Astral Weeks
Encyclopedia
Astral Weeks is the second solo album by Northern Irish
singer-songwriter Van Morrison
, released in November 1968 on Warner Bros. Records
. It was Morrison's first album after Warner Bros. had been able to free him from his contract with Bang Records
. The recording sessions were set up by the production-management team of Lewis Merenstein
and Bob Schwaid and took place during three sessions in September and October 1968.
Blending a mixture of folk
, blues
, jazz
, and classical music
, it was a complete departure from his previous pop
hit, Brown Eyed Girl
, released in 1967. Astral Weeks is often referred to as a song cycle
or concept album
with lyrics described as impressionistic
, hypnotic
, and stream-of-consciousness.
It received critical acclaim immediately upon its first release and subsequently has been placed on numerous widely circulated lists of best albums of all time. The 1995 Mojo
list of the 100 Best Albums ranked it as number two, and it ranked nineteenth on Rolling Stone
magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003. It became and remains a cult
favourite, despite the fact that it failed to achieve significant mainstream sales success for decades; after 33 years, it finally achieved gold in 2001.
that kept him away from any recording activity. This occurred after the sudden death of the label's founder Bert Berns
; born with a congenital heart defect, Berns experienced a massive heart attack and was discovered dead in a New York hotel room on 30 December 1967. Prior to Berns' death, he and Morrison had experienced some creative difficulties. Berns had been pushing Morrison towards a more pop-oriented direction, while Morrison wanted to explore newer musical terrain. As a result, Berns' widow, Ilene Berns, held Morrison and this conflict as responsible for her husband's death. Years later she would downplay this scenario but Morrison's ex-wife Janet (Planet) Minto has gone on record describing her initial subsequent vindictiveness towards Morrison.
Upon Bert Berns death, Ilene Berns inherited the contracts of Bang Records. Morrison's annual option on his recording contract was also due less than a week after Berns' funeral. Legally bound to Bang Records, Morrison was not only kept out of the studio, but he also found himself unable to find performing work in New York as most clubs refrained from booking him, fearing reprisals. Ilene Berns then discovered that her late husband previously had been remiss in filing all the appropriate paperwork to keep Morrison (still a British citizen) in New York. She contacted Immigration and Naturalization Service
and attempted to have Morrison deported. However, Morrison managed to stay in the U.S. when his then-girlfriend Janet (Planet) Rigsbee agreed to marry him. Once married, Morrison and his wife moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts
, where he found work performing in the local clubs. Morrison began performing with a small electric combo doing blues
numbers, songs from Blowin' Your Mind!
and from Morrison's Them
band days. Two of the musicians soon left but Morrison did retain the bassist, Tom Kielbania, a student at the Berklee School of Music. At that juncture, Morrison decided to try an acoustic sound, and he and Kielbania began performing shows in coffee houses in the Boston
area as an acoustic duo with Morrison playing guitar and Kielbania on upright bass. Before this, Morrison had primarily recorded and performed with electric musicians. The acoustic medium would provide him "greater vocal improvisation and a freer, folkier feel."
Later, Kielbania heard flautist John Payne for the first time while sitting in on a jazz jam session. He Invited Payne to the club where he played with Morrison, hoping Morrison would invite him to join them, and after allowing Payne to sit-in on one performance, Morrison did extend an invitation that Payne accepted. The trio of Payne, Kielbania, and Morrison continued performing for four months. In the weeks they played at the Catacombs, they began to develop the template for Astral Weeks. It was around this time that Warner Bros. Records
approached Morrison, hoping to sign him to their roster. Presumably their interest focused on his prior success with "Brown-Eyed Girl", not on Morrison's current acoustic work. Regardless, their interest allowed Morrison to return to the recording studio.
At the time, Warner Bros. had a deal with Inherit Productions, the production arm of Schwaid-Merenstein which was founded by manager Bob Schwaid (who worked for Warners Publishing) and producer Lewis Merenstein
. Merenstein received a call from Warner Bros. to go see Morrison in Boston and related how eight or nine producers had gone to hear Morrison thinking they were going to hear "Brown Eyed Girl" and "it was another person with the same voice." Merenstein first heard Morrison play at Ace Recording studio and recalled that when Morrison played the song, "Astral Weeks
" for him, "I started crying. It just vibrated in my soul, and I knew that I wanted to work with that sound." While Merestein had been to see Morrison, Schwaid had set to work on resolving Morrison's contractual troubles.
Still legally bound to Bang Records, Morrison would yet have more issues with them in the future. For the time being, Schwaid managed to free him from those obligations, under several conditions. First, Morrison had to write and submit to Web IV Music (Bert Berns's publishing company) three original compositions per month over the course of one year. Morrison fulfilled that obligation by recording thirty-six nonsense songs in a single session. Such action risked legal reprisals, but ultimately none transpired. Morrison then had to assign Web IV one half of the copyright to any musical composition written and recorded by Morrison and released as a single within one year from 12 September 1968. That demand became a moot point when Warner Bros. refrained from releasing any single during that time frame. (No single was released from Astral Weeks.) Finally, Morrison had to include two original compositions controlled by Web IV on his next album. Morrison fulfilled that demand with two of his own compositions, "Madame George
" and "Beside You
". (Although the versions subsequently released were vastly different musically than the original versions recorded with Bang.)
Recording adjacent to Van Morrison's studio, musician John Cale
reported, "Morrison couldn't work with anybody, so finally they just shut him in the studio by himself. He did all the songs with just an acoustic guitar, and later they overdubbed the rest of it around his tapes." This is, in fact, completely untrue – the live tracks for the sessions were performed by Morrison on vocals and acoustic guitar in a separate vocal booth with the other musicians playing together on upright bass, lead acoustic guitar, vibes, flute, and drums. The strings and horns constituted the only instruments added subsequently to the initial recording sessions.
Producer Lewis Merenstein had a background in jazz, and according to Merenstein, Morrison "was not an aficionado of jazz when I met him. R&B and soul, yes; but jazz, no." For the Astral Weeks recording sessions, Merenstein first contacted veteran bassist Richard Davis. Perhaps best known for his work with Eric Dolphy
, Davis essentially served as the session leader, and it was through Davis that Merenstein recruited guitarist Jay Berliner
, percussionist Warren Smith, Jr.
, and drummer Connie Kay
. All of these musicians had strong backgrounds in jazz; Berliner had worked closely with Charles Mingus
and Kay was part of the Modern Jazz Quartet
. Morrison was still working with Kielbania and Payne, but for these sessions, they were essentially replaced. According to Kielbania, "I got to show all the bass lines to Richard Davis. He embellished a lot of them, but I gave him the feeling."
Davis proved, perhaps, to be the most pivotal instrumentalist during these sessions. "If you listen to the album, every tune is led by Richard and everybody followed Richard and Van's voice," says Merenstein. "I knew if I brought Richard in, he would put the bottom on to support what Van wanted to do vocally, or acoustically. Then you get Jay playing those beautiful counter-lines to Van." Davis was not impressed by Morrison, but not out of disdain or any preconceived notions, but rather because Morrison's professional comportment generally did not meet Davis's expectations. "No prep, no meeting," recalls Davis. "He was remote from us, 'cause he came in and went into a booth... And that's where he stayed, isolated in a booth. I don't think he ever introduced himself to us, nor we to him... And he seemed very shy..." Drummer Connie Kay later told Rolling Stone that he approached Morrison and asked "what he wanted me to play, and he said to play whatever I felt like playing. We more or less sat there and jammed." Morrison's impression of the sessions was "The songs came together very well in the studio. Some of the tracks were first takes. [But] the musicians were really together. Those type of guys play what you're gonna do before you do it, that's how good they are."
For the Astral Weeks sessions, apparently they did not employ any lead sheets, or at least none were distributed to the musicians. "What stood out in my mind was the fact that he allowed us to stretch out," recalls Berliner. "We were used to playing to charts, but Van just played us the songs on his guitar and then told us to go ahead and play exactly what he felt." Berliner actually had great appreciation for the freedom given to him and the band; something few, if any, of them were used to. "I played a lot of classical guitar on those sessions and it was very unusual to play classical guitar in that context," says Berliner. Morrison recalled in a 2009 radio interview with Don Imus
: "They were jazz musicians and the approach was jazz. They were able to follow me. I'd tell them: Just follow where I'm going...follow my vocal, and follow the best way you can, and don't get in the way."
