Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl CD Reviews

Slate: Somehow it's become an inevitability, this business of reperforming your famous album. Lou Reed did it with Berlin, Brian Wilson did it with Pet Sounds, Roger Waters did it with Dark Side of the Moon, Arthur Lee (RIP) did it with Love's Forever Changes. Even Anthrax did it, with Among the Living. The years pass, a consensus is achieved, and then it's time: Assemble the band, hose off the magnum opus. There's a certain clinical rhythm to the thing, like getting a colonoscopy.

Still, let's not become inured to the oddness of it. Because it is odd. Totally un-rock 'n' roll, for starters, to be casting this fond retrospective gaze upon one's own work. (Would Iggy Pop do it, for God's sake? Oh—he already did.) And then rather risky too, by a paradox. Reperforming is a high-wire act. It's aesthetically fraught. What are you doing out there, exactly? You could be burnishing your masterpiece or flogging a dead horse. Or flogging your masterpiece. Or burnishing a dead horse.

In the case of Van Morrison and Astral Weeks—last year's reperformance of which has just been released as Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl­—there would seem to be even more on the line than usual. Is there another album in the canon so haunted by the specter of maturity, so obsessed with a return to the lost springs of creation? "And I will stroll the merry way and jump the hedges first/ And I will drink the clear clean water for to quench my thirst/ And I will never grow so old again." Morrison had read no William Blake when he delivered these lines (the poetical-mystical immersions of his middle period were still to come), which perhaps accounts for their authentically Blakeian atmosphere: Astral Weeks was this displaced 23-year-old Irishman's Songs Of Innocence & Experience.

It begins with a request to be born again and ends in a guitar-and-flute coughing fit as the dwindling junkie of "Slim Slow Slider" tips over on the streets of West London. The songs are strung taut between two worlds—or perhaps between one world and what it is dying to become. A man on Cyprus Avenue is watching schoolgirls through his windshield, frozen with yearning, "conquered in a car seat/ Nothing that I can do." Can lechery be made holy? Maybe if you use enough harpsichord. ... The album's opening couplet is immortal: "If I ventured in the slipstream/ Between the viaducts of your dream ..." The first words, that cautious "ventured," suggest tentativeness, but the singer has already taken the plunge. Between innocence and experience, in a fast-moving associative blur, runs this bristling, scatty, half-tortured voice that will never sound the same again.

Against the stream of time, or in its slipstream to be precise, Van Morrison in 1968 goes into a New York studio. He finds a group of crack session men, the cream of the contemporary jazz scene, assembled there by producer Lew Merenstein. Bassist Richard Davis has played with Eric Dolphy and Ahmad Jamal; drummer Connie Kay is from the Modern Jazz Quartet; Jay Berliner, on guitar, is a Mingus man. Rather an unrock crew for a session with Van Morrison, performer of the bouncy "Brown-Eyed Girl" and recent graduate from mad-dog beat combo Them. But then, Van, as Merenstein has intuited, is about to become an unrock star. His new songs are weird—straggling, open-ended raptures, almost gibberish some of them, about 14-year-old girls and railroad bridges in Belfast. In the studio, ecstasy happens: Davis and Kay set up a cross-flutter of bass and cymbal, a kind of hallucinated skiffle, that will become the nervous system of Astral Weeks. One imagines Van and the band in an inspired folk-bop huddle, eye to eye, melding minds at high temperatures, but apparently not. Studio walls separate them, as well as some never-explained reluctance on the part of the singer to offer any direction at all to his musicians: Most accounts have Van sealed off, raving privately in his recording booth while the unflappable jazzers outside just do it.

Fast forward 40 years, and Van is no longer a minstrel on fire but a "legendary figure," girded with age and thicker about the larynx, about to reperform his most renowned work. His career has been restless and refractory, with plenty of blinding music in it but nothing, as even his fiercest partisan will admit, to compare to Astral Weeks. He simply never goes there again, with the result that the album assumes in his discography the character of something almost aberrant, a freak-out or visitation. In its wake, he'll become a seeker, exploring theosophy, poetry, the New Age—even Scientology, briefly. He'll rumble about Blake and Yeats and Madame Blavatsky for album after album, but Astral Weeks, in which his pet word "mystic" isn't used once, remains his most purely mystical statement. Unrepeatable, in other words.

And yet here he is in November 2008, repeating it—sort of. It must be said that the first 10 minutes of Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl are not easy to enjoy. The music is a fine sparkling shuffle, but the singer sounds truculent, dissociated, puddinglike. "From the far side of the ocean/ If I put the wheels in motion ..." There's a technical interest, perhaps, in hearing lines as beautiful as these rephrased as lounge-bar throwaways. And some small satirical gratification to be had from Van's growling of "I believe I've transcended/ I believe I've tran-scen-ded ..." when he has plainly done no such thing. But these are jaundiced pleasures, and by the middle of "Beside You" the possibility has presented itself that the whole affair might be an amazing Morrisonian debacle, like one of those shows where he ends up swearing at everybody.

As his tubes warm up, though, and as he works his changes upon the words "I just don't know what to do/ I just don't know what to do," "Slim Slow Slider" becomes rather gorgeous. When Patti Smith reperformed Horses in London in 2005 she began (of course) with "Gloria," her visionary expansion of the 1964 Them hit, her strange tribute to Van. She was fiery-voiced and potent, and somewhat unexpectedly she took the roof off. Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl is less robust than that. The spirit shyly descends, then gives a puff on its boosters and is away again. Here's why we love Astral Weeks, the real one: because life runs backward, in some way. The original gift is squandered, the native knowledge mislaid, and half an existence spent scrambling to reclaim what once seemed our birthright. Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl is by no means a great album. Here and there it even stinks. But in the annals of reperformance, it's already a classic—perhaps the most poignant dialogue yet recorded between time, mean old don't-give-a-shit time, and the irretrievable moment.
-James Parker

The Sun:VAN MORRISON - Astral Weeks: Live At The Hollywood Bowl

WITH his fedora and shades, he is every inch Mr Inscrutable.

When he plays live, you’re never quite sure which Van Morrison is going to turn up.

He’s rather like my football team, Norwich City, capable of a woeful defeat at home to rock-bottom Charlton or a heroic 3-3 draw at runaway leaders Wolves.

So his decision to reinterpret his greatest album, 1968’s Astral Weeks, with band and orchestra at The Hollywood Bowl left me with mixed feelings.

There’s no way he could surpass the fluid, mystical majesty of the original.

And when I discovered he only did one rehearsal, I thought, “surely not?” He couldn’t possibly pull it off.

Then again (without wishing to sound too gushing), I was aware that Van Morrison is one of contemporary music’s true greats: The Belfast Cowboy, the creator of Celtic soul.

So, what of the album?

Quite simply, it’s stunning. He doesn’t try to match the original. He doesn’t try or can’t hit some of the high notes.


But these loose, improvised, inspired readings circle the old songs with due reverence while heading into new realms of emotion and connection. The older, wiser Van Morrison is discovering meanings and moods quite different to those of the long-haired 23-year-old of ’68.

As the opening title track ebbs and flows to a conclusion, he repeats “I Believe I’ve Transcended” and it’s not hard to believe him.

The remaining tracks roll effortlessly along on the crest of waves of strings and horns and acoustic guitars, THAT voice at its soulful best.

He lets songs like Beside You, Sweet Thing and Madame George go on new journeys without pre-ordained ideas about their destinations.


And Slim Slow Slider and Cyprus Avenue are given lyrical codas that add rather than detract.

Morrison says: “The Hollywood Bowl concerts gave me a welcome opportunity to perform these songs the way I originally intended them to be.

“There are certain dynamics you can get in live recordings that you can’t get in the studio.

“The songs are timeless and as fresh as the day they were written, actually even more so.

“It’s got it all, jazz, blues, folk, classic, you name it.”
-SIMON COSYNS

Democrat & Chronicle: Astral Weeks remains my favorite album of all time, despite the fact that I still have no idea what it's about. Love through the eyes of a tortured young man, I suppose. Morrison is no longer a young man. He was 63 when he recorded this live version last year on Astral Weeks' 40th birthday. But when, in "Slim Slow Slider," he sees the woman he longs for with another man and slowly moans, "I don't know what to do," I still believe him. The songs are in a different order now, with two additional tracks from deep in his career, "The Lion Speaks" and "Summertime in England." And different instruments. Morrison pauses to riff over certain lines, stutters "my tongue gets tied every, every, every time I try to speak." It will be in the stores on Feb. 10.
-Jeff Spevak

Huffington Post: When Van Morrison's essential work, Astral Weeks, hit the stores in 1968, it instantly was revered by critics and musicians around the world. It influenced future cultural icons such as Bono and especially, Bruce Springsteen, whose "Incident on 57th Street," "New York City Serenade," and virtually all of Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. sounded like unintended tributes to the Celtic rocker. Named Rolling Stone's nineteenth best album of all time in 2003, it was Morrison's first long player for Warner Bros. Records, and his second solo album post his tenure with the rock group Them (his first being T.B. Sheets for Bang Records). Even though the LP's most "commercial" recording, "Sweet Thing," initially was perceived as its focus track, Astral Weeks featured no hit singles, sales were not impressive (it finally having turned "gold" by 2001), and to new listeners raised on pop radio, it was a challenging amalgam of folky-blues, jazz, northern soul, and singer-songwriter-styled lyrics. But historically, the LP was released at just the right time since, like the substances that supposedly were expanding the minds of a generation, this album did the same.

