because, for instance, when you make an album you end up with three-, four-, maybe five-minute songs, but when I actually just play with other musicians things stretch out much longer than that, so you have to edit it and re-shape it to make it accessible for people to "get it."

PV: "Summertime In England," from Common One, was originally thirteen minutes long, and the record company released an edit of that. Does that distress you when you hear your work edited?

VM: No. That's what I'm saying--you have to do that, 'cause at the pace we live in the world we live in, that's the way it's done.

PV: You play quite a bit in the Bay Area, but you haven't toured in a while. I can understand the negative aspects of touring, but there are also the positive aspects--the reaction you get from people in different cities, and so forth. Do you miss that at all?

VM: You see, for me it was more negative than positive. I take my involvement with music as a whole thing. I was telling somebody yesterday that this album I have coming out has taken me 21 years to make. It's not just an album, something I did months ago. I don't just take it as 1981 or 1982. I've been in it for 21 years, so it's taken me 21 years to get to this point. It's accumulated experience. Getting back to the going on the road thing--I started going on the road when I was 15, so by the time I was 21 I had had enough of touring. Before I even walked in a studio all I knew was touring, one-nighters.

PV: Do you see a time when you might just write and record and not tour at all? Miles Davis, for instance, just came out of a semi-retirement of seven years to do some gigs, and there are other examples of artists who write but don't perform.

VM: It's hard to say, because it depends on a combination of things. If you're happy with the band you've got and it's really happening, you can stand to do more gigs and combat staying in hotels. But also, the economic situation of touring is outrageous at the present time.

PV: You seem to be pretty pleased with the band you have now.

VM: That's why I've been doing some gigs. We just finished the album and it was time to say "goodnight," but I realized I haven't gotten off with a bunch of musicians like this in quite a while, so I wanted to keep it happening.

PV: Many of your songs are rather complex, intricately put together. How do you write? Do you have a musical idea first, or a lyrical idea?

VM: Well, there's "A," "B" and "C." "A" is where I get the whole idea, the lyrics and the melody to the song. That's inspirational writing, which is very rare. "B" is where I get a melody or have a melody I'm working on, and I later work on words to go with the melody and the chords. And "C" is the reverse of that.

PV: Do you write on the guitar or keyboards?

VM: Guitar and piano.

PV: Do you think about your audience at all when you're writing?

VM: Not really, because you can't think about anything when you're writing except that. It's like if you're a carpenter, you can't build a shelf well if you're thinking about who you're going to sell it to. You have to build the shelf first, and then whoever wants to buy it...

PV: Unfortunately, the reverse is usually true these days. Writing--and maybe even carpentry--is done with the audience in mind.

VM: See, I don't think of myself as "a songwriter." I know songwriters and I'm not one. A songwriter's a guy who can come in at 9:30 in the morning and write a song on demand, and I've never been able to do that. I'm an inspirational writer. I write when I'm inspired. If I'm not inspired I *can't* write. It's impossible for me. I'm not like a craftsman, which is what a songwriter is.

PV: There was a period of about three years, between Veedon Fleece ['74] and Period of Transition ['77], when you went back to Ireland for a while. Were you writing during that time? There was no album for about three years.

VM: There was a period there where I didn't write for about two-and-a-half years. I didn't do anything. I didn't play guitar, I didn't listen to music. I had overdosed. I had to stop. I had had enough. I was mentally exhausted, physically exhausted and I just had to get away from music completely. I'd been going at it hard for ten or twelve years.

PV: And then it all came around again and you got psyched up and ready to go back.

VM: I started to like it again. When I was taking the time off I hated it. I had a total aversion to everything about it.

PV: How planned are your live sets? They seem to be kind of structured as they go along.

VM: At this point they're planned, or more planned than they'd be if we just threw something together to play at a club. There are too many people for it not to be planned. There are seven musicians and three singers. The order of the songs isn't planned, though.

PV: Do you still enjoy performing your older music? Do you still enjoy playing "Gloria," or do you do it kind of for the sake of the audience?

VM: If I haven't done a song for a while and it's fresh, I enjoy it. I haven't done "Gloria" in quite a while so it is fresh. I don't take it seriously, though.

PV: You get a kick out of it, though, don't you? It's not drudgery.

VM: No, no, it's good. It's so old it's new, y'know?

PV: A lot of times in live performance you do great songs that weren't written by you: "Stand By Me," "Mona," "Not Fade Away," Sam Cooke's "You Send Me," some Jimmy Reed songs, some Willie Dixon songs, and "Buona Sera," a Louis Prima song which is really a kick. Do you have studio versions of any of these in a vault somewhere?

VM: There's a version of "Buona Sera" somewhere from a KSAN show. I went into the studio a couple of years ago and went through my old tapes. By the time you get through everything you realize it would be better to do it fresh than get hung up on old tapes.

PV: The flipside of "Joyous Sound" from Period of Transition is a song called "Mechanical Bliss" which is weird, kind of strange...

VM: That was a big disappointment for me because I was trying to break into comedy there and that was my only comedy song. I played it for Dudley Moore and he flipped over it; he really loved it. I thought, "This is it. This is my big chance." But Warner Bros. buried it.

