21-Jun-09 Cardiff Concert Review
South Wales Argus
THE great man was in great form, as was his superb band of highly accomplished musicians.

Sporting his trademark suit, hat and shades, Morrison joined in on piano, saxophone, guitar and harmonica.

There were the old standard crowd-pleasing favourites like Brown Eyed Girl, Moondance, Gloria and Georgia On My Mind.

But where Morrison really came into his own was with more compositions that fuse blues, jazz and Celtic tinges, some of his music is achingly beautiful. He and his band played straight through for an hour and a half without a break to a packed Wales Millennium Centre.

Numbers like In The Garden, The Philosopher's Stone and Heavy Connection were sublimely played and went down a storm.

Van the Man doesn't do audience banter. He and his musicians just let the music do the talking.
-Iwan Davies

Correspondent Mike's report:

Yesterday in Cardiff was a moving experience in a number of ways. Coming off the first show in my previous post I sent some minor disappointment what with the return to the 90 minute format and no Astral Weeks to be found. When I awoke this morning after show two in Cardiff at a magnificent new facility that had tremendous sound
quality (you could hear a pin drop...) I've come away as we all do - wanting and waiting for more. Here's why. My first thought as I rose was that I needed to re-connect to "Veedon Fleece", another of the storied Van classic albums that
keeps coming up along with Astral Weeks as most celebrated, though never selling terribly well and perhaps under appreciated. Since Van is obviously listening to the comments (thank you Johnny G) and perhaps noting that this album is often referred to in a similar vein by we purists as Astral Weeks -- he continued to mine his gold over these past two nights and all I wanted to do was listen again to that album which I did and it was stunning. I've listened twice since early this morning. So Van did his magic, moving off the Astral Weeks train to a new platform and it appeared that we are on another grand non-stop train. Fair Play led off straight away out of both nights following the opening - Van on piano, growling Northern Muse/Solid Ground, lofts into Moondance and then.... real magic. Fair Play was just stunning again and the flair that Jay Berliner lent with Van coaxing him further on ("Yeah, yeah....") -- we've witnessed that exchange in Astral Weeks sets and it's very clear that Van is enjoying his time on stage with Mr. Berliner. It just builds from there and while you may have heard the two setlists by now, in night two we had some very special additions including Streets of Arklow from that same album but rather than Ned's harmonica, it was Jay and Tony and Paul that helped build it and it was magnificent to hear.

Over the two nights we heard some classics from the vault and now that
I've been able to step away from the Astral Weeks phenom, and while I'd still love to see that again (and it's rumoured) in August... Van did as he does and
reminds us why we keep coming back. He takes us back...way way way back and reinvents the music that propels us all forward to the next gig. I'm on that train & now much as I hate to rush the summer, August can't come soon enough. Here's what we got over two nights, in no particular order:

Solid Ground
Foreign Window
In the Garden
Fair Play
Streets of Arklow
Alan Watts Blues (one of MY all-time favs and Paul Moran was spectacular on piano)
Leaves Come Falling Down
The Mystery
Healing Has Begun
Have I Told You Lately
Philosophers Stone
Queen Of The Slipstream
So Quiet In Here
All In The Game
Georgia
Magic Time
Moondance
Brown Eyed Girl(oops - how'd that get in there?)
Mystic Eyes/Gloria.

Now, that's a dream set list if ever there were one and I know some are probably thinking of their own dream tunes to include.
All I might say is that when you wish upon a star....or whatever it is
that you might wish upon (my wife comes to mind...) Whoever thought we'd get Astral Weeks cover to cover. Now that Veedon Fleece is in the mix, No Guru is back after a decade of absence --- hard to know what lies ahead but suffice to say, this briiliant train continues rolling and we're along for a great ride.
-Mike

Setlist:
Northern muse (Solid Ground)
Moondance
Fair Play
Foreign window
It's All In The Game/You Know What They're Writing About
Allan Watts Blues
The Mystery
When The Leaves Come Falling Down
In The Garden
Streets of Arklow
Philosopher's Stone
Georgia
And The Healing Has Begun
So Quiet In Here
Brown-Eyed Girl
Mystic Eyes/Gloria

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

Thanks to Ivo & Bern for setlist!

20-Jun-09 Bristol, England Concert Review

Bristol Evening Post
VAN THE MAN ON TOP FORM

With ticket prices of £80, this was always destined to be a gig to remember, but Van Morrison’s reputation for unpredictability is the stuff of legend so nobody was taking anything for granted.

In the run-up to this rescheduled gig, there was much talk of the curmudgeonly singer playing tracks from his seminal 1968 album Astral Weeks, as he had recently done in New York and London.

The hefty ticket prices - almost twice what they were the last time he played the venue - certainly suggested the prospect of something as special as a rare airing of his most famous work.

Dressed in his trademark dark suit, black fedora and aviator shades, Morrison walked on stage on the stroke of 8pm with his seven-piece band and he clearly meant business from the outset.

With no acknowledgement of the rapturous reception that greeted him, he sat at the grand piano and launched into Northern Muse (Solid Ground), a track from his lesser known 1982 album Beautiful Vision.

Moondance, one of his most famous songs, came next and then he picked up the guitar for I Like It Like That, a song recorded by his original band Them.

With a career spanning almost 50 years, this fiery Belfast singer songwriter has a vast back catalogue to choose from and he picks the set list as he goes along, depending on his mood. Not even the band know what’s coming next and there is always an air of tension in his performances.

It soon became clear that he was in a more reflective mood and he cherry-picked several tracks from his underrated mid-career albums of the late Seventies and Eighties.

These included some of his more spiritual songs: Queen of The Slipstream and The Mystery (both from 1987’s Poetic Champions Compose) and the magnificent track In The Garden from the 1986 album No Guru, No Method, No Teacher, an epic song during which Morrison brought the volume of his skin-tight band down so low that you could hear a pin drop before raising the roof again.

And there were even more gems to come - a brilliant version of Into The Mystic from the classic 1970 album Moondance and a superlative rendition of And The Healing Has Begun from 1979’s Into The Music, with Morrison playing some mean electric guitar, slapping his instrument like a man a fraction of his 63 years.

After 90 minutes, Morrison left the stage, having not acknowledged the audience or uttered a word all night.

Before the band had chance to leave the stage, he returned to play some improvised bluesy harmonica before going straight into a raucous version of Gloria, which had the audience to its feet and still dancing as he slipped away again and the lights came up for good, job done.

OK, a tad disappointing if you had paid £80 expecting to hear Astral Weeks, but this was Van Morrison on top form and to see this legendary singer at such close quarters, rather in the large arenas he could play, has to be worth every penny even if he doesn't acknowledge it himself.
-Mark Taylor

Here' Bern's Report:
Still totally blown away this morning - hard to grasp that he did Fair Play, and it was an awesome performance as well. Someone said to me after that they came to hear the voice but the musical ending to that song was fantastic!
Also In the Garden, and a sincere version too. Much chat afterward about the last time he did this live. I recall him saying once that he didn't sing it any more because he no longer believed in god. Foreign Window and Into the Mystery and Slipstream where also big moments for me. This AW stretch is certainly getting him reconnected with some of his best work.