The first session held on 25 September 1968 produced four recordings that made it to the album. Only three had initially been intended for inclusion: "Cyprus Avenue
", "Madame George
," and "Beside You
". Although not scheduled to play, Payne still attended the first session and listened as another flautist played his parts. To this day, nobody recalls the name of this flautist, nor has he been identified on any of the surviving documentation; he does play flute on the released takes of "Beside You" and "Cyprus Avenue" but is not included in the album credits. When Morrison tried to squeeze in one last tune during the end of that first session, Payne spoke up and pleaded to Merenstein to permit him to participate. Payne was then allowed to play on what became the title track of the album – "Astral Weeks
" – the fourth song produced from this initial session. For the remainder of the sessions, John Payne played on every song.
The next session, according to John Payne, occurred early in the morning, but it did not work and nothing from this session worked for the final album. "It just didn't happen'" says Payne. "It was the wrong time of day for jazz musicians to create. I think that by the end of that session we all knew that nothing was going to be used. They just said, let's forget it." Jay Berliner was not available, so Barry Kornfeld was recruited to play lead guitar in his place. According to Merenstein, there was tension at this second session and it was stopped after about three hours. In his biography, Clinton Heylin gives the date for the second session as 1 October and states that "Only 'As Young Lovers Do' from this session would make the album" contending that this is the reason for the different "lounge-jazz sound" on this track. Morrison was quoted by Ritchie Yorke
as saying the album was recorded in "two eight-hour sessions, plus two overdub sessions. That was the whole album."
The third and final session on 15 October produced four more recordings that completed the album — "The Way Young Lovers Do
" "Sweet Thing
", "Ballerina
" and "Slim Slow Slider
". Both "Sweet Thing" and "Ballerina" were originally scheduled for the session, but the search for a 'closer' consumed a considerable amount of time. They attempted (and rejected) a number of songs until Morrison suggested "Slim Slow Slider". "I don't think we'd ever done [it] live," recalls Payne. "[Morrison] had a book full of songs... I don't know why he decided to do it...And we were first doing it with the drums, with Richard Davis and Connie Kay and the guitar player and the vibe player and me and Van — all of us were playing. Then I started playing soprano sax on the thing, and Lew said, 'OK, I wanna try it again. Start again. And I want just the bass, the soprano sax, and Van.'" It was a successful take, but it also came with a very long coda, prompting Merenstein to make a large cut during the editing process. Many of the tracks on Astral Weeks would be subjected to edits (mainly to tighten the performances), but the one on "Slim Slow Slider" was easily the most substantial. "I would estimate three, five minutes of instrumental stuff," says Payne. "We went through stages [until] we got to be avant-garde kind of weird, which is what you hear after the splice- all that weird stuff we're playing — but there was a whole progression to that." According to Merenstein, before he cut it, the coda "was a long, long ending that went nowhere, that just carried on from minute to minute...If it had [some] relativity to the tune itself, I would have left it there."
The recording engineer for the album, Brooks Arthur, remembered the sessions in 2009: "A cloud came along, and it was called the Van Morrison sessions. We all hopped upon that cloud, and the cloud took us away for awhile, and we made this album, and we landed when it was done." In a Rolling Stone interview in 1972, Morrison told John Grissim, Jr.: "I was really pretty happy with the album. The only complaint I had was that it was rather rushed. But I thought it was closer to the type of music I wanted to put out. And still is, actually."
in painting, which similarly seeks to evoke emotions associated with an image. Although usually described as a "song cycle" rather than a concept album, the songs do (when considered in their totality) seem to link together, forming a loose narrative.
The album embraces a form of symbolism that would eventually become a staple of Morrison's songs, equating earthly love and heaven, or as close as a living being can approach it. Morrison and Davis's upright bass can be interpreted as the earth opposing Kay's percussion and the string arrangement representing heaven and with Berliner's lead acoustic guitar residing on a plane in between.
Van Morrison told Ritchie Yorke, one of his biographers, he wrote both of the songs "Madame George" and "Cyprus Avenue" in stream of consciousness: "['Madame George'] just came right out...The song is just a stream of consciousness thing, as is 'Cyprus Avenue'...I didn't even think about what I was writing."
In an interview with Paste
in 2009, Morrison said the songs on Astral Weeks were written "prior to 1968 over a period of five years". In an NPR review he comments: "It's not about me. It's totally fictional. It's put together of composites, of conversations I heard—you know, things I saw in movies, newspapers, books, whatever. It comes out as stories. That's it. There's no more."
"Astral Weeks"
The song "Astral Weeks" opens the album with the lines "If I ventured in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dream/ Where immobile steel rims crack, and the ditch in the back roads stop ", which according to Erik Hage
shows Morrison had "once and for all pulled neck and neck with Dylan as a lyricist." It is two chords in 3/4 time that "travels a linear poetic path, continually resolving itself, not with a chorus but with the finishing line 'to be born again'". Morrison described it as "one of those songs where you can see the light at the end of the tunnel... I don't think I can elaborate on it any more than that." The words in the song: "Talkin' to Huddie Ledbetter/Showin' pictures on the wall" appear to be based on Morrison's real life custom of carrying around a poster of Lead Belly and hanging it on the wall wherever he lived. (This was revealed in a Rolling Stone interview in 1978.)
"Beside You"
"Beside You", the second song on the album, has been described as "expressionistic poetry and a scattershot collection of images and scenarios". It begins with the classical guitar of Jay Berliner
and Morrison's voice circling each other. Morrison described it as "the kind of song that you'd sing to a kid or somebody that you love. It's basically a love song. It's just a song about being spiritually beside somebody." It was originally recorded for Bang Records
in December 1967. That first recording shows the pop music intentions of Bert Berns
which give it a different sound than on the Astral Weeks recording.
"Sweet Thing"
"Sweet Thing" is the only song on the album to look forward instead of backward. In the words of The Allmusic reviewer: "Over the endlessly descending, circular progression, Morrison sings positive lyrics about nature and a romantic partner, seemingly beginning in the middle of a thought: 'And I will stroll the merry way.'" Paul Du Noyer
wrote, "Sweet Thing puts the singer in a hazy, pastoral paradise where he wanders in 'gardens wet with rain', or counts the stars in his lover’s eyes, and vows to 'never grow so old again' or 'read between the lines'. He pleads with his mind to keep quiet, so his heart can hear itself think. He yearns to obliterate experience and rediscover innocence." It has been a more popular cover song than any of the others on the album and is the only Astral Weeks song that has been included in any of Morrison's compilation albums.
"Cyprus Avenue"
The song "Cyprus Avenue" is a three chord blues composition and served for many years as the closing song for most of Morrison's live shows. Along with "Madame George", it is the centerpiece of the album and both songs are Belfast
related and highly impressionistic. The song is told from the point of view of an outsider watching from inside an automobile and getting tongue-tied as the refined school girl he fantasizes about appears and he imagines her a fine lady with "rainbow ribbons in her hair" in a carriage drawn by six white horses and "returning from a fair". Van Morrison described Cyprus Avenue as "a street in Belfast, a place where there's a lot of wealth. It wasn't far from where I was brought up and it was a very different scene. To me it was a very mystical place. It was a whole avenue lined with trees and I found it a place where I could think."
Side Two — Afterwards
"The Way Young Lovers Do"
"The Way Young Lovers Do" is described by Clinton Heylin
as a "lounge-jazz" sound that "still sticks out like Spumante at a champagne buffet." In his review for Rolling Stone, Greil Marcus
also spoke of the song as a "poor jazz-flavored cut that, is uncomfortably out of place on this record." Brian Hinton
describes it as there being "a Sinatra strut to Van's voice, a blues knowingness with Stax brass, and a string section which swirls where previously it drifted." He describes it as "about growing up, an adolescent first kiss..."
"Madame George"
Called the other album masterpiece (along with Cyprus Avenue) the song is almost ten minutes long and tells of the mysterious "Madame George" "in a corner playing dominoes in drag" among other things. It also has a setting of Cyprus Avenue in Belfast with impressionistic lyrics that give stream-of-conscious details that are seemingly unrelated. Erik Hage describes the effect of the sensory experience of the lyrics, the instrumentation and Morrison's impassioned vocals on the listener and the album as being "like some kind of twilight state between sleeping and wakefulness", engaging the listener to project themselves into the spell of the song. Rolling Stone
s album reviewer wrote: "The crowning touch is 'Madame George', a cryptic character study that may or may not be about an aging transvestite but that is certainly as heartbreaking a reverie as you will find in pop music." Morrison has denied that the song is about a transvestite, as others, including Lester Bangs
, have believed. The original title of the song is "Madame Joy" and Morrison later changed the title although he actually sings the words "Madame Joy" in the song. An earlier recording for Bang Records with slightly altered lyrics, backing singers, a much swifter tempo and a "bizarrely inappropriate party atmosphere" changes the tone considerably from the Astral Weeks recording.
