Van Morrison

Van Morrison: Gonna Rock Your Gypsy Soul

Report and Interview by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, July 1973

"IT'S SHOWTIME, ladies and gentlemen! And here's the one you've been waiting for – the Caledonia Soul Orchestra with ... VAN MORRISON!" ...

Van Morrison: "I Can't Mix – My Problem"

Profile and Interview by Carol Deck, KRLA Beat, December 1967

VAN MORRISON is hunting for himself. ...

Van Morrison, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Brinsley Schwartz: Fillmore East, New York NY

Live Review by Geoffrey Cannon, Guardian, The, April 1970

I WAS ON that New York trip last weekend, too. My brief was to listen to the music. I have to report that as soon ...

Van Morrison: Egotistical and Brilliant

Profile by Danny Goldberg, Circus, June 1970

VAN MORRISON has finally begun to get his due. Finally is a pretty strange word to use with someone who is not yet twenty-five, but ...

Van Morrison: In Conversation

Interview by Happy Traum, Rolling Stone, July 1970

VAN MORRISON sits on the edge of the bed and absently picks an old Gibson. He is moody, his eyes intense and his smile sudden; ...

Van Morrison: February 1971

Interview by Rick McGrath, Georgia Straight, The, February 1971

This interview with Van Morrison and some of the members of his band took place at Vancouver airport on the morning after a concert. ...

Van Morrison: His Band And Street Choir

Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, October 1971

THERE'S A SECRET to every Van Morrison album, and even this one, which too many of us wrote off too long ago, has it. The ...

Soul Brothers: Al Green, Sly Stone, Van Morrison

Review by Charlie Gillett, Cream, January 1972

IS THE REVIEWER supposed to come to each record as an objective analyst? Or, if he isn’t one, must he pretend he is? Impossible for ...

Van Morrison: Where Is The Restless Lion Now?

Interview by Danny Holloway, NME, August 1972

I'M AFRAID that the Van Morrison you know, may not be quite the same person as the one I envisage. ...

Van Morrison: St.Dominic's Preview (Warner Bros.); Them: Them Featuring Van Morrison (Parrot)

Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, October 1972

AFTER TUPELO HONEY Van Morrison must have been faced with a choice. He could continue with his domestic tranquility myth, which was as artistically false ...

Van Morrison: Saint Dominic's Preview (Warner Bros.)

Review by Dave Laing, Let It Rock, October 1972

LIKE ANYONE else, a record reviewer has certain expectations and anticipations of an album before he hears it, and tends to judge it on whether ...

Van Morrison: Hard Nose The Highway (Warner Bros.)

Review by Wayne Robins, Zoo World, January 1973

I KEEP HAVING this dream – wish fulfillment, for the Freudians out in Zoo World – where the mailman rings the bell, and tells me ...

Van Morrison: Hard Nose The Highway

Review by Charlie Gillett, Let It Rock, September 1973

WHAT'S HE BEEN DOING, listening to Brahms? If that title is a riddle that holds the answer, I give in, and the cover doesn't help ...

Van Morrison: Hard Nose The Highway

Review by Tom Nolan, Phonograph Record, October 1973

THE TEMPTATION is simply to quote huge chunks of lyrics, but allow me instead the indulgence of a passage from Kierkegaard, cited by A. Alvarez ...

Van Morrison out of the music

Profile and Interview by John Tobler, ZigZag, November 1973

"You could forgive him anything after you've listened to his music." Nicola Hugen-Tobler after first straining to hear the great man's words through the clinking ...

Van Morrison: TB Sheets

Review by Michael Gray, Let It Rock, June 1974

I FOUND VAN MORRISON by a most tortuous, circumlocutory route: first (after the mediocrity of 'Here Comes The Night') there was, of course, 'Gloria', which ...

Van Morrison

Book Excerpt by David Dalton, Lenny Kaye, Rock 100, 1977

ON THE WALL OF HIS NORTHERN CALIFORNIA home, a note announces to friends and visitors that "Van Morrison the person only sometimes has anything to ...

Van Morrison: Jamming with George Benson

Report by Harvey Kubernik, Melody Maker, April 1977

LOS ANGELES: VAN MORRISON made a rare TV appearance on the Midnight Special filmed last Monday at the NBC studios in Burbank. The show, which ...

Van Morrison: A Period Of Transition (Warner Bros)

Review by Nick Kent, NME, April 1977

A MOST DISTRESSING set of circumstances is what we have here. ...

Van Morrison: A Period Of Transition

Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, May 1977

"It’s just what it is – it says what it is and nobody is going to analyze it for secret meanings. It’s exactly what it ...

Van Morrison

Interview by Vivien Goldman, Sounds, June 1977

EVERYONE calls him Van the Man. For reasons of symmetry, mainly; Van Morrison the Man as opposed to the Musician is pretty elusive. Vague slogans ...