Apparently, expansion was on Morrison's mind during the landmark album's creative process that reached beyond mundane arrangements and traditional recording routines. Lots of musical freedom was encouraged during the sessions that, basically, were well-mapped jams. In one of his 2008 interviews, the artist recalled that Astral Weeks' material was "from another sort of place" (fyi, his first take on "Madame George" was included on T.B. Sheets). He revealed how the album's "poetry and mythical musings" sprung from his imagination in a unique way, saying, "The songs were somewhat channeled works...that is why I called it 'Astral Weeks,'"--its title an obvious shoutout to the astral plane. As far as it having been one of the great "concept" albums, Astral Weeks was considered one, though it really shouldn't have been stereotyped as merely that. Regardless of the original LP's side splits as "In The Beginning" and "Afterwards" (probably the result of vinyl's timing issues), it otherwise ignored symmetry and any intentional travel from points "a" to "z" as its musical journeys and stream of consciousness lyrics rejected normal structure. Characters, subject matter, lovers, and landscapes migrated throughout the work, often, at the most random of moments, in order to prove an emotional, not intellectual point. Springsteen took a fraction of this approach and applied it to his first two albums, amazing us in the process. However, Morrison remains the master of his transcendental craft to this day, using it most effectively during his live performances.

That brings us to Morrison's early November 2008 concerts featuring his new take on that seminal album. The CD Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl documents his album's initial vision with a slight makeover, it now taking creative license by extending song titles and tweaking the original sequence. (Morrison felt some sequence tweaks, such as concluding with "Madame George," were now more appropriate.) Originally written and sung from a young man's more innocent perspective, Astral Weeks' live revisit mostly benefits from the forty years of character lines and some graying that Morrison's reinterpretation now brings to it. From the moment he sings the title track's lyrics, "To lay me down, in silence easy, to be born again," you get the feeling it's not just the singer's implied transformation that's being announced, but Astral Weeks itself.

Through it all, Morrison is where he wants to be, onstage and in Heaven, singing, playing sax, guitar, and harmonica. The band's camaraderie is communicated musically, especially between Morrison and Astral's original guitarist, Jay Berliner. There are many featured solos and licks, and there's even some playful overacting, such as on "Cyprus Avenue"'s lines, "...and my t-t-t-t-tongue gets tied every time I try to s-s-s-s-speak." Morrison's new sequence works just fine, like how "Sweet Thing" leads into "The Way Young Lovers Do" ("Moondance"'s wilder cousin). His adding the bonus tracks "Listen to the Lion" from St. Dominic's Preview, and "Common One" (added from the show's earlier non-Astral set) don't detract, but instead, strangely feel like appropriate epilogues. In "...Lion," Morrison pumps his harp for a primal sound that's both humorous and masculine, and "Common..." with its echoed vocal replies, almost serves as the encore and one last reminder that this singer's got chops.

Almost as important as the performances, there is a real intimacy heard on this CD, perhaps from its players being recorded amidst tightly compacted stage gear and stacked instruments, giving it an old time Bleecker Street music shop vibe. And with a basic reverence for the original record, this live Astral's arrangements allow for musicians to add new layers of strata though jams, while acknowledging forty years has passed since the original was slated. Reportedly, Van Morrison wasn't aware of the anniversary when he thought up the live version, and in an interview with entertainment guru, David Wild, he said, "I had always wanted to do these songs live with orchestration. I thought I should probably get to it now--it's time."
-Mike Ragogna

Caught In The Carousel: The Beatles said "It was thirty years ago today" and that's a helluva long time, but Astral Weeks was recorded exactly forty years before the day they re-recorded it live at the Hollywood Bowl and for those of you quivering under your beds, let me just say that first of all, yes, it is a long fucking time, but fear not: Van, at 63, is in good form, good as ever, and still fearlessly delivering the goods. He's backed by forty musicians (get it...forty?), many of who played on the original (yup). The instrumentation is lush, naturally, lots of cool guitars and pretty licks and flutes, violins and cellos (and after only one rehearsal...holy shit) but the thing that struck me the most while listening to this is that it appears that Van is unchanged; he's still that guy that who can move you in a phrase. "Slim Slow Slider" is especially poignant, more so than on the LP. "The Way That Young Lovers Do," my favorite on the original, is spectacular, "Cypress Avenue" and "Madame George," too. Listening to this CD is like opening your screen door at the end of a hot summer's day and seeing a long lost pal standing there, ready to go over old times with you like they just happened yesterday. Bless the Belfast Cowboy. He's ornery as hell but he did a great job raising us. Check out my review of the original Astral Weeks at www.vinylprincess.blogspot.com
—The Vinyl Princess

Hippies Are Dead: Van Morrison's Astral Weeks is viewed by many critics to be his defining artistic achievement. Largely forgotten at the time due to its inaccessibility and abstract nature, it has slowly become the dark horse of Morrison's catalog: worshiped by those in the know, and completely ignored by the disciples of Morrison's greatest hits. As such, the album has languished in its live format for many years. Van presumably wanted to cater his fans, and Astral Weeks simply was not at the top of most of those fans' lists. So it came as no surprise that when Morrison announced he would be playing the album in full at the Hollywood Bowl, there was a collective sigh of musical orgasm from critics the world over.

To be frank, the original Astral Weeks has always proved a tad elusive for us here at HAD. The age of the tapes serves to make them reasonably muddy, and the ethereal, "jammy" feel of the album simply seemed to lose something in the recording. We could hear that there was something special there, but the record simply never really reached out and grabbed us. Given that, we were of two minds with regard to Morrison's announcement: On the one hand, it might serve to enlighten us and allow us to finally "get" Astral Weeks. We're always partial to live recordings, and modern recording technology couldn't hurt things either. On the other hand, it had the potential to further confound us amidst further applause of genius or even be a complete artistic disaster.

Thankfully, the upcoming Astral Weeks Live At The Hollywood Bowl puts us firmly in the former category. The record is a vital, crystal clear, stunningly executed live document of Morrison's 1968 album. Everything about the record is so right that it's hard to know exactly where to begin. Most obvious is Morrison himself: he simply delivers a vocal performance that completely transcends his 63 years. His voice is in top form, with a touch more of baritone, and he makes his way through the songs with ease. Backing up Morrison is the guitarist from the original sessions, Jay Berliner. Berliner serves not only to give the recording some vintage credibility, but his distinctive playing slowly reveals itself as one of the stalwarts of the original record. These two, combined with a stellar backing band, serve to lay the foundation for an amazing night.

Still, solid musicians a great live record do not necessarily make. There are so many more aspects to performance and recording that have to fit the bill and fall in to place to allow for a live record to be truly great. Surprisingly, Morrison apparently only had one rehearsal before these shows, and allowed no overdubs in post production. While this may seem to be a bit optimistic, it serves the record extremely well. The feel of the album has a truly live character: the audience is ever present in the background, and the band has a loping unity that truly brings home the feel of collaboration. No doubt if one had been sitting in the studio during the original recording sessions, it might have felt something like this.

For an endeavor that had so much potential for pitfalls, Astral Weeks Live At Hollywood Bowl simply managed to sail right past all of them. The music is immaculate, the performances exceptional, and the reality of the performance jumps right out of the speakers. The album is unquestionably a must-have, for both fans and skeptics of the record. For those who already love it, it's a no-brainer. Morrison's performance is a landmark event, and he pulls it off flawlessly. For those who haven't "found" the record, its equally as crucial. The record brings the songs to life in a new light, and does a great deal to illustrate what it is that makes the original such a landmark.

At the end of the day, Morrison has managed to successfully pull off something of a "reunion" with his former self, reaching back into his catalogue and pulling out its crown jewel for all to see. It should be a lesson to his peers, and even those younger, who are considering reunions of their own: the bar has been set, and if you can't do it this well, you might really want to reconsider doing it at all.

Astral Weeks Live At Hollywood Bowl is released on February 10th, 2009 on Morrison's own Listen To The Lion records.

Chicago Tribune: Van Morrison revisits his masterpiece, 'Astral Weeks'

On one evening last year, Van Morrison finally got around to revisiting the album that many consider his masterpiece, “Astral Weeks.”

On Tuesday, a recording of that performance --- “Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl” (Listen to the Lion/EMI) --- will be released. It presents a singer who sounds more engaged, more passionate than he has been about anything in years.

No work in Morrison’s canon --- or in the rock lexicon, for that matter --- sounds quite like “Astral Weeks.” Forty-one years after its release it still occupies its own world. It was never meant to be a rock album. Nor is it quite jazz either, even though a bunch of accomplished jazz musicians play on it. It’s not readily identifiable as the blues and R&B that Morrison revered as a youth. It’s steeped in the spirit of Irish poetry, but more in how it is sung rather than in how the words scan or what they mean.

