Nowadays, we know too much about Van Morrison. He is the Ulsterman who has dabbled in Scientology, New Age mysticism, Gestalt therapy, Transcendental Meditation and the occult; the grump who railed against lockdown measures and spread odd conspiracy theories during the pandemic; the misanthrope still bitter about signing a disastrous contract as a teenager that meant he never received royalties for one of the most played radio hits of all time, 1967’s “Brown Eyed Girl”. His battles with the music industry and combustible relationships with bandmates have become almost as famous as his songs.
But there was a time when Morrison seemed impossible to pin down. His music emerged from some indeterminate, mythical realm, a place equidistant from Cyprus Avenue, Ladbroke Grove, Greenwich Village, rural Woodstock and Haight-Ashbury. At his best, Morrison inhabited a territory that belonged neither to Ireland nor America, neither to folk nor jazz nor soul. It was this quality of being somehow unplaceable that made his greatest records feel almost supernatural.
When producer Lewis Merenstein placed Morrison in a New York studio in September 1968, the jazz musicians booked to accompany him did not know who he was and could not place his accent, assuming he came from some unfamiliar corner of the United States. They barely exchanged words with him and received only the most basic instructions about how to perform each song. Yet together, in only a handful of takes, they created a masterpiece.
Astral Weeks is hard to locate, geographically or stylistically: a curious fusion of folk, jazz, flamenco and stately baroque dances. Richard Davis’s garrulous double-bass countermelodies provide a rhythmic and harmonic anchor, John Payne’s flute circles overhead like a bird of prey, while Morrison’s voice functions almost as a wordless instrument. He does not so much tell stories as worry at them, repeating words and phrases as though speaking in tongues. It established Morrison’s reputation as a mystic: not a dispenser of comforting spirituality, but a lay preacher ecstatically pushing language beyond its limits.
By the time of 1970’s Moondance, Morrison had replaced both producer and band. Where Astral Weeks floats, Moondance swings, and in the case of the title track, swings hard. The songs have choruses, hooks and sharply defined edges. Yet the air of the ecstatic mystic remains. “And It Stoned Me” transforms a childhood fishing trip into a sacrament; “Crazy Love” is devotional without losing its physical warmth; “Caravan” turns the radio into a source of communal ecstasy. The centrepiece may be “Into The Mystic”, a transcendent love song in which the erotic and spiritual become inseparable. Lyrics such as “we were born before the wind, also younger than the sun” make the mystical feel bodily and immediate.
Morrison’s second album of 1970, His Band And The Street Choir, is a more extroverted and communal affair, leaning heavily into R&B. “Domino” and “Blue Money” reveal his gift for making sophisticated rhythm sound effortless, while “I’ve Been Working” takes Otis Redding-style gestures and transforms them into an ecstatic act of praise. Yet even among the celebration there remains a darker undertow in songs like “Virgo Clowns” and “Street Choir”.
After relocating from Woodstock to the Bay Area in 1971, Morrison recorded Tupelo Honey, an unorthodox move into country music. It contains some of his warmest and most approachable songs, but it also marks one of the few moments during this golden period when he feels rooted in a recognisable musical tradition. The spell of the unplaceable mystic is briefly broken.
By 1972 he was back on familiar terrain with Saint Dominic’s Preview, perhaps the finest expression of what Morrison later described as “Caledonia soul”: African American musical forms refracted through Celtic longing. Backed by a band that functions like a miniature R&B orchestra, he moves effortlessly between the joyous celebration of “Jackie Wilson Said (I’m In Heaven When You Smile)”, the pastoral reveries of “Redwood Tree” and “Gypsy”, and the title track’s cryptic mixture of Belfast, San Francisco, religious imagery and the Troubles.
Best of all are the two sprawling meditations that close each side: “Listen To The Lion” and “Almost Independence Day”. Both stretch beyond conventional songwriting into something closer to invocation.
Hard Nose The Highway (1973) is often overlooked but richly rewarding, particularly the raga-inflected “Snow In San Anselmo”, the gorgeous jazz waltz “Wild Children” and, improbably, a moving interpretation of Kermit the Frog’s “Bein’ Green”. Then came Veedon Fleece (1974), his other great masterpiece, which revisits terrain first explored on Astral Weeks: wandering structures, literary references, sinuous double-bass lines and reflective balladry.
Yet where Astral Weeks is youthful and sensuous, Veedon Fleece is autumnal and solitary. “Linden Arden Stole The Highlights” and “Who Was That Masked Man” become miniature tales of violence, exile and divided identity. Morrison’s falsetto on the latter remains startlingly vulnerable.
After this, the pickings become less consistent, though there are still treasures. A Period Of Transition (1977), produced with Dr John, and Wavelength (1978) move towards slick gospel-infused funk. Both contain excellent moments but less of the mystery. Traces of it return on Into The Music (1979), particularly in the magnificent “And The Healing Has Begun”, whose emotional power was later renewed by its appearance in Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast.
Common One (1980) remains highly recommended. The opener, “Haunts Of Ancient Peace”, recalls the spaciousness of Miles Davis’s In A Silent Way, while the 16-minute “Summertime In England” is a gloriously incoherent epic, a stream of consciousness connecting Yeats, Blake and jazz in a single ecstatic flow.
Perhaps the clue to all of this lies in exile. After leaving Northern Ireland in 1967, Morrison spent much of the next decade constructing an imagined homeland. Rather than addressing the daily violence unfolding in Belfast, Ardoyne or Tigers Bay directly, he responded by creating “Caledonia”, a spiritual territory where memory, music and longing could coexist.
References to this homeland recur throughout later records, including Avalon Sunset, Too Long In Exile and No Guru, No Method, No Teacher (perhaps his last great classic). Increasingly, however, his albums became rooted in identifiable genres: blues records, skiffle records, jazz records, country records, collaborations with The Chieftains or Georgie Fame. There are fine moments on all of them.
But perhaps Van Morrison’s music was most compelling when it refused to belong anywhere. The tension between Belfast and America, between rootedness and exile, between soul music and Celtic memory, fuelled his greatest work. The result was a run of albums that seemed to arrive from nowhere in particular, and therefore from somewhere magical.