Hi,

Did anyone on here see Van Morrison performing Astral Weeks at the Hollywood Bowl recently?

I'm a huge Van fan, but only saw him once at the Shepherd's Bush Empire in London and he was disappointingly mediocre.

I'm going to the Royal Albert Hall and hope he is back on form and passionate about performing.

SonicD

You can buy the album of the Hollywood Bowl show. It's pretty mediocre. Plus the shows were half full because of the ticket prices - $300. The shows are far from sold out in the UK.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2009-02-22 10:00 by Nikolai.

Seen Van countless times but not in some years. later shows were getting more pedastrian.
I actually like the Hollywood Bowl CD and its only the astronimical prices that have prevented me going back to see Van.
Whilst the RAH isnt sold out (SURPRISE) it is sellin well, with few pairs left and none in the £200 section.

Quote
Nikolai
You can buy the album of the Hollywood Bowl show. It's pretty mediocre.

Disagree. I think he did a great job with it.

I am curious about the Hollywood Bowl performance, but the idea of revisiting Astral Weeks makes me uncomfortable. That album has such a delicate, dream-trance like quality to it. It has an almost voyeuristic feel. It's so delicate I do not even like trying to describe it.

I recently revisited NY's Tonight's The Night album. That one gives me a similiar feeling of looking into the heart of the matter.

I was prepared not to like this recording, but I did. My quibbles are small. I thought the band caught the pulse and drive of the record, but had enough leeway to make the music breath and not feel "reproduced." The transitions to non-AW songs did not throw me off as much as I thought it would. It took a bit to get used to what I thought was a too loud audience mix. Van's pronounciation on the studio album is very precise and he smears the lyrics a bit live. The live recording ends with a fizzle. I read that an additional song is on the vinyl release. All and all I thought it was a nice musical experience that to some extent de-mystifies something that I resist wanting de-mystified. But I enjoyed it nonetheless.

I wait for the DVD release of the Hollywood Bowl concert:

[www.vanmorrison.com]

I think Van has sunk into "lounge/yawn" music long ago...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009-02-26 22:31 by dcba.

Quote
dcba
I think Van has sunk into "lounge/yawn" music long ago...

you say that as though there is something wrong with lounge music. i love lounge music....the "ultra lounge" cd series is among my favorite collection of discs.

but, van is no lounge singer. his body of work over the past couple of decades...probably starting in 1984 with a Sense of Wonder...rivals any of his peers. a few near-misses along the way, but some absolutely stunning albums that easily stack up with his best work of the 60s and 70s....

T&A

I purchase my auto insurance from the lounge lizard that 's always on tv. In any event, the official Van Morrison website has footage from this tour. Also, Wolfgang's vault has some great live VM recordings. "Here comes the night " from the Berkley CC is a "must hear". If you already know this info please disregard, LOL

i was prolly at that berkeley cc show

I agree with PMK's review about Van smearing the lyrics on the live album. I have a copy of it. Astral Weeks is one of my favorite albums of all time, but I can honestly say that I'm pretty disappointed with the live album.

Well if that is the case have you heard the recording on Wolf's vault? Attending a concert recorded later released is awesome.

Van Morrison on Astral Weeks: why I had to go back to my soul classic

Last November, 40 years after its release, Van Morrison performed his classic album Astral Weeks at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. In April he will bring the same show to the UK. Ahead of the LA dates - now released as a live album - he talked to Scott Foundas about the reasons behind a decision that has delighted thousands of fans

By Scott Foundas
Last Updated: 7:39PM GMT 25 Feb 2009

SCOTT FOUNDAS: I wanted to begin by asking you... I know you've said that you weren't able to tour with these songs 40 years ago because there wasn't any support from the record company. Why pick this moment to do it now, instead of five years ago, ten years ago?

VAN MORRISON: Many, many reasons. I haven't really played with any of the original musicians since then, and I thought it would be a good idea, it would be more like... you know, a live situation. I never played live with any of the people who were on the original recording; I've never done any live gigs with those people. I've never done the orchestrations for the songs. At the time, there was no money to do this from anybody, including the record company. Plus, it keeps coming up, this recording keeps coming up all the time–in top tens and polls and various things. There's a demand for it from the audience. There's loads of reasons why. That's enough for me, really, you know? It's never really been done live, and that's kind of what my music is all about... it's like spontaneity, being in the moment, and I also wanted to work with some different musicians for a change.