The album produced no radio hits to rival Morrison’s best known songs, such as “Brown Eyed Girl,” “Domino,” “Wild Night” and “Moondance.” And it has been outsold by several Morrison albums. But it has never gone out of print, and it continues to hold an almost sanctified place in the history of popular music. It consistently appears on lists extolling the top albums of all time and it has been dissected and praised by discerning music listeners for decades. More significantly, it is an album that Morrison himself has never topped.

The original studio album arrived at a crucial time in Morrison’s transformation from the R&B shouter who fronted the Irish garage-rock band Them to the solo artist who chased his muse “into the mystic” and defined Celtic soul.

Morrison had established his solo career in 1967 with “Brown Eyed Girl,” but he couldn’t have been more discouraged. He had a vision for how he wanted his music recorded, and to his ears, producer Bert Berns had sabotaged it with pop sugarcoating.

Soon after, the Irish singer was banging around Boston, testing new songs in coffeehouses with an acoustic trio. He was moving toward a more meditative sound outside the boundaries of rock, R&B and blues, though it was informed by all of those genres. Most producers he auditioned for didn’t get it, but one did: Lewis Merenstein, a New York studio veteran whose credits would include the Mamas and Papas, Curtis Mayfield, John Cale, Miriam Makeba and Gladys Knight.

In Morrison’s idiosyncratic voice, Merenstein heard echoes of jazz vocalese, the style of vocal improvisation briefly popular in the early ‘50s. He hired jazz musicians for a recording session in New York, naming the bassist Richard Davis as session leader. Davis in turn recruited Jay Berliner, a veteran of Charles Mingus’ bands, to play guitar, and the Modern Jazz Quartet’s Connie Kay to play drums. The session also would include strings, horns, keyboards and flute.

Morrison’s nonlinear songs lent themselves to a more open-ended interpretation. In these songs, his native Belfast figures prominently, but more as a state of mind than a geographical location. In these songs, Belfast becomes a place where time ceases to matter and childhood memories, adolescent passions and adult anxieties merge in a free zone of pure feeling. Cypress Avenue, the Belfast street where the rich folks lived, would become a lyrical metaphor for all that was out of reach for young Van.

Morrison was only 23 years old when the album was completed, but the songs on “Astral Weeks” showed the perspective of a much older man.

The album opens with the wondrous invitation of the title song to “be born again,” in a place “between the viaducts of your dreams.” The extraordinary sound of Richard Davis’ upright bass functions as a second voice, a foil for Morrison’s mercurial musings. The song unfolds and then gently recedes over seven minutes, with strings trembling like leaves in a sun-kissed breeze, and Morrison’s voice drifting away to a whisper. He is a “stranger in this world,” and his true home is “in another time, in another place.”

The album tells the story of that search for home by focusing on commonplace details. Morrison repeats phrases and words until they become incantations. Freed from the confines of pop structure and chord changes, he bends and twists lyrics in search of every possible nuance until he liberates them from literal meaning. “You breathe in, you breathe out, you breathe in, you breathe out,” he chants on “Beside You.” “Then you’re high, on your high-flying cloud.”

Morrison doesn’t belong to the world he describes because he feels too much; implied is the notion that life is only worth living in these emotional extremes, from the reverie of “The Way That Young Lovers Do” to the torment of “Cypress Avenue.” The images conjured in these whirls of madness and ecstasy are all the more powerful because they’re uncensored. His hometown street of elusive dreams becomes the setting for a tale of illicit obsession. Morrison pines for a 14-year-old girl in “Cypress Avenue,” and over stately harpsichord, his self-denial turns into physical pain.

Yet there is still a reward in feeling so deeply about anything. What is most unbearable is the impermanence of it all. The specter of loneliness haunts Morrison throughout “Astral Weeks,” and as the album winds down it overwhelms him. “Madame George” describes the life of an aging, kind-hearted drag queen who throws parties for “the little boys comin’ round,” only to be abandoned by them again when the music fades, the booze runs out and the dancing stops. Amid these decadent liaisons, Morrison sees only the sadness of another human being, and he is moved to tears even as makes his exit. The music is more of a tone poem than a song, a gentle weave of melancholy violin, flute and guitar with Davis wielding his bass like a beacon in the gloaming.

The light is extinguished for good on the closing “Slim Slow Slider.” Death closes in and Davis’ unflappable bass suddenly turns agitated as Morrison mutters the album’s epitaph. And then it’s done, an abrupt “Sopranos”-like shift to inky black silence.

When Morrison performed “Astral Weeks” at the Hollywood Bowl last year, he tinkered with the sequencing so that “Slim Slow Rider” arrived in the middle of the set, rather than the end. And he reshaped many of the songs, adding new codas, playing with vocal phrasing, and expanding the orchestration. It is a different work but no less emotionally devastating. Morrison’s invocation to “get on the train” in “Madame George” evokes Curtis Mayfield’s civil-rights anthem “People Get Ready.” Like the soul classic, “Madame George” becomes a hymn to transcendence, an invitation to the better world Morrison describes in the title song --- one that may exist only in our imagination.
-Greg Kot

The Independent: It's taken only four decades, but fans finally get the opportunity to hear what Astral Weeks, that most singular, haunting and enchanted of albums, sounds like in concert.

Through all five of Van Morrison's previous live albums, only "Cyprus Avenue" has been featured, leaving the milestone album's extraordinary semi-improvised folk-jazz excursions seeming like a blind alley, upon which the singer had long since turned his back. This recording, featuring a string section alongside subtle jazz accompanists, suggests the reluctance may have been due more to logistical difficulties in realising the songs adequately. But it's been worth the wait: the more mature aspect now accorded these youthful, impressionistic songs works to their advantage, the stream-of-consciousness imagery coalescing like fragmentary autumnal memories of a sylvan spring. Their loose structures expand easily to accommodate Morrison's further vocal extemporisations and the band's instrumental breaks. The track which perhaps profits most in its new incarnation is "Ballerina", which here acquires a new poise and relaxed grace commensurate with its metaphor, not least in the violin and acoustic guitar breaks. A triumph, revisited.

Pick of the album:'Ballerina', 'Sweet Thing', 'The Way Young Lovers Do', 'Madame George', 'Beside You'
-Andy Gill

UK Telegraph: In a cascade of flowing instrumentation, a swollen tide of tumbling bass and rising flute, washing around a lone, ululating voice, Van Morrison ventures once more into the slipstream, the 62-year-old Belfast singer delightedly repeating the phrase, "to be born again", as if he really has been. It is the extraordinary opening track for his new album, Astral Weeks.

The title will already be familiar to music fans. Astral Weeks was the legendary 1968 album that established Morrison's reputation, after pop hits with Northern Irish band Them. Although not a big seller at the time, it has come to be regarded as a classic in rock's canon, regularly named among the greatest albums ever made. Forty years on, Morrison has remade it as a live album, recorded with a 14-piece band over two concerts at the Hollywood Bowl last November.

The original is an album of mysteries, as much, one suspects, to its maker as its listeners. Raw and in-the-moment, it blends jazz, blues, soul and folk into an amorphous singer-songwriter extemporisation. The young, sharply tenor-voiced Morrison pulls together snatches of vivid imagery into a richly melancholic yet strangely uplifting song sequence. It is beautiful and strange.

In dispute with his American label, Morrison was in dire financial straits when Warner Brothers bought out his contract. Astral Weeks was recorded in just three live sessions with a handful of New York jazz musicians. What happened in the studio was an improvised collision of cultures, channelled through a young genius trying to convey the music he heard in his head.

Despite poor sales, it was influential among critics, helping shape the singer-songwriting boom of the Seventies.

Yet Morrison has often belittled it, claiming he didn't have the budget to create the fully orchestrated work he envisioned. In an interview in Uncut magazine in 2005, Morrison disparaged producer Lewis Merenstein and his fellow musicians. "If you listen to the record closely enough, they're out of sync a lot of the time, or sometimes they're not sure where they're going next. Those guys were just winging it. There was no rapport."

Morrison is a notoriously unpredictable and belligerent interview subject. A recurring theme is irritation at being viewed as some kind of heritage act. On Radio 4's Today programme last year, he accused the music business of being obsessed with the past. "It's like no one has moved on. The marketplace is going backwards." Which makes his decision to revisit Astral Weeks all the more curious.

What he has done, I suspect, is remake it the way he always imagined it. The running order is slightly different and the band (which includes only one original member) much larger. Astral Weeks Live At The Hollywood Bowl is looser, jazzier, warmer, fuller. It is still spontaneous, the band having only had one rehearsal, yet there is an assuredness in working from a solid template. Morrison's voice has changed, descending into a more baritone range, but his singing is, if anything, even more extraordinary.

Playful and celebratory, the live version doesn't have the undercurrent of melancholy, sacrificing one of the most magical ingredients of the original. Only on Slim Slow Slider, which grapples with the death of a loved one, does his age add emotional weight. But Morrison fills those emotional spaces with other things, a mature musical talent at the height of his powers, leading an exceptional band on a journey to complete self expression. Astral Weeks Live is no slavish recreation but a new interpretation. Now there are two versions of the same piece of music, each distinct. "I believe I've transcended," he starts to sing during the title track. And we believe him too.
-Neil McCormick

Times Online: It might be naive to imagine that financial expediency (note how it’s on his own label) didn’t play a part in prompting Van Morrison to recreate Astral Weeks at last year’s Hollywood Bowl show.