And not one AW song in the 90 minute set!

Van and slimmed down band certainly delivered for me.
-Bern

Correspondent Gordon checks in:

Briefly... a great gig. Solid Ground with Van on piano then Moondance and in no particular order .... a wonderful version of In the game, Fair Play (!!), Queen of the slipstream, The mystery song freom poetic champions (sorry I'm tired... whats your excuse), In the garden, (not played live for a while), A filler Magic time, the one about sleeping on a pallet on the floor in the palace of the lord (brilliant), NGMT (also brilliant), also Into the Mystic, Help me, and a song I could not identify.

That's all for now must chill as I am in work tomorrow - everyone was on a buzz about so many people from all over and that just added to the evening - cheers Van and all Vanatics for a great evening... enjoy Cardiff !!
-Gordon Home "in Bristol"

Setlist :
Nothern Muse (Solid Ground)
Moondance
Fair Play
Foreign Window
The Mystery
Help Me
Have I Told You Lately
All In The Game
In the Garden
Queen of the Slipstream
Into the Mystic
Magic Time
Healing Has Begun
Mystic Eyes/Gloria

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

New US Concerts Announced

Ticketmaster
August 4 – Boston, MA – Wang Theatre

August 6 & 7 – Washington, DC – DAR Constitution Hall

August 8 – Atlantic City, NJ – Caesars Ballroom

Van To Be A 2010 Walk of Fame Honoree

Hollywood Reporter
2010 Walk of Fame honorees revealed

Russell Crowe, Adam Sandler, Bill Maher and Ringo Starr are among the entertainers who will have their names added to Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010.

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce announced Wednesday that next year's Walk honorees from the world of motion pictures will be Crowe, Sandler, James Cameron, John Cusack, Colin Firth, Gale Anne Hurd, Alan Menken, Randy Newman, Emma Thompson and Mark Wahlberg.

TV honorees are Maher, Chris Berman, Jon Cryer, Peter Graves, Jimmy Kimmel, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Sam Waterston.

Recording artists to be recognized are Starr, Bryan Adams, the Funk Brothers, Alan Jackson, Chaka Khan, Van Morrison, Marco Antonio Solis, ZZ Top and the late Roy Orbison.

Andrea Bocelli and the Cirque du Soleil's Guy Liberte will represent live performance and theater.

Reuters Interview With Van

Reuters
Van Morrison's career almost over before it began

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Van Morrison hates the fame game so much that he would have abandoned his music career 40 years ago if one of his early albums had made him a superstar.

The album in question is his second solo release, "Astral Weeks," which failed to crack the U.S. or British pop charts when it came out in 1968 but is now regarded as one of the greatest musical works of the rock era and is generating new interest more than 40 years since its release.

Undaunted by the initial commercial setback, the Irish soul singer says he "just moved on" to his next project: The 1970 album "Moondance" whose title track is one of his best-known songs.

If "Astral Weeks" had generated the sales commensurate with its eventual stellar status and transformed him into a huge pop star, Morrison is in no doubt about his reaction.

"I would have quit the business had that happened," he said in an email interview with Reuters. "I am not one who has ever taken well to fame and what that attracts. It's a drag. I just wanted to be a songwriter and a singer. I did not bargain for all the rest of it."

Morrison, now 63, has spent his entire career trying to dodge "all the rest of it," in the process becoming one of rock's most unknowable figures. A hugely influential artist who was in turn inspired by Ray Charles and Lonnie Donegan, Morrison has earned a reputation as a grumpy old man and has zero tolerance for showbiz frivolity. He even failed to turn up to his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1993.

FICTIONAL FAVORITE

But Morrison remains proud of "Astral Weeks," which ranks at No. 19 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the greatest albums of all time and is now a steady seller along with the rest of his vast catalog.

The disc, recorded in less than two days in New York City with a jazz quartet assembled by producer Lewis Merenstein, was a marked departure for the singer of the pop hits "Gloria" (with his band Them) and "Brown Eyed Girl."

Morrison had spent years crafting the songs, setting mysterious lyrics referencing his Belfast childhood to multilayered arrangements. The centerpiece of the free-form improvisational effort was "Madame George," a 10-minute tune whose meaning confounds the writer and his fans to this day.

"I was practicing songwriting," he recalled. "Each composition is a fictional story I made up to work on my craft as a songwriter. The rest of the stories people say about my music is fiction as well. I do not tend to write about me. I write about the collective, the collective unconscious."

While many artists of a certain vintage avoid dwelling on their past glories in an effort to show that they are still relevant, Morrison is simply reveling in "Astral Weeks."

To mark its 40th anniversary, he performed the album in its entirety at two shows in Los Angeles last November, and released the fruits on the DVD "Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl," which has just gone on sale exclusively at Amazon.com. A CD was also released through his own EMI-distributed label.

He has also revived "Astral Weeks" at sold-out shows in London and New York City.

Morrison has been accompanied on stage by an orchestral string section as well as a band comprising two of the veterans from the original "Astral Works" sessions. He has also ad-libbed new material to many of his compositions.

"To me it is very forward-looking and, I am told, iconoclastic to have the guts to take a vintage work and take it somewhere else," he said. "Each and every show, I have discovered layers I had not noticed in my lyrics and magic from every crowd."

Morrison said movie studios have expressed a lot of interest in licensing the live recordings. It helps that the vague lyrics can be applied to virtually any situation.

"Any film would be done right by the live versions of these compositions," he said. "Each can tell a story -- whatever story one wants to make of it. This is why when people say 'It's about this or that' I just laugh because that is about the person listening -- not me. These songs trigger things in people's own imaginations. That is their stuff -- not mine."
-Dean Goodman

L.A. Weekly

Van Morrison Goes Astral on The Tonight Show



“I need to know that he’s going to do the three-minute-and-50-second version and not some eight-minute version,” says the Tonight Show talent booker moments after Van Morrison storms off the stage during the run-through for last Wednesday afternoon’s taping. The booker — a stern-looking woman in her 40s with curly, dark hair and thigh-high riding boots — is talking to J.R. Rich, a soft-spoken vice president of publicity for Morrison’s distributor, EMI Music, who calmly assures her that this is the first time anything like this has happened on Morrison’s Astral Weeks Live concert tour, which kicked off at the Hollywood Bowl last November and returned to Los Angeles for a three-night stand at the Orpheum last weekend. Along the way, there have been incident-free television appearances by the normally press-shy singer-songwriter on Regis, Jimmy Fallon and CBS Sunday Morning.

