27-Oct-09 Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, Baltimore Concert Review
Baltimore Sun
JazzTimes managing editor Evan Haga saw Van Morrison last night at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. Here are his thoughts:

The Irish singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Van Morrison is one of popular music's great contradictions, as he proved last night during a 90-minute set at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. The performance was, on several levels, bewildering.

Over the last four-plus decades, Morrison has written indelible melodies and delivered them in his singular blue-eyed-soul shout, a sort of half-croak, half-belt that feels at once homey and otherworldly. He has recorded songs, like "Brown Eyed Girl," that even children know to sing along to. People genuinely feel like they own his music, even when it's dressed in jazz and Celtic flourishes.

But what he offers, even as it's anchored in American roots and R&B, is so totally esoteric. A notoriously diffident and difficult personality, Morrison, like Bob Dylan, is now less interested in celebrating those terrific melodies than being a roots bandleader ...

Morrison spent most of the Meyerhoff gig directing his crack nine-piece ensemble (with strings) through simmering vamps and R&B shuffles, stoically cuing a keyboardist to lay out here, inviting a guitarist to bend a few more bluesy licks there. You heard stop-time percussion solos, long, true notes played on soprano sax and flute, corner-bar organ and muted, Miles Davis-esque trumpet. For many in the audience, it very well may have been the most they’d ever listened to improvised music.

Morrison himself holds musicianship dear, even if his chops on guitar and sax are middling (he fares better on harmonica). His voice is the thing, and he treats it like his horn, turning lyrics into syllabic scats, re-harmonizing songs whose melodies are set in stone (as he did on "Moondance"), and generally understanding that his inflection and phrasing is more important than annunciation.

There's a parlor game I play at shows like these, especially Dylan. Compare what you remember to what you’re hearing: Last night, "You wiped the teardrops from your eye in sorrow," a favorite line from "In the Garden," became "You'll ride the T. Rex tomorrow."

It's the voice that makes for moments of transcendence, no matter how much attention Morrison pays to his band. His generous croon over the striding "And the Healing Has Begun" and thrusting "Gloria" almost made up for how unaccommodating he is as a performer. In case you're wondering, "Brown Eyed Girl" was tossed off at the very top of the show.

The hour and a half flew by without Morrison acknowledging his audience, and there was no encore despite the crowd's floor-shaking request for one. There were also tech issues: Toward the beginning, a radio signal was continuously funneled into the sound system, providing a serious distraction during ballads, and the house lights seemed constantly in flux throughout.

You might chalk all or at least some of this up to Van the Man's legendarily defiant being. But with tickets running roughly $80 to $350, legend only goes so far.

-Sam Sessa

Setlist
Northern Muse (Solid Ground)
Brown Eyed Girl
Fair Play
The Mystery
All in the Game
Moondance
Queen of the Slipstream
Help Me
Fame
I Can't Stop Loving You
Philosopher's Stone
Little Village
In the Garden
On Hynford Street
Gloria
And the Healing Has Begun

Big Hand For The Band
Paul Moran
Tony Fitzgibbon
David Hayes
Richie Buckley
Jay Berliner
Bobby Ruggiero
Richie Buckley
Michael Graham
Terry Adams
Rick Schlosser

Checking in with Van Morrison
Baltimore Sun
Few singer/songwriters have had a greater impact on music than Van Morrison.

Morrison has written some of the most important songs and albums of the 20th century. Ever the recluse, Morrison gives few interviews and rarely interacts with audiences at concerts. Instead, he lets the music speak for itself.

For Morrison, music isn't real unless it can be played live. He looks with disdain on some of his biggest hits, such as "Brown Eyed Girl," which he has called a "throwaway." Due to bad contracts, he didn't gain control of his career until the late '70s, he has said.

Tonight, the 64-year-old Irishman will perform at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (you can buy tickets here). Here is an e-mail interview with Morrison ...

Question: Van, You've said when you play live, everything hinges on your voice. The players follow your voice. Do you follow your voice too? Do you guide it? Does it guide you?

Answer: I GUIDE IT - THAT IS THE ONLY WAY IT CAN BE DONE

What's it like to be in the moment, when you're performing and nothing's on your mind, and it's just you and the music?

ITS ALL ABOUT FOCUS - NOT THINKING OR PRECONCEIVING -- BEING IN THE PRSENT TIME IS THE ONLY WAY TO DO WHAT I DO ...

With time, has it become easier for you to get your feelings and emotions across in your singing? Or does the challenge remain the same?

ITS NEVER THE SAME - ITS IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW - EACH DELIVERY IS DIFFERENT DEPENDING ON THE AUDIENCE THE SCENE ---

You've said Leadbelly, Rory McEwan, Ray Charles and John Lee Hooker were a few musicians who you got into right off the bat. These guys had soul, which is almost impossible to describe. But when you think of these artists and some of your other favorite singers, what qualities in their voices and performances drew you to them?

EACH HAS TO HAVE A QUALITY OF TRANSCNDENCE TO GET MY ATTENTION - THOSE THAT DO CAN HOLD MY ATTENTION...

What goes through your mind when you hear one of your own albums, like "Into the Music?" Are you critical of yourself? Can you step back and enjoy it? Or do you ever go back into your own catalog at all, just to sit and listen?

BASICALLY I ONLY RE LISTEN IF I AM THINKING OF REWORKING MATERIAL FOR A LIVE SETI AM NOT PARTICULARLY CRITICAL OF IT BECAUSE I PUT OUT WHAT I WANT THE WAY I WANT IT - AT *THAT TIME* - I MAY LISTEN TO REWORK SOMETHING OR TRY SOMETHING ELSE LIVE BUT THERE IS NO NEED TO BE CRITICAL OF A WORK THAT WAS PUT OUT THE WAY I PROBABLY WANTED IT AT THE TIME FOR WHATEVER REASON...

Do the saxophone, guitar and piano appeal to you in different ways? Can you discover things on one that you wouldn't have found on another?

EACH INSTRUMENT IS ITS OWN PERSONALITY WITH ITS OWN VOICE SO OF COURSE YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE DIFFERENT APPEALS - ONE DOES THINGS THE OTHER DOESN'T ONE CONVEYS AN EMOTION OR A MOOD THE OTHER MAY NOT DO IN THE SAME WAY- DEPENDS ON WHAT THE COMPOSITION IS

I'm sure it can be hard to answer a question like this objectively, but how have you grown as a songwriter and a singer in the past couple decades?