"Ballerina"
The oldest composition on Astral Weeks is " Ballerina", which Morrison composed in 1966 when still a member of Them
and about the same time he first met his future wife, Janet. Inspired by "a flash about an actress in an opera house appearing in a ballet" (according to Morrison), former Them guitarist Jim Armstrong recalls the band working on the song between engagements. "[Morrison] had all these words", Armstrong says, "we sort of formalized it, 'cause there was no structure to it". Them performed the song one night in Hawaii, but it was not recorded until Astral Weeks.
"Slim Slow Slider"
"Slim Slow Slider" is the only song on the album to not have string overdubs and according to John Payne, Morrison had not played it live before. Like in the song "T.B. Sheets
", the singer tells of watching a young girl die, but in "Slim Slow Slider" the girl seems bent on her own self destruction: "I know you're dying, baby/I know you know it too." The songs ends abruptly with the words, "Every time I see you, I just don't know what to do." It has been said to be about a junkie but Morrison only has said that it's about someone "who is caught up in a big city like London or maybe is on dope, I'm not sure."
' from Europe through to Kathmandu and there were even reports of vans painted in psychedelic colours being renamed 'the Van Morrison'." A year later with the release of Moondance
, Warner Bros. ran full-page advertisements with the note: "It may be a little tough to find 1969's Astral Weeks in some record stores. Damn shame. It wasn't adopted by the Pepsi set and ended up as what you might call a critically acclaimed but obscure album... If you want it and can't find it, yell at the store's record buyer. Loud, because you're the customer and you're always right. Undo the veils of potential obscurity."
In 1979, Lester Bangs
wrote in an essay, published in the book Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island, "Van Morrison was twenty-two or twenty-three—years old when he made this record; there are lifetimes behind it. What Astral Weeks deals in are not facts but truths. Astral Weeks, insofar as it can be pinned down, is a record about people stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralyzed by the enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend."
In a 2004 review, Sean O'Hagan with The Observer
described the album as: "Ultimately unreadable, utterly singular, it remains one of those rare albums that actually lives up to the extravagant claims made on its behalf." In another article about Astral Weeks in November 2008, O'Hagan wrote that "Its singularity lies, as Costello points out, in its vaulting ambition. It is neither folk nor jazz nor blues, though there are traces of all three in the music and in Morrison's raw and emotionally charged singing. There are no solos save for the ethereal flute and soprano saxophone improvisations that are woven through the last, and shortest, song, 'Slim Slow Slider', the album's elegiac coda. Throughout, there are interludes of breathtaking beauty when the music surges and subsides, rises and falls, around Morrison's voice."
Alan Light of CNN
Time magazine wrote in 2006 that "Morrison sings of lost love, death and nostalgia for childhood in the Celtic soul that would become his signature." Light asserted that "Astral Weeks didn't reach the charts, but its mystic poetry, spacious grooves, and romantic incantations still resonate in ways no other music can." The Rolling Stone
reviewer wrote that the album was "soft, reflective, hypnotic, haunted by the ghosts of old blues singers and ancient Celts and performed by a group of extraordinary jazz musicians". Again noting the album's rare hypnotic effects, Allmusic's review describes its "unique musical power". Joe Levy remarks: "Astral Weeks is about a different way of organizing thought, a different way of organizing music. It's otherworldly." Popmatters
noted: "Because everything came together and then somehow disappeared, one could argue Astral Weeks came to life much like John Milton’s exhortation at the beginning of “Paradise Lost”: through the muse’s effervescent mists."
Music critic Greil Marcus
, said that Martin Scorsese
told him, in 1978, that the first fifteen minutes of his movie Taxi Driver
was based on Astral Weeks. In an NPR review, Marcus, who says he has listened to the Astral Weeks record more than any other, comments about it: "You can hear these moments of invention and gasping for air, and you reach your hand and close your fist and when you open your fist there's a butterfly in it. There was really something there, but you couldn't have seen it. You couldn't have known."
Glen Hansard
of The Frames
says that he was captivated by the feeling of freedom when he first heard the album. Hansard says: "It made me realize that so much of what makes music great is courage, and up to that, what I thought made music great was practice and study...This album says there's more to life than you thought. Life can be lived more deeply, with a greater sense of fear and horror and desire than you ever imagined." Niall Stokes
of Hot Press
praised the album upon its being voted as best Irish album of all time in 2009: “Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks is a worthy poll-topper. It’s an extraordinary work, packed with marvelously evocative songs that are rooted in Belfast but which deliver a powerful and lasting universal poetic resonance. Astral Weeks has consistently appeared in polls of the Greatest Albums of All Time, in the US, the UK and all over the world – so it has been widely recognized as a really important work of art." The album's producer Lewis Merenstein
said in 2009: "To this day it gives me pain to hear it. Pain is the wrong word—I'm so moved by it."
In December 2010, writing in Tablet Magazine
, Lieb Liebovitz called the album "one of very few albums I know that possess the quality of redemption." He explained that: "No matter what afflictions you, the listener, might bring into the experience, no matter how much woe or heartache or ennui or sweet melancholy, Morrison’s howls—and the swirling musical notes that accompany them—will purge you of your sadness."
wrote "It was almost as if Van Morrison, elusive at any time, had deliberately created an album of music which would indefinitely withstand the vulgarity of music industry image-making. Later they might say that other albums were reminiscent of Astral Weeks, but they could never claim that Astral Weeks was like anything else."
Greil Marcus refers to the impact of the album calling it a "common language" and relates that: "I was so shocked when I was teaching a seminar at Princeton just a couple years ago, and out of 16 students, four of them said their favorite album was Astral Weeks." Marcus goes on to say, "Now, how did it enter their lives? We're talking about an album that was recorded well before they were born, and yet it spoke to them. They understood its language as soon as they heard it."
Elvis Costello
described Astral Weeks as "still the most adventurous record made in the rock medium, and there hasn't been a record with that amount of daring made since." Johnny Depp
, in a Rolling Stone interview in 2008, recalled how when he was a preteen his older brother (by ten years) tiring of Johnny's favorite music of the time said, "'Try this.' And he put on Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. And it stirred me. I'd never heard anything like it." Steven Van Zandt
(Bruce Springsteen
's E Street Band
) has said: "Astral Weeks was like a religion to us." Joan Armatrading
has said that Astral Weeks was the first album she purchased as a teenager and that it opened her up musically. In August 2010, director and choreographer, Jessica Wallenfels, staged a production in Portland, Oregon
of a rock opera/story ballet of Astral Weeks called "Find me Beside You".
Astral Weeks has often appeared on "best of all time" album lists including the #2 rating by Mojo
In 1995 and the #19 ranking by Rolling Stone in 2003.The Times
listed Astral Weeks at #3 of The Times All Time Top 100 Albums. In 1998, it was voted the 9th greatest album of all time in a "Music of the Millennium" poll conducted by HMV
, Channel 4
and The Guardian
. In 2000, Q magazine
placed it at #6 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever. It was listed along with Moondance
among the All-Time 100 albums by CNN
Time magazine in November 2006. In 2009, it was voted #6 on the list of The 100 Greatest Singer-Songwriter Albums of All Time by the editors at Amazon.com
. In December 2009, it was voted the top Irish album of all time by a poll of leading Irish musicians taken by Hot Press
magazine.
In 1999, Astral Weeks and Moondance
, Morrison's next album, were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Astral Weeks was reissued by Warner Bros.
on 180 g. vinyl in December 2008.
, one of Van Morrison's biographers, Irish painter Cecil McCartney influenced the titling of Astral Weeks. Morrison related how "A friend of mine had drawings in his flat of astral projection. I was at his house when I was working on a song which began, 'If I venture down the slipstream' and that's why I called it 'Astral Weeks'." "It was a painting," McCartney corrects. "There were several paintings in the studio at the time. Van looked at the painting and it suggested astral travelling to him." The album cover photograph of Van Morrison was taken by Joel Brodsky
, best known for his "Young Lions" photoshoot with Jim Morrison
. The squared circle in the cover photo is described as portraying "the mystic symbol of the union of opposites; the sacred marriage of heaven and earth".
in Los Angeles, California playing the entire Astral Weeks album. The band featured Jay Berliner
who played on the classic album released forty years previously.