SF: I've seen you live a lot in the last 13 years or so, and usually the majority of the set is more recent material.

VM: That's kind of what the modus operandi usually is. But this is a diversion, and it's also new, because of all the recordings I have, it's the one that's been least played, and these songs have been the least-played songs in my repertoire. So, that's another reason, because it's almost like new; it hasn't been kind of burned out.

SF: When I saw you this summer in Philadelphia, actually, you performed both "Ballerina" and "Sweet Thing"

VM: That's right. I performed them with the band I have at present, but this is a different set up, because there's going to be a couple of the original players, plus there's going to be the string parts–it's going to be more orchestrated than that.

SF: I'm just wondering if you were already toying with this idea of doing an Astral Weeks live concert.

VM: Yeah, like I say, the material is requested at my gigs quite a bit. I just wanted to check it out for myself and re-explore it myself.

SF: Can you talk a little bit about when you were recording the original album. I think when people talk about the original album they talk about how unique the sound of the album was, even compared to other recordings that you had made up to that time, even though a couple of the songs you had recorded versions of in the Bang sessions...

VM: They weren't coming out like I wanted them to come out, and I had put a lot of work into these songs. But those sessions were produced by someone else, so it wasn't my musical vision; it was someone else's musical vision which didn't fit the material. So this was the first time I could address the material, working with people who had enough vision and could actually do it. Basically, those sessions were produced by myself and Lewis Merenstein, and I had much more of a hands-on approach to doing it than previous, when someone else was calling the shots and booking the type of musicians that they booked. But this needed a different type of musician, because it needed to work from the lyrics and work more around the stories–that kind of thing.

SF: A lot of these musicians had a background in jazz:

VM: Which was more appealing, because that's the way I was singing the songs. It was jazz, as opposed to rock.

SF: How much of what we hear on the record, in terms of the arrangements and the musicianship... how much of that was something that you had thought out ahead of time and how much of it was something that was developed in the moment in the studio, over the course of maybe multiple takes of a song.

VM: Well, there weren't multiple takes. Most of these songs were first or second takes. There was kind of a run through to actually get the routine right and get the progression right, and then we just recorded it. It was recorded like a jazz session, which is the way I like to do it. Not to say that the previous stuff wasn't, but just the arrangements weren't right and the production wasn't right previously for these type of songs. This was more amenable to the type of songs. There was a lot of work put into the songs previously, when I rehearsed them, and I did some of them live with a trio–myself and two other guys. So, the basic arrangements I had worked out then and the rest was added to that. But the whole thing was not just that; it was more the spontaneity of what was going on, and the reading of the material by the other people. So it was like an alchemical kind of situation, where the people involved could read the situation and knew what to do spontaneously, and come up with stuff spontaneously, and not belabour it, not sort of overproduce or overthink it. The people involved were like that. Everybody on the session was like that, which was uncanny. That's the way it worked out.

SF: I know that even today you like to record things like, in one go, instead of all this overproduction you hear on so many records. Is that coming from that initial experience, because it worked?

VM: You see, I'm coming from jazz as opposed to whatever else there is. That's always been my background and my impetus. It's always been my way of delivering it. No matter what's going on around me, my delivery is always going to be coming from there, because that's the tradition I come from–whether that be scat singing, which has a lot to do with it... a lot of my influences were derived from that, and that's it.

SF: Maybe it's not of any significance, but I'm wondering why you decided to do these two shows here in Los Angeles specifically and at the Hollywood Bowl?

VM: I don't know. It just seemed to have a certain ring to it. I wanted to do it outdoors, and I thought this is probably the only place in November that you could play outdoors.

SF: There's also an intimacy to that venue, even though it's so big.

VM: That's right. Plus, it's sort of a historic venue, to go with the project. Historic project, historic venue type of thing.

SF: Also, I know you've said this and other people have said it, that Astral Weeks does have a particularly cinematic quality to it.

VM: I have said that.

SF: So, maybe that's another reason for doing it here.

VM: So, it's probably subconscious.

