timeline

Van Morrison

Northern Irish singer and songwriter, from Them's Gloria to Astral Weeks, Moondance and the live album It's Too Late to Stop Now.

Origin
Belfast, Northern Ireland
Years active
1963-present
Genres
rhythm and blues, soul, jazz, Celtic soul
Labels
Decca, Bang Records, Warner Bros. Records, Exile Productions, Legacy Recordings
Also known as
George Ivan Morrison, Van the Man

Belfast and Them

George Ivan Morrison was born on 31 August 1945 in Bloomfield, east Belfast, the only child of a shipyard electrician and a mother who had been a singer and tap dancer. His father's record collection, among the largest in Northern Ireland, introduced him to Jelly Roll Morton, Ray Charles, Lead Belly and Solomon Burke. He took up guitar at eleven, then saxophone, left school in 1960 with no qualifications and worked as a window cleaner while playing in showbands. At seventeen he toured clubs and US Army bases in Europe with the Monarchs, and made his first record with them in Cologne in November 1963.

In April 1964 he formed Them out of a Belfast group called the Gamblers, and Decca's Dick Rowe signed them after their time at the Maritime Hotel. Them had hits with Baby, Please Don't Go, Here Comes the Night and Mystic Eyes, and the B-side of the first of those was Gloria. The band split in 1966 after a tour of America.

Bang and Astral Weeks

In 1967 Bert Berns, who had produced Them, brought Morrison to New York to record solo for Bang Records. A two-day session starting on 28 March produced eight songs, which Berns released as Blowin' Your Mind! without consulting him. It held Brown Eyed Girl, a number ten single in the US that summer. After Berns died, Morrison was caught in a contract dispute that kept him from recording or performing in the New York area. He moved to Boston, and Warner Bros. bought out the Bang contract for $20,000 in cash.

His first Warner album was Astral Weeks, recorded in three sessions between 25 September and 15 October 1968 at Century Sound Studios in New York. Producer Lewis Merenstein called bassist Richard Davis, who brought in guitarist Jay Berliner and other jazz players, and Morrison sang live from a separate booth while they played together. It sold poorly at first. Later it placed at number 19 on Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums, and in November 2008 Morrison performed it in full for the first time, at the Hollywood Bowl.

Moondance and the 1970s

After moving to the Catskills near Woodstock he began writing Moondance in July 1969 and, for the first time, produced his own record, with a horn section and rhythm section in place of the Astral Weeks jazz players. Released in 1970, it reached number 29 in the US and was later certified triple platinum there. Into the Mystic, Caravan and the title track Moondance are on the album, which Pitchfork's Ryan H. Walsh wrote would solidify Morrison as an FM radio mainstay. Its success led him to form the Caledonia Soul Orchestra, an eleven-piece band with horns and strings, whose tour from May to July 1973 produced the live double album It's Too Late to Stop Now.

Saint Dominic's Preview reached number 15 on the US chart in 1972. After a three-week visit to Ireland in October 1973 he made Veedon Fleece, which sold poorly on release in 1974 and was followed by three years without a new album. On Thanksgiving Day 1976 he performed Caravan at the Band's farewell concert, filmed as The Last Waltz.

Later work

His albums of the 1980s ran from Common One in 1980 to Avalon Sunset in 1989. Irish Heartbeat, made with the Chieftains in 1988, reached number 18 in the UK, and AllMusic judged The Best of Van Morrison, which he compiled himself in 1990, far and away the best-selling album of his career. He has won two Grammy Awards and the 1994 Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

In 2015 he sold the rights to most of his catalogue to Legacy Recordings, and in 2016 he was knighted for services to the music industry and to tourism in Northern Ireland. Latest Record Project, Volume 1 returned him to the UK top ten in 2021, giving him top ten albums in four consecutive decades. His songs were used extensively in Kenneth Branagh's film Belfast, and Down to Joy earned him his first Academy Award nomination.

Records

Songs

Them, The Band, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, John Lee Hooker

Where to go next

Official

Reference

Writing and criticism

Interviews

Sources

  1. Van Morrison, Wikipedia
  2. Astral Weeks, Wikipedia
  3. Moondance, Wikipedia
  4. It's Too Late to Stop Now, Wikipedia
  5. Classic Tracks: Van Morrison 'Moondance', Sound On Sound (2009-05)
  6. Van Morrison: Moondance, Pitchfork (2018-11-25)