A live album entitled Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl
was released by Van Morrison's record label, Listen to the Lion, on 24 February 2009. It was also issued as a double vinyl LP album released the same date. A DVD featuring the Hollywood Bowl performances and entitled Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl: The Concert Film
was released on 19 May 2009.
When asked by Rolling Stone contributing editor, David Wild
why he is performing the album again live after forty years, Morrison replied: "It received no promotion, from Warner Bros.—that's why I never got to play the songs live. I had always wanted to play the record live and fully orchestrated—that is what this is all about. I always like live recording and I like listening to live records too. I'm not too fond of being in a studio—it's too contrived and too confining. I like the freedom of live, in-the-moment sound."
As for the songs on the original album, Morrison told Los Angeles Times
columnist Randy Lewis: "The songs are poetic stories, so the meaning is the same as always—timeless and unchanging. The songs are works of fiction that will inherently have a different meaning for different people. People take from it whatever their disposition to take from it is."
Side one:
In The Beginning
Side two
Afterwards
Production
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
singer-songwriter Van Morrison
Van Morrison
Van Morrison, OBE is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician. His live performances at their best are regarded as transcendental and inspired; while some of his recordings, such as the studio albums Astral Weeks and Moondance, and the live album It's Too Late to Stop Now, are widely...
, released in November 1968 on Warner Bros. Records
Warner Bros. Records
Warner Bros. Records Inc. is an American record label. It was the foundation label of the present-day Warner Music Group, and now operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of that corporation. It maintains a close relationship with its former parent, Warner Bros. Pictures, although the two companies...
. It was Morrison's first album after Warner Bros. had been able to free him from his contract with Bang Records
Bang Records
Bang Records was created by Bert Berns in 1965 together with his partners from Atlantic Records: Ahmet Ertegün, Nesuhi Ertegün and Jerry Wexler...
. The recording sessions were set up by the production-management team of Lewis Merenstein
Lewis Merenstein
Lewis Merenstein is most famous as the record producer for the Van Morrison album, Astral Weeks, and as executive producer for Moondance, Morrison's 1970 album.Astral Weeks is listed as #19 on the Rolling Stone Magazine's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003...
and Bob Schwaid and took place during three sessions in September and October 1968.
Blending a mixture of folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, and classical music
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
, it was a complete departure from his previous pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
hit, Brown Eyed Girl
Brown Eyed Girl
"Brown Eyed Girl" is a song by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. Written and recorded in 1967 by Van Morrison and produced by Bang Records chief Bert Berns, it was first released in May 1967 on the album Blowin' Your Mind!. When released as a single, it rose to number eight on the...
, released in 1967. Astral Weeks is often referred to as a song cycle
Song cycle
A song cycle is a group of songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a single entity. As a rule, all of the songs are by the same composer and often use words from the same poet or lyricist. Unification can be achieved by a narrative or a persona common to the songs, or even, as in Schumann's...
or concept album
Concept album
In music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical." Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing...
with lyrics described as impressionistic
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
, hypnotic
Hypnosis
Hypnosis is "a trance state characterized by extreme suggestibility, relaxation and heightened imagination."It is a mental state or imaginative role-enactment . It is usually induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction, which is commonly composed of a long series of preliminary...
, and stream-of-consciousness.
It received critical acclaim immediately upon its first release and subsequently has been placed on numerous widely circulated lists of best albums of all time. The 1995 Mojo
Mojo (magazine)
MOJO is a popular music magazine published initially by Emap, and since January 2008 by Bauer, monthly in the United Kingdom. Following the success of the magazine Q, publishers Emap were looking for a title which would cater for the burgeoning interest in classic rock music...
list of the 100 Best Albums ranked it as number two, and it ranked nineteenth on Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003. It became and remains a cult
Cult
The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices...
favourite, despite the fact that it failed to achieve significant mainstream sales success for decades; after 33 years, it finally achieved gold in 2001.
Background
At the beginning of 1968, Van Morrison became involved in a contract dispute with Bang RecordsBang Records
Bang Records was created by Bert Berns in 1965 together with his partners from Atlantic Records: Ahmet Ertegün, Nesuhi Ertegün and Jerry Wexler...
that kept him away from any recording activity. This occurred after the sudden death of the label's founder Bert Berns
Bert Berns
Bertrand Russell Berns , most commonly known as Bert Berns as well as Bert Russell and Russell Byrd, was an American songwriter and record producer of the 1960s...
; born with a congenital heart defect, Berns experienced a massive heart attack and was discovered dead in a New York hotel room on 30 December 1967. Prior to Berns' death, he and Morrison had experienced some creative difficulties. Berns had been pushing Morrison towards a more pop-oriented direction, while Morrison wanted to explore newer musical terrain. As a result, Berns' widow, Ilene Berns, held Morrison and this conflict as responsible for her husband's death. Years later she would downplay this scenario but Morrison's ex-wife Janet (Planet) Minto has gone on record describing her initial subsequent vindictiveness towards Morrison.
Upon Bert Berns death, Ilene Berns inherited the contracts of Bang Records. Morrison's annual option on his recording contract was also due less than a week after Berns' funeral. Legally bound to Bang Records, Morrison was not only kept out of the studio, but he also found himself unable to find performing work in New York as most clubs refrained from booking him, fearing reprisals. Ilene Berns then discovered that her late husband previously had been remiss in filing all the appropriate paperwork to keep Morrison (still a British citizen) in New York. She contacted Immigration and Naturalization Service
Immigration and Naturalization Service
The United States Immigration and Naturalization Service , now referred to as Legacy INS, ceased to exist under that name on March 1, 2003, when most of its functions were transferred from the Department of Justice to three new components within the newly created Department of Homeland Security, as...
and attempted to have Morrison deported. However, Morrison managed to stay in the U.S. when his then-girlfriend Janet (Planet) Rigsbee agreed to marry him. Once married, Morrison and his wife moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
, where he found work performing in the local clubs. Morrison began performing with a small electric combo doing blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
numbers, songs from Blowin' Your Mind!
Blowin' Your Mind!
- Musicians :* Van Morrison – guitar, vocals* Eric Gale - - Production :* Vic Anesini – Mastering* Brooks Arthur – Engineer* Bert Berns – Arranger, Director, Producer, Liner Notes* Adam Block – Project Director...
and from Morrison's Them
Them (band)
Them were a Northern Irish band formed in Belfast in April 1964, most prominently known for the garage rock standard "Gloria" and launching singer Van Morrison's musical career...
band days. Two of the musicians soon left but Morrison did retain the bassist, Tom Kielbania, a student at the Berklee School of Music. At that juncture, Morrison decided to try an acoustic sound, and he and Kielbania began performing shows in coffee houses in the Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
area as an acoustic duo with Morrison playing guitar and Kielbania on upright bass. Before this, Morrison had primarily recorded and performed with electric musicians. The acoustic medium would provide him "greater vocal improvisation and a freer, folkier feel."
Later, Kielbania heard flautist John Payne for the first time while sitting in on a jazz jam session. He Invited Payne to the club where he played with Morrison, hoping Morrison would invite him to join them, and after allowing Payne to sit-in on one performance, Morrison did extend an invitation that Payne accepted. The trio of Payne, Kielbania, and Morrison continued performing for four months. In the weeks they played at the Catacombs, they began to develop the template for Astral Weeks. It was around this time that Warner Bros. Records
Warner Bros. Records
Warner Bros. Records Inc. is an American record label. It was the foundation label of the present-day Warner Music Group, and now operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of that corporation. It maintains a close relationship with its former parent, Warner Bros. Pictures, although the two companies...
approached Morrison, hoping to sign him to their roster. Presumably their interest focused on his prior success with "Brown-Eyed Girl", not on Morrison's current acoustic work. Regardless, their interest allowed Morrison to return to the recording studio.
At the time, Warner Bros. had a deal with Inherit Productions, the production arm of Schwaid-Merenstein which was founded by manager Bob Schwaid (who worked for Warners Publishing) and producer Lewis Merenstein
Lewis Merenstein
Lewis Merenstein is most famous as the record producer for the Van Morrison album, Astral Weeks, and as executive producer for Moondance, Morrison's 1970 album.Astral Weeks is listed as #19 on the Rolling Stone Magazine's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003...
. Merenstein received a call from Warner Bros. to go see Morrison in Boston and related how eight or nine producers had gone to hear Morrison thinking they were going to hear "Brown Eyed Girl" and "it was another person with the same voice." Merenstein first heard Morrison play at Ace Recording studio and recalled that when Morrison played the song, "Astral Weeks
Astral Weeks (song)
"Astral Weeks" is the title song and opening track on the 1968 album Astral Weeks by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison.-Recording:...