Moments earlier, everything seemed to be going smoothly at The Tonight Show, too, as Morrison led his band in a rendition of “Slim Slow Slider,” a song that clocked in at a mere 3:18 on the 1968 Astral Weeks studio recording, but which has been regularly “stretched out” (Morrison’s preferred term for his stream-of-consciousness improvisations) to three times that length during the Astral Weeks Livesets, making it the most radically transformed of the album’s eight tracks. On the surprisingly small Tonight Show stage, Morrison, outfitted in signature Stetson and shades, straps on the white acoustic guitar he has favored during this tour and starts to play, pausing to give a few shorthand directions to the band (“Something missing, man,” “Too much”). But in an effort to conserve his voice, strained by the previous week’s concerts in Berkeley, Morrison doesn’t sing the song full-out, instead whispering a few key lyrics here and there just to keep everyone on track. When he finishes, the show’s floor director says, “I think you should do that the way you’re gonna do it on the show.” To which Morrison replies, “It’s not a song you can rehearse like that,” and then bolts for his upstairs dressing room, where he will remain until the taping.

It’s almost a scene straight out of Morrison’s song “Showbusiness” — one of many he has written about the perils of fame and the music industry — which begins by describing “the man on the TV with the phony smile” and features a chorus in which the subject is asked to “do it just like the last one.” However, there’s nothing phony about Morrison, who rarely smiles at all — certainly never when he doesn’t mean to — and seems driven by a congenital inability to repeat himself. When he steps in front of a crowd, whether the teeming thousands of the Hollywood Bowl or the peaceful few hundred in NBC Studio 3, he seeks to transcend the apparent boundaries of any given song; to achieve a total freedom of form; to take himself, his band and the audience on a journey whose destination is anything but known.

“You get to the next level, where it’s spontaneous, and you get to the level of being, the being level, like being here and now, whatever you want to call it,” Morrison tells me later in his dressing room, where he’s cooling his heels (literally, in the case of a sore foot he has propped on a hassock) in the company of his tour executive producer, Gigi Lee. Meanwhile, Leno and company move on to rehearse a Celebrity Jeopardy parody that will also be part of the show. “Some people call it meditation,” Morrison continues. “I don’t really like that word either. It’s just creating space, really. It’s the next level up.”

Whatever you want to call it, it’s in that meditative space where an unclassifiable give-and-take seems to occur between Morrison, his band and his public; where he instinctively gauges how far into the music they — we — are willing to follow him on any given night, recalibrating midset, even midlyric, at the slightest shifts in the energy of the room. It’s where, when all the stars align, Morrison can seem like the most generous performer who has ever taken to a stage, putting so much of himself into every howl and guttural scat that you fear he might vaporize into thin air. And it’s where Morrison will strip a song we thought we knew down to its component parts and rebuild it — stretch it out — before our very ears, as if he had just figured out how to do so in that very moment, which he very well might have.

That’s not to say that Morrison is incapable of playing a 3:50 version of “Slim Slow Slider” when the occasion calls for it. But what Morrison isn’t is the sort of artist who goes out and plays a song exactly as it sounded on the album. Even the Astral Weeks Live tour, which ostensibly adheres to a more defined template than a typical Morrison show, has proven to be so fluid — with everything from arrangements and song order to the number of musicians in the band changing from one night to the next — that the live album and DVD recorded at the Hollywood Bowl, and released in February, offer only a rough approximation of the shows Morrison has more recently performed in New York, London and Berkeley. The constant has been Morrison himself, who has been playing harder — two hourlong sets a night, separated by an intermission — and more soulfully than he has in years, inviting favorable comparison to the Caledonia Soul Orchestra shows captured on his seminal 1974 live album, It’s Too Late to Stop Now. What’s more, Morrison has rarely seemed to be enjoying himself so much, flashing a broad, toothy grin; cracking up onstage at some unknown private joke at least once per night, usually during “Ballerina”; even occasionally talking to the audience.

“The playing part is okay and the singing part is okay,” Morrison says in typically taciturn fashion back in theTonight Show dressing room, “but the rest of it is pretty much the same thing, having to deal with a lot of people and situations you don’t want to deal with to get this done.” Situations, one assumes, like The Tonight Show itself, where it has now been agreed that the floor director will hold up a cue card during the song to give Morrison a 30-second warning. Not that he ends up needing it. When Morrison finally goes on, following appearances by Tim Allen and Star Trek co-star John Cho, he performs brilliantly, his voice warm and resonant, his fingers strumming the guitar strings violently as he sings the lyric “I start breaking down” — and then, with an almost imperceptible signal to the band, the final chords. Three minutes 50 and not a second more.

There is such a thing as a Van Morrison set list, I discover, when I stop by the next day’s Orpheum sound check, although the neatly typed page of about 20 titles (with a handful of others labeled as “options”) contains several songs that have not been heard at all during the Astral Weeks Live tour and omits several more that Morrison has done at almost every gig. As the band adjourns to dinner, the piano and trumpet player Paul Moran, who has been touring with Morrison for three years now, tells me that the band has to be prepared to play somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 songs at the drop of a hat — or, rather, at a shout from Morrison, who typically calls out the name of the next song he wants to play while the crowd is still applauding the previous one.

“It certainly keeps you on your toes,” adds Jay Berliner, the classically trained guitarist who performed on the original Astral Weeks recording and was “just a little” surprised when Morrison phoned him out of the blue after 40 years to ask if he’d join him on the road. Berliner, a veteran session musician whose very long resumé includes gigs with Jacques Brel and Charles Mingus and three years touring with Harry Belafonte, happily said yes, taking an extended hiatus from his seat in the orchestra of the Broadway revival of Chicago.

Ironically, Berliner says, he barely met Morrison at the 1968 Astral sessions, during which the singer locked himself in the recording booth and only occasionally stuck his head out to give terse instructions to the band. “There was a lot of smoke in the booth — I remember that,” he says with a chuckle. This time around, however, Morrison and Berliner have developed a full-bodied rapport that has been one of the consistent pleasures of the tour, the singer approaching the guitarist multiple times each night and inviting from him imaginative, flamenco-style solos, which, in turn, seem to re-energize Morrison, push him to new heights. Berliner is, in Morrison’s words, someone who “understands what it is, intuitively, and he’s got the background in order to go where he needs to go. As long as you’ve got two or three people who get where you’re going,” he adds, “they can bring the rest along.”

With the Astral Weeks Live tour winding down, Morrison tells me he may take some time off to regroup — something he hasn’t really done since a 1974-76 retreat from the spotlight prompted by his on-again, off-again battle with stage fright. “I’d like to get back to writing — not necessarily songs, just, like, my viewpoints on my experience of being in this, whatever it is,” he says. Does he mean show biz, I ask? “I don’t really know what it is,” he replies. “It’s different things to different people.”

In the meantime, Morrison is electrifying twice more on the Orpheum stage Thursday and Friday (only a flight to Europe prevents me from catching the Saturday show, too). On the first night, he holds forth with a particularly inspired “Sweet Thing” that morphs unexpectedly into the “Burning Ground” track from 1997’s The Healing Game album, making rhythmic knocks on his guitar with his right hand while pressing his harmonica to his lips with his left, singing and knocking and blowing in unison, as if the music were bursting out through his every extremity. Friday, it’s a cover of “Georgia On My Mind” that similarly brings down the house, the song seeming to rise up from so deep inside Morrison that I’m reminded of something he told me during our first interview, in November of last year, about how performing live was akin to baring scars. Which, relatively speaking, makes Morrison’s recent shows something like the concert version of the stigmata.