However great the legacy of the legendary 1968 album, Morrison has never let it be forgotten that it barely paid his heating bills at the time. Along the way, though, he clearly reconnected with the feverish reverie that spawned these songs. If it was tempting fate to go back at all, sourcing the same jazz sessioneers – barely known to Morrison at the time, or indeed after – seems positively foolhardy. And yet, on Sweet Thing, somewhere between the lugubrious thump of Richard Davis’s bass and the euphoric strum of Morrison’s guitar, the magic that spawned these songs in the first place billows off the speakers like seaspray.

Beautifully recorded, The Way Young Lovers Do preserves the spark of new love long enough for us to marvel at its constituents, while on the title track Morrison exclaims: “I believe I’ve transcended.” Hear and believe it.
-Pete Paphides

Entertainment Weekly: This re-creation of Van Morrison's 1968 classic, recorded in November, finds Van's voice deeper and throatier, but no less prone to glossolalia and playful stuttering. The strings, flute, etc., are all present on Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl, albeit mixed more subtly into the acoustic-jam arrangements than on the original LP. All this deceptively timeless fluidity induces a wonderful mystic fog that might make you forget whether you're honoring a 40th, 5th, or 100th anniversary. A–
-Chris Willman

Van To Appear On Live With Regis & Kelly March 3rd

Van is schedule to perform on Live With Regis & Kelly on Tuesday March 3rd.

Time Magazine: Ask Van Morrison

Time - Ask Van Morrison:
With his signature growl and unique blend of blues, jazz and celtic folk, Van Morrison is consistently ranked as one of the most iconic and influential rock artists of all time. Writer of such classic songs as "Gloria", "Moondance" and "Brown Eyed Girl", his 1968 masterwork, Astral Weeks, is listed by almost every major music publication as one of the most essential albums ever made. A newly recorded, live version Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl is out now. Submit your questions for Van Morrison here; then read the interview in an upcoming issue of TIME magazine.

Jimmy Fallon On Van & His Impersonation Of Him

Movieweb: Can you talk about your first guest lining up De Niro, Van Morrison?

Jimmy Fallon: Van Morrison I just lucked out because he's in the city; he's performing the full album of Astral Weeks. And if you're audiophile or if you love any music you know that that's a phenomenal record. But I'm also - grew up an Irish kid and, you know, he comes on your iPod in your brain when you're born. He's just like - he's one of my favorites of all times. So the fact that he was in town is just pure luck. And I think Astral Weeks is a phenomenal record so it's a double whammy on that one.

Has Van Morrison actually seen your impersonation of him? Do you know what he thinks of it?

Jimmy Fallon: I can almost guarantee you he has no idea who I am. I could almost guarantee that to you. But, yeah, I don't even know if I'm going to show it to him, I don't know. I don't know that guy at all. I was just psyched just to book him. I don't know if I want to, you know, piss him off before he comes on the show. But, yeah, I respect him, I love him and I could sing any song backup if he needs me.

Van To appear On Jimmy Fallon's Late Night Debut March 2

Late Night With Jimmy Fallon
The celebrities are coming! Everybody look busy! The news is out: we've booked guests for the first week, and they're awesome.

The first guest ever on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon will be an actor who's been in a few films - maybe you've heard of him... ROBERT "YOU TALKIN' TO ME, JIMMY?" DE NIRO! Also on the first show, VAN "INTO THE MYSTIC, JIMMY?" MORRISON will sweep us away with his sweet sweet melodies. Sooooo, I think it's pretty safe to say, this is going to rule.

Fallon on his musical guests: The show’s going to invite fans of the bands featured to get up close and personal, dancing behind the musicians. But he’s not quite sure if Van Morrison, the inaugural musical guest, will get the “American Bandstand” treatment.

“What do you think?” he asked a reporter. “I don’t think you should have kids dancing behind him when he’s doing ‘Astral Weeks.’”

Van To Bring Astral Weeks Live To Royal Albert Hall In London In April

This Is London:

Van Morrison is to perform his landmark album, Astral Weeks, in two concerts at the Royal Albert Hall.

The decision to play the entire album live in London comes after a recording of a sell-out performance at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles wowed critics.

That performance in November marked the 40th anniversary of the record which routinely makes the all-time-best charts.

It was described by Elvis Costello as "still the most adventurous record made in the rock medium and there hasn't been a record with that amount of daring made since".

The decision to resurrect Astral Weeks surprised observers last year, coming after Morrison criticised the pop industry's tendency to look forever backwards.

But announcing the London dates today, the singer said: "These concerts have given me the opportunity to perform these songs the way I originally intended them to be.

"There are certain dynamics you can get when performing songs live that you cannot get in a studio. These songs are timeless and as fresh today as the day they were written - actually even more so."

The original album was recorded in September 1968 when the Belfast singer was 23. It was made with top jazz artists including bassist Richard Davis, who had played with Miles Davis, and guitarist Jay Berliner, best known for his work with Charles Mingus. The results were quite different from the pop songs such as Brown-Eyed Girl with which Morrison had first grabbed attention and the album was not an immediate bestseller. But the critics loved it - and the public eventually joined the acclaim.

It was named the second best album of all time by Mojo in 1995 and came in the top 20 in Rolling Stone magazine in 2003. A public poll for the Millennium put it in ninth place. The live release last month has only added to the clamour. The Guardian's critic said: "In a triumph as unlikely as it is complete, Astral Weeks is reborn."

The decision to perform the entire album live is a growing trend with artists from Brian Wilson to Echo and the Bunnymen turning to the back catalogue for sell-out gigs.

Tickets go on sale on Friday for the two concerts on Saturday 18 and Sunday 19 April.

-Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent

Village Voice Review & Interview With Van On Astral Weeks Live

Village Voice: "I believe I've transcended," Van Morrison repeatedly incanted toward the end of the title track from his 1968 album, Astral Weeks, during the second night of a brief November stint at the Hollywood Bowl. Indeed, frequently over the course of those two nights, the famously mercurial, 63-year-old Irish singer-songwriter seemed to transcend age, time, and whatever other ballasts turn some veteran performers into wan caricatures of themselves better suited to halls of fame than halls of music. All the more remarkably, Morrison was, for the first time in his five-decade career, doing what could be loosely termed an "oldies show," performing Astral Weeks in its entirety, with a band that included Charles Mingus guitarist Jay Berliner, who played on the record itself.

Now, as evidence that Morrison's Bowl shows really did happen and weren't his enthusiastic fans' collective delusion, he's released the CD Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl (due in stores February 24), with a DVD concert film soon to follow. Owing to popular demand, he will also perform four more live Astral Weeks gigs, at Madison Square Garden and the newly renovated Beacon Theatre, beginning February 27. As with his L.A. appearances, each night will begin with an hour-long set of other rare classics from across his repertoire—a marked contrast from most recent Morrison concerts, where the set list, while constantly in flux, has favored his newer albums, with only a few familiar crowd-pleasers (like "Moondance" or "Gloria") sprinkled in.

But as far as Morrison is concerned, the resurrection of Astral Weeks isn't so much a journey into the past as an entirely new beginning. For all its enduring critical acclaim (Lester Bangs, for one, famously cited it as his favorite record), the album was a commercial non-starter upon its release and remains, along with 1974's masterful, defiantly uncommercial Veedon Fleece, one of his least-performed. At the time, a proper tour was never organized, and although Morrison, backed by a trio, did play a few Astral Weeks gigs on both coasts, few took note. "It's never really been done live, and that's kind of what my music is all about," he told me last fall when we met in L.A. a few days prior to the Hollywood Bowl shows. "I just wanted to check it out for myself and re-explore it."

Morrison's New York dates will also mark a homecoming of sorts, to the place where Astral Weeks was first recorded, in September of 1968, during a storied 48 hours at Manhattan's Century Sound Studios. Along with Berliner, many of the Astral Weeks session musicians (including bassist Richard Davis and late drummer Connie Kaye) were recruited by Morrison and producer Lewis Merenstein because of their background in jazz. Most had never met or played with the singer before. "It was recorded like a jazz session, which is the way I like to do it," he says. "It was an alchemical kind of situation, where the people involved could read the situation and come up with stuff spontaneously and not belabor it, not overproduce or overthink it. Everybody on the sessions was like that, which was uncanny. That's the way it worked out."

Forty years later, a similar in-the-moment euphoria prevailed as Morrison and another group of musicians—some old, some new—came together in L.A. "We'd only had one run-through, and even that wasn't a complete rehearsal," he said, speaking by phone last month from his U.K. home. Nevertheless, when he and his band took to the Hollywood Bowl stage, the result was an inspired reimagining of the Astral Weeks song cycle, from a reshuffled track order to a dramatically expanded "Slim Slow Slider," now transformed from a plaintive, three-minute album closer into a wailing, heartwrenching eight-minute centerpiece. Meanwhile, from the first pluckings of the title track's pizzicato bass line to the final invocation to "get on the train" on "Madame George," Morrison grunted, spoke in tongues, strummed his guitar, and blew his harmonica with such impassioned vigor that it really was as if he were playing these songs for the very first time. To be born again, indeed.