Van Morrison: The Speakeasy, London

Live Review by Chas de Whalley, Sounds, July 1977

EVER LOOKED Dr John the night tripper straight in the eyes? Ever stood this close to Van the Man you can feel him breathe? ...

Van Morrison: A Period Of Transition and The Story Of Them

Review by John Morthland, Creem, August 1977

A Period of Transition is a disappointing album, and at first I thought it was mainly because after his nearly three years absence, I expected ...

Van Morrison: T.B. Sheets (Phonogram – Reissue)

Review by Chas de Whalley, Sounds, September 1977

IN WHICH Phonogram Records acquire the rights to Van Morrison's early BANG material and effectively re-issue an album called T.B. Sheets which Decca put out ...

Van Morrison: "Sam Cooke Still Turns Me On"

Interview by Davitt Sigerson, Sounds, July 1978

A short and rather scruffy man, accompanied by a handsome L.A. Ethnic (tee-shirt, jeans, clean black moustache) is milling around Oxford on an afternoon characterised ...

Van Morrison: Astral Weeks

Essay by Lester Bangs, Stranded (ed. Greil Marcus), 1979

VAN MORRISON'S Astral Weeks was released ten years, almost to the day, before this was written. It was particularly important to me because the fall ...

Van Morrison: These Dreams of You (So Unreal, So Untrue)

Interview by Chris Welch, Melody Maker, February 1979

OUTSIDE THE ROYAL GARDEN HOTEL, a blizzard raged. Inside, snowflakes dripped and melted into the plush carpets. Waiters scurried while rich Americans and Arabs mulled ...

Van Morrison (part 1)

Interview by John Tobler, Blank Space, March 1979

Talking to Tobler ...

Van Morrison: Hammersmith Odeon, London

Live Review by Chris Welch, Melody Maker, March 1979

VAN MORRISON has a special kind of communication with his followers that is reserved for only a favoured few. It's not an hysterical or violent ...

Van Morrison: When Irish Eyes are Scowling

Report and Interview by Tony Stewart, NME, March 1979

'If you want me to sit here and talk about my emotions you've got to be out of your MIND!' ...

Van Morrison (part 2)

Interview by John Tobler, Blank Space, April 1979

IT WOULD BE shrewd to note at this point, the start of the second part of this documentary, that there is no intention here to ...

Van Morrison: Belfast to Belfast

Retrospective by Peter Silverton, Trouser Press, July 1979

IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO imagine someone further removed than Van Morrison from looking like a pop star or even a rock'n'roll artiste. It's not even like, ...

Van Morrison: Into The Music (Mercury)

Review by Ian Birch, Melody Maker, August 1979

NOWADAYS, PEOPLE don't so much discover Van Morrison as grow old with him. ...

Van Morrison: Into The Music

Review by Don Snowden, Los Angeles Times, September 1979

LAST YEAR'S Wavelength may have dispelled lingering doubts about Van Morrison's creative talents, but it did so only at the expense of some of the ...

Van Morrison: Common One

Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, December 1980

ANYONE WHO CAN make the phrase "William Blake and the eternals" sound like the evocation of a metaphysical doo-wop group, as Van Morrison did on ...

Ted Templeman: Super Producer

Interview by David Gans, BAM, 1982

The super producer talks about Little Feat, Van Halen, the Doobies, and staying sane in a world of crazies. ...

Van Morrison

Profile and Interview by Michael Goldberg, Rolling Stone, February 1982

VAN MORRISON's brown, two-story, shingled house sits alongside a narrow road that snakes up Mt. Tamalpais above the sleepy Marin County town of Mill Valley. ...

Van Morrison: AWESOME!!!

Live Review by Gavin Martin, NME, March 1982

Van Morrison: The Dominion, London ...

Van Morrison: Odeon, Birmingham

Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, September 1983

I LOST VAN Morrison's wavelength on the album of the same name, and my feelings about the last four are decidedly mixed. This misanthropic mystic ...

Van Morrison: Live At The Grand Opera House Belfast (Mercury)

Review by David Quantick, NME, March 1984

AS SOMEONE not over-exposed to Van Morrison's music, this is an extremely useful record. It acts both as a good compilation album (all the songs ...

Van Morrison: A Sense Of Wonder

Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, June 1985

ONE OF THE SMARTEST things Martin Scorsese did in The King Of Comedy was bracket it with songs by Ray Charles and Van Morrison. The ...

Van Morrison

Interview by Mick Brown, promo for 'No Guru, No Method, No Teacher', 1986

Musical Roots ...

Van Morrison: No Guru, No Method, No Teacher

Review by Sean O'Hagan, NME, July 1986

ALTHOUGH VAN Morrison has long since ceased to surprise, there have been enough scattered moments throughout his recent work to point to a singer content ...

Van Morrison: Live At Liverpool Empire.

Live Review by John McCready, NME, 1987

"Didn’t I come to bring you a sense of wonder.Didn’t I come to lift your fiery vision brightDidn’t I come to bring you a sense ...