As Morrison prefaces the Astral Weeks set-closer, “Madame George,” by likening the song to a series of opium-induced hallucinations — “à la Fellini, if you know what I mean” — a couple seated behind me tell me they’ve driven all the way from Tulsa for the three Orpheum concerts and will not go home disappointed. This is the sort of devotion Morrison inspires in his fans and, more often than not, richly rewards. We may come to see him bare his scars, and his soul, but we also come in search of the mysterious healing that he has so often sung about, and which he seems able to find only inside his own music. We come baring our own scars and tattered souls, hopeful that before the curtain falls and the lights go up, that healing will — for him and for us — have begun.
-Scott Foundas

Van Interview On Los Angeles Fox TV Station

Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl DVD Reviews

Kansas City Star
‘Astral Weeks: Live’ is in another zone altogether

I nearly bawled a couple of times while watching “Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl: The Concert Film.”

This is one of the most astoundingly artful live performances I’ve ever seen. Plus, it celebrates an album overflowing with associations for boomers like yours truly.

Being a Van Morrison production, it’s also a tad eccentric. He never acknowledges the fans, never announces the song titles or introduces the members of his band.

We forgive him because Van Morrison is one of the great artists of the last 100 years, a singer and songwriter of such soaring imagination and aesthetic purity that I cannot name his equal.

Morrison’s 1968 album “Astral Weeks” was a landmark, simultaneously blending folk, jazz and blues in a song cycle about transcendence. It was like an encounter between William Blake and Big Joe Turner. It’s hard to believe Morrison was just 23 when he wrote and recorded it.

But while the critics raved, the public was indifferent. Though named one of the great albums of all time on numerous surveys, it took 30 years for it to go gold.

I remember being puzzled by the LP. A few years earlier Morrison had written the rock classic “Gloria” and the previous year had hit the charts with “Brown Eyed Girl.”

But “Astral Weeks” wasn’t anything like those tunes. The songs ebbed and flowed to gently lapping rhythms. Morrison’s lyrics were so cryptic that after three decades of listening I’m still not sure what they are about, yet they remain compelling. And despite the lack of obvious hooks, the songs take root deep in your consciousness.

Last November’s concert does not disappoint. Morrison and a dozen backup musicians (standouts are fiddler Tony Fitzgibbon and David Hayes, whose work on the upright bass gracefully propels each song) perform the cycle’s eight tunes.

Each number starts out sounding more or less like the recording but invariably segues into breathtaking improvisations. The driving force is Morrison’s slurred voice, more an instrument than a vehicle for lyrics. He’ll scat and repeat phrases until they take on hypnotic power.

Each song builds to a breathtaking climax, yet it’s not about volume. It’s about depth and feeling.

Yeah, you could say I liked it.
-ROBERT W. BUTLER

The Oklahoman
Van Morrison was 22 when he released "Astral Weeks,” his second and — up to then — most adventurous solo album. Fans who only knew him for the raw blues-rock of "Gloria” and "Here Comes the Night” and the free-wheeling R&B of "Brown-Eyed Girl” were caught off guard by the centerpiece "Cypress Avenue,” a delicate mix of chamber strings and harpsichord, jazzy acoustic bass and Morrison’s folky-bluesy vocal ruminations on his searching youth in Belfast. Once past the initial surprise, most fans and critics embraced the singer’s new eclecticism and painful honesty, which have remained hallmarks of his work ever since.

But with age, he’s become jazzier and brassier, often prone to extended self-indulgent excursions into meandering, scat-singing, repetitious improvisation. Such treatment works with his later material but tends to stretch many of these once emotionally fragile songs too thin, while rendering others almost unrecognizable. There’s no denying the stellar musicianship filling the Hollywood night on the blues-tinged "Slim Slow Slider” and the joyous, string-laced "Sweet Thing,” but when Morrison keeps repeating in his mush-mouthed mumble that "I believe I’ve transcended” in the long final minutes of the title song, one begins to wonder who he’s trying to convince. And his nearly unintelligible, hopped-up reading of "Cypress Avenue” wrings out all vestiges of its original youthful innocence. Purist admirers of the original work might want to pass on this jam-style update.
-Gene Triplett

Digital Entertainment News
Van Morrison has had a long career, with his second album Astral Weeks being hailed as a classic and one of the greatest ever recorded. The fact that it hasn’t sold phenomenally has not deterred the fanbase, critics, or even the artist himself. Now the whole album is presented in a live format 40 years after its initial release with Van Morrison: Astral Weeks – Live at the Hollywood Bowl: The Concert Film.

Those looking for a faithful reproduction of the album will be disappointed as things are changed around a bit. The spirit of the album is wholly intact, and the changes made are not radical. The mellow songs are still mellow, the bass and piano are still prominent, but the arrangements are given an orchestral lean that wasn’t on the album. The order of the songs is also different as performed from the track listing of the album.

This is all so that Van Morrison can simply present the songs in a way that is interesting to both him and the audience. Retained is the jazz/folk feel that the original album has, but now simply produced live. The Hollywood Bowl is a great venue and helps to produce a great rich live sound. Very little post-production work is necessary, and we get, unlike many other concert recordings, essentially what the audience heard – and in this case saw.

I have two complaints about the DVD. The first is that the whole concert is not presented here. From what I understood, Van Morrison split the evening into two separate concerts, performing about an hour’s worth of hits, then performing the Astral Weeks numbers. We get two “bonus” songs, Common One and Gloria from the other section of the concert, but this is strictly the Astral Weeks album for the most part. The whole thing lasts just over an hour and 20 minutes, less than a full concert.

My other complaint is that the camera moves around too much. While this isn’t an action packed visual spectacle like modern concerts by current bands, mostly just the band standing with their instruments, it would be nice to be able to see the same image for more than 10 seconds at a time. It really wasn’t necessary to keep the handheld cameras in motion or needlessly keep cutting away and zooming in.

For fans of Van Morrison this is an absolute must-see, as it presents one of the musician’s seminal works in a new way that is interesting and engaging. This DVD also presents fans a way to be reintroduced to an early work of the singer that they may have overlooked.
-Daniel Pelfrey

Queen Of The Slipstream Used In Farrah Fawcett Documentary

E Online Farrah Fawcett loves Van Morrison's music.

So much so that the legendary musician filmed his recent shows at L.A.'s Orpheum Theater so he could give copies to Fawcett to watch while she's at home in bed in Malibu.

Morrison's 1987 romantic ballad, "Queen of the Slipstream," is featured in Farrah's Story, Fawcett's documentary about her cancer battle premiering tomorrow night on NBC.