THE ANSWER TO THAT IS WITH THE BEHOLDER - WHAT DO YOU THINK?
-Sam Sessa

25-Oct-09 Wamu Theater, New York Concert Review
Here's Dan's review:
If Van's Waterbury show was "loud, fast and out of control," as Art Siegel colorfully put it, then last night's show at the Wamu Theater at Madison Square Garden was silky, sensual and saturated with carnal and spiritual knowledge. I was too conquered in a theater seat to keep a formal setlist, but there were no major variations from his recent Denver and Las Vegas non-Astral Weeks gigs. Still, many of what are now becoming those same old songs left lasting impressions. All in the Game build in a slow, steady burn before exploding down by the pylons. Van let out an ecstatic scream during the finale, true squealin feelin. Philosopher's Stone continues to excel, the audience lifted into the song's upward spiral. The audience always roars when Van's vocal re-enters after the harmonica sunburst. Another devotional In the Garden, pure trancelike healing power, summoning down the holy guardian angel with a voice like soothing balm before hitting the chorus hard,
washing over the audience like a warm wave. A giddily lustful Help Me was one of my personal favs. Van at the start singing softly and cooing a creamy blues before bringing it up into harmonica heaven again. "I'm not tired,
but this old man feels like lying down!" Morrison declared.

The final 20 minutes of the gig saw Van reaching for the stars, the ones that shine in his eyes and the ones that glitter in his memories. On Hyndford Street was a tour de force last night, a masterpiece of contemplative solace,
winding on and on down through the decades of a singer's life. With the band providing another gorgeous backdrop, Van kept boring deeper and deeper until he was bent over humming, bleating, the emotion spilling over. Morrison did not recite the lyrics. He sang them with as much beauty and meaning as he knew how and created another time and place. A storming Gloria propelled the audience back into the world on 7th Avenue. Van seems as pleased as ever with the band, which just gets better and better. At one point in the show, as Jay Berliner spun his magic, Van just smiled and watched him: saying that's right, yeah, that's good.

Setlist
Northern Muse (Solid Ground)
Brown Eyed Girl
Fair Play
The Mystery
All in the Game
Moondance
Philosopher's Stone
Little Village
Help Me>Early in the Morning
Have I Told You Lately
In the Garden
On Hynford Street
And the Healing Has Begun
Gloria

Big Hand For The Band
Paul Moran
Tony Fitzgibbon
David Hayes
Richie Buckley
Jay Berliner
Bobby Ruggiero
Richie Buckley
Michael Graham
Terry Adams
Rick Schlosser

24-Oct-09 Palace Theatre, Waterbury Concert Review
Hartford Courant
Van Morrison celebrated forty years since the release of his classic "Astral Weeks" last November with concerts that covered the album in its entirety, a carefully crafted rethinking of its nuanced nature that has been the backbone of his live schedule since. His stop Saturday night at Waterbury's Palace Theater, the first of his two Connecticut shows this week, was a glorious trek through that record, and showcased vitality that remain as undimmed as Morrison's own.

Sporting his trademark fedora and mirror sunglasses, the 64-year-old Northern Ireland native ambled forth without ceremony, settling in front of a piano to the left of the stage as he opened with a song of considerably more recent vintage, 1982's "Northern Muse (On Solid Ground)." Accompanied by a flexible eight-piece band, he made a soulful ascent of the tune, a musical pleasantry for which his voice, at once husky and melodic, served as a signature.

After ladling a flowing piano line across the organic rock of "Brown Eyed Girl," Morrison headed to center stage to spend the remainder of the show on acoustic guitar, a golden monogram of his initials attached to his microphone stand the showiest thing onstage in a program that made powerful use of subtlety. His tone was rough but his manner all fond caress as he forged entrancing atmosphere while building "In the Garden" from sparse to rousing and back again.

The "Astral Weeks" portion of the show diverged slightly from the original album's sequencing, which suited a performance that kept the original disc's songs recognizable while refreshing them along the way. Morrison's splendidly imprecise diction loaded character into every turn, a loose affiliation of growled syllables that danced with the flamenco guitar traces in "Beside You," and forged a hypnotic centerpiece as a tune from the original was expanded into the stunning meditation "Slim Slow Slider (I Start Breaking Down)."

With a flute and two cellos lining a breezy bound through "Sweet Thing," Morrison alternately blew and sang through his harmonica, in the latter case giving his voice enticing sizzle around its edges. His cadence came in broad strokes that nonetheless sported finesse as he navigated "Ballerina," and stood as a stout counterpoint to accompanying violin as he offered "Madame George" as a lengthy near-trance.

After completing the album, Morrison closed his set on electric guitar with his 1979 tune "And the Healing has Begun," luxuriating in its drama as he exhaled his way through its latter passages, and walked offstage while playing it to a close. The show snuck past the 90 minute mark when he returned for a single song encore, a throbbing offering of the old school garage rock number "Gloria" that came forth in more straightforward fashion than anything else on his dance card.

Van Morrison's show Saturday included the following songs: "Northern Muse (Solid Ground)," "Brown Eyed Girl," "Fair Play," "The Mystery," "In the Garden," "Astral Weeks," "Beside You," "Slim Slow Slider (I Start Breaking Down)," "Sweet Thing," "Cyprus Avenue," "The Way Young Lovers Do," "Ballerina," "Madame George," "And the Healing has Begun," (Encore) "Gloria."
-THOMAS KINTNER

Here's Dan's Review:
What an absolutely beautiful theater in the heart of downtown Waterbury. The stage lighting at The Palace last night was as inviting as I have ever seen for Van, and the sound system was clean and clear. It was another superior show with Morrison chomping at the bit from the start, imploring the band to "come on!" only seconds into Northern Muse. And the band responded. Another powerful excursion through the County Down as the Muse moved through the fair, she moved through the town. Van stayed at the piano for Brown Eyed Girl, very cool, pop song in classical mode. Van's still sticking with what has become the standard setlist when it comes to the Astral Weeks gigs. I thought he would mix it up more, but when the songs sound this good, it's hard to quibble. Van only did 5 songs tonight before going into Astral Weeks, instead of his usual 6 or sometimes 7. The In the Garden was filled with vocal leaps and was played powerfully straight through.

The Astral Weeks set continues to reveal how hardy these songs continue to be. The band was also digging in deep tonight, and the music had a rich fullness that filled the ornate dome. The songs continue to reveal new plot lines and emotions. Slim SLow Slider and railway carriage charms getting Van through the day. Lots of sweet thing champagne eyes and harmonica vibrations in perfect harmony. Set closer was a long, glistening version of And the Healing Has Begun. Multiple peaks scaled and sun-dappled valleys explored. A thunderous Gloria to close the gig, skittering violin and rock solid rhythm. A woman sitting two seats from me kept saying at regular intervals during the show: This is so good. This is so good. This is so good.


Newtown Bee
WATERBURY — Anyone who queued up to slap down the $350 single ticket cost to get up close to the quirky yet sublime Van Morrison at Waterbury's Palace Theater last Saturday thinking they would be singing along to his many radio-friendly tunes was probably venomous by the end of the show.