" for him, "I started crying. It just vibrated in my soul, and I knew that I wanted to work with that sound." While Merestein had been to see Morrison, Schwaid had set to work on resolving Morrison's contractual troubles.
Still legally bound to Bang Records, Morrison would yet have more issues with them in the future. For the time being, Schwaid managed to free him from those obligations, under several conditions. First, Morrison had to write and submit to Web IV Music (Bert Berns's publishing company) three original compositions per month over the course of one year. Morrison fulfilled that obligation by recording thirty-six nonsense songs in a single session. Such action risked legal reprisals, but ultimately none transpired. Morrison then had to assign Web IV one half of the copyright to any musical composition written and recorded by Morrison and released as a single within one year from 12 September 1968. That demand became a moot point when Warner Bros. refrained from releasing any single during that time frame. (No single was released from Astral Weeks.) Finally, Morrison had to include two original compositions controlled by Web IV on his next album. Morrison fulfilled that demand with two of his own compositions, "Madame George
Madame George
"Madame George" is a ten-minute song by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. It appears on the album Astral Weeks, released in 1968. The song features Morrison performing the vocals and acoustic guitar...
" and "Beside You
Beside You
"Beside You" is the second track on Astral Weeks the 1968 album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison and released by Warner Bros...
". (Although the versions subsequently released were vastly different musically than the original versions recorded with Bang.)
Recording sessions
With his legal matters resolved, Morrison now had the freedom to proceed with recording his Warner Bros. debut album, with the recording sessions taking place at the Century Sound Studios in New York on 25 September, 1 and 15 October 1968.Recording adjacent to Van Morrison's studio, musician John Cale
John Cale
John Davies Cale, OBE is a Welsh musician, composer, singer-songwriter and record producer who was a founding member of the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground....
reported, "Morrison couldn't work with anybody, so finally they just shut him in the studio by himself. He did all the songs with just an acoustic guitar, and later they overdubbed the rest of it around his tapes." This is, in fact, completely untrue – the live tracks for the sessions were performed by Morrison on vocals and acoustic guitar in a separate vocal booth with the other musicians playing together on upright bass, lead acoustic guitar, vibes, flute, and drums. The strings and horns constituted the only instruments added subsequently to the initial recording sessions.
Producer Lewis Merenstein had a background in jazz, and according to Merenstein, Morrison "was not an aficionado of jazz when I met him. R&B and soul, yes; but jazz, no." For the Astral Weeks recording sessions, Merenstein first contacted veteran bassist Richard Davis. Perhaps best known for his work with Eric Dolphy
Eric Dolphy
Eric Allan Dolphy was an American jazz alto saxophonist, flutist, and bass clarinetist. On a few occasions he also played the clarinet and baritone saxophone. Dolphy was one of several multi-instrumentalists to gain prominence in the 1960s...
, Davis essentially served as the session leader, and it was through Davis that Merenstein recruited guitarist Jay Berliner
Jay Berliner
Jay Berliner is an American guitarist and multi-instrumentalist. Starting with his first television experience at age 7 on NBC’s The Children’s Hour with sister Eve, his career has spanned the globe: from the Metropolitan Opera house , where he was house guitarist and mandolinist; to...
, percussionist Warren Smith, Jr.
Warren Smith (jazz musician)
Warren Smith is an American jazz percussionist.Smith was born in Chicago, Illinois, into a musical family; his father played saxophone and clarinet with Noble Sissle and Jimmy Noone, and his mother was a harpist and pianist. He studied clarinet under his father from age four...
, and drummer Connie Kay
Connie Kay
Connie Kay was an American jazz drummer.Kay was a member of the Modern Jazz Quartet from 1955 until the group's dissolution in 1974...
. All of these musicians had strong backgrounds in jazz; Berliner had worked closely with Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...
and Kay was part of the Modern Jazz Quartet
Modern Jazz Quartet
The Modern Jazz Quartet was established in 1952 by Milt Jackson , John Lewis , Percy Heath , and Kenny Clarke . Connie Kay replaced Clarke in 1955...
. Morrison was still working with Kielbania and Payne, but for these sessions, they were essentially replaced. According to Kielbania, "I got to show all the bass lines to Richard Davis. He embellished a lot of them, but I gave him the feeling."
Davis proved, perhaps, to be the most pivotal instrumentalist during these sessions. "If you listen to the album, every tune is led by Richard and everybody followed Richard and Van's voice," says Merenstein. "I knew if I brought Richard in, he would put the bottom on to support what Van wanted to do vocally, or acoustically. Then you get Jay playing those beautiful counter-lines to Van." Davis was not impressed by Morrison, but not out of disdain or any preconceived notions, but rather because Morrison's professional comportment generally did not meet Davis's expectations. "No prep, no meeting," recalls Davis. "He was remote from us, 'cause he came in and went into a booth... And that's where he stayed, isolated in a booth. I don't think he ever introduced himself to us, nor we to him... And he seemed very shy..." Drummer Connie Kay later told Rolling Stone that he approached Morrison and asked "what he wanted me to play, and he said to play whatever I felt like playing. We more or less sat there and jammed." Morrison's impression of the sessions was "The songs came together very well in the studio. Some of the tracks were first takes. [But] the musicians were really together. Those type of guys play what you're gonna do before you do it, that's how good they are."
For the Astral Weeks sessions, apparently they did not employ any lead sheets, or at least none were distributed to the musicians. "What stood out in my mind was the fact that he allowed us to stretch out," recalls Berliner. "We were used to playing to charts, but Van just played us the songs on his guitar and then told us to go ahead and play exactly what he felt." Berliner actually had great appreciation for the freedom given to him and the band; something few, if any, of them were used to. "I played a lot of classical guitar on those sessions and it was very unusual to play classical guitar in that context," says Berliner. Morrison recalled in a 2009 radio interview with Don Imus
Don Imus
John Donald "Don" Imus, Jr. is an American radio host, humorist, philanthropist and writer. His nationally-syndicated talk show, Imus in the Morning, is broadcast throughout the United States by Citadel Media and relayed on television by the Fox Business Network.-Personal life:Imus was born in...
: "They were jazz musicians and the approach was jazz. They were able to follow me. I'd tell them: Just follow where I'm going...follow my vocal, and follow the best way you can, and don't get in the way."
The first session held on 25 September 1968 produced four recordings that made it to the album. Only three had initially been intended for inclusion: "Cyprus Avenue
Cyprus Avenue
"Cyprus Avenue" is a song written by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison and included on his 1968 album Astral Weeks.In performance it was a concert highlight and closer for years to come and would end with Morrison's command, "It's too late to stop now!" as he stalked from the stage...
", "Madame George
Madame George
"Madame George" is a ten-minute song by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. It appears on the album Astral Weeks, released in 1968. The song features Morrison performing the vocals and acoustic guitar...
," and "Beside You
Beside You
"Beside You" is the second track on Astral Weeks the 1968 album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison and released by Warner Bros...
". Although not scheduled to play, Payne still attended the first session and listened as another flautist played his parts. To this day, nobody recalls the name of this flautist, nor has he been identified on any of the surviving documentation; he does play flute on the released takes of "Beside You" and "Cyprus Avenue" but is not included in the album credits. When Morrison tried to squeeze in one last tune during the end of that first session, Payne spoke up and pleaded to Merenstein to permit him to participate. Payne was then allowed to play on what became the title track of the album – "Astral Weeks
Astral Weeks (song)
"Astral Weeks" is the title song and opening track on the 1968 album Astral Weeks by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison.-Recording:...
" – the fourth song produced from this initial session. For the remainder of the sessions, John Payne played on every song.
The next session, according to John Payne, occurred early in the morning, but it did not work and nothing from this session worked for the final album. "It just didn't happen'" says Payne. "It was the wrong time of day for jazz musicians to create. I think that by the end of that session we all knew that nothing was going to be used. They just said, let's forget it." Jay Berliner was not available, so Barry Kornfeld was recruited to play lead guitar in his place. According to Merenstein, there was tension at this second session and it was stopped after about three hours. In his biography, Clinton Heylin gives the date for the second session as 1 October and states that "Only 'As Young Lovers Do' from this session would make the album" contending that this is the reason for the different "lounge-jazz sound" on this track. Morrison was quoted by Ritchie Yorke
Ritchie Yorke
Ritchie Yorke is an Australian-born author, broadcaster, historian and music journalist. Born in Brisbane in 1944, while his father was serving with the Australian Army, Yorke developed a passion for rock ‘n’ roll in his early teens.-Biography:...
as saying the album was recorded in "two eight-hour sessions, plus two overdub sessions. That was the whole album."