The fact that I have now talked with Morrison at length on two separate occasions about his music is nearly as rare an occurrence as the Astral Weeks concerts, the singer having spent much of his career dodging—and, occasionally, confronting head-on—the media. During an interview for Rolling Stone in the early '90s, he allegedly walked out of a Boston restaurant midway through, leaving the reporter to tail him down the street; in recent songs like "New Biography" and "Too Many Myths," he has been harshly critical of the myriad websites and pseudo-biographies that have peddled purportedly authoritative accounts of his life and work. Coupled with his recalcitrant onstage demeanor, this has earned Morrison a reputation for being "difficult," when, in fact, these may merely be the tell-tale signs of a performer who doesn't suffer fools gladly, pay lip service to sycophants, or buy into the conventional wisdom that someone who endures the pain of artistic creation is obliged to be "nice" when discussing his craft.

He doesn't suffer slackers, either. Pay close attention during one of his concerts—nearly two dozen of which I've attended in the last decade—and you can frequently catch sight of Morrison's band members scurrying to keep pace with their leader as he calls out sudden tempo changes or uses hand gestures to take a swelling crescendo down to a muted whisper and back again. For these and other reasons, it has not always been easy for Morrison to find musicians tuned into his wavelength. "It's difficult to get them to do . . . to go where I'm going," he told me during our first interview, in his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. "That's what you have to work on. It doesn't have anything to do with technical ability. Well, it has something to do with it, because they need the technical ability to start with, but then they need to drop that and follow me and break it down into something that's less complicated than that, so they can follow where I'm going."

Where he's going is, as often as not, into a stream-of-consciousness reverie where a single album cut is deconstructed and reassembled into a trancelike epic often lasting a quarter-hour or more. In the '70s, songs like "Caravan" and "Cyprus Avenue" were regularly subject to such reinvention, while more recently, Morrison has favored the likes of "In the Afternoon" (from 1995's Days Like This) and "Burning Ground" (from 1997's The Healing Game). These are the moments—the bedrock of any Morrison gig—in which the "healing" about which he has so often sung really begins.

"If you study psychology and philosophy, and you look at various types of religion, what you find out is that people call this these different names," says Morrison. "Carl Jung would look at it one way, and Alfred Adler would look at it another way. Aristotle would maybe look at it a different way, Sartre would look at it some other way, and Beckett would look at it a different way. If you go through all this, what I end up with is energy, and I can't name it, and no one can really say what this energy is. So the healing thing is tapping into that energy, because I can't find a name for it, and I can't find it in any books. There was a time when I read everything I could get my hands on because I was looking to find out what this is—is anybody writing about this energy? And not really."

The course that a concert takes depends on a couple factors, says Morrison. "One is, if you feel like the audience can go with you, then I can stretch out more. [The other is] finding key songs where I can get these particular musicians to go along with me, because every band combination is quite different. A lot of times, you can get musicians, but they don't have a rapport, so you have to build the set around where we can go. Some bands I've had can do anything, go anywhere, you know? Other bands can only do certain songs in a certain way. It just depends."

Even on less celebrated Morrison works like Days Like This or 1987's Poetic Champions Compose, you can find yourself enraptured by the dense networks of interconnected images and allusions in his songs, struggling to make some mental geography out of the mystical yet entirely tangible places he frequently sings about: an ancient highway, a town called Paradise, the viaducts of his dreams. Nearly all those tropes, however, date back to Astral Weeks, which begins with its first-person narrator venturing into the slipstream and ends some eight tracks later with the funereal assertion, "I know you're dying/And I know you know it, too/Every time I see you/I just don't know what to do."

Whether Morrison was describing the real Belfast he knew as a child or building an imagined, Joycean universe of private meanings upon its foundations, the yearning for a distant, irrecoverable past is profoundly felt, and something that continues to resonate throughout his music of the subsequent 40 years, up to and including the epic album-closer "Behind the Ritual" from last year's Keep It Simple, wherein he sings of "drinking wine in the alley . . . in the days gone by." Indeed, if Morrison has rarely seemed eager to look back over the course of his own discography, his music itself is very much about conjuring a personal and collective past, hovering just out of reach and threatening to displace the present. It's a feeling that extends to the myriad cover/tribute albums he's produced in the past 15 years, honoring traditional country with Pay the Devil and jazz with How Long Has This Been Going On, while elsewhere tipping his porkpie hat to such influences as Mose Allison, Lonnie Donegan, John Lee Hooker, and Solomon Burke. It is perhaps the highest compliment one can pay those albums to say that Morrison's original compositions are frequently indistinguishable from the "period" songs written by others decades earlier.

"Well, if you take it as a river, then it's got offshoots—this stream and that stream, north stream, south stream, slipstream. All sorts of streams, you know?" Morrison says. "But it's all connected to the source. All that stuff that I picked up in the formative years is what I've been able to put together as my own thing, so to speak. For me, it's [about] going back to the source. That's where I first got the word, or heard that sound. You can't really say it is 'X,' because it just ends up being another word or a cliché. But that initial energy was turned on in me, and I was lucky enough to get to know some of the people—like John Lee Hooker, who was a very good friend over the years."

Since Astral Weeks, Morrison has issued more than 30 albums of new material, penned hundreds of songs for himself and other artists, and managed to put an enviable distance between himself and the record company executives who've been a regular (and hardly undeserved) object of scorn and derision in such Morrison songs as "Saint Dominic's Preview," "Drumshanbo Hustle," and "Showbusiness." Having recently parted ways with his latest label, Universal, which, he says, did little to promote Keep It Simple despite it being the highest-charting domestic release of his career, he remains characteristically circumspect "not so much about the business" itself, but "about the kind of people that the business and fame sometimes attract."

For the man who once sang that "my job is turning lead into gold," his own celebrity and its attendant pressures seem as much a double-edged sword as ever. "I never bargained on fame; it's just something I've had to deal with that came along with doing the music," Morrison says. "It's like I've got these scars," he adds, pointing at his back, "and why do I have to keep showing people the scars all the time? You know what I mean? It's in the songs somewhere there. I still have to turn myself inside-out to do this. It's still got a price—it's not free. Doing these gigs, that's got a price. I have to act. I have to perform."

But he still loves it, right?

"The only thing I love is the music," he says, without hesitation. "The rest of it is pure shit. The kind of shit that fame attracts is very dark. It's very dark. I like the music, but that's it."
-Scott Foundas

Paste Magazine Interview With Van

Catching Up With...

Van Morrison defends most of his work with a poet's pride, but can he revive his 1968 album Astral Weeks in a live setting 40 years after its release? In November, Morrison reunited with the surviving members of his studio band for the live re-release of the entire album, which is out today on his new label, Listen to the Lion.

Lester Bangs wrote the seminal review of Astral Weeks in 1979, calling it the rock record with the most significance in his life. “It was proof that there was something left to express artistically besides nihilism and destruction.” Martin Scorsese had said that the first half of Taxi Driver was based on Astral Weeks. But when the album was released, it was a commercial failure. It didn’t receive praise, nor did it sell until 10 years later. Now, it is considered one of his best—regularly hailed as one of the top albums of all time. Everyone from Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and U2 owe a debt to Morrison and have credited Astral Weeks in reference to their own work.

Paste caught up with Morrison to look back on the original album and talk about its new live incarnation.

Paste: What inspired you to re-release Astral Weeks? You had said that you wanted to play the record live and fully orchestrated…

Morrison: I wanted to do this material the way I had always heard it in my head—orchestrated with a full sound. It was time. These were written prior to ’68 over a period of five years. It took a lot of hard work. I wanted these songs to have a large string section for the original, but I could not afford it at the time.

Paste: But you never perform the songs live the same as on the album, or indeed the

same way every time. The rumor is that none of the players heard what the previous band member had tracked, just the drums and guitar. Is this true?

Morrison: I play in a free-form, inspired style; I have no choice but to change it up according to the vibe. The new record was recorded live; what [you hear] is what was played in its raw form. There was no mixing, no tweaking, no post-production at all, and I like that raw and edgy sound in real time. It’s got a lot of boom to it! I really like listening to live records, it’s my new thing. Real and alive, the life is not taken out of it like a studio produced record can and very too often, does. My motto right now is post mixing kills.

Paste: Tell me about the songwriting for Astral Weeks. Every track has such spontaneous quality, blending jazz, folk, rock and soul.

Morrison: Each song is a factious story. I wrote them on the astral level from the collective... The songs require listeners to follow along and see what happens next. I can’t compromise my music. I have fought all my life with people trying to sell me a bridge to compromise my music and I can’t do it, musically.

Paste: Do you still enjoy playing live shows and is there a song you refuse to perform live?

Morrison: Live is what I love the best and another reason I made the new Astral Weeks live: it’s real and I dig that. There are many I don’t play—I have over four hundred songs and each person has a favorite. It’s a catch 22.

Paste: What was your experience like during the production process? Were Richard Davis and Jay Berliner involved?