After all, he only performed two of his greatest hits, starting with what could only be described as a schmaltzy, throw-away take on "Brown Eyed Girl," which he quickly and unceremoniously dispensed in the first ten minutes of his 92-minute set.

But true fans, who know that Morrison likes to mine the depths of his amazingly prolific 30-plus album catalog, had to be transfixed by a man and a sound Morrison managed to evoke from a spectacularly tight ensemble featuring bass, guitar, drums, keyboards, flute, sax, trumpet, mandolin, violin and two cellos.

While "Van the Man" was on mission to showcase his critically acclaimed Astral Weeks, celebrating the 40th anniversary of its release, every note from the strains of the show's opening number, "Northern Muse (Solid Ground)," through the re-ordered sequence of material from the aforementioned groundbreaking 1968 effort and into the encore was delivered with such cleverly crafted nuance that the entire set could have been considered a rabid fan's musical gift from the heavens.

The sweet clarity of a young Van Morrison's tenor back in the late '60s and early '70s, like that bottle of fine wine, has mellowed, taking on the still tasty, yet world-weary growl of a veteran bluesman. And his presence, with dark suit, huge mirrored aviator sunglasses and dark fedora offsetting his brilliant white acoustic guitar, only enhanced his eccentric posturing.

It was fascinating to watch as Morrison occasionally backed well off the microphone and sing to the band, or maybe to himself, and the musicians surrounding him would ratchet down to almost a whisper so the audience could hear every throaty mumble of his jazzy scat. These interludes were amplified well in the vintage theater, where every tick of the drumstick on the high-hat, and every breathy draw of the bow across the cello's strings were clearly audible all the way to the balcony's last row.

Besides the re-ordered and invigorated treatment of the Astral Weeks, Morrison proved to the crowd early on that this would be a night to remember, pulling out "Fair Play," from his 1974 project Veedon Fleece, as he transitioned from grand piano to guitar.

The Astral Weeks portion of the show came with the band launching into the hypnotic title track. Following up with "Beside You," which included beautiful Spanish guitar underpinning from Jay Berliner, Morrison continued leading the crowd through this litany of stories, stopping only once ahead of "Slim Slow Slider (I Start Breaking Down)," to tell the audience, "Any reference to any living person is fiction..."

Morrison shed his guitar momentarily on "Sweet Thing," grabbing a harmonica and alternating between singing directly into the mic, and through the distorting reeds of the harp. A jangling harpsichord drove the band down "Cyprus Avenue," and the high notes of "Ballerina," failed to challenge Morrison's 64-year-old vocal chords.

Wrapping up this portion of the show, Morrison finally let the entire band bring on a joyful burst of sound at the end of "Madame George."

Switching to a vintage Les Paul guitar, the artist briefly returned to his catalog for "And the Healing Has Begun," before shuffling off stage into the wings trailing a jazzy solo as the house erupted in a standing ovation.

He closed the show with "greatest hit" number two, a rousing "Gloria," which served as a clever cover to bail out of the venue and get his limo on the road several minutes before the band wrapped up and the audience realized he had left the building.

As folks began filing out into the misty night a few minutes later, it was clear that few were disappointed by the musical magic they had just witnessed courtesy of one of the true masters of his craft.

Morrison didn't use this venue as a marketing showcase to trudge out the repackaging of an "anniversary" album in concert, but as a lyrical and tonal envelope in which to deliver an astral gift to satisfy the thirst of everyone willing to just sit back and drink it all in.
-John Voket

Setlist
Northern Muse (Solid Ground)
Brown Eyed Girl
Fair Play
The Mystery
In the Garden
Astral Weeks
Beside You
Slim Slow Slider
Sweet Thing
Cyprus Avenue
Way Young Lovers Do
Ballerina
Madame George
And the Healing Has Begun
Gloria

Big Hand For The Band
Paul Moran
Tony Fitzgibbon
David Hayes
Richie Buckley
Jay Berliner
Bobby Ruggiero
Richie Buckley
Michael Graham
Terry Adams
Rick Schlosser

Exclusive New Interview With Van On CBC's Q Show

Jian Ghomeshi interviewed Van on CBC's Q show just before his Massey Hall gig.

Jian Tweets: Just back from exclusive w/ Van Morrison at his hotel. Tis very provocative stuff. The man pulls no punches. Went 45 mins - Q tmrw morn.

'Vanatics' Arrive From Far & Wide For Van Morrison Concert

Montreal Gazette
His name is Fred Durette. He is a most affable locomotive engineer residing in Shediac, N.B. At the prompting of a buddy, he pulls back the shirt sleeve on his left arm to reveal a tattoo to end all tattoos. It is a magnificently colourful and flawless rendering of the cover of Van Morrison’s 1970 album His Band & Street Choir. It took the tattoo artiste more than 13 hours to recreate this – as well as the actual Van Morrison autograph on the cover – on Durette’s arm.

Such are the lengths some Van Morrison fans will go to express their feelings for the Belfast Cowboy. Durette is part of a group of nearly 30 fanatics who gathered at Hurley’s before and after Morrison’s concert at Place des Arts on Thursday night.

They call themselves the Vanatics. They are mostly fifty or sixtytsomethings and they come from all walks – from Durette the choo-choo dude to performance analysts to publishers and, in one case, “a forcibly retired journalist.” And they come from South Africa, the Netherlands, England, the United States and beautiful North Bay, Ont. to celebrate one of the most enduring, intriguing and mesmerizing singer/songwriters of them all. Some in this group have seen Morrison in concert hundreds of times.

Now that’s devotion. But, hey, if you’re going to pick a musical guru, better Van Morrison than, say, Marilyn Manson.


Nor can I be entirely objective about Morrison, either. To my often unsettled mind, he is one of the most brilliant and original performers in the biz. Astral Weeks, his classic album, which he has reincarnated on his current tour, is, simply put, a masterwork. Problem was that I had never lucked out catching Morrison in concert in an earlier life. If memory serves – and it often hasn’t – I first took in a Morrison concert about 40 years ago at the mercifully defunct Autostade, which had to be the world’s worst music venue, and underneath an expressway to boot. Morrison had a meltdown on stage, and stormed off, something to do with a broken relationship. Two years later, I took in another concert at the defunct Capitol Theatre downtown. Better acoustics, but another Morrison meltdown, and Van abandoned stage prematurely again.


But just when it appeared that my appreciation for Morrison would forever have to be limited to disc, he blew us all away at his 2007 jazz fest show at Place des Arts. (Which, as colleague Bernard Perusse reported, was his best yet here, an absolutely intoxicating experience – with no non-musical intoxicants required.)