The third and final session on 15 October produced four more recordings that completed the album — "The Way Young Lovers Do
The Way Young Lovers Do
"The Way Young Lovers Do" is one of the songs included on Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison's second solo album Astral Weeks that was recorded in 1968 in New York City...
" "Sweet Thing
Sweet Thing (Van Morrison song)
"Sweet Thing" is one of the songs included on Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison's 1968 acclaimed second album Astral Weeks. It was on the first side of the album, that was under the heading: In the Beginning...
", "Ballerina
Ballerina (Van Morrison song)
"Ballerina" is the second to last song on Astral Weeks, the 1968 album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison.-Recording and composition:...
" and "Slim Slow Slider
Slim Slow Slider
"Slim Slow Slider" is the closing track on the 1968 album Astral Weeks by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison.-Recording and composition:...
". Both "Sweet Thing" and "Ballerina" were originally scheduled for the session, but the search for a 'closer' consumed a considerable amount of time. They attempted (and rejected) a number of songs until Morrison suggested "Slim Slow Slider". "I don't think we'd ever done [it] live," recalls Payne. "[Morrison] had a book full of songs... I don't know why he decided to do it...And we were first doing it with the drums, with Richard Davis and Connie Kay and the guitar player and the vibe player and me and Van — all of us were playing. Then I started playing soprano sax on the thing, and Lew said, 'OK, I wanna try it again. Start again. And I want just the bass, the soprano sax, and Van.'" It was a successful take, but it also came with a very long coda, prompting Merenstein to make a large cut during the editing process. Many of the tracks on Astral Weeks would be subjected to edits (mainly to tighten the performances), but the one on "Slim Slow Slider" was easily the most substantial. "I would estimate three, five minutes of instrumental stuff," says Payne. "We went through stages [until] we got to be avant-garde kind of weird, which is what you hear after the splice- all that weird stuff we're playing — but there was a whole progression to that." According to Merenstein, before he cut it, the coda "was a long, long ending that went nowhere, that just carried on from minute to minute...If it had [some] relativity to the tune itself, I would have left it there."
The recording engineer for the album, Brooks Arthur, remembered the sessions in 2009: "A cloud came along, and it was called the Van Morrison sessions. We all hopped upon that cloud, and the cloud took us away for awhile, and we made this album, and we landed when it was done." In a Rolling Stone interview in 1972, Morrison told John Grissim, Jr.: "I was really pretty happy with the album. The only complaint I had was that it was rather rushed. But I thought it was closer to the type of music I wanted to put out. And still is, actually."
Composition
With varied rhythms and frenzied vocals, mixed with bizarre lyrics that evoke images instead of coherent ideas and narratives, Astral Weeks has been compared to the school of ImpressionismImpressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
in painting, which similarly seeks to evoke emotions associated with an image. Although usually described as a "song cycle" rather than a concept album, the songs do (when considered in their totality) seem to link together, forming a loose narrative.
The album embraces a form of symbolism that would eventually become a staple of Morrison's songs, equating earthly love and heaven, or as close as a living being can approach it. Morrison and Davis's upright bass can be interpreted as the earth opposing Kay's percussion and the string arrangement representing heaven and with Berliner's lead acoustic guitar residing on a plane in between.
Van Morrison told Ritchie Yorke, one of his biographers, he wrote both of the songs "Madame George" and "Cyprus Avenue" in stream of consciousness: "['Madame George'] just came right out...The song is just a stream of consciousness thing, as is 'Cyprus Avenue'...I didn't even think about what I was writing."
In an interview with Paste
Paste (magazine)
Paste is a monthly music and entertainment digital magazine published in the United States by Wolfgang's Vault. Its tagline is "Signs of Life in Music, Film and Culture."-History:...
in 2009, Morrison said the songs on Astral Weeks were written "prior to 1968 over a period of five years". In an NPR review he comments: "It's not about me. It's totally fictional. It's put together of composites, of conversations I heard—you know, things I saw in movies, newspapers, books, whatever. It comes out as stories. That's it. There's no more."
Songs
Side One — In The Beginning"Astral Weeks"
The song "Astral Weeks" opens the album with the lines "If I ventured in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dream/ Where immobile steel rims crack, and the ditch in the back roads stop ", which according to Erik Hage
Erik Hage
Erik Hage is an American writer, cultural reporter, and critic raised in Boston and New York State. His books include the critical biography The Words and Music of Van Morrison and the work of literary criticism Cormac McCarthy: A Literary Companion , which was deemed "indispensable," "engaging,"...
shows Morrison had "once and for all pulled neck and neck with Dylan as a lyricist." It is two chords in 3/4 time that "travels a linear poetic path, continually resolving itself, not with a chorus but with the finishing line 'to be born again'". Morrison described it as "one of those songs where you can see the light at the end of the tunnel... I don't think I can elaborate on it any more than that." The words in the song: "Talkin' to Huddie Ledbetter/Showin' pictures on the wall" appear to be based on Morrison's real life custom of carrying around a poster of Lead Belly and hanging it on the wall wherever he lived. (This was revealed in a Rolling Stone interview in 1978.)
"Beside You"
"Beside You", the second song on the album, has been described as "expressionistic poetry and a scattershot collection of images and scenarios". It begins with the classical guitar of Jay Berliner
Jay Berliner
Jay Berliner is an American guitarist and multi-instrumentalist. Starting with his first television experience at age 7 on NBC’s The Children’s Hour with sister Eve, his career has spanned the globe: from the Metropolitan Opera house , where he was house guitarist and mandolinist; to...
and Morrison's voice circling each other. Morrison described it as "the kind of song that you'd sing to a kid or somebody that you love. It's basically a love song. It's just a song about being spiritually beside somebody." It was originally recorded for Bang Records
Bang Records
Bang Records was created by Bert Berns in 1965 together with his partners from Atlantic Records: Ahmet Ertegün, Nesuhi Ertegün and Jerry Wexler...
in December 1967. That first recording shows the pop music intentions of Bert Berns
Bert Berns
Bertrand Russell Berns , most commonly known as Bert Berns as well as Bert Russell and Russell Byrd, was an American songwriter and record producer of the 1960s...
which give it a different sound than on the Astral Weeks recording.
"Sweet Thing"
"Sweet Thing" is the only song on the album to look forward instead of backward. In the words of The Allmusic reviewer: "Over the endlessly descending, circular progression, Morrison sings positive lyrics about nature and a romantic partner, seemingly beginning in the middle of a thought: 'And I will stroll the merry way.'" Paul Du Noyer
Paul Du Noyer
Paul Du Noyer is a British rock journalist and author. He was born in Liverpool and educated at the London School of Economics. He has written and edited for NME, Q, and Mojo...
wrote, "Sweet Thing puts the singer in a hazy, pastoral paradise where he wanders in 'gardens wet with rain', or counts the stars in his lover’s eyes, and vows to 'never grow so old again' or 'read between the lines'. He pleads with his mind to keep quiet, so his heart can hear itself think. He yearns to obliterate experience and rediscover innocence." It has been a more popular cover song than any of the others on the album and is the only Astral Weeks song that has been included in any of Morrison's compilation albums.
"Cyprus Avenue"
The song "Cyprus Avenue" is a three chord blues composition and served for many years as the closing song for most of Morrison's live shows. Along with "Madame George", it is the centerpiece of the album and both songs are Belfast
Belfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
related and highly impressionistic. The song is told from the point of view of an outsider watching from inside an automobile and getting tongue-tied as the refined school girl he fantasizes about appears and he imagines her a fine lady with "rainbow ribbons in her hair" in a carriage drawn by six white horses and "returning from a fair". Van Morrison described Cyprus Avenue as "a street in Belfast, a place where there's a lot of wealth. It wasn't far from where I was brought up and it was a very different scene. To me it was a very mystical place. It was a whole avenue lined with trees and I found it a place where I could think."