PV: It was a flipside and wasn't on any album, but it does show a humorous side of you. A lot of people look at you as being the brooding musician who rarely cracks a smile. Are you aware of people having that image of you as the depressed poet?

VM: Yeah, but I think it's totally wrong. Things have been written and people get hold of certain things and put it in the paper and it gets blown out of proportion. Like the thing that I don't do many interviews. That's wrong. I've done so many interviews you wouldn't believe it. Writers have something about everybody: "Oh he's like that," which usually he isn't.

PV: Do you think, though, that people might get that idea, too, from your live shows? You're very much into your music and the music is the bottom line in your live shows. But do you think people expect you to be more of a--

VM: If I went out there and tried comedy, what would happen? It would be "What?" When I've done that, they don't know what to make of it because the image that's out there is not conducive for me to do comedy. I've been in bands where I've done actual comedy.

PV: At a recent show at the Palace of Fine Arts [in SF] a couple of people yelled out, "Van, talk to us. Say something to us." You hear that when they say it, don't you?

VM: Yeah, but you can't please everybody. When I'm playing I've got to concentrate on the music--the arrangements and the people and getting the moment. If I start developing myself as a personality, that's another form of concentration, so in order to concentrate on that I couldn't do what I do now. I would have to change completely. I have to concentrate to build the energy and I have to put a spell on it, so to speak, to do it. I don't want to talk because it would break the spell. Music is what I'm saying.

PV: Is it frustrating to think that a lot of people don't pick up on that and think that you're just being cold?

VM: Who are "they"? Different people think different things and the audience is made up of individuals. Some people like it and some people don't. I do what I do and if people get it, great. And if they don't get it, they don't have to buy it.

PV: In the past year or so, when you have performed the song "Angeliou", you've expressed some opinions in the break there, little ad libs or whatever. One time I wrote down what you said: "This is the part--this is my message--it only takes a few--everyone will get it sooner or later." What will they get?

VM: The message is not in actual lyrics, because lyrics are different every time. And the message is not really in songs. The message is behind the whole thing, which is getting very, very quiet. And when you get very, very quiet you can actually hear yourself. That's what I was trying to say. I was trying to show the dynamics in the music. There's not enough education about what music is today. Kids aren't taught what it is, and I was trying to do a little teaching about it: these elements are in music because they exist in ourselves and society. Anger is in rock and roll, love is in there. There's a lot of different energy. But if you go out and you don't know what you're doing with it--you're just *blasting* this energy--then it becomes destructive. I was trying to show people, "this is energy and *this* is energy, but ultimately the real energy that we're dealing with is the energy that's inside you that you can only hear when you get quiet. And the whole purpose of that was to make people listen to themselves.

PV: At another point in that break in "Angeliou" you referred to a San Francisco music critic who put your music in with rock and roll and you said, "It's not rock and roll, that's not what it's all about." Is rock and roll a bad image in your mind?

VM: Oh yeah. Once you say "rock and roll" people start to project and relate to you in a certain way. I'm just so far away from that projection and that image. The way I live my life from day to day is so far removed from what people think of when you say "rock and roll." I've got nothing to do with all that rock and roll stuff at all. When I started out, when I was a teenager, rock and roll to me was Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry and people like that. But now, what is rock and roll? Rock and roll is a mind trip. It's not music anymore.

PV: Are you aware of what albums are selling these days; what's at the top of the charts? Do you keep abreast at all of any of that?

VM: I don't really know. Some of the new music is interesting. I definitely believe we need a new music, something new in order to survive. If music is such a big thing in everybody's life--and I think it is--we need something different because the garbage that we keep getting is going to make everybody sick after a while. I think the young kids are crying out--screaming--for something new. That's why you're getting all this really destructive punk music. They're saying, "We can't take it anymore. We'll do anything." I feel like some of it is very adventurous, and I like that about it. But some of it has turned into a very destructive thing.

PV: How far in advance do you work as far as writing goes? Do you have songs that you've written and that you'll get back to or do you try to stay pretty current with what you're doing?

VM: I try to stay current, but like I said before, I'm an inspirational writer so I've always got bits and pieces hanging around. I never really put it together unless I've got a contract. If I didn't have a contract to do an album, I wouldn't do it.

PV: Until the mood hit you.

VM: I'd only do it if I need the money, if I needed to do it for survival purposes. Otherwise I'd never do it. I went through that phase years ago of being successful, and then I went through the phase of being a successful songwriter. I went through those phases and saw what they were. When you see what something is, then you can drop it; if you don't see what it is, then you keep doing it.

PV: Your music is always changing. Are those mainly conscious or unconscious changes?

VM: At this point it's conscious, because I'm actually starting to work on it. It's taken me 20 years to be able to see what it is I'm involved in and what I'm actually doing with it. You find out after a while it's just too limiting to make an album and tour, make another album and tour. It's not very creative. So you start exploring: what does a C chord mean? It could mean a lot of different things; it could be a color. The C chord means a certain thing, the G chord means certain things. What does this song mean? What do these lyrics mean? It took me 20 years to get to this point, where I'm consciously involved with what I'm doing.

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