Bob Croll is the Montreal head of the Vanatics. Like other chapter heads around the world, Croll – an equipment liquidator, a “sensitive repo-man” – felt it was incumbent upon him to show the other Vanatics a good time here. So he has arranged a pre-game nosh at Hurley’s with Schwartz’s smoked meat and St. Viateur bagels.

Croll, too, was at that ill-fated Autostade concert, but remembers nothing. “What I do know is that Van’s music has been with me for 40 years, through good times and bad times. It is so healing. The man is unique.”

Durette interjects. “If our partners didn’t like Van, they weren’t our partners for long. He is a biblical experience for us.”

Shannon Vale, an ex-Montrealer now living in New Hampshire, caught Morrison at the Capitol Theatre in 1971 for the first time. Clearly not dissuaded, she has since seen him 75 times in concert and is writing a book about him. “There was just something about his voice. I was instantly hooked. Honestly, I had no clue about the lyrics then, but the music touched me then and continues to do so now.”



Ken Dawe is the executive-director of Baseball Newfoundland/Labrador by day. By night, he is a Van stalker – in the concert sense. “I’ve always been captivated by his intensity.”

Dan Murray is the aforementioned journalist who had to be forcibly retired from his gig in upstate New York over “ a difference of opinion with a boss.” He has taken in Morrison over 200 times. “Only a bachelor like me could be doing something like this. I guess you could say I’m in pursuit of the lost chord.”

Sean Andrews, an accountant from North Bay, has only done 60 concerts, but he plans to make up for lost time. “I always feel I’m in the company of genius when I hear him. I like Bob Dylan, too, but I wouldn’t be following him around the globe. Van makes music in the moment. Unlike almost everyone else, his concerts are not choreographed.”

Mike Millard is a retired performance analyst from Canterbury, England, who has seen Van 700 times over the last 40 years – which speaks not only volumes about his devotion but also about the money to be made as a performance analyst. Millard’s best year was 2003: he witnessed 56 out of 90 Morrison concerts. “What can I say? I love the man, his music and the gatherings. And I have yet to meet a fan who I’ve later wanted to avoid.”

Detroit publisher Michael Seltzer and his wife Laurie, along with Millard, are among the few Vanatics who’ve actually met the man. “A quiet, sweet man,” he says. “My friends have season tickets to the Pistons. I have season tickets to Van.”

A Van concert doesn’t come cheap. Tickets for the Montreal show fetched up to $325 each. When transport and hotel are factored in, these are some of the priciest season tickets around. “Especially when my wife and I go off to Spain or Switzerland to see him,” Seltzer notes.

Which explains why most of us fans will never be able to spend our lives on the cara-Van.

“But this is our biggest addiction,” Seltzer adds. “And, besides, Van never plays the same song, the same way twice.”

“It’s not about the fame or fortune for Van,” says Laurie Seltzer. “It’s all about the music and the man’s passion for it.”

“He’s the equivalent to a meditation high,” Vale rhapsodizes.

Which is to say Morrison will never be mistaken for Metallica.

Benjamin Croll, the 22-year-old student son of Montreal Vanatic-chief Bob, may well have been a Metallica fan if not for genetics. “Let’s just say the Stockholm Syndrome has kicked in,” muses the younger Croll, about to take in his second Morrison concert. “Sure, I could have jumped out of the car when my father first started playing his music, but I figured I might have hurt myself. Now I’ve really come to appreciate Van’s Zen-like qualities.”

And perhaps there is hope for the next generation.
-Bill Brownstein

02-Oct-09 Massey Hall, Toronto Concert Review
Here's Cami's Review:
Another fabulous show! Van, taking it down and bringing it back up, over and over... the band just so in tuned and tight and bringing it all back home one more time again...Beside You and Ballerina the Astral standouts this night The concert rounding out with Healing Has Begun and Hyndford Street! So thrilled to have been a witness to that magnificence! In between we got the holy guardian angels again and we got rainbows in our souls and pylons and backstreet jelly roll and "gimme 5" and the slap on the left side of our collective faces too. My daughter was with me, her first show..she loved it. Aside from Astral Weeks she also got two of her favourite songs..she described his voice as "velvet covered in melted chocolate".. .never quite thought of it like that before, but it's a fitting description I think. She's had a night she won't soon forget. I don't! think she'll ever be the same again!!

Setlist
Northern Muse (Solid Ground)
Brown Eyed Girl
Fair Play
The Mystery
All In The Game
In The Garden
Astral Weeks
Beside You
Slim Slow Slider
Sweet Thing
Cyprus Avenue
Young Lovers Do
Ballerina
Madame George
And The Healing Has Begun
On Hyndford Street

Big Hand For The Band
Paul Moran
Tony Fitzgibbon
David Hayes
Richie Buckley
Jay Berliner
Bobby Ruggiero
Richie Buckley
Michael Graham
Terry Adams
Rick Schlosser

01-Oct-09 Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier of Place des Arts, Montreal Concert Review
Montreal Gazette
During a no-nonsense, 100-minute set at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier of Place des Arts last night, the man on stage never seemed to connect with his audience or his band in any conventional way.

If the performer were anyone else but Van Morrison, that would be a problem. With Morrison, however, it's kind of what you want. You need him to be somewhere else, speaking in tongues, repeating words like "never" and "very" so often within a line that the simplest phrases take on fresh meaning as they simultaneously become meaningless.

From the moment he sat down at the piano - just once - to open the show with a slow, subtly bluesy Northern Muse (Solid Ground), Morrison showed more engagement with a live performance than he's let us see in some time.

Whether it's the challenge presented by the concert's centerpiece, Astral Weeks in its entirety, or whether it's the sheer fun of shocking the fans by putting utterly unexpected gems in the set list, Morrison seemed fully inspired at every moment. Quite simply, it would be hard to argue that last night's performance was anything but the best show he has ever given in this city.

The finest of Morrison's work sounds like it's part of one long, perfect song. And that's how the concert unfolded. A playful Brown Eyed Girl - with the audience singing the sha-la-las and Morrison tossing back "Like that!" - yielded easily to a dreamy, jazzy Fair Play that wanted to go on all night.


Yet it all seemed mere prelude to a hushed, sublime and mystical In the Garden, with Morrison invoking the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost as the strings in his nine-piece backup group swelled up and rose around him.

A 45-minute Astral Weeks followed, managing to sound both turn-on-a-dime tight and like it was being created right in the moment - a testimony to both the singer and his stellar musicians, among whom were guitarist Jay Berliner, who played on the original album.

With Sweet Thing and The Way Young Lovers Do swinging and Ballerina rocking like never before, the revamped, resequenced Astral Weeks has now taken on a life of its own, well beyond the one-off celebration it started out as last year.