Side Two — Afterwards
"The Way Young Lovers Do"
"The Way Young Lovers Do" is described by Clinton Heylin
Clinton Heylin
Clinton Heylin is an English author who has written extensively about popular music and the work of Bob Dylan.- Education :...
as a "lounge-jazz" sound that "still sticks out like Spumante at a champagne buffet." In his review for Rolling Stone, Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a much broader framework of culture and politics than is customary in pop music journalism.-Life and career:Marcus was born in San Francisco...
also spoke of the song as a "poor jazz-flavored cut that, is uncomfortably out of place on this record." Brian Hinton
Brian Hinton
Brian Hinton, MBE is an English poet and musicologist. In June 2006 he was honoured in H. M. the Queen’s Birthday Honours List with an MBE for services to the Arts.-Education:...
describes it as there being "a Sinatra strut to Van's voice, a blues knowingness with Stax brass, and a string section which swirls where previously it drifted." He describes it as "about growing up, an adolescent first kiss..."
"Madame George"
Called the other album masterpiece (along with Cyprus Avenue) the song is almost ten minutes long and tells of the mysterious "Madame George" "in a corner playing dominoes in drag" among other things. It also has a setting of Cyprus Avenue in Belfast with impressionistic lyrics that give stream-of-conscious details that are seemingly unrelated. Erik Hage describes the effect of the sensory experience of the lyrics, the instrumentation and Morrison's impassioned vocals on the listener and the album as being "like some kind of twilight state between sleeping and wakefulness", engaging the listener to project themselves into the spell of the song. Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
s album reviewer wrote: "The crowning touch is 'Madame George', a cryptic character study that may or may not be about an aging transvestite but that is certainly as heartbreaking a reverie as you will find in pop music." Morrison has denied that the song is about a transvestite, as others, including Lester Bangs
Lester Bangs
Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs was an American music journalist, author and musician. He wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines, and was known for his leading influence in rock 'n' roll criticism....
, have believed. The original title of the song is "Madame Joy" and Morrison later changed the title although he actually sings the words "Madame Joy" in the song. An earlier recording for Bang Records with slightly altered lyrics, backing singers, a much swifter tempo and a "bizarrely inappropriate party atmosphere" changes the tone considerably from the Astral Weeks recording.
"Ballerina"
The oldest composition on Astral Weeks is " Ballerina", which Morrison composed in 1966 when still a member of Them
Them (band)
Them were a Northern Irish band formed in Belfast in April 1964, most prominently known for the garage rock standard "Gloria" and launching singer Van Morrison's musical career...
and about the same time he first met his future wife, Janet. Inspired by "a flash about an actress in an opera house appearing in a ballet" (according to Morrison), former Them guitarist Jim Armstrong recalls the band working on the song between engagements. "[Morrison] had all these words", Armstrong says, "we sort of formalized it, 'cause there was no structure to it". Them performed the song one night in Hawaii, but it was not recorded until Astral Weeks.
"Slim Slow Slider"
"Slim Slow Slider" is the only song on the album to not have string overdubs and according to John Payne, Morrison had not played it live before. Like in the song "T.B. Sheets
T.B. Sheets
"T.B. Sheets" is a blues-influenced song written and recorded by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison, recorded for the Bang Records label in 1967 and included on his first solo album, Blowin' Your Mind!. It later appeared on the Bang compilation, T.B. Sheets.-Recording:"T.B...
", the singer tells of watching a young girl die, but in "Slim Slow Slider" the girl seems bent on her own self destruction: "I know you're dying, baby/I know you know it too." The songs ends abruptly with the words, "Every time I see you, I just don't know what to do." It has been said to be about a junkie but Morrison only has said that it's about someone "who is caught up in a big city like London or maybe is on dope, I'm not sure."
Reception
Astral Weeks received critical acclaim soon after being released, but it was not a best selling album with the general public, even though Rolling Stone named it album of the year and Melody Maker called it "one of the strongest albums of the year". Steve Turner relates how it was "one of the essential albums for travellers on the 'hippie trailHippie trail
The hippie trail is a term used to describe the journeys taken by hippies and others in the 1960s and 1970s from Europe overland to and from southern Asia, mainly India, Pakistan and Nepal...
' from Europe through to Kathmandu and there were even reports of vans painted in psychedelic colours being renamed 'the Van Morrison'." A year later with the release of Moondance
Moondance
Moondance is the third solo album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. It was released on Warner Bros. Records on 28 February 1970 and peaked at #29 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart....
, Warner Bros. ran full-page advertisements with the note: "It may be a little tough to find 1969's Astral Weeks in some record stores. Damn shame. It wasn't adopted by the Pepsi set and ended up as what you might call a critically acclaimed but obscure album... If you want it and can't find it, yell at the store's record buyer. Loud, because you're the customer and you're always right. Undo the veils of potential obscurity."
In 1979, Lester Bangs
Lester Bangs
Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs was an American music journalist, author and musician. He wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines, and was known for his leading influence in rock 'n' roll criticism....
wrote in an essay, published in the book Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island, "Van Morrison was twenty-two or twenty-three—years old when he made this record; there are lifetimes behind it. What Astral Weeks deals in are not facts but truths. Astral Weeks, insofar as it can be pinned down, is a record about people stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralyzed by the enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend."
In a 2004 review, Sean O'Hagan with The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
described the album as: "Ultimately unreadable, utterly singular, it remains one of those rare albums that actually lives up to the extravagant claims made on its behalf." In another article about Astral Weeks in November 2008, O'Hagan wrote that "Its singularity lies, as Costello points out, in its vaulting ambition. It is neither folk nor jazz nor blues, though there are traces of all three in the music and in Morrison's raw and emotionally charged singing. There are no solos save for the ethereal flute and soprano saxophone improvisations that are woven through the last, and shortest, song, 'Slim Slow Slider', the album's elegiac coda. Throughout, there are interludes of breathtaking beauty when the music surges and subsides, rises and falls, around Morrison's voice."
Alan Light of CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
Time magazine wrote in 2006 that "Morrison sings of lost love, death and nostalgia for childhood in the Celtic soul that would become his signature." Light asserted that "Astral Weeks didn't reach the charts, but its mystic poetry, spacious grooves, and romantic incantations still resonate in ways no other music can." The Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
reviewer wrote that the album was "soft, reflective, hypnotic, haunted by the ghosts of old blues singers and ancient Celts and performed by a group of extraordinary jazz musicians". Again noting the album's rare hypnotic effects, Allmusic's review describes its "unique musical power". Joe Levy remarks: "Astral Weeks is about a different way of organizing thought, a different way of organizing music. It's otherworldly." Popmatters
PopMatters
PopMatters is an international webzine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater,...
noted: "Because everything came together and then somehow disappeared, one could argue Astral Weeks came to life much like John Milton’s exhortation at the beginning of “Paradise Lost”: through the muse’s effervescent mists."
Music critic Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a much broader framework of culture and politics than is customary in pop music journalism.-Life and career:Marcus was born in San Francisco...
, said that Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
told him, in 1978, that the first fifteen minutes of his movie Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver is a 1976 American drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader. The film is set in New York City, soon after the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro and features Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, and Cybill Shepherd. The film was nominated for four Academy...
was based on Astral Weeks. In an NPR review, Marcus, who says he has listened to the Astral Weeks record more than any other, comments about it: "You can hear these moments of invention and gasping for air, and you reach your hand and close your fist and when you open your fist there's a butterfly in it. There was really something there, but you couldn't have seen it. You couldn't have known."
Glen Hansard
Glen Hansard
Glen Hansard is the Academy Award–winning principal songwriter and vocalist/guitarist for Irish group The Frames and one half of folk rock duo, The Swell Season...
of The Frames
The Frames
The Frames are an Irish band based in Dublin. Founded in 1990 by Glen Hansard, the band has been influential in the Dublin rock music scene. The group has released six albums...
says that he was captivated by the feeling of freedom when he first heard the album. Hansard says: "It made me realize that so much of what makes music great is courage, and up to that, what I thought made music great was practice and study...This album says there's more to life than you thought. Life can be lived more deeply, with a greater sense of fear and horror and desire than you ever imagined." Niall Stokes
Niall Stokes
Niall Stokes is the award-winning editor of the long-running fortnightly Ireland music and political magazine Hot Press based in Dublin. He has edited the magazine since 1977. He has been a longstanding champion of Irish music, most famously U2 in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s...
of Hot Press
Hot Press
Hot Press is a fortnightly music and political magazine based in Dublin, Ireland founded in 1977. The magazine has been edited since its inception by Niall Stokes. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, it had a circulation of 19,215 during 2007...
praised the album upon its being voted as best Irish album of all time in 2009: “Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks is a worthy poll-topper. It’s an extraordinary work, packed with marvelously evocative songs that are rooted in Belfast but which deliver a powerful and lasting universal poetic resonance. Astral Weeks has consistently appeared in polls of the Greatest Albums of All Time, in the US, the UK and all over the world – so it has been widely recognized as a really important work of art." The album's producer Lewis Merenstein
Lewis Merenstein
Lewis Merenstein is most famous as the record producer for the Van Morrison album, Astral Weeks, and as executive producer for Moondance, Morrison's 1970 album.Astral Weeks is listed as #19 on the Rolling Stone Magazine's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003...
said in 2009: "To this day it gives me pain to hear it. Pain is the wrong word—I'm so moved by it."