Ryan O'Neal, along with his grandchildren, visited with Morrison backstage after his concert this past Saturday. I'm told the actor and Fawcett have been fans of Morrison since the 1970s.
Van Morrison, Ryan O'Neal Courtesy: Kevin Scanlon f or Listen To The Lion Films

"Van is also a huge fan of Ryan and Farrah's work," says a rep for Morrison, whose new DVD, Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl, is out May 19.

Among his favorites? "Farrah in The Apostle," the rep said, "and Ryan in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon and, of course, Love Story."

Now Magazine
Farrah Fawcett comforted by Van Morrison

Singer sends Charlie's Angels star his concert tapes

Farrah Fawcett has been watching tapes of her favourite musician performing while she battles cancer.

The actress, 62, is a huge fan of Van Morrison and his romantic ballad Queen Of The Slipstream even features in her new 2-hour documentary.

To make up for the fact that Farrah couldn't attend his recent shows at LA's Orpheum Theatre, the singer, 63, had the concerts filmed for her.

Van even met her long-term partner Ryan O'Neal, 68, backstage at his gig last Saturday to pass on his best wishes.

'Van is a huge fan of Ryan and Farrah's work,' confirms his rep.

Poll Results: Next Van Album You Like To See Live

With 485 votes, here are the results of the next Van album you want to see performed live. Thanks to all that voted.

Veedon Fleece (30%)

No Guru, No Method, No Teacher (24%)

Into The Music (23%)

Hymns To The Silence (21%)

Moondance (15%)

St Dominic's Preview (13%)

Common One (10%)

Avalon Sunset (7%)

Other (Various Albums) (7%)

Hard Nose To The Highway (6%)

Wavelength (5%)

Beautiful Vision (5%)

09-May-09 Los Angeles Concert Review

Setlist:
Northern Muse(Solid Ground)
Wild Night
Moondance
Have I Told You Lately
Help Me
Georgia
It's All In the Game
And the Healing Has Begun
Caravan
Brown Eyed Girl
Astral Weeks
Beside You
Slim Slow Slider
Sweet Thing
Cyprus Avenue
The Way Young Lovers Do
Ballerina
Madame George
Listen to the Lion
Gloria

08-May-09 Los Angeles Concert Review

Matt has this review:
It was truly spectacular. He opened on piano again with Solid Ground and the crowd quickly got into it. It was a nice little venue, only about 2,000 seats. I was sixth row, right center, seated next to Tom Quinn, who has attended every show on the AW tour. Highlights of the opening set included Georgia, Help Me and And The Healing Has Begun. I thought Caravan was only average but he really ramped it up with Help Me and And The Healing Has Begun. Through the night he played piano, sax and harmonica on several songs, and guitar on nearly all of them. It was a full two hours of music, maybe a little more. As has been the case with most of the opening sets on this tour, Van closed on a high note with Common One. It's always a crowd-pleaser because of the interaction between Van and Richie Buckley, who again did a great job keeping up with Van.

I thought the second set -- Astral Weeks -- was definitely better than the Astral Weeks set in November at the Hollywood Bowl, which I thought at the time was outstanding. You can see that he and the band are more in sync, each band member more confident with his/her role in the shows. Van was interacting with the other musicians a lot more than he had been six months earlier, especially with Berliner, and it obviously is having a positive effect on all the players. But most notable to me last night was Van's voice, as Boom pointed out. I am amazed at how strong his voice is right now, especially since he's been on the road for six months. But his voice was better last night than it was six months ago at the Bowl, holding notes longer, hitting higher notes and really expanding his range in many instances.

Slim Slow Slider was magical. Van was beating on his guitar and firing up the entire band. Sweet Thing was far better than the version played in the Hollywood Bowl show(s). Both Sweet Thing and Madame George were closer to the original album versions, very focused and intense. And Ballerina was especially good last night, very passionate and personal. But, again, Madame George may have been the real highlight of the evening for me. It didn't go on as long as the version he played in November, but Van was really into it and seemed to demand the same from the band and the crowd -- just awesome. And even though they have become regular fare on this tour, Listen to the Lion and Gloria still come off as fresh and inspired, both outstanding last night. The band was really feeling it by then and came through with lively performances in those final two songs. I think I have seen Van about 12 times over the last 23 years (I know, that's nothing compared to most listers) and this was the best. Last night's was just a stellar show and it was great meeting up with so many listers at Casey's Irish Pub before the show.

Here's to another night of beautiful music...

-Matt

Setlist:
Northern Muse/Solid Ground
Troubadours
Queen of the Slipstream
Moondance
Help Me
It's All In the Game
Caravan
I Can't Stop Loving You
Georgia
And the Healing Has Begun
Common One
Astral Weeks/Aryan Mist
Beside You
Slim Slow Slider
Sweet Thing
Cyprus Avenue
The Way Young Lovers Do
Ballerina
Madame George
Listen to the Lion
Mystic Eyes/Gloria

07-May-09 Los Angeles Concert Review

Live Daily
Rather than taking a victory lap to celebrate his reclamation of his earliest masterpiece, "Astral Weeks," Van Morrison [ tickets ] is digging deeper into the 40-year-old album's maze of openings, lush walkways and scenic vistas. His performance Thursday (5/7) on the first of three nights at the Orpheum Theater, about eight miles from where he recorded "Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl" in November, found the Belfast Cowboy engaged and caring, not just about the material, but the dynamics of the presentation as well.

Veteran acts have found anniversaries provide an excellent marketing hook to revisit classic works that, for a multitude of reasons, never were heard live. Most notably, Brian Wilson did it with "Pet Sounds" and The Zombies with "Odessey & Oracle," but in Morrison's case it's a return to his earliest solo experiment. "Astral Weeks" is a gateway for him to reconnect with a portion of his past that has not been rehashed over and over. The concert is an exploration of his open-ended melange of jazz, blues, folk and beat poetry in the manner in which it was created.

The openness of "Astral Weeks," released in 1968 but never followed up with a tour, would influence "Moondance" and some future albums, but the expansiveness of the material, the lyrics presented as incantations and the striking interplay between acoustic rhythm guitar and upright bass would never be repeated so thoroughly.
For the Hollywood Bowl shows, Morrison went for a nearly identical re-creation of the album, and the resulting live album, released on Listen to the Lion Records, confirms the reports that Morrison put on a show for the ages on those nights.

The second go-round opens the doors for Morrison to expand a bit, find spots to growl, repeat a few more phrases or let the music linger while the violist or one of the guitarists stretches out for a few bars. "Slim Slow Slider," with the previously unrecorded "I Start Breaking Down" added as a coda, was the third song in the set and the first one Morrison attacked with vigor. The band followed his signals impeccably, rising and dropping out when he thrust his arm through the air, allowing the song to unfold rather than drape, his mumbles, whispers and shouts marrying perfectly with the ambling melody. He followed with a deliciously emphatic "Sweet Thing" and an elegant "Cyprus Avenue," complete with harpsichord.

"Astral Weeks" was performed with the same 10-member band that appears on the new album, with the guitarist from the initial session, Jay Berliner, seated up front alongside Morrison.