Still, the biggest surprise came at the end. A lyric sheet was brought out in case of emergency, the band started a slow, pastoral swirl and Morrison, swaying back and forth, offered a recitation of On Hyndford Street, delivering its last lines as he walked off the stage without doing an encore.

Five minutes after the lights went up, an incredulous crowd began to shuffle out only when the crew started removing instruments from the stage.

But really, how could he have followed that ?
-Bernard Perusse
Setlist
Northern Muse (Solid Ground)
Brown Eyed Girl
Fair Play
The Mystery
Philosophers Stone
In the Garden
Astral Weeks
Beside You
Slim Slow Slider
Sweet Thing
Cyprus Avenue
The Way Young Lovers Do
Ballerina
Madame George
And the Healing Has Begun
On Hyndford Street

Big Hand For The Band
Paul Moran
Tony Fitzgibbon
David Hayes
Richie Buckley
Jay Berliner
Bobby Ruggiero
Richie Buckley
Michael Graham
Terry Adams
Rick Schlosser

30-Sep-09 Massey Hall, Toronto Concert Review
Toronto Sun
With roughly three dozen studio albums under his belt, it took more than four decades for Van Morrison to return to one of his and rock music’s landmarks.

And despite the fact it wasn’t played in the same running order as the 1968 record, the Irish soul singer ensured that Astral Weeks was the focal point of his near capacity show Wednesday night at Massey Hall.

With a large backing band – including a small string section – Van Morrison sat behind a black piano to start the 100-minute set with some other non-Astral Weeks efforts. Northern Muse (Solid Ground), the first of several tunes that dabbled almost simultaneously in folk, blues, country, Celtic and soul, set the tone for most of the first half highlights.

Not one for idle banter, Van Morrison, 64, left the piano for good and did a rather ordinary run through of Brown Eyed Girl as the audience eagerly helped out. But it was the ensuing number Fair Play which symbolized the magic of the man and his muse.

Often leading the very attentive group with subtle hand cues and gestures, the performer took Fair Play down a rather lengthy and lovely musical road, giving guitarist Jay Berliner (who played on Astral Weeks) and fiddler Tony Fitzgibbon time to shine as Van Morrison let the song guide him and not the other way around.

The only low moment of the night might have been when Van Morrison figuratively and literally blew it during Little Village. Attempting a saxophone solo, but not quite hitting the desired notes, the singer quickly got help from Paul Moran who fleshed out the horn portion on trumpet.

Nonetheless, the draw to this particular tour is Astral Weeks. Earlier this year Van Morrison released Astral Weeks: Live At The Hollywood Bowl as a live CD and DVD. Next year a documentary entitled To Be Born Again will be released revolving around his return to this particular masterpiece.

After a brief announcement stating Astral Weeks was commencing, the musician opened with the melodic title track, often playing off David Hayes plucking his standup bass. The song was also met with some heads bobbing and toes tapping throughout the audience.

Probably the night’s highlight was the middle section where the blues-tinged Slim Slow Slider found its groove early on, bobbing and weaving as Van Morrison strummed his acoustic guitar with more verve. Singing at times a bit off microphone but with a voice that rarely needs amplification, he nailed the swaying, melodic Sweet Thing which he occasionally slowed to a crawl.

The combination of Ballerina and Madame George also soared, the former met with hoots and hollers while the latter – with the song again steering Van Morrison – concluded with a standing ovation, proving it was well worth the steep price to get in.

Closing with the warhorse Gloria, Van the Man thanked the band, took a bow and exited the building, leaving the audience pleased to have witnessed such a rare sweet thing.

****1/2(4.5 out of five stars)
-JASON MacNEIL


The Star
Van Morrison's only got but so much to give and that seems to be all right with his fans.

Clad in trademark black fedora, dark suit and sunglasses, the 64-year-old Irish native delivered a perfunctory 90-minute set at Massey Hall Wednesday night.

The folk-rocker didn't banter with the audience or crack a smile. (He'd even requested the venue not serve alcohol).

The only bit of flash was the giant "M" in the centre of his microphone stand. You assumed his occasional side-to-side rocking meant he was having a good time.

The first half was dedicated to the musician's "classic songs," including "Brown Eyed Girl" and "In the Garden." Since enunciation didn't seem to be a priority, singing gave way to scatting with no jarring.

But the vocal delivery was adjunct to the penetrating and heavily improvised musical palette, courtesy of a nine-piece band that included flute, fiddle and cello.

Through clearly working from a set list, Morrison who accompanied himself on acoustic guitar and also played harmonica and sax, kept the musicians on their toes with unexpected solo cues.

The remainder of the concert was a slightly rearranged front-to-back rendition of his 1968 critically acclaimed Astral Weeks.

He's been touring that routine since debuting it with a pair of successful Hollywood Bowl concerts last fall that were released on DVD.

The Massey Hall gigs (he's back Friday night) are billed as "the most intimate setting to date."

Funny though, with the full orchestration, songs such as "Beside You," "The Way Young Lovers Do" and "Sweet Thing" were not as intimate as the recordings by 23-year-old Morrison.

With that blues-laced voice less in the forefront, the angst-ridden tales of his Belfast upbringing didn't connect in the same way.

But the near capacity crowd lapped it up and lingered hopefully for the encore that never came.
-Ashante Infantry

Setlist
Northern Muse (Solid Ground)
Brown Eyed Girl
Fair Play
The Mystery
Little Village
In the Garden
Astral Weeks
Beside You
Slim Slow Slider
Sweet Thing
Cypress Avenue
The Way Young Lovers Do
Ballerina
Madame George
Listen to the Lion
Gloria

Big Hand For The Band
Paul Moran
Tony Fitzgibbon
David Hayes
Richie Buckley
Jay Berliner
Bobby Ruggiero
Richie Buckley
Michael Graham
Terry Adams
Rick Schlosser

29-Sep-09 Chicago Theatre, Chicago Concert Review
Chicago Tribune
“Astral Weeks,” a 1968 album that produced not a single hit but remains one of the most revered works of the rock era, was the main course at Van Morrison’s sold-out concert Tuesday at the Chicago Theatre.

Its eight songs were performed in slightly reshuffled order from the original album, presumably so Morrison could present the album in definitive form. His nine-piece band was designed to evoke the flavor of the original, with its mix of acoustic instrumentation, chamber-pop orchestration and agile, jazz-flavored interplay. At the center of it all was the Irish soul singer in fedora and shades. As is his habit, he didn’t say anything to his audience that wasn’t already in his music.

He played with a mixture of resolve and distraction, throwing himself into some songs and tossing off others, notably the obligatory hits “Brown Eyed Girl” and “Have I Told You Lately.”