SF: How difficult is it to find musicians today who can play in the style you were describing, that these jazz musicians who played on the Astral Weeks sessions were so adept at.

VM: Well, it's difficult to get them to do... to go where I'm going. That's what you have to work on. It doesn't have anything to do with technical ability. Well, it has something to do with it, because they need the technical ability to start with. but then they need to drop that and follow me and break it down into something that's less complicated than that, so that they can follow where I'm going. So there's a lot of direction from me on stage. I'm not sure whether one of your questions was about why do I turn my back. Well, a lot of the time I'm directing the band. A lot of direction is coming from me up there.

SF: I've noticed there are a lot of hand signals.

VM: Yeah. It's dynamics, bringing it down, bringing it up, that kind of thing. There's a lot dynamics going on that you don't notice when you're in the audience.

SF: That's something I wanted to ask about too, that word specifically: dynamics. Because it seems to me that both on your recordings and live, in a lot of songs there's this incredible dynamic range, where we'll go from something very forceful and loud and lots of instrumentation to something that's almost imperceptible.

VM: That's it, yeah.

SF: Is it just through the course of playing with you over a period of time that the musicians...

VM: No, you have to read it. Certain musicians come together for a certain period of time, you know?. On this particular record, it happened that those musicians came together for that. I didn't continue that, because they were session musicians. It wasn't my band at the time; I couldn't afford it to be my band at the time! Certain other bands have come together for a certain period of time, and that will work for a certain period. Then some of them will divert or break off or do something else, and then that will inevitably break up or whatever. Then I have to start over again, with training other people. A situation can maybe peak, and after the peak it usually burns out, that's where it goes down, so you have to kind of catch it when it's at its peak. I've had these situations. It's... the kind of containment of keeping all this together is what the job is–contain this and keep it and, you know, hopefully continue. The problem is when it peaks and you don't get to another level, then you have to usually start again, because it'll be burnout. You get to a point where you peak, and after that, if you don't go somewhere else, if you don't redirect it, it will burn out. Then you have to start again.

SF: Do you sometimes also, just for the sake of variety, to try different instrumentation. For example, the last few times I've seen you, there's been a pedal-steel guitar player...

VM: Well, you see the country thing was more of a personal thing, where I was paying tribute to that musical tradition, which has probably mainly died out.

SF: Traditional country.

VM: Which is the only type of country that I really like. I don't really like modern country. But that is what I grew up around, that kind of music, as well as blues and jazz. I guess guys like Ray Price are the only people that are left doing this sort of music. So that's what it was for me. It was fun for one thing. Gotta have fun, right, sometimes?

SF: But it's been interesting for me to hear you then incorporate that sound into your own songs, not just the country songs. There might be a pedal-steel solo on "Moondance" or something.

VM: It can overlap sometimes; again, sometimes it works, sometimes it'll be out of context. But some of it can overlap.

SF: Because were talking about these two forthcoming shows, I have a few other things I wanted to ask you about performing live, specifically, because for me it's very electrifying to see you live a in way that it isn't to see just any performer live, because a lot of people do kind of just reproduce what you already heard on the record, and I think when you see you live...

VM: I couldn't do it, because I'd get too bored. It would be too boring for me. I need change. In order to actually do it, I need change. it has to evolve for me. Otherwise, I don't really want to do it, and I'll lose interest.

SF: On a given night, when you go out to do a show, how much of it is... for lack of a better term... scripted or planned in terms of the songs you're going to play and how those songs are going to progress?

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 it's all... 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 I've had can do anything, go anywhere, you know? Other bands can only go on certain songs in a certain way. It just depends.

SF: Aside from the fact that you're going to play Astral Weeks from cover to over at the Hollywood Bowl, are there any other respects in which these shows will be different conceptually from other shows we may have seen of yours recently.