The group expands to 14 in the first half of the show and on the finale, "Listen to the Lion." While it's only three extra musicians, it ensures that "Listen to the Lion" has a climatic push; the music swells and informs the audience that this has been a journey, not one that makes a whole lot of sense lyrically, but one that concludes on a peak with majestic views. It's visceral and enthralling.

The finale provides a contrast to the rest of "Astral Weeks" as well, enhancing the perception that Morrison is relishing the depth of field being explored. We've all felt bands driving through their material; this is rare instance of an act burrowing underground. The layering of instruments, the counterpoint and contrasts--Morrison's jazz sensibilities are intact. He has ensured that there is an airiness to the music, that Miles Davis quality wherein the notes not played can be just as significant as the ones that are.

The performance's 12-song first half, which had its pluses and minuses, shared many of the qualities of the last several Morrison tours, in which he brings together instruments from his jazz band (assembled in 2003 for "What's Wrong With this Picture?") country unit ("Pay the Devil" in 2006) and R&B-and-then-some act (last year's "Keep It Simple").

The larger ensemble dipped into a bag of obscurities--"Northern Muse (Solid Ground)" from 1982's "Beautiful Vision," "Troubadours" from 1979s' "Into the Music" and "Queen of the Slipstream" from 1987's "Poetic Champions Compose"--in addition to several of his classics. "Caravan" received a "Last Waltz"-inspired treatment; "Moondance" continues to be performed in a swing band style; and despite "Wild Night" and "And It Stoned Me" making it into the set, both were given half-baked performances.

Morrison was prodding his band in the early-going, and it paid off with a passionate reading of the 50-year-old pop classic "It's All in the Game." Evening closed with the inevitable "Gloria," but he shook things up a bit by having the band play another gem from his days in Them, "Mystic Eyes," during the intro.
-Phil Gallo

Setlist:
Solid Ground
Troubadours
Stoned Me
Wild Night
Caravan
Queen of the Slipstream
Help Me
I Can't Stop Loving You
Moondance
It's All In the Game/You Know What They're Writing About
And The Healing Has Begun
Common One/Town Called Paradise
Astral Weeks
Slim Slow Slider
Sweet Thing/Burning Ground
Cyprus Avenue
The Way Young Lovers Do
Ballerina
Madame George
Listen to the Lion
Mystic Eyes/Gloria

Van To Perform on The Tonight Show 06-May-09

From Van's website:

Don't miss Van Morrison performing live on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno - 6th May 2009!

03-May-09 Berkeley Concert Review

Pat & Mary's Review:

The ever punctual Van didn’t walk onstage until 7:40 PM , which was a good thing as most people were still coming into the theatre and locating their seats. The weather was great and the threat of rain was over for the evening. There were plenty of empty seats, and it was surprising that Van didn’t sell out in the Bay Area as he usually does.

Van came out, sat down at the piano, and played “Northern Muse.” The band was tight and Van’s voice was in great shape. He progressed through his set directing the musicians and singing his songs. Van and the band pulled the audience in and gave them a little bit more with each tune. One song that stands out was “Caravan,” and it was the string section that made it special. Whoever thought strings on this song would be a great accompaniment is a genius. Van had the crescendo and decrescendo going throughout the evening. The hoots and the hollers of the audience during the really quiet parts of the songs were a bit irritating, as you wanted to hear where Van was taking the music. Overall, the first set was outstanding and the band had it going throughout the entire set.

After a brief 15 minute intermission, the Astral Weeks set was announced. Van had changed into a black leather jacket, picked up the guitar and sang his heart out for the rest of the evening. He seemed to enjoy the Astral Weeks songs. He had not spoken a word to the audience all night, and right before “Madam George” he started telling a story about the meaning of the song. He went on to explain that the young protagonist was given something to ingest, unaware that it contained opium. He was very animated during this part, and even hit himself on the side of the head. Unlike his normal ramblings and mumblings, the audience could actually understand what he was saying. He closed out the evening with “Listen to the Lion,” “Mystic Eyes,” and “Gloria.” At this point, you could see the taillights of the limo backing up to the left side of the stage for Van. He walked offstage singing while the band played out to a loud applause. A big hand for Van and the band!

Setlist:
Northern Muse(Solid Ground)
Troubadours
Stoned Me
I Can't Stop Loving You
Moondance
Help Me
Queen of the Slipstream
Caravan
It's All In The Game
And the Healing Has Begun
Common One
Astral Weeks
Beside You
Slim Slow Slider
Sweet Thing
The Way Young Lovers Do
Cypus Avenue
Ballerina
Madame George
Listen To The Lion
Mystic Eyes/Gloria

02-May-09 Berkeley Concert Review

Mercury News
It looked like it would be a miserable night for a “Moondance.”

The wet weather, however, managed to dry up in time for the opening night of the UC Greek Theatre’s 2009 concert series, and all the fans who carted rain ponchos and umbrellas to the Berkeley venue on Saturday never had to use them.

Perhaps the threat of rain was one of the reasons why so many stayed away from the event – only a half-full house turned out to the 8,500-capacity open-air theater to see the first of two nights with rock legend Van Morrison.

Or, maybe, it was the exorbitant ticket prices, which topped out at $350 per stub.

The third plausible reason is that the occasion – the chance to see a live performance of Morrison’s most highly cherished record, 1968’s “Astral Weeks” – wasn’t quite the draw that promoters had hoped. The album is generally regarded by critics as one of rock’s all-time finest, but its sales numbers aren’t nearly as elite. It did, after all, take some 33 years before “Astral Weeks” would move enough copies to achieve gold certification (500,000-plus in sales).

Sales numbers don’t tell the story of how much this glorious song cycle, Morrison’s second solo record, means to die-hard fans. It’s not the album that produced his best-known hits – indeed, only one “Astral Weeks” track, “Sweet Thing,” would make it onto “The Best of Van Morrison” – but it is the one that most fully captures the singer’s highly individual mix of Celtic, rock, folk and jazz sounds. It’s a work that, even today, most people have difficulty in trying to classify – it’s just pure Van, at the height of his powers.

The Belfast Cowboy certainly did this material justice in concert, but he’d make fans wait until the second set before opening the book on “Astral Weeks.”

Backed by a 14-piece band, which included two percussionists, backing vocalists and a string section, the 63-year-old former Bay Area resident spent the first hour of the show reeling through the years. He performed the first number, “Northern Muse,” while seated at the Steinway piano, then moved to the microphone at center stage and began slurring out the words to some of his greatest hits, including “And It Stoned Me,” “Baby Please Don’t Go,” “Wild Night” and “Moondance.”

Morrison’s typically eclectic mix of musical flavors tilted in the first set to the country side, something the star explored at length on 2006’s “Pay the Devil,” with plenty of fiddle and some slide guitar rising to the top.

It took Morrison a while to warm up on this cold night, and the songs that came later in the set were much stronger – more alive, if you will – then what was heard early on.