The singer and his musicians eased into the concert a bit uneasily, with muted versions of relative obscurities such as “Northern Muse (Solid Ground)” and “Fair Play.” The band was best when Morrison was setting the tempo on acoustic guitar, and he found a rich vein of country-soul that morphed into brass-fueled R&B in “Little Village,” shouting off the microphone and soloing on his saxophone. Soon after he delivered an incantatory version of “In the Garden,” working subtle variations barely above a whisper into a song like a prayer.

If the set so far had been a bit relaxed, the start of “Astral Weeks” in the show’s second half found the musicians leaning into their instruments, visibly rising to the challenge.

The album is less a narrative then an exploration of emotional extremes, the human experience laid out in childhood reveries and adult anxieties, infatuation and sadness, desire and death. To reflect that bittersweet volatility, the music ebbed and flowed, the upright bass of David Hayes surging to the front of the mix and then receding, Jay Berliner’s guitar and Tony Fitzgibbon’s fiddle answering each other like human voices, while Morrison turned his voice into a saxophone, the way he reshaped syllables and phrases.

Berliner, the lone musician on stage who also played on the original “Astral Weeks” sessions, embroidered every vocal phrase on the brilliant title song, and the three-piece string section played a slow, shivering fade – the night’s single most enduring moment.

“Turn me up!” Morrison yelled to his sound engineer as he and Berliner traded lines in “Beside You.” Then came the dark “Slim Slow Slider,” which ended the original album on a devastating note, its anguish now punctuated by Morrison’s slashing rhythm guitar.

“Cypress Avenue” couched its illicit longing in stately harpsichord. “The Way Young Lovers Do” swung ebulliently. And the elegiac “Madame George” brought the song cycle to a close with an invitation to leave this world – presumably for a better place. “Get on this train,” Morrison chanted as if in a church, conjuring images of Curtis Mayfield’s civil-rights anthem “People Get Ready.”

After that, a mini-medley of the singer’s garage-rock classics with Them, “Mystic Eyes” and Gloria,” felt anti-climactic. Four decades after it was recorded, “Astral Weeks” remains a tough act to follow.
-Greg Kot

Setlist
Northern Muse (Solid Ground)
Brown Eyed Girl
Fair Play
Foreign Window
The Mystery
Little Village
Have I Told You Lately
In the Garden
Astral Weeks
Beside You
Slim Slow Slider
Sweet Thing
Cypress Avenue
The Way Young Lovers Do
Ballerina
Madame George
Mystic Eyes/Gloria

Big Hand For The Band
Paul Moran
Tony Fitzgibbon
David Hayes
Richie Buckley
Jay Berliner
Bobby Ruggiero

26-Sep-09 Wells Fargo Theater, Denver Concert Review
Denver Post
Van Morrison was armed well at his Denver concert on Saturday night.

Wearing his ever-present sunglasses, suit and fedora, Morrison switched between a white acoustic guitar and a harmonica, an electric guitar and an alto saxophone during his 90-minute, no-nonsense set at the Wells Fargo Theatre on Saturday.

The time spent with Morrison was hardly as memorable as the artist’s Red Rocks show a few summers back, but longtime fans were pleased as Morrison kicked off the evening (at 8 p.m. sharp, no less) with “Northern Muse (Solid Ground),” “This Love of Mine” and “Fair Play.”

The singer-songwriter catered his performance to the fans who have faithfully followed his music beyond “Brown Eyed Girl,” the fans who enjoy/revel in elongated takes – accented by multiple solos – of “Foreign Window” and “The Mystery.” I’ll admit that I’m not that fan, but still Morrison’s top-notch six-piece band made for an entertaining evening.

The gentleman on the flute/tenor sax/bari sax was a master player who was versatile enough to handle all three of those instruments with aplomb, and the seated acoustic guitarist was a madman who slayed each of his solos and accented Morrison’s playing smartly, ably.

Speaking of the solos, the best part of the show came watching Morrison dole out the solos – with a head-nod here and a finger-point there. You could tell some of it was impromptu, as Morrison would sometimes bark at an unprepared player – the flutist/sax player and the pianist/trumpeter – to pick up his other instrument and join him on an improvisation.

Morrison’s shows are always studies in dynamics, and the loud-soft-loud of his songs is one of his trademarks that, like his hat and glasses, has become a cliché. But Morrison’s cloud-lifted, otherworldly voice never gets old.


That said, Saturday’s setlist, which also included “Queen of the Slipstream,” “All In the Game” and a gorgeous “In the Garden,” wasn’t ideal. It’s not like anybody who paid between $90 and $350 to see Morrison expected to hear “Brown Eyed Girl,” but he could have thrown a couple more familiar bones.

He played fewer than 15 songs, and of those, only two or three were familiar hits – including “Moondance” and the Them track “Gloria.” And of those, Moondance cruised on a sweet backbeat while “Gloria” sounded like a dated anachronism – a shame indeed because it’s one of the strongest songs he’s written to date.
-Ricardo Baca

Here's Rick's review:
OK, so one night after Vegas, with an 8:00 start time instead of 7:00 in a city in which he has usually punched the clock, I was expecting Van to simply mail in tonight's set. What I didn't expect, and what we got, was a Van fan's wet dream. I mean, I suppose it could have been better, he could have encored with a ten minute version of Cyprus Avenue, and at the end screamed "It's too late to stop now", thrown down the mic an stormed off the stage.

But what we did get is a Van who was engaged throughout, great sound, nice sightlines and a show worthy of the ages. The setlist is below. Trust that even though the man never spoke to the audience, he was pointing out solos generously, and letting the band do its thing. Setlist surprises were Little
Village and Philosopher's Stone, but the highlight had to be the extended version of Fair Play, including scat, harmonica and a solo from David Hayes on the stand-up bass that looked like he was making love to it. And one night after an abbreviated "You Know What They're Writing About" when the audience got enthusiastic a little too early, the same thing happened except Van then went straight to the Rainbow in his Soul and Making It Real One More Time and ripped it up.

Oh, and he needed the 90-minute clock, because the show clocked in at 88 minutes. But a sublime 88 minutes it was.
-Rick

Setlist

Northern Muse (Solid Ground)

This Love of Mine

Fair Play

Foreign Window

The Mystery

Queen of the Slipstream

It's All In The Game

In The Garden

Little Village

Moondance

Help Me

Philosopher's Stone

And The Healing Has Begun

Gloria

Big Hand For The Band
Paul Moran
Tony Fitzgibbon
David Hayes
Richie Buckley
Jay Berliner
Bobby Ruggiero

{Images via Erik Kabik}

25-Sep-09 Hard Rock, Las Vegas Concert Review
Vegas News
Morrison, wearing his iconic black Fedora and dark sunglasses, performed some of his greatest tunes and demonstrated his powerful and dynamic vocal prowess as the audience hung on every note. At times you could hear a pin drop in the Joint as he skatted and whispered out some of his vocals and then slowly and soulfully built them up into soaring powerful deliveries that got the crowd on its feet and into full roaring applause and cheers.