Van Morrison: "I’m not doing this because I want to be on Top Of The Pops."

Interview by Chris Salewicz, Q, January 1987

Van Morrison’s job is the pursuit of magic moments. All the rest – the touring, the recording, the interviews, the selling – is an irrelevance ...

Van Morrison: Hammersmith Odeon, London

Live Review by Len Brown, NME, January 1987

NOT UNREASONABLY I've always associated middle-aged corpulence and material over-indulgence with the death of desire to develop; we witness the long drawn-out demise of our ...

Van Morrison: CD Reissues

Review by Robert Sandall, Q, September 1989

Earthy but out of this world: at last on CD, Van Morrison's swinging '70s. ...

Van Morrison’s Belfast

Essay by Steve Turner, Independent, The, March 1991

Does the lady with the glasses and the grey-flecked hair in the electrical store on the corner of Hyndford Street in east Belfast remember Van ...

Van Morrison: Hymns To The Silence

Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, October 1991

QUINTESSENTIALLY quare maybe, but Van Morrison is certainly a worker. His third new album within 27 months weighs in at 95 minutes. For Van addicts ...

Peter Gabriel: World Party

Report by Johnny Black, Q, November 1991

One week this summer, Peter Gabriel's dream came true. Musicians of the world, from Sinead O'Connor and Van Morrison to stars of Lapland and Tanzania, ...

Van Morrison: The Great Hall, Exeter University

Live Review by Johnny Black, MOJO, April 1994

MAN. VAN. THE. UNTIL NOW THE ONLY WELL-KNOWN PHRASE or saying into which these three words could be re-assembled has been a synonym for irascible ...

Van Morrison: Days Like This (Polydor)

Review by Mark Cooper, Q, July 1995

Although Van Morrison has enjoyed unprecedented commercial success since signing to Polydor in 1989, in creative terms it has been an uncertain period for him. ...

Van Morrison: The Philosopher's Stone

Review by Gavin Martin, Uncut, June 1998

AS HE'S an artist soaked in mystique, renowned for a hard-headed approach to both his work and the business around it, expectations for this, Van ...

Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison at the Pauley Pavilion, UCLA, Los Angeles

Live Review by Dave DiMartino, MOJO, July 1998

Set List Van Morrison: Sweet Thing/You Make Me Feel So Free/Burning Ground/It Once Was My Life/Cleaning Windows/Vanlose Stairway/That's Life/Days Like This/Sometimes We Cry/Moondance/This Weight/Tupelo Honey/Why ...

Bishopstock 2001: Nina Simone and Van Morrison

Live Review by The Rev. Al Friston, Rock's Backpages, September 2001

Two cantankerous legends hold court in the Devon sunshine ONE FESTIVAL, THREE DAYS, four major cancellations... and two obstreperous veterans doing their thang on Bank ...

Nothin' But A Stranger In This World: Van Morrison and Astral Weeks

Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, November 2001

THE FITFUL BRITISH SUMMER of 2001 is ending not with a whimper but a bang – a burst of Bank Holiday heat that's got everyone ...

Van Morrison/Solomon Burke: Royal Albert Hall, London

Live Review by Gavin Martin, Independent, The, April 2003

THE POTENTIAL that the double bill offered for a soulman super summit was certainly enticing – Solomon Burke, the veteran preacherman from Philadelphia, and George ...

Van Morrison: Astral Weeks

Review by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, June 2004

RECORDED in New York over two days in 1968, Astral Weeks still sounds like nothing before or since. Unlike other classic albums, Pet Sounds, say, ...

Magic Time: Van the Man's New Lucky 13

Review and Interview by Gene Sculatti, ICE, May 2005

THE ARTIST who famously proclaimed It's Too Late to Stop Now means what he says. In 1974, when Van Morrison used the phrase for the ...

Van Morrison: Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl (Listen to the Lion/EMI)

Review by Roy Trakin, Rock's Backpages, January 2009

FAR INTO THE post-apocalyptic future, long after people have holed up in their fallout shelters, emerging only to forage for what little edible green foodstuff ...

Van Morrison: Astral Weeks – Live at the Hollywood Bowl

Review by Steven R Rosen, blurt-online.com, February 2009

FIRST OF ALL, Van Morrison's Astral Weeks is rock's A Love Supreme. There's no way you could ever listen to its title song – a ...

Van Morrison: The Healing Game (1997)

Book Excerpt by Greil Marcus, 'When That Rough God Goes Riding' , June 2010

THE BLACK-AND-WHITE photo that appears on the face of The Healing Game–and on the disc itself, and on the back of the CD box, insisting ...

Them: 'Baby Please Don't Go' (1965)

Book Excerpt by Greil Marcus, 'When That Rough God Goes Riding', June 2010

IN 1965, THEM'S 'Baby Please Don't Go'–usually cited as a rock 'n' roll update of a song first recorded by the Mississippi blues singer Joe ...