Fortunately, he was good and ready by the time it came to delve into “Astral Weeks,” which the band did after coming back from a 20-minute break.

Those looking for a note-for-note, or even lyric-by-lyric, re-creation of the milestone would’ve have better served to stay home and listen to the record. Morrison went the other direction and grabbed onto what, at essence, made “Astral Weeks” such an amazing work – the sense that the star was leading the listener on a very personal musical exploration, one built on pure feeling more so than licks, riffs and melodies.

It was impossible to say how much of the mix was pure lyrical stream of consciousness, as opposed to premeditated, or to what degree improvisation factored in, although Morrison was visibly active in leading the band through changes that the players apparently weren’t expecting. One way or the other, the balancing act worked wondrously as Morrison made all eight of these tracks –and especially “Cypress Avenue” and “Ballerina” – feel exciting in fashions both familiar and new.

For those who missed Saturday’s concert, or the repeat on Sunday, think about picking up “Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl.” That newly released set, recorded late last year at one of Los Angeles’ most fabled venues, provides a good picture of what some local fans had the good fortune to experience in person.
-Jim Harrington

The SF Chronicle
Van Morrison's transcendent 'Astral' at Greek

"Astral Weeks," one of rock's most revered masterpieces, never made the Billboard Hot 100. Regardless of an epic, five-star Rolling Stone review by Greil Marcus, the record took eight years before it passed 100,000 in sales.

But Van Morrison's luminous second album has hung over his shoulder ever since. The idea that he would perform the entire album, sealing its stature as a set piece within his body of work and galvanizing the album's lofty reputation, seemed entirely improbable.

Yet there he was, under the cool, gray skies at UC Berkeley's Greek Theatre on Saturday, in the first of two weekend shows, belting "step right up, step right up, step right up," recreating the lithe, elusive sound of the original album and investing it with the power of the immediacy of live performance.

Based around light, airy arrangements for flute and two acoustic guitars that left plenty of room for the musicians to stretch out underneath Morrison's rambling narratives, "Astral Weeks" would be an especially difficult album to recreate in a concert environment. But Morrison and his 14-piece ensemble made the songs sound fresh and spontaneous, as the unwieldy orchestra proved light on its feet, taking cues from hand signals and quick nods by Morrison, who was calling plays from the line of scrimmage all evening.

He jiggered the running order of the album - shifting "Madame George" to close the set makes perfect emotional and musical sense - and let the songs run like streams of music, playing them practically end-to-end. With guitarist Jay Berliner from the original sessions winding lyrical lines into the mix, the songs rose and fell on simmering grooves, sweetened by a four-piece string section. Morrison, playing the third acoustic guitar in the band, could pump the engine of the band by stroking his guitar.

He opened with a 50-minute set that drew from throughout his catalog - from the Mississippi Delta blues of "Baby Please Don't Go" of his Them days to the big band R&B of "Magic Time," Morrison topping the swinging sound with a piercing alto sax solo. His voice warmed up and he attacked the '50s ballad "It's All In the Game," long a part of his repertoire, like a bebop horn soloist, carving jazzy little figures out of phrases such as "caress your fingertips" or "once in a while he won't call." By the time he returned for the 45-minute "Astral Weeks" performance, his voice was full of bluster and blare - rich, resonant.


The "Astral Weeks" songs explode with passion and intensity, with Morrison not feeling the need to spell everything out. The juxtaposition of his brawny bluesman's vocal style with the heart of a mystic poet has been his signature since these songs. They provided him with a basic template he has been improvising from for the past 40 years and they pushed the rock music movement further into the literary realm than it had previously been. These are not easy, simple songs, but pieces that gave the whole idea of pop music greater meaning.
-Joel Selvin

Setlist:
Northern Muse (Solid Ground)
Troubadours
And It Stoned Me
Baby Please Don't Go
Magic Time
Have I Told You Lately
Wild Night
It's All In The Game
Queen of the Slipstream
Moondance
And the Healing Has Begun
Common One
Astral Weeks
Beside You
Slim Slow Slider
Sweet Thing
The Way Young Lovers Do
Cypus Avenue
Ballerina
Madame George
Listen To The Lion
Mystic Eyes/Gloria

Ann Vansickler Bock

One of our beloved friends, and my darling wife Ann, known to some as annvanfan....has passed on.
She died peacefully in her sleep suddenly Thursday, of heart failure at the age of 53.
She was the most warm, generous, loving person you would ever want to meet and call your friend
Ann's beloved husband and friend and TRUE soulmate,
-Heshy

It was a mutual love of Van's music that brought Ann and Heshy together. We, in the Van fan community, are all so saddened by Ann's passing and we send you all of our condolences and love, Heshy.
-John

Please feel free to share your thoughts here.

Van Interview With The Daily Californian

The Daily Californian
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Van Morrison, of "Brown Eyed Girl" fame, will play the Greek Theatre on May 2 and 3. The Daily Californian interviewed Morrison via e-mail to discuss set lists, songs, CDs and more.

Daily Californian: What do you enjoy most about performing your newer albums, like Pay the Devil and Keep It Simple?

Van Morrison: I enjoy whatever music I am playing at any given time. Sometimes I play certain things because it can get too serious; other times require a serious message. Some (songs) are played for no particular reason other than I might like the tune, the melody (or) the timbre; others are because of the lyrics or the mood. It varies-it has to keep it all flowing.

DC: How do you decide the balance between old and new songs in a set list?

VM: It depends on a couple of factors. One is if you feel like the audience can go with you, you know, then I can stretch out more. There might be key songs that can be stretched out more ... finding key songs where I can get these particular musicians to go along with me, because ... every band combination can be quite different. A lot of times, you can get musicians, but they don't have a rapport together, so you sometimes have to build the set around where we can go. Some bands ... can do anything, go anywhere, you know? Other bands can only go on certain songs in a certain way. It just depends.

DC: What's your favorite venue to play?

VM: I like symphony halls that are built acoustically for music-musician's best friend(s). Good acoustics (equals) walls and surroundings built for subtleties and good ambient sound.

DC: Do you have any memories of the Bay Area or of the Greek Theatre in Berkeley that you might share?

VM: Just that the audience really seems to get what the music is about. They understand where this music fits in and what it's for: the soul. It's all soul.

DC: You have a lot of fans who have been loyal to you since the '60s. How do you keep them coming back while also attracting newer fans of younger generations?

VM: It's like what Jung said about the creative process: What is unconscious or subconscious becomes more conscious. And I suppose when you become more conscious of the process then, you know, it's different than, say, Astral Weeks, which was mainly channeling something from the unconscious, you know? My latter stuff is more like coming from where there's more kind of thought going into it, there's more editing going into it; it's different in that way. But that's just because I changed. I think the fact (that) my music comes from the collective unconscious, the soul-and that it has soul and is soul-is a reason people may stay in tune with certain music. I know soul grabs my attention.

DC: You stated in another interview that you have no intention of renewing your contract with iTunes. How do you think this decision will affect your younger fanbase, who rely almost completely on downloadable music?