VM: I guess there's two different bands. The first set is going to be more like the kind of band that was on Into the Music or It's Too Late to Stop Now, maybe that kind of band is the first set. And then the second set will be Astral Weeks. There'll be two different bands. I haven't done that for... well, I don't think I've ever done that basically. It's the first time I'll be doing that. Also, there's another key point about this recording, too. There's been a lot of problems with the original Astral Weeks; I don't own it. A lot of my stuff since I became an independent producer, I own the masters. That one I don't. So, another reason for re-recording it is, now I'll have more control over using the material, say, for soundtracks and stuff like that, which I don't really have with the original stuff. I have a problem with Warner Bros.–it's an ongoing problem... a kind of stand-off situation. Basically, it's to get me more in control of that material in any way I can, because I'm not, and they are. So, that's another reason.

SF: I know that over the course of your career you've gradually been able to obtain more and more control over what you're doing, and that's obviously been important for you. I read that with this live recording at the Hollywood Bowl, you're inaugurating a new label called Listen to the Lion records.

VM: That's right, and it looks like it's going to be distributed by EMI–that's the way it looks. I just left Universal, because basically they didn't do anything except coattail me and coattail the people that buy my product. Universal was just coat-tailing me. They didn't do anything to promote the product. In fact, the new record was supposed to be promoted; it wasn't. So, I'm outta that one, you know, and moving forward with EMI on this one.

SF: I mentioned before that, as you yourself have said, there's a cinematic quality to Astral Weeks. I think there's a cinematic quality to a lot of your music. A song that I listened to obsessively when it was new is "Ancient Highway" from the Days Like This album, and that seemed like a movie to me, that song–I could see these places you were talking about. And I think that a lot of your songs seem to be describing a place, whether it's a real place or an imaginary place. There are these physical locations.

VM: That song if the archetypal fugitive song; that's what that is. There used to be an old TV program years ago, The Fugitive–not exactly like that, but similar, in another kind of way. I've written several songs with that theme. That's the theme.

SF: There's also a sense in a lot of these songs of a journey or some sort of search or a quest–that we're going somewhere, that we're moving through space and time.

VM: It's more like space, creating space... it's not a journey, it's just about people, you know? Any people. It's not in particular about me. In that case it's about a concept. But as far as me, the way I relate to it, is creating space, the same was as creating space in dynamics, it's like creating space with lyrics and music. That's what that's about. You can call it like... I mean I know these words become redundant after a while, but meditative, or "trance" is more like it, trance-like explorations.

SF: Maybe it's a bit abstract to ask this, but another idea that comes up a lot is healing, whether it's that "the healing has begun" or "the healing game." There's a sense that this is something we're searching for in life, maybe, this healing.

VM: I think it's more uncovering than searching or going into it. The thread of it is that... if you study psychology, philosophy, and you look at various types of religion, what you find out is that people call this these different names. Carl Jung would look at it one way, and Adler would look at it another way, Aristotle would maybe look at it a different way, Sartre would look at it some other way, Beckett would look at it a different way. If you go through all this, what I end up with is energy, and I can't name it and no one can really say what this energy is. So the healing thing is tapping into that energy, because I can't find a name for it, and I can't find it in any books. There was a time when I read everything I could get my hands on because I was looking to find out what this is–is anybody writing about this energy? And not really. There's not really anyone that can describe the energy, really. OK, well, you can end up in a place where you go, yeah, it's shamanistic or whatever, and that's where I'm at with the healing thing. That's where I end up is that. If I was living in another time, another era, another century, or way back when, then that's what I would be. You can call it that, witch doctor, whatever you want... that's really what it is.

SF: Has the way in which you write songs changed significantly at all over 40 years?

VM: This is what happens. 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 channelling 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.

SF: I've read that you often record a song when you have it ready to go and you're not really thinking in terms of an album per se, that that comes later. Is that an accurate way of putting it?

VM: Some of them were a concept, like Astral Weeks was a concept.

SF: I meant more now, today.

VM: Well, the tendency now is to... yeah... write the songs and when there's enough material think about the album. Yeah, that's interesting because... earlier on before I had 50 albums out, it was more like working of the material and then recording it... you know, working on it and then recording it. Now it's kind of back to front, but I need to get back to that... working the material more before I actually record it, because the best way for me to record is live, because that's the only true thing. Recording in a studio, with earphones on, communication is difficult with the musicians. The drummer's got a baflle... a lot of that stuff gets in the way. Live recording are really good, but record companies don't like live recordings. I don't know why. Maybe there's some other reason, maybe because a lot of the bands can't really do it live. I don't know.