The sold out crowd was fully engaged with Morrison throughout. He was in full command of the stage, his large backing band and the gold microphone and gold microphone stand embellished with the initials VM. Morrison also played piano, guitar, saxophone and harmonica throughout the show.

Highlights included the tunes In The Garden, Moondance ( a jazzy version reminicent of classic Miles Davis and Art Blakey tunes), Gloria, And The Healing Has Begun, That's Life and Have I Told You Lately?
- Erik Kabik


Here's Chris W's review:
Van really came to sing at the Hard Rock tonight. The first half of the show was simply sublime. He stretched every song out and seemed to be in that spiritual "higher plane." The Voice and the band were in total sync. The newly renovated Joint was somewhat cavernous but this is Vegas. They obviously had unlimited bucks to spend on sound, lights, video screens, etc. and it showed.

Highlights included a beautiful Fair Play, In the Garden, Foreign Window, and Mystery. His tone wandered a bit at the beginning of Slipstream but he brought it back into another drawn out triumph.

Then he went into the real VM "Workshop," All in the Game and he seemed to be impossibly taking it into an even higher realm. He brought the end of "You Know What They're Writing About" to a whisper and started backing away from the mic. The applause quickly built to a crescendo, Van looked up, I think a little disgusted, and abruptly ended the tune. I think the string of medium- to
slow-tempo relatively obscure tunes proved too much for the alcohol-fueled casino crowd.

Next thing you know the band is walking through a perfunctory Moondance (standing ovation) followed by Help Me. He walked off the stage at the end of a well-sung And the Healing Has Begun and we wondered if we would get BEG, Gloria or both. Instead he did Common One with Richie before the usual Gloria closer. It was just about 90 minutes at the end of the last drum crash so I figure he needed another (somewhat longer) song to add to the "encore." The crowd waited
around for a long time thinking they could bring the band back with more applause. They didn't know that Van was probably at the airport before the end of Gloria. Admittedly, the airport in Vegas is pretty close.


Half of one of the best shows I've ever seen is pretty good. Am I too greedy to have wanted a whole one?
- Chris

Setlist
Northern Muse (Solid Ground)
That's Life
Fair Play

The Mystery
Foreign Window
In The Garden
Queen of the Slipstream
Moondance
Help Me
Have I Told You Lately
And The Healing Has Begun

It's All In The Game/You Know What They're Writing
Common One
Gloria

Big Hand For The Band
Paul Moran
Tony Fitzgibbon
David Hayes
Richie Buckley
Jay Berliner
Bobby Ruggiero

{Images via Steven Lawton & Erik Kabik}

Van Fans Pre & Post Show Gatherings

Come enjoy a drink (or two) and meet other Van fans before the show!

Meeting places are listed on the left under the venue info under Concert Schedule. Additional gatherings to be added when confirmed.

Email me if you have any questions or want to suggest a place if you do not see one listed: vanmorrisonnews{at}yahoo.com

Astral Phenomenon: Van Morrison In Conversation, Sort Of

Montreal Gazette
The fact that Van Morrison is on the road performing his 1968 album Astral Weeks might suggest he’d be keen to reminisce about the recording, heralded as a masterpiece by too many musicians and critics to count.

But if you think that, you might not know the first thing about the mercurial singer.

In an email interview with the Gazette, Morrison was dismissive when asked how the original album sounds to his ears these days. “It sounds like a 20-something-year-old me,” he wrote. “I do not listen to it. But I suppose it sounds like it always did.”

In the 1979 essay collection Stranded: Rock and Roll For a Desert Island, the iconoclastic – and difficult to please – critic Lester Bangs said Astral Weeks was “the rock record with the most significance in my life so far.” In a rhapsodic retrospective, Bangs referred to a “swath of pure beauty and mystical awe that cut right through the heart of the work.”

Even if such assessments were meaningful to Morrison – which is doubtful – it wouldn’t make him any more inclined to preserve the record as a museum piece. When its 40th anniversary came around last year, Morrison celebrated by performing the whole album, slightly resequenced, over two November nights at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

“The whole point is, I wanted to do it live with full orchestration – and that is what I did,” he wrote. “Plus, most of these songs are the least played in my whole repertoire.”

The Hollywood Bowl shows, subsequently released on CD and DVD, featured a small string section and enough musicians to comfortably navigate the unusual chamber jazz and folk sounds of the original release. Guitarist Jay Berliner, who played on the first Astral Weeks, returned for the live revisit. Without providing specifics, Morrison wrote that his Oct. 1 concert here will feature “about the same lineup as in Hollywood.”

The Hollywood Bowl concerts were intended as a one-shot deal. New York and London followed early this year, however, and before long, a full tour was under way.

“Demand was the only reason it carried on,” Morrison wrote. “I only intended two shows in Hollywood to get the recording down live in front of an audience. I prefer live music to studio – especially for a project like Astral Weeks. It gives it a fullness a studio would not have allowed for.”

It’s hard not to be struck by the difference between Morrison’s vocal performance on the 1968 recording and his approach to the 2008 re-invention. On the original, there’s a nervous energy and a sense of uncharted territory that announces an untamed, raw talent – a bona fide original who was probably not yet sure, at 23, of his place in the music business, let alone the world.

At that point, Morrison had had only one hit since leaving Belfast R&B rockers Them: the infectious, catchy Brown Eyed Girl, released the previous year. And his new label, Warner Bros., could only have been hoping for more of the same.

It’s a sure bet that no label suit was wishing for an impossible-to-categorize batch of lengthy free-form compositions with jazz players weaving a wondrous path around the singer’s folk- and blues-based meditations. Not to mention inscrutable lyrics that were more likely to feature drag queens and dying loved ones than brown-eyed girls.

But it was what it was. And it was brought to life by Morrison, singing and playing acoustic guitar, augmented by blue-chip jazz players like Berliner, who had played with Charles Mingus, bassist Richard Davis, who had worked with Miles Davis and the late Modern Jazz Quartet drummer Connie Kay, along with Van’s own sideman John Payne on flute and soprano sax. With the eight tracks that make up the album recorded over only two sessions – a middle session yielded nothing useable – a classic was born.

Like many classics, however, it sold very little – at least not for a long time. After years of ending up on all-time-greatest-album lists in every major rock periodical you can think of, Astral Weeks earned its gold record only in 2001.

“(It) is a work of such singular beauty, such sustained emotional intensity, that nothing recorded before or since sounds even remotely similar,” Sean O’Hagan wrote in the London Observer last November, encapsulating the slow-building acclaim that eventually added commercial respectability to artistic praise.