VM: I'm not into downloading because I'm not a download artist. Maybe some people are, but I prefer something I can hold, with sleeve notes and lyrics I can read. I think, no matter (their) age, people will understand that the hard copy CD is the very best dollar value entertainment on the planet Earth. And the best part is you can keep it for ever and more. I like the old-fashioned way of making music. I am not into disposable music-I still like LP vinyl records best. Nowhere else but the LP can (give) you a true-to-life, uncompressed, real sound. People may think the download sounds right but if you heard the music before it is compressed 100 times, you would think I may be onto something here.

San Francisco Chronicle Interview With Van

San Francisco Chronicle
Van Morrison finds magic in 'Astral' songs

Van Morrison, who begins the final dates in his current tour Saturday and Sunday at UC Berkeley's Greek Theatre playing his classic album, "Astral Weeks," has long had a wary relationship with the press, which made it somewhat surprising that he was willing to talk about his tour.

But when transatlantic time changes and hectic schedules added up to missed phone connections, who would have expected that the notoriously taciturn character, who has always maintained that he wanted his music to speak for itself, would sit down and type out e-mail answers to a list of questions submitted in advance? Morrison first performed this "Astral Weeks" concert - a Morrison fan's dream come true - with a band featuring many of the musicians from the original sessions last November at the Hollywood Bowl. Both live DVD and CD have been released. He took the show to New York in March and earlier this month to London's Royal Albert Hall. He closes out the historic run with two dates next month back in Los Angeles.

Q: What made you decide to do these "Astral Weeks" shows?

A: I wanted to do these songs the way I have always heard them in my head, with strings section, flutes and full orchestration. We initially were doing just the two shows in Hollywood in order to get these live and raw, straight-from-the-stage recordings, but demand from New York and London and now Bay Area and Los Angeles to finish up the series of shows where it all began - where I started out my career as a soloist - Los Angeles. I have a history as a musician in the '60s there, so it seemed the fitting place to end up.

Q: How have the shows been going?

A: I went into this to just record the songs live in Hollywood and that was it - no expectations whatsoever. I only wanted to get the 2009 live version recorded, but it went from there, the demand. There has been a strong magic from each and every audience which has been tangible. I have felt it each show. There is definitely something magical and "astral" going on every time the songs have been played live before the audiences.

Q: What was so special about "Astral Weeks" in retrospect?

A: It depends on what special means - but there is nothing else like the "Astral Weeks" songs. They are poetry - movie-like stories woven into music. There are a lot of dynamics to find in these songs, a lot of nuance that goes on, and a lot of subtlety going on. That is what I like about them. They are complex - it's me doing me, my kind of music, my signature sound - all me.

Q: Why "Astral Weeks"? Is there another album you considered doing?

A: I am in the moment and I choose music I do by what I want to work with at any given time. The ... albums [that have been] been requested a lot [have] been "Hymns to the Silence" and "Hard Nose the Highway" and "No Guru No Method No Teacher," but I have not really thought about doing "albums" per se, though I would like to hear what my songs on those albums sound like raw, as I have noticed the engineers lost a lot of sound that I know was there when it was recorded. That is why I am doing raw music from now on; the production thing is a myth and ruins my songs, I find.

Q: "Astral Weeks" was made at a very stressful time in your career - what do you recollect of its creation?

A: As people, we all have stressful times - some are worse because it happens when we are younger and do not know quite how to deal, so the trauma is or could be worse, but that is a loaded subject. "Astral Weeks" was made with intention of getting it right, just like the 2009 live version. I just went in and did it - same with the live 2009 record of "Astral Weeks." No matter what any band member was doing, I had the intention and mind-set of getting it recorded like I wanted it and that is what I did - one short and not so good rehearsal after 40 years and I just took the stage and did what I do - played it and made it go right.

Q: How did you put the band together for these dates? Have you stayed in touch all these years? Were they hard to find?

A: I had not stayed in touch with anyone. I just chose some of the band I had before this and, as I thought back, I just started calling people - some for no particular reason other than I thought they might "get it." There was not a real plan to it, really, just step by step.

Van Morrison: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley campus. Tickets $50-$350 at ticketmaster.com or call (800) 745-3000, at APEConcerts.com. Tickets may be purchased without a service charge in person at the Cal Performances box office.
-Joel Selvin

Astral Weeks Live At The Hollywood Bowl DVD Available May 19th On Amazon.com

Van Morrison's DVD Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl Press Release:

AMAZON EXCLUSIVE WORLDWIDE RELEASE On Heels of Critical Acclaim at London's Royal Albert Hall

Following Van Morrison's two critically-acclaimed sold out nights bringing his groundbreaking, signature album, Astral Weeks to brilliant life at London's Royal Albert Hall, the anticipation builds for the May 19 Amazon exclusive DVD release, Astral Weeks: Live at The Hollywood Bowl.

Five-star reviews heralded Mr. Morrison's revisiting of his 1968 studio masterpiece, performed on stage for the first time in its entirety outside of the U.S. And soon multitudes of fans around the world will be able to invite multi-award-winning soul singer Van Morrison into their living rooms through the DVD release of Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl, an in-concert reworking of the musical legend's historic 1968 gold-certified solo album. Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl was recorded live over two nights at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles in November 2008 and is available as a concert film for purchase exclusively on Amazon.com beginning May 19 for an SRP of $29.99.

The London papers exclaimed about the music legend's pivotal performances:

* "Encircled by his own musicians, in thrall to the jazz-folk sub-genre single-handedly invented and, many would say, never bettered by these songs, two eyebrows rose plaintively above Morrison's shades. "I believe I've transcended," he averred. If the five-minute ovation encompassing all of a seismic, valedictory Gloria was anything to go by, he wasn't the only one who thought so. FIVE STARS!" The London Times
* And from London's Daily Express, "What we saw this weekend was dynamic creation...this was no evening of nostalgia. This was music making on the hoof-improvised, intense. FIVE STARS!"
* The U.K.'s Telegraph remarked, "Morrison showed off by playing piano, harmonica, saxophone, organ and guitar. I also noticed the vocal tic of repeating words and syllables which often has the exultant effect of making him sound (as Lester Bangs once said) like a man running downhill into a lover's arms...FIVE STARS!"

Van Morrison first released Astral Weeks when he was only 22. The recording immediately became a critically-acclaimed classic and is still considered one of the greatest albums of the rock era. The fall 2008 shows captured for the DVD 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. During the first half, the artist performed a number of the timeless classics he is famous for while the second half was an awe-inspiring performance of the Astral Weeks album. Among the songs included on the concert DVD are: "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," and "Madame George."

The Astral Weeks DVD also features special bonus songs, including a live version of "Gloria," and unprecedented behind-the-scenes footage as well as a candid conversation with the artist himself talking about the meaning behind Astral Weeks, his decision to revisit the pivotal project, and his impressions of the music business. 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, Mr. Morrison insisted there be no post-production engineering. It is straight up raw from the Hollywood Bowl stage - pure resonant sound.

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.