Morrison: For the original 1968 Astral Weeks recording sessions, it was like an old time jazz session, which is hard to come by these days. There is nothing better.

Paste: Did you oversee the mixing or production? And as far as the equipment, do you prefer vintage gear?

Morrison: To the present day I have always been my own producer, so everything has always been in my hands. I have always had the say. It would have been someone else’s and I do not play that. My music has a life of its own that does not take well to other people’s ideas or lack thereof.

I prefer to keep it as simple as possible. Modern day gadgets are the things as a producer that I hate, because then it’s contrived and manufactured, tweaked, the antithesis of what I am about personally and musically.

Paste: Do you have any new albums in the works? Are there musicians you would work with? Or how about playing Astral Weeks with new artists?

Morrison: Of course I do. I am a writer, therefore I write…

I would not do Astral Weeks with other musicians because I am only doing this for a limited time. I may switch around musicians, as my music requires keeping the sound where it needs to be.

-Jessica Pilot

New Interview With Van

Associated Press: Van Morrison revisits astral plane on live 'Weeks' concert version of classic album

Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks" rests high on critics' lists of all-time best albums. Yet Morrison felt he never quite had the chance to get it right the first time.

So he has taken a second crack at it with "Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl," recorded over two nights last November with musical arrangements closer to what he originally envisioned.

"I didn't do exactly what I wanted to, because I didn't have the support, and I didn't have any money. I mean, basically, I was broke. I had bad management, a bad record company," Morrison, 63, said in a phone interview from London. "I didn't really have the freedom."

Newly signed to Warner Bros. in 1968 after extricating himself from a painful previous record deal, Morrison cut "Astral Weeks" during a handful of studio sessions mostly using jazz musicians with whom he had never worked.

Fans would call the results sublime, an introspective masterpiece blending Morrison's jazz, blues, classical and folk influences. But with its dreamy, freeform structure and half of its eight songs topping seven minutes, "Astral Weeks" confounded an industry built on catchy three-minute singles such as Morrison's earlier hits "Gloria" and "Brown-Eyed Girl."

Morrison said he had no backing for a proper tour to promote the album, which sold only modestly at first.

As Morrison followed with such radio-friendly singles as "Moondance," "Domino" and "Jackie Wilson Said," critics continued to talk up "Astral Weeks," which gradually took on an almost mythical aura.

New fans would discover the album, and audiences still call out for "Cyprus Avenue," "Ballerina" or the title track from "Astral Weeks," songs played here and there when the album first came out but only rarely since.

Morrison decided it was time to pull out those tunes again and play the entire album live, with a full string section.

He enlisted musicians he had worked with before, including guitarist Jay Berliner, who played on the original "Astral Weeks" album. In keeping with the loose studio sessions that produced the original record, Morrison and his collaborators got together only once to rehearse the live concert.

"Not even a rehearsal. Just kind of a run-through. We just ran through a few songs and then did the gig. I'm not a rehearsal-type person," Morrison said. "Everybody was under the right kind of pressure. ... Everybody had to be on their toes and had to be there, had to be totally present. It was done under pressure, but the pressure turned out to be good pressure."

For the live shows, Morrison shuffled the song order. Rather than "Slim Slow Slider," the spare, downbeat number that ends the 1968 album, Morrison closed with the fan favorite, "Madame George."

"I just wanted to finish on an uptempo song," Morrison said. "That has been the most-requested from that album over the years from the audience, the one they want to hear, so that's why we ended on that one."

"Madame George" is emblematic of the album, citing Cyprus Avenue, the grand street of luxurious homes near the working-class Belfast neighborhood where Morrison grew up. The lyrics are cryptic and pensive, relating youthful visions of "kids out in the street collecting bottle tops" or "throwing pennies at the bridges down below."

"Basically, it's short stories, it's fiction, and it means something different to each person who listens to it," Morrison said. "I was writing it from the collective unconscious, what I was picking up at that particular time, in the '60s, late '60s. So I was just picking this stuff up, like, psychically or however you want to put it.

"That's kind of why it's called `Astral Weeks,' you know?" Morrison added with a laugh.

Morrison is following the album, due out Feb. 24 as the first release of his own Listen to the Lion label, with more live performances of "Astral Weeks" in New York in late February and early March.

A concert film of his Hollywood Bowl performances also is planned on DVD this year, and Morrison said he might perform the album at future live shows.

Fans often call "Astral Weeks" a transcendent record, and Morrison used the same word to describe the vibe he felt among the players and audience at the Hollywood Bowl shows.

"We did the songs and took them somewhere else. Transcended the originals, if you know what I mean," Morrison said. "They were so fresh. I could approach it, and I could sort of do it the way I wanted to do it with the orchestration. Because like I said, originally, I couldn't afford the orchestration, so because of that, it was such a bad experience at the time, I sort of buried it in my own mind. ...

"So I guess I just got around to it, brought it out of the box. And why should all these other people be getting all this kind of mileage out of it? I need to be doing this myself. ... For instance, there's been a lot of requests to use the material in movies, so if I can give them my version, my production, rather than Warner Bros., then that's obviously better for me, you know? There's a lot of different sides to this story."

-DAVID GERMAIN

Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl

CD & Double Vinyl available March 10!!

Sweet Thing - Live at the Hollywood Bowl

Tickets Now On Sale For Van's New York Shows In February

Tickets for Van's February 27th & 28th shows at WaMu Theater at MSG are now on sale.

American Express Cardmembers can purchase tickets January 18 at 10AM through January 24 at 10PM, before they go on sale to the general public on January 25.

L.A. Times Interview With Van On Astral Weeks Live And Upcoming New York Show

L.A. Times:
Van Morrison takes listeners on his spiritual journey

With a live album combining 'Astral Weeks' and more recent material, he steps aside to let his soul express itself.

One of the conundrums facing anyone who makes music for a living is that live music frequently isn't. Truly alive, that is.

The brutal reality of mounting a major concert tour is that it requires intensive rehearsals and meticulous planning of sound, lighting and staging effects, often leaving music itself as just another element of a tightly organized script that's repeated night in and night out with little room for deviation.

Some artists, of course, make an art out of veering from the script mentality. Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen hold court atop the list of rockers who strive for liberation with every performance. Jazz as a genre also counts spontaneity among its core values, just as gospel at its most inspired seeks something higher through performance.

You could hear Van Morrison drawing on all three traditions when he performed his 1968 album, "Astral Weeks," live for the first time last November at the Hollywood Bowl, transcendent concerts preserved faithfully in "Astral Weeks Live," which will be released Feb. 10 on Morrison's new Listen to the Lion record label.

Because of the largely ecstatic response to those performances, Morrison has decided to do two more "Astral Weeks" shows Feb. 27 and 28 at Madison Square Garden in New York.

The two Bowl shows came after only one rehearsal of the "Astral Weeks" material, which blended jazz, folk, rock, soul and Irish traditional music elements into one of the most revered albums in pop music history.

"It was pure magic for me," Morrison told The Times this week in an interview conducted by e-mail. "I really had no expectations prior to the show. We had one rehearsal and some magic wand must have been waved, because I felt it -- I felt the current of magic, the power. It was more than I could have hoped for."

Rather than re-creating the album precisely, Morrison used it as a springboard to music in and of-the-moment, stretching phrases with his signature melismatic vocals, altering lyrics, shifting the song order and allowing the players around him to feed off one another.

From the first notes of the defining run-up, run-down bass line of the song "Astral Weeks," the live version becomes something new entirely, making it all the more clear why Morrison said he'd always envisioned presenting this set of poetically evocative ruminations live with a full orchestra.

He turns the word "Caledonia" into a mantra as that first song unfolds, spontaneously interpolating new lyrics including the phrase "I believe I've transcended," which he repeats like a gospel preacher on fire. The audience cheers, as if offering a collective "Amen."

In revamping the song sequence from the album, what had been separate jazz waltz-tempo numbers, "Sweet Thing" and "The Way Young Lovers Do," now merge and further build on each other. And upon completing the original batch of songs with "Madame George," he encored with "Listen to the Lion," from 1972's "St. Dominic's Preview," and "Common One," the title track of his 1980 album, both included on the live album.

"There was an alchemy that took place," Morrison noted. "I could feel it, and other people tell me they could literally see it occurring. I thought it was just going on within me. But apparently I was not alone. By the looks of it, far from it."

As for appending "Listen to the Lion" to the "Astral Weeks" material, Morrison said, "I wanted to end the 'Astral Weeks' set with 'Madame George.' I wanted to tell people at the end these songs are a 'train of thought' and leave it at that. I think 'Lion' is a song that is all me, as well, so I ended with that. . . . It's a song I guess about me -- probably the only one about me.

"The second bit I do on the harp is 'the lion speaks.' If you listen to that, I am playing as if the lion is trying to speak with no voice. He only has his soul and I think -- I hope -- that came across. It's about getting out of one's way so the soul can be heard, I suppose. The lion speaks. . . . I decided to end the show on a spiritual note."

He said that whether the audience senses that spirituality or not is almost incidental.