The 2008 Astral Weeks, at least as captured on the live CD, is a different animal. It shows Morrison fully self-assured, deeper-voiced and comfortable with a technique that has been honed and crafted, yet still depends on wild abandon for its full force. Challenged by the songs, he sounds at the top of his game.

Which means that while the printed lyrics might say “And I will stroll the merry way and jump the hedges first/ And I will drink clear clean water for to quench my thirst,” what comes out of Morrison’s mouth is “Allathrowamanywayenstepahedgesfirst/ Asadrinkthecleclewallafoddaquenchamythirst.”

Through much of the performance, Morrison is singing in tongues, his voice channeling mystical impressions from somewhere else.

For Morrison, it just comes down to doing what he has always done. “I do not assess it,” he wrote in response to a question regarding the difference between his vocal approach to the Astral Weeks material then and now. “I just do what I do in the moment. I have to have a non-contrived element to all my singing.

“I did not do it the same way twice then and I do not do it the same way twice now. It just happens organically that way,” he explained.

Oddly enough, while much of Morrison’s catalogue has been remastered, Astral Weeks and its hugely successful follow-up, Moondance (1970), are among those that have not been upgraded to state-of-the-art sound.

“I spent a year of my life getting those remasters together,” Morrison wrote. “It was all me. They just ran it through a machine after I did all the work. I retained back, from Universal, half of the remasters. And I intend to put those out on my own at some point – maybe.”

The need for that kind of artistic control is evidenced by Morrison’s insistence on producing his own albums – pretty much since Astral Weeks.

“For one thing, my recordings do not get ruined or stamped with someone else’s opinion, who could not possibly understand where I am coming from musically,” he wrote. “No producer has ever contributed anything to any of my recordings. They have just detracted and pushed back vocals.”

Anyone who has listened to Morrison’s body of work knows that he has an even lower opinion of anyone on the business side of music. Still lower: people who exploit his life to sell books.

“There will always be people who think they know something they have no idea about – and I am one of those things,” he wrote. “It’s bizarre when people write entire books about you and the music who have no clue what they are talking about. That is not to mention the people who make things up just to appear like they are ‘involved,’ or in the know. I am not into that. I have my peace now, but I get it from other sources that no one knows about.”

Morrison also had a few choice words for the state of the way people consume music now. Certainly, in an age where the album is in danger of extinction and music is being mixed and matched via digital downloads, track by arbitrary track, it’s hard to imagine the modern-day descendent of an indivisible work like Astral Weeks ever taking hold.

“The demise of the album was the demise of the record business,” Morrison wrote. “Now it’s just compressed air and digitized distortion of original resonance. That is a shame.”

Still, Morrison has not closed the door on future album-related projects that might echo the Astral Weeks revisit. Queried about his current thoughts on what some consider one of his masterpieces, the 1991 album Hymns To the Silence, he offered a tantalizing bit of information.

“Hymns is one of the albums I would like to rework live,” he wrote. “I hear different things when I listen to it now, and I would like to experiment with it at some point.”
-Bernard Perusse

Van Morrison performs Oct. 1 at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier of Place des Arts. Tickets cost $100 to $250. Phone 514-842-2112 or go to www.laplacedesarts.com

Exciting Van Video News!!

Make sure you check out Van's official video channel, YouTube - OfficialExileFilms, which is in the process of being updated - new videos added today. Expect more to come very soon! Some of the footage will be familiar to fans but there shall also be new edits and new material appearing as well!

The aim is to provide Van's global fanbase with a quality, easy-to-access source of great, Van footage.

To Be Born Again Documentary To Be Released In Movie Theaters

Times Online
Film to show Van Morrison is own man
The Northern Ireland-born singer hopes to clear up 'myths' about his past

Nobody ever suspected there’d be days like this: Van Morrison is directing a documentary chronicling his experience in reviving Astral Weeks, a 40-year-old album, in an effort to dispel myths about himself and his career.

One of the music industry’s most reluctant celebrities, the Northern Ireland-born singer-songwriter would never have been expected to co-operate with a behind-the-scenes documentary, let alone make it. Entitled To Be Born Again, it will be released early next year.

The documentary will show Morrison rehearsing for the Astral Weeks tour which began at the Hollywood Bowl last November, and contains lengthy interviews with him and fly-on-the-wall footage shot over the past year.

To Be Born Again will first be shown in arthouse cinemas in New York and Los Angeles, and Morrison is also considering entering the production for the Sundance and Cannes film festivals.

The musician, who has spent much of his career avoiding the media, said he decided to make the documentary so he could “set the record straight”.

Gigi Lee, Van Morrison’s business partner, said he wants to correct a number of misconceptions, such as the belief that all his songs are autobiographical.

“Van tells his own story for the first time so people can hear the truth direct from the man himself rather than relying on the false planted stories of any tabloid,” said Lee.

“The film dispels all the books written by those who do not know him and never met him, who took it upon themselves to tell the public tall tales. It dispels the pretenders and false friends quite well.

“It’s all Van in fine form — raw, candid and completely brilliant in his ability to convey to the audience the nuance of his music. It’s his story, direct from him, without all the mythology connected to it, without all the voluminous fabrications that have been written about it.”

A trailer for the documentary, carried on the website of producer Darren Doane, shows Morrison in the back of a car. He spots some fans with records on a street corner and shouts out the window to them, in a gruff American accent: “Why don’t you buy some new ones?” before rolling up the window and muttering, “f***”.

In another part of the trailer, 64-year-old Morrison tells the camera: “I’ve got these scars. Why do I have to keep showing people the scars all the time, you know what I mean?”

Morrison would like the film to depict him as “a proud Ulster-Scot”, Lee said, “and that whatever people derive from his music is much more about them and their thoughts and projections than him as a songwriter. Each composition is a made-up, architected song and story — his songs are not at all autobiographical”.

Last year at the Hollywood Bowl was the first time Morrison had performed Astral Weeks in one complete concert set. A live album and film — Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl — on Morrison’s new EMI-distributed label, Listen to the Lion Records, followed. There was also a film of the concert, which included an orchestral string section and some of the musicians who had played on the original Astral Weeks sessions in 1968.

Written when he was just 23 and recorded in two days, Astral Weeks failed to crack the charts when it was originally released. The album sold poorly for years and was neglected by his record company.

“It received no promotion from Warner Brothers — that’s why I never got to play the songs live,” Morrison told Rolling Stone magazine last November. But the album has since been hailed as the Belfast musician’s best work. In 2003, Rolling Stone rated Astral Weeks No 19 on its list of 500 greatest albums of all time.

Morrison has also shied away from award ceremonies. He wasn’t in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1993 when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, though he did accept honorary degrees from the University of Ulster in 1992 and Queen’s University in 2001. He also became an OBE in 1996.
-Gabrielle Monaghan