SF: You've been able to put some distance between yourself and the record companies because you're your own producer and you have your own company, but picking up on what you were saying before about leaving Universal, is it still a battle to deal with the suits and the executives, the way you've suggested in some of the songs you've written like "Showbusiness" and "Drumshanbo Hustle"?

VM: It's not so much about the business. It's about the kind of people that the business and fame sometimes attract. It's more about that. Because the business is just business, and at the end of the day it is just cut-throat. These people are not my friends. I don't know them. We don't hang out. I mean, it's not like the old days when you had guys who were called A&R men and they had actual producers at record companies; there were more people that actually did know something about music. Now it's pretty clear-cut. You can bet 99.5% of the record business knows nothing about music. You can bet on that now, where you couldn't 30 years ago, because there were more people who did know music in the record business, right? It basically comes down to maths. So now, if you're doing what I do, you need to carry a calculator with you, because it all just comes down to maths, as far as dealing with record companies. That's what it is, because that's all it is for them, so that's what it's got to be for you. It's certainly not what it used to be. The beginning of the end was when a lot of those guys sold out, like Atlantic Records. That was the beginning of the end. It's now the end. We've probably gone past the end of the actual record business as it was, or what it was supposed to be. We've probably gone beyond that. We're on the other side of that now. It's minus.

SF: And the record business seems to have been in a panic with all of this pirating of music and free downloads...

VM: They keep saying the record business is finished, but then, I've sold over two million hard copies in the last year, adding it all up over two million, which nobody seems to notice. Universal certainly didn't notice that. I think in a lot of ways their head's stuck up their ass, you know what I mean? And there's a lot of this lip service about... I'm not into downloading, because I'm not a download artist. Maybe some people are and, you now, that's the future; but I prefer something I can hold, with sleeve notes I can read.

SF: I have all your records on CDs, but because I was travelling recently, I did load them all into my computer, which I'm a real novice with; it's not my bag at all. But I thought it was curious that when they came up in the iTunes player, every one was classified as something different. One album would be called "pop," one would be called "rock," one would be called "world." Common One for some reason was called "world." The computer doesn't seem to know what to call your music.

VM: I'd call it soul.

SF: Something I wanted to ask you about, because I've got a real education from it, are these collaborations that you've done with people like Mose Allison and Lonnie Donegan and Georgie Fame and Ray Charles, and it seems like particularly in the last 15 or 20 years you've been doing more of this revisiting of styles of music and musical figures who were an inspiration.

VM: It's mainly like paying respect to the tradition, and in some cases it's just a purely personal thing, like with Donegan, right? He was the only guy that could play skiffle, actually, and knew what it was, and could do it, you know? There were a lot of other people who hadn't a clue what they were doing. And it's just my personal taste, and I started off in that idiom. It's paying tribute to the music, just like the country record–same kind of thing. Paying tribute to this music that's dying out, really.

SF: I guess what's interesting about it is like... on the You Win Again album, in the liner notes, Jools Holland says that it's hard to separate the covers from the original compositions because the original compositions sound like they could have been made at the same time. And it feels like, with your music, the past is very much alive; it's not a dead thing. If you're making a jazz album or a skiffle album or a country album, there's a kind of seamlessness between what we might call "old" music and "new" music. There's a continuity.

VM: Well, if you take it as a river, then it's got offshoots–this stream and that stream, north stream, south stream, slipstream. All sorts of streams, you know? But it's all connected to the source, because it's the formative years, and all that stuff that I picked up in the formative years is what I've been able to put together as my own thing, so to speak. For me, it's going back to the source.

SF: And that's something else that you feel very strongly listening to your music is the sense of home, of where you grew up, of those formative years. And yet it's kind of a cliché among artists that they're always trying to escape their pasts or reinvent themselves. But you're constantly going back to it, remembering it. It's very vibrant.

VM: Yeah, it's very vibrant, because that's where I first got the word, or heard the word or heard that sound. It was maybe unnamable, like I was saying about the energy. You can't really say it is 'X,' because it just ends up being another word or a cliché. But the same kind of thing... it's what that initial energy was turned on in me, and I was lucky enough to get to know some of the people, like John Lee Hooker was a very good friend over the years, and connect with whatever that is–I don't know, some sort of energy.