"I do not consciously aim to take the listener anywhere," Morrison said. "If anything, I aim to take myself there in my music. If the listener catches the wavelength of what I am saying or singing, or gets whatever point whatever line means to them, then I guess as a writer I may have done a day's work. . . .

"During the 'Astral Weeks' live in Hollywood performances, that emotionality, transcendence and tangible alchemy was 100% organic and grew itself spontaneously . . . ," he continued. "I think God must have wanted it to happen -- my higher-power instinct -- I am not sure, but it was not a conscious effort. It was a matter of getting back to doing 'me' -- what I like, what comes naturally from me when I have an interest in what I am creating."

On Bringing 'Astral Weeks' Shows to NYC:
Van Morrison said that his Hollywood Bowl shows in November would be the only time he would perform his classic 1968 album “Astral Weeks” live.

But that was before the two performances, which he says in an exclusive Times interview, "was more than I could have hoped for."

“The whole thing just worked,” he told The Times by e-mail. “One rehearsal -- that was not even that good -- and we hit the stage and the Magi or whoever just waved the wand and we flew.

“Even now listening to the live recording of the shows,” he wrote, “I hear something different and profound every time I replay something. It took a while for me to understand that we really did it, and made it into something even more different than it already was.... I do believe I transcended something doing this. Not sure what it is, but I still feel it.”

Consequently, he’s adding two more “Astral Weeks” shows in New York next month, Feb. 27 and 28 at Madison Square Garden. For the first half of those shows, Morrison said he’ll be delving further into the music he was writing leading up to the release of “Astral Weeks,” some of which appeared on the Bang Records album “Blowin’ My Mind.” That collection included his first solo hit, “Brown-Eyed Girl,” but was released without his input or approval. So expect major revamping of those songs.

“I am reworking set one to play 'TB Sheets,' 'Mystic Eyes' and 'Who Drove the Red Sports Car' and a couple of Them songs I have not done in decades, so it is once again fresh and new and interesting for me,” Morrison said. “So we will venture into the slipstream one more time.”
-Randy Lewis

Van Brings Astral Weeks Live To New York On February 27 & 28

Press Release:
Multi-award winning soul singer and musical legend Van Morrison is set to release "Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl," an in-concert reworking of his historic 1968 gold-certified solo album. Recorded live over two nights at the Hollywood Bowl this past Nov. 7 and 8, the album marks the premiere release on Mr. Morrison’s new EMI-distributed label, Listen to the Lion Records. "Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl" arrives in stores Feb. 10, 2009. A double-vinyl edition with three bonus tracks (including a live version of “Gloria”) arrives in stores the same day.

The concerts marked the first time Mr. Morrison ever performed "Astral Weeks" in one complete concert set. Joining him was an orchestral string section and a band composed of world-class musicians, some of whom played with Van on the original "Astral Weeks" sessions 40 years ago. Tracks on the CD include: "Astral Weeks/I Believe I’ve Transcended," "Beside You," "Slim Slow Slider/ I Start Breaking Down," "Sweet Thing," "The Way Young Lovers Do," "Cyprus Avenue / You Came Walking Down," "Ballerina," "Madame George" and two bonus tracks, "Listen to the Lion / The Lion Speaks" and "Common One."

"The Hollywood Bowl concerts gave me a welcome opportunity to perform these songs the way I originally intended them to be," says Mr. Morrison, who amazingly held only one rehearsal prior to the concerts. "There are certain dynamics you can get in live recordings that you just cannot get in a studio recording. I love listening to live recordings. You get the whole thing right there, unabridged, raw and in the moment. There was a distinct alchemy happening on that stage in Hollywood. I felt it."

To rework "Astral Weeks," Mr. Morrison added his signature stretching of songs in a manner unlike any before by creating new sections of songs live on stage. As producer of the record, Morrison insisted there be no post-production engineering. It is straight up raw from the Hollywood Bowl stage - pure resonant sound.

"These songs are timeless and as fresh today as the day they were written, actually even more so," Mr. Morrison added. "I was happy to perform them at the Hollywood Bowl and delighted to release a live album which really captures the essence of the original for today’s audiences with every taste in music. It's got it all, jazz, blues, folk, classic. You name it."

Fans and critics present at the Hollywood Bowl those two nights grasped the momentous nature of the concerts. Rolling Stone Magazine noted that Mr. Morrison "took charge of the music with the authority that comes with four decades of performing. It seemed that once he breathed in the perfume of these eight songs, he didn’t want them to end — and looking at the enraptured crowd, he wasn’t the only one." Added the Los Angeles Times, "Transcendence is what Morrison has been after with his music from the beginning… the wondrous youthful timbre of his voice… has evolved over the years into a richer, fuller instrument, with every bit of its remarkable elasticity very much intact."

Unbeknownst to Mr. Morrison at the time he planned the Hollywood Bowl shows, the concerts coincided exactly with the 40th anniversary of the release of "Astral Weeks." He took it as a sign this project was destined to be. Universally regarded as one of the most important albums in pop music history, "Astral Weeks" broke new ground with its experimental free-flowing arrangements and deeply reflective songs. Mr. Morrison’s motivation to rework the music was to get back to his original signature sound: a blend of jazz, blues, classical and folk unique to Van Morrison.

Both Bowl shows were filmed in high-definition, and will later be available as a commercial DVD concert film. Due to overwhelming demand, Mr. Morrison will perform "Astral Weeks" again, in show at the Theater at New York’s Madison Square Garden, on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 27 & 28. Accompanied by two different bands, Mr. Morrison will play two sets per show: one of “Astral Weeks” cover to cover, the other of rarely played Van Morrison classics. He may even pull out rare gems “TB Sheets,” "Mystic Eyes," “Who Drove the Red Sports Car” and “Baby Please Don’t Go.”

A Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Mr. Morrison is responsible for some of the greatest recordings of the last fifty years. A Belfast native of proud Scottish heritage, he grew up listening to American music with his parents, his favorites artists being greats like Ledbelly, Mahalia Jackson, Lightnin’ Hopkins and other legends of blues and soul. With more than 200 of his compositions featured in major motion pictures over the years, Mr. Morrison was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame by the late Ray Charles in June 2003.

As Mr. Morrison said, “I’m not just a singer. I am a soul singer.” His “Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl” proves exactly that, over and over again.

[Image via L.A. Weekly]

Producer Mick Glossop On Mixing Van's Albums

Mick Glossop has been engineering Van's albums for many years. Here is part of an interview he did in October 2006 with Resoulution magazine in which he speaks about mixing Van's albums. Also included is an interview from 1999.

From Mick Glossop's website:

I hear you’re mixing all of Van Morrison’s archive material for a boxed set.

The boxed set is an ongoing project. A huge amount of tape arrived from the US at the Wool Hall studio about 15 years ago. They were recordings from all the sessions Van had ever done, presumably during the entire Warner period. Some of the material was mixed immediately and came out as the Philosopher’s Stone album, pretty much everything else has been mixed by now, I’ve spent a fair amount of time doing that. It was extremely enjoyable, there were some great bands, great playing and performances. It was fabulous fun to work on, the tape was running all the time during most sessions, so you get the atmosphere and chat from the time. A lot of the tapes were not labelled, so a lot of detective work went on. Fortunately Van’s memory is incredible, he was right there with all the names of people he’d played with 30 years ago.

Van’s Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart album was recorded here at The Town House, wasn’t it?

We spent six days in the old Studio 2, which doesn’t exist any more, I think we recorded 12 or 13 songs including Rave On John Donne.

So can you now exclusively reveal to Resolution readers the existence of an extended studio version of John Donne?

It’s one of the longest tracks Van has recorded in the studio, 32 minutes or something — we had to change the tapes in the middle of it — or maybe we had two machines running, I can’t quite remember. A lot of editing went on. But that’s what happens with free improvisation, which is what largely developed in that song. That’s a particular type of Van Morrison song which starts out as a sheet of lyrics and some melodic ideas on his part, but basically nobody knows what’s going to happen.

Mick also did an interview in 1999 with Studio Sound in which he talks about the recording process with Van:

A case in point is Van Morrison, with whom Mick Glossop has collaborated on no less than 13 albums since kicking things off with the Wavelength project in 1977.

'I remember something that happened with his saxophone part on 'Celtic Swing',' says Glossop with regard to one of the singles on Van the Man's 1982 album, Inarticulate Speech of the Heart. 'He was playing a low note and it wouldn't speak properly. The key wouldn't seal, so we just got this kind of rushing air sound, but he carried on playing and he was really furious about it afterwards. "The bloody thing only got serviced the other day and it's still not working properly!" However, it was left on the record and a lot of people have since remarked about that, because it's a very interesting sound; the sound of the air blowing through the key of the sax. At the time Van was upset about it, but other people thought it should be left in because it was atmospheric, which is not something that he would normally do.

