Van the Man
Van Morrison is 60 years old today.
He was born George Ivan in Belfast and started his career singing r&b and soul with Them. That band recorded a couple of albums in various configurations, and Van provided them with classics like "Here Comes the Night" and especially "Gloria," which has been covered by approximately everybody and is probably being torn through in some bar at this very moment.
After that, he moved to New York and cut some more classic singles for the Bang label, particularly "Brown Eyed Girl". He doesn't seem to have liked them very much, which is incomprehensible, but no artist is the best judge of his or her own work.
The combination of limited success and distance from his home seems to have pushed Van deep into his own soul. His next album, "Astral Weeks," belongs on every top-ten list of great pop music ever generated; if it isn't there, the writer of that top-ten list is hereby excommunicated.
That was in 1969, and the music, while of the very uppermost quality, sounded unlike anything ever recorded, before or since. That's the definition of a masterpiece.
If Van had never recorded another note he would still be some kind of genius, but of course he recorded a great many more notes.
Over time, he's developed a sort of combination of soulfulness and spirituality in his music that cuts Prince every time. It's taken many forms, one of the greatest of which IMHO is the duet he sang with John Lee Hooker of his own "Gloria" a few years ago.
Listen to it and notice that Van and John Lee never quite sing the lyric all the way through. They don't need to. It's Van's song, so he can do what he likes with it, and John Lee had one of the greatest blues voices God ever let out of heaven. What's more, both of them had developed a vocal style of chewing up words, notes, phrases and melodies and dancing them around and about. Listening to their version of "Gloria" is a little like watching Fred Astaire dance; there's something inspiring about watching someone with nothing to prove, doing what he or she does best.
In any event, it's a demonstration (if one were needed) that Van's refusal to churn out another "Astral Weeks" was not due to any inability - his "Gloria" with John Lee shows quite clearly that he could have done so at any time. He moved on from "Astral Weeks" because he'd done that and it was time for the next thing. I wish we could all live like that.
Benshlomo says, Life is change.
He was born George Ivan in Belfast and started his career singing r&b and soul with Them. That band recorded a couple of albums in various configurations, and Van provided them with classics like "Here Comes the Night" and especially "Gloria," which has been covered by approximately everybody and is probably being torn through in some bar at this very moment.
After that, he moved to New York and cut some more classic singles for the Bang label, particularly "Brown Eyed Girl". He doesn't seem to have liked them very much, which is incomprehensible, but no artist is the best judge of his or her own work.
The combination of limited success and distance from his home seems to have pushed Van deep into his own soul. His next album, "Astral Weeks," belongs on every top-ten list of great pop music ever generated; if it isn't there, the writer of that top-ten list is hereby excommunicated.
That was in 1969, and the music, while of the very uppermost quality, sounded unlike anything ever recorded, before or since. That's the definition of a masterpiece.
If Van had never recorded another note he would still be some kind of genius, but of course he recorded a great many more notes.
Over time, he's developed a sort of combination of soulfulness and spirituality in his music that cuts Prince every time. It's taken many forms, one of the greatest of which IMHO is the duet he sang with John Lee Hooker of his own "Gloria" a few years ago.
Listen to it and notice that Van and John Lee never quite sing the lyric all the way through. They don't need to. It's Van's song, so he can do what he likes with it, and John Lee had one of the greatest blues voices God ever let out of heaven. What's more, both of them had developed a vocal style of chewing up words, notes, phrases and melodies and dancing them around and about. Listening to their version of "Gloria" is a little like watching Fred Astaire dance; there's something inspiring about watching someone with nothing to prove, doing what he or she does best.
In any event, it's a demonstration (if one were needed) that Van's refusal to churn out another "Astral Weeks" was not due to any inability - his "Gloria" with John Lee shows quite clearly that he could have done so at any time. He moved on from "Astral Weeks" because he'd done that and it was time for the next thing. I wish we could all live like that.
Benshlomo says, Life is change.
posted by benshlomo at 10:06 AM
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