SF: Do you plan to release to revisit and release any of your additional unreleased material like you did with the Philosopher's Stone album a few years ago–stuff that you have in your archive?

VM: It all depends, because the situation with record companies is becoming, like I say, you're just coming up against a brick wall all the time, because, you know, I sort of sell myself, so there's really not much in it now for me to go and give my life to sign up with a record company who'd just see me as a cash machine. Because I sell myself, they don't have to do anything, my records just sell. So it's a question of like, I don't really know where it's going. Right now, it's just like one project at a time. They don't know where it's going, and they're saying in public, every time you pick up a paper, they're saying "we don't know where this is all going." So why should a guy like me want to get involved with a business that doesn't know where it's going, that doesn't even know if it's going to exist in five years? You know what I mean? You have to re-evaluate all this, because it isn't the same as even what it was a couple of years ago. What they're saying is doom and gloom. So why the hell would you want to sign up with anybody who tells you the end of the world is nigh. That doesn't make any sense. You have to tread carefully, I think. People like me would have to tread carefully.

SF: Do you keep apprised much of what would be called pop music today?

VM: I was never really into pop music, as such. It bored me, and it still does. I just was brought up in a household where there was good music–there was jazz and blues and really good stuff to listen to. So rock-and-roll was something... that was great, you know? Rock-and-roll was like, "yeah, I'm a teenager and I dig rock-and-roll." But I've never really been into what you call rock... rock music to me is a con because along with the record companies there's been this massive con by rock music this, that and the other thing. But really, if you look at it, rock music has got more people that say they're singers that can't sing, with loud bands that have to drown them out because they can't sing; and I just think it's a con. It's about selling an image. Most of it I can't relate to. I'm just coming from another place entirely.

SF: Given all of this, the record companies' attitude and lack of promotion, this idea that the end is near. did you find it ironic in any way that you ended up with the highest charting album of your career just this year?

VM: Yeah, but they didn't even pick up on it. If you look, all my releases have been, probably apart from Astral Weeks, have been on Billboard chart in the top 20–most of them. So, I mean, it's really nothing knew. But that one, again, did it on its own, but there was no follow up. Just like, "oh yeah, it's in the top ten." But then that was it. They dropped it. No nothing, no promotion, no follow-up.

SF: I'm just wondering if there's anything we can read into it to say that maybe people are carving this kind of music. Bob Dylan had his first #1 in 30-something years with his last album. Somehow it seems that maybe there's a renewed interest in this not rock music.

VM: I don't really know. They're just promoting, especially with the download thing, like it's always been: let's just get the next load of kids in and milk that and then get the next lot in and milk those. It's the same as it was in the old days, only much more. Like I say, the people running these companies don't know anything about music and they don't are about music; they're not interested. It's a con, it's a front, you know? They will just get the young talent, and they will squeeze them out, drain them dry, and then... next! That's what the game is. It's always been like that but it's more so now. They don't care about music. They're not interested in music. They couldn't care less. You try talking to these people, I mean... you may as well talk to that table, because they don't want to know. They really don't want to know about music. They're not interested in real stuff.

SF: But you still seem to have a lot of enthusiasm.

VM: But I started before all these people, you know?. I actually started... anybody you can name or think of, I started... there wasn't any of this stuff. You were just playing gigs. It was just gigs. You were called a professional musician, that's what you were called and you just played gigs–anywhere, everywhere. It was basically before it became this hyped-up thing that it is now, before all this mythology was invented and reinvented. The mythology was invented by, I guess, people like Bill Graham–he's one of them. He invented the big rock show. That was probably the last mythology, but there's probably been more since then. And before that it was The Beatles myth. And before that, I don't know, the Elvis Presley myth. So there's always been these mythologies around and people have always found a way to exploit it. I guess this big thing about rock shows and just cramming people in, which is basically just based on pure greed, un, yeah... I don't know.

SF: Well, the title of the last album seems very apropos to me: Keep It Simple. If I think about the times that I've seen you live, it's really about the music, and it's not about all of these other things that seem to get grafted on to some people's concerts, where it's more about the lighting design or the costumes...

