Morrison, Van

Morrison was born in 1945 in Belfast , in the family of the singer. His father, being not indifferent to American jazz and blues, gathered a large collection of records from across the ocean. Instead of going to school, the boy listened to these records all day, and at the age of 15 he joined the rhythm and blues band The Monarchs. After performing at American bases in Europe, the group was disbanded, and its place was taken by a new band - Them .

Morrison tried to instill Them into the sultry, un-ironed sound of the southern blues. As a vocalist, he imitated blues artists such as Howlin Wolf . Them's recordings were full of youthful fervor. In 1965, their version of “Baby Please Don't Go” from Big Joe Williams ’s repertoire burst into the British top ten. However, the song for which Them is still remembered - the unfading guitar classics " Gloria " - Morrison wrote and performed himself. Subsequently, it was performed by very many - The Doors , Jimi Hendrix , Patti Smith .

Meanwhile, the composition of the group was constantly changing, and external musicians (including young Jimmy Page ) were constantly invited to the session. This instability annoyed Morrison, and in 1966, during an American tour (and soon after a joint performance with The Doors), he left the band.

Ex-Them producer Bert Burns , then living in New York , invited Morrison to solo on his Bang Records label. The fruit of this collaboration was the optimistic hit Brown-Eyed Girl , which reached the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1967. This song remains one of the hymns of the “ summer of love ”, which marked the peak of the hippie movement .

Relationships of Morrison, who always had a heavy temper, with Burns deteriorated when he unbeknownst to the singer released his debut solo album “Blowin 'Your Mind”. An angry Morrison returned to Ireland and soon found out about Burns' death from a heart attack. Meanwhile, his contractual obligations passed to the Burns heirs, and it took the singer years to finally get rid of this bondage. When they demanded that he record another disc under the contract, he recorded 36 songs with meaningless improvised words in one session and sent them to America.

In 1968, Morrison agreed with Warner Brothers that he would be allowed to record an album without any pressure from the producers. Since he did not find a common language with the session musicians, he was left alone in the studio with an acoustic guitar. The result was a cycle of poetic texts unsurpassed in the history of rock music of complexity, which in the aggregate is not so much a collection of songs, but a single whole piece.

Producer Lewis Merenstein , who had acquaintances among jazzmen, put on the recording made by Morrison the musical accompaniment of the best session musicians of that time. Thus was born the disc " Astral Weeks " (1968), regularly included in the lists of the greatest rock music albums. [1] Despite the unanimous admiration of the critics, the disc scared the audience away with its jazz improvisations and the gloom of the general mood. It took several decades to reach the status of gold ....

Plunging into the mystical depths of the Astral Weeks freed Morrison from the sense of hopelessness that marked the records of 1968, when he lived alone and starved due to lack of funds. His personal life began to improve, and optimism appeared in Morrison's notes. His next album, Moondance (1970), not inferior to its predecessor in quality, continued the line on the rapprochement of folk rock with blues and soul.

Instead of the desperate wheezing of the previous disc, listeners found a charge of vivacity and energy on this melodic record. The first side of the disc consists of songs that are now included in the list of the best for the last 50 years - “Moondance”, “Into the Mystic”, “Caravan” (the performance of which with The Band will capture Martin Scorsese in “ The Last Waltz ”) and “Crazy Love” (which Morrison will perform a duet with his idol Ray Charles years later). Rolling Stone Magazine included Moondance in its list of 500 greatest albums in 2003.

The three albums following Moondance, recorded at a feverish pace, supported the high standard taken on it. The performer, who moved to California with his young wife, looked at life as a celebration. His fiery single “Domino” from the album “His Band and the Street Choir” (1970) reached the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100 . The Tupelo Honey album included the two most popular Morrison melodies of the 1970s - Wild Night and Tupelo Honey. Bob Dylan , performing the last at a concert, once noticed that she always existed, and Morrison became the earth vessel that brought her to people. [2]

The album Veedon Fleece (1974), written by Morrison after a divorce from his wife and return to Belfast, was marked by a more depressed mood. Critics saw in him an attempt to appeal to national roots, to ethnic Irish music, and subjected this attempt to ostracism . A decade passed before Veedon Fleece was recognized. Elvis Costello and Sinead O'Connor consider him the best of all written by Morrison. [3] [4]

Frustrated by the cool reaction of the public to his new work, Van Morrison in the mid-1970s. completely minimizes concert activity. He always saw the meaning of the musician’s work in live performances. He considered studio recordings as mini-concerts designed to convey the feeling of a live performance, and rejected singles altogether as a concession to the commercial side of show business. In 1978, he resumed speaking in support of the “pop”, by his own admission, “Wavelength” disc, but the fear of the stage did not leave him in 1979, when, speaking at a stadium in New York, he left the stage and did not came back.

Albums of Van Morrison, published in the 1980s, are not accepted as one of his successes. He is experimenting on many records: for example, the album “Irish Heartbeat” (1988) is a selection of Irish folk songs performed with the folk band The Chieftains . In the texts of those years, he addresses the themes of faith and salvation. In 1989, the album Avalon Sunset was released - the most successful of its entire career from a commercial point of view. A duet with the legendary Cliff Richard and the new violin ballad “Have I Told You Lately” (later included in Rod Stewart’s repertoire) opened Van Morrison to a new generation of listeners.

In 1990, he took part in the grand charity concert in Berlin “ The Wall ”. There he performed the chorus in the song Comfortably Numb.

In each of the 9 albums of the 1990s. (of which one is concert) Van Morrison opens up to fans from a new perspective. He toured with his band and with Bob Dylan, recording duets with bluesmen, whom he admired in his youth, and with his daughter. Belated recognition comes to him - Jeff Buckley and Bono from U2 speak of his enormous influence on them, in 1993 his name is credited to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame , he is awarded several Grammys (in 1996 and 1998).

In 2006, Van Morrison delighted fans with his Pay the Devil album, which he recorded in Nashville . This is a tribute to the singer of country music . In 2008, the first decade album of his new songs was released. This disc, “Keep It Simple,” was featured in the top ten on the Billboard 200 for the first time in Morrison’s career. Finally, in 2007, Morrison collected Someone Like You and many of his other songs that were featured in famous films on Van Morrison at the Movies - Soundtrack Hits.

In the fall of 2012, a new album, entitled “ Born to Sing: No Plan B, ” also appeared in the top ten of the American sales chart.

• Van Morrison and Theosophy

• Morrison Wang's official website on Myspace
• Van morrison at allmusic
• Van Morrison at RollingStone .com / artists
• Van Morrison at Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
• Van Morrison at Songwriters Hall of Fame
• Van Morrison on the Internet Movie Database
• Van Morrison Biography (link unavailable)
• Discography (inaccessible link)