'He's very much a Take 1 person and he's certainly not obsessed with technique in the technical sense. He's very into the feel and he's had a big influence on me in that respect, and he usually okays quite a few things which other people would iron out, such as a guitar that might be slightly out of tune. If the performance has got the feel and the spontaneity and the creativity that it needs then he'll accept that. He'll always sacrifice technical considerations for atmosphere and expression and feel, and from that point of view it's very good working with him. There have been several performances and overdubs where he's initially said, "No, that's fine, that's great", and I've thought, "He's going to redo that in a couple of weeks. I'm sure he's going to replace that overdub". However, two weeks later we've put the tape up and I've listened to it and thought, "Well, that's actually okay, isn't it? It's not a problem." I'd been sucked into being too focussed and too microscopic about it, and therefore in terms of my other work it's a very good thing for me to work on his sessions every now and again, because it just sets things in perspective. He's constantly got his mind on the performance, and that's very healthy.'

Glossop also tries to keep the tape rolling in order to avoid missing out on any moments of artistic inspiration.

'The first time that I missed something with Van Morisson was at the Record Plant in Sausalito,' Glossop recalls. 'It was the second album that I did with him [Into the Music], as usual everything was live--live vocals, the band was playing live--and they all came into the control room to listen to playbacks for a couple of tracks. People were just hanging around chatting, and Van walked out into the studio and was tinkling around on the piano, and then he picked up his guitar and started tuning it. I was still talking to everybody else, and a couple of minutes later I looked out and he was strumming some idea or other. He was nowhere near his little recording area, but then the drummer wandered out there and he started playing along, followed by the piano player who started fingering a few notes in relation to what Van was doing. Well, this gradually evolved into a performance, and at that point I realised something was going on and we'd better put some tape on. Don't forget, we'd just been playing back a track and the master was still on there, and so we quickly spooled the tape off, put on a new reel and stuck the machine in Record but by that time they were already into the chorus of the song. Of course, because of the way that things work psychologically and musically, this ended up being the take, of which I hadn't recorded the first two minutes. I think they ended up having to do another take.

'As a result, ever since then I always have two tape machines, and if we're working with Dolbys--which is normally the case--I take wire leads from the back of the Dolby rack to both machines. That means there's always a tape machine ready to record. At the same time, quite often Van's songs will extend much longer than most people's--I mean, the longest live performance I recorded with him was about 32 or 33 minutes. You don't know how long it's going to be, so you have to have another machine that you can put in Record to catch the overlap instead of losing 15 seconds of the song.

'Van does do a lot of stream-of-consciousness-type songs, where instead of lyrics he'll have a page of words or phrases that he dips into and a lot of other stuff is off the top of his head. There's no structure and the band members are just flying by the seat of their pants, and there are often misgivings from the musicians when they are put on the spot. He doesn't tell them what key the song is in, he doesn't tell them anything about the chord structure. They have to pick it up most of the time, and that's pretty tough. Obviously there will be mistakes and various musicians will feel that they haven't played as well as they could because they were feeling their way, and sometimes they're right and patch-ups will be done. However, quite often Van will insist that they don't redo their parts unless there's a really glaring error, because he knows that that first tentative performance has a unique quality purely because they had to play instinctively.

'That's one of the massive things that I learned from him--there is something about a musician's performance which you can only get under those circumstances. I used to think the reason he didn't fill them in on the song's key was because he didn't think it was necessary and he just couldn't be bothered, but I now think that it's deliberate because he instinctively knows that they are going to have to feel their way. That's what it's about, and it also means that people can never overplay, because they have got to respond to what he is doing. It's a very human element about performance that is brought into the recording, and I think he knows that. He worked it out a long time ago and he's stubbornly stuck to it, and he gets the results by virtue of doing that.'

Tracklisting: Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl

Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl

Recorded in 1968 when the Belfast-bred, blues-rock music legend Van Morrison was just 22 years old, Astral Weeks immediately received critical acclaim and continues to be cited as one of the greatest albums of the rock era. Subsequently the album has been ranked on numerous Best Albums of All Time lists, including #19 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and the 40th Greatest Album Ever on VH-1’s list in 2003. Both Astral Weeks and Moondance (Morrison’s next album) were inducted in the Grammy® Hall of Fame.

Astral Weeks became a cult favorite and was regarded almost as a musical religion to many artists. On November 7 and 8, 2008, four decades later to the day, at the age 63, Van Morrison revisited Astral Weeks live in its entirety at the Hollywood Bowl and delivered a jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring performance.

Astral Weeks Live At The Hollywood Bowl (February 10, 2009)

Featured Tracks
1. Astral Weeks - I Believe I've Transcended
2. Beside You
3. Slim Slow Slider - I Start Breaking Down
4. Sweet Thing
5. The Way Young Lovers Do
6. Cyprus Avenue - You Came Walking Down
7. Ballerina - Move On Up
8. Madame George
9. Listen To The Lion - The Lion Speaks
10. Common One
Bonus Track (LP)
Gloria

Van Morrison Returns To EMI Music

EMI Press Release: Legendary soul singer Van Morrison returns to EMI Music

The live recording of Astral Weeks Live At The Hollywood Bowl (February 10, 2009) to be released worldwide by EMI Music in early 2009 on Morrison's own Listen To The Lion Records

December 18, 2008, New York – Multi-award-winning legendary soul singer and songwriter Van Morrison has returned to EMI Music, with a live recording slated for release in early 2009. The album marks the first record to be issued on Morrison’s own label, Listen To The Lion Records, which will be distributed worldwide by EMI. The album captures the widely-acclaimed live performance Morrison gave at the venerable Hollywood Bowl in November, which featured a breathtaking recreation of the Astral Weeks album.

“I brought these records to EMI because they seem to have people with vision, who have ‘ears’ and who understand the significance of the complex arrangements and the classic essence of recordings like Astral Weeks,“ said Van Morrison. “They’re committed to maintaining the integrity of the records I make. That is what it’s all about to me.”

“Van Morrison is a true living legend, and he continues to inspire artists and fans that span generations and genres,” said Nick Gatfield, EMI Music’s president, A&R – North America and UK/Ireland. “We are delighted he is bringing his label to EMI and are very excited to bring his first release to the world.”

In his remarkable career, Morrison has become one of the most influential artists in the modern age. His album Astral Weeks, originally released 40 years ago, was heralded as a groundbreaking work and today is universally regarded as one of the most important albums in popular music history. Timeless music from the soul, Astral Weeks is ranked one of the greatest albums of all time by Mojo, Rolling Stone and Britain’s The Times.

“EMI has had the good fortune to work with Van over the years, but I am personally excited about this release because I worked with Van back in 1968 on the release of the original Astral Weeks recording” said Ian Ralfini, Senior Vice President, EMI Music. “This particular show at the Bowl was electrifying. For some of us it was a little bit of nostalgia and for others it was a brand new experience. But for everyone it was a great concert and a piece of musical history. We are honored that Van has returned to EMI.”

Astral Weeks Live CD & DVD Update

L.A. Times Music Blog: Van Morrison fans who waited 40 years to hear the first live performances of his 1968 album "Astral Weeks" last month at the Hollywood Bowl will have to hold out a few more weeks for the live recording from the recent concerts.

Morrison originally announced plans to release a vinyl LP edition of the live set by Christmas, with a CD and DVD to follow after the first of the year.

A spokesman for the Rock and Hall of Fame musician said Tuesday that it might be February before the recording is ready, in part because Morrison is considering a follow-up “Astral Weeks” concert in New York in the new year.
-Randy Lewis

Rolling Stone: 100 Greatest Singers Of All Time

Rolling Stone has put out a list of the 100 Greatest singers of all time as voted by music artists, journalists and music industry insiders.

You can view the ballots to see how artists voted.

Van contributed his thoughts on Sam Cooke.

4 | Sam Cooke
by Van Morrison

If a singer is not singing from the soul, I do not even want to listen to it — it's not for me.

Sam Cooke reached down deep with pure soul. He had the rare ability to do gospel the way it's supposed to be — he made it real, clean, direct. Gospel drove Sam Cooke through his greatest songs, the same way it did for Ray Charles, who came first, and Otis Redding.

He had an incomparable voice. Sam Cooke could sing anything and make it work. But when you're talking about his strength as a singer, range is not relevant. It was his power to deliver — it was about his phrasing, the totality of his singing.

He did a lot of great songs, but "Bring It on Home to Me" is a favorite. It's just a well-crafted song with a great lyric and melody. It's a song that's written to allow you to go wherever you can with it. "A Change Is Gonna Come" is another song I covered; it's a great arrangement.

Not many people can play this music anymore, not the way Sam Cooke did it, coming directly from the church. What can we learn from a singer like him, from listening to songs like "A Change Is Gonna Come"? It depends on who the singer is and what they are capable of, where their head is and how serious they are. But Sam Cooke was born to sing.

24 | Van Morrison

John Lee Hooker called Van Morrison "my favorite white blues singer." Morrison has left his mark on over 40 years' worth of rock, blues, folk, jazz and soul, as well as several genres that only really exist on his records. He's the most painterly of vocalists, a master of unexpected phrasing whose voice can transform lyrics into something abstract and mystical — most famously on his repetition of ". . . and the love that loves the love . . .," on "Madame George," from Astral Weeks. Morrison's growls and ululations inspired singers from Bob Seger to Bruce Springsteen to Dave Matthews. Sometimes they can even be an overwhelming influence: Bono said that he had to stop listening to Morrison's records before making U2's The Unforgettable Fire because "I didn't want his very original soul voice to overpower my own."