VM: Yeah, well, you see I don't know anybody who does what I do, because I do it all. Like, some of the people you mentioned there, they don't do it all. I do it all. You name it, I do it: jazz, blues, whatever. I can do everything. Because that's the background that I came out of. So I don't really fit into this mythology. I don't fit into the rock mythology, or the Zimmerman mythology or any of that shit. I don't fit into any of that. I'm not creating any image. I'm anti-mythology. I'm not really in the music business as such. I never bargained on fame, you know? Never bargained on that. It's just something I've had to deal with that came along with doing the music. So, the fame... that was the price, and all this stuff, it's all got a price. Like in that song, "Why Must I Always Explain": "Have to pay the piper/Time and Time again." It's like I've got these scars, and why do I have to keep showing people the scars all the time? You know what I mean? It's in the songs, somewhere there. And I still have to turn myself inside-out to do this. It's still got a price; it's not free. Everything's got a price. Doing these gigs–that's got a price. I have to act. I have to perform.

SF: You still love it, though, don't you?

VM: The only thing I love is the music. The rest of it is pure s***. The kind of s*** that fame attracts is very dark. It's very dark. I like the music, but that's it. That's it.


www.telegraph.co.uk

Hey Stones, ARE YOU LISTENING???

SCOTT FOUNDAS: I wanted to begin by asking you... I know you've said that you weren't able to tour with these songs 40 years ago because there wasn't any support from the record company. Why pick this moment to do it now, instead of five years ago, ten years ago?

VAN MORRISON: Many, many reasons. I haven't really played with any of the original musicians since then, and I thought it would be a good idea, it would be more like... you know, a live situation. I never played live with any of the people who were on the original recording; I've never done any live gigs with those people. I've never done the orchestrations for the songs. At the time, there was no money to do this from anybody, including the record company. Plus, it keeps coming up, this recording keeps coming up all the time–in top tens and polls and various things. There's a demand for it from the audience. There's loads of reasons why. That's enough for me, really, you know? It's never really been done live, and that's kind of what my music is all about... it's like spontaneity, being in the moment, and I also wanted to work with some different musicians for a change.

Man I would love to see this show. He never comes to this area anymore. I think the last time he was here was in the early 70's.

I saw Van in SF a couple of Decembers back. It was an interesting show. I am not sure it was "lounge" music, but I suspect that it was this music that was referred to, above. It was subtle, medium tempo, textured music made by an ensemble band and it was wonderful and engaging. There was a lot going on onstage, musically. But there was a song that turned up the tempo with Van flaying energetically away on a brown bodied acoustic guitar that threw the whole show off kilter. After that up tempo energetic "rocker," so to speak, Van and the band struggled to regain the connection with the audience. I could feel it and so did Van. He started one song, changed his mind and started another. He looked frustrated. I guess my point is that his "lounge music" was much more interesting to me than that "rocker" or "Moondance" or any other audience favorites.

The Stones have the same problem. The band has musically boxed itself in to what works for the audience, i.e., playing that big "exciting" sound. After you establish that level of excitement there is no where to go. It becomes a self pertpetuating circle. Other options are not available.

Van's "lounge" music sounds much more immediate to me than say another rendition of "Moondance" or "Honky Tonk Women."

Quote
The Sicilian
Hey Stones, ARE YOU LISTENING???

.

I think the Stones should be more concerned about what he says about their 'new' record label!



VM: That's right, and it looks like it's going to be distributed by EMI–that's the way it looks. I just left Universal, because basically they didn't do anything except coattail me and coattail the people that buy my product. Universal was just coat-tailing me. They didn't do anything to promote the product. In fact, the new record was supposed to be promoted; it wasn't. So, I'm outta that one, you know, and moving forward with EMI on this one.

finally got around to listening to the new live album. wow. stunning. as good as the original release, imo...maybe better - van's voice is much richer these days. i'm really amazed how well these musicians captured the essence of the album. it's a keeper...

I cannot believe that anyone would not dig the Hollywood Bowl disc! It is simply stunning. And I agree T&A his voice is better! SO much more experience, and more nuances, but all the power and range he had in his younger days. The man is simply brilliant, and a great collection with passion and inspirations.

Very good at The Felt Forum (NYC) Friday night