In December 2010, writing in Tablet Magazine
Tablet Magazine
Tablet Magazine is a two-time National Magazine Award-winning online publication of Jewish life, arts, and ideas. Sponsored by Nextbook, it was launched in June 2009. Its Editor in Chief is Alana Newhouse....
, Lieb Liebovitz called the album "one of very few albums I know that possess the quality of redemption." He explained that: "No matter what afflictions you, the listener, might bring into the experience, no matter how much woe or heartache or ennui or sweet melancholy, Morrison’s howls—and the swirling musical notes that accompany them—will purge you of your sadness."
Legacy
In his 1975 book, Ritchie YorkeRitchie Yorke
Ritchie Yorke is an Australian-born author, broadcaster, historian and music journalist. Born in Brisbane in 1944, while his father was serving with the Australian Army, Yorke developed a passion for rock ‘n’ roll in his early teens.-Biography:...
wrote "It was almost as if Van Morrison, elusive at any time, had deliberately created an album of music which would indefinitely withstand the vulgarity of music industry image-making. Later they might say that other albums were reminiscent of Astral Weeks, but they could never claim that Astral Weeks was like anything else."
Greil Marcus refers to the impact of the album calling it a "common language" and relates that: "I was so shocked when I was teaching a seminar at Princeton just a couple years ago, and out of 16 students, four of them said their favorite album was Astral Weeks." Marcus goes on to say, "Now, how did it enter their lives? We're talking about an album that was recorded well before they were born, and yet it spoke to them. They understood its language as soon as they heard it."
Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello , born Declan Patrick MacManus, is an English singer-songwriter. He came to prominence as an early participant in London's pub rock scene in the mid-1970s and later became associated with the punk/New Wave genre. Steeped in word play, the vocabulary of Costello's lyrics is broader...
described Astral Weeks as "still the most adventurous record made in the rock medium, and there hasn't been a record with that amount of daring made since." Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp
John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol...
, in a Rolling Stone interview in 2008, recalled how when he was a preteen his older brother (by ten years) tiring of Johnny's favorite music of the time said, "'Try this.' And he put on Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. And it stirred me. I'd never heard anything like it." Steven Van Zandt
Steven Van Zandt
Steven Van Zandt is an Italian-American musician, songwriter, arranger, record producer, actor, and radio disc jockey, who frequently goes by the stage names Little Steven or Miami Steve...
(Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen , nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter who records and tours with the E Street Band...
's E Street Band
E Street Band
The E Street Band has been rock musician Bruce Springsteen's primary backing band since 1972.The band has also recorded with a wide range of other artists including Bob Dylan, Meat Loaf, Bonnie Tyler, Air Supply, Dire Straits, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Stevie Nicks, Tom Morello, Sting, Ian...
) has said: "Astral Weeks was like a religion to us." Joan Armatrading
Joan Armatrading
Joan Anita Barbara Armatrading, MBE is a British singer, songwriter and guitarist. Armatrading is a three-time Grammy Award-nominee and has been nominated twice for BRIT Awards as Best Female Artist...
has said that Astral Weeks was the first album she purchased as a teenager and that it opened her up musically. In August 2010, director and choreographer, Jessica Wallenfels, staged a production in Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
of a rock opera/story ballet of Astral Weeks called "Find me Beside You".
Astral Weeks has often appeared on "best of all time" album lists including the #2 rating by Mojo
Mojo (magazine)
MOJO is a popular music magazine published initially by Emap, and since January 2008 by Bauer, monthly in the United Kingdom. Following the success of the magazine Q, publishers Emap were looking for a title which would cater for the burgeoning interest in classic rock music...
In 1995 and the #19 ranking by Rolling Stone in 2003.The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
listed Astral Weeks at #3 of The Times All Time Top 100 Albums. In 1998, it was voted the 9th greatest album of all time in a "Music of the Millennium" poll conducted by HMV
HMV
His Master's Voice is a trademark in the music business, and for many years was the name of a large record label. The name was coined in 1899 as the title of a painting of the dog Nipper listening to a wind-up gramophone...
, Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
and The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
. In 2000, Q magazine
Q (magazine)
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...
placed it at #6 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever. It was listed along with Moondance
Moondance
Moondance is the third solo album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. It was released on Warner Bros. Records on 28 February 1970 and peaked at #29 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart....
among the All-Time 100 albums by CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
Time magazine in November 2006. In 2009, it was voted #6 on the list of The 100 Greatest Singer-Songwriter Albums of All Time by the editors at Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
. In December 2009, it was voted the top Irish album of all time by a poll of leading Irish musicians taken by Hot Press
Hot Press
Hot Press is a fortnightly music and political magazine based in Dublin, Ireland founded in 1977. The magazine has been edited since its inception by Niall Stokes. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, it had a circulation of 19,215 during 2007...
magazine.
In 1999, Astral Weeks and Moondance
Moondance
Moondance is the third solo album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. It was released on Warner Bros. Records on 28 February 1970 and peaked at #29 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart....
, Morrison's next album, were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Astral Weeks was reissued by Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
on 180 g. vinyl in December 2008.
Packaging
According to Steve TurnerSteve Turner (writer)
Steve Turner is an English music journalist, biographer and poet, who grew up in Northamptonshire, England. His first published article was in the Beatles Monthly in 1969. His career as a journalist began as features editor of Beat Instrumental where he interviewed many of the prominent rock...
, one of Van Morrison's biographers, Irish painter Cecil McCartney influenced the titling of Astral Weeks. Morrison related how "A friend of mine had drawings in his flat of astral projection. I was at his house when I was working on a song which began, 'If I venture down the slipstream' and that's why I called it 'Astral Weeks'." "It was a painting," McCartney corrects. "There were several paintings in the studio at the time. Van looked at the painting and it suggested astral travelling to him." The album cover photograph of Van Morrison was taken by Joel Brodsky
Joel Brodsky
Joel Lee Brodsky was an American photographer, best known for his photography of musicians, particularly his iconic "Young Lion" photographs of Jim Morrison. In his lifetime, he is credited with photographing over 400 album covers.Brodsky was born in Brooklyn, New York and graduated from Syracuse...
, best known for his "Young Lions" photoshoot with Jim Morrison
Jim Morrison
James Douglas "Jim" Morrison was an American musician, singer, and poet, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the rock band The Doors...
. The squared circle in the cover photo is described as portraying "the mystic symbol of the union of opposites; the sacred marriage of heaven and earth".
Astral Weeks revisited
In November 2008, Van Morrison performed two concerts at the Hollywood BowlHollywood Bowl
The Hollywood Bowl is a modern amphitheater in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles, California, United States that is used primarily for music performances...
in Los Angeles, California playing the entire Astral Weeks album. The band featured Jay Berliner
Jay Berliner
Jay Berliner is an American guitarist and multi-instrumentalist. Starting with his first television experience at age 7 on NBC’s The Children’s Hour with sister Eve, his career has spanned the globe: from the Metropolitan Opera house , where he was house guitarist and mandolinist; to...
who played on the classic album released forty years previously.
A live album entitled Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl
Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl
Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl is the fifth live album recorded by Northern Irish singer/songwriter Van Morrison, and released in the US on February 24, 2009 and on February 9, 2009 in the UK...
was released by Van Morrison's record label, Listen to the Lion, on 24 February 2009. It was also issued as a double vinyl LP album released the same date. A DVD featuring the Hollywood Bowl performances and entitled Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl: The Concert Film
Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl: The Concert Film
Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl: The Concert Film is the second official DVD by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. It was released May 19, 2009 . It features the songs from his 1968 classic album, Astral Weeks...
was released on 19 May 2009.
When asked by Rolling Stone contributing editor, David Wild
David Wild
David Wild is an American writer and critic in the music and television industries and a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine. His published books include Friends: The Official Companion , Seinfeld: The Totally Unauthorized Tribute , Friends 'til the end and others.Wild was the host of...
why he is performing the album again live after forty years, Morrison replied: "It received no promotion, from Warner Bros.—that's why I never got to play the songs live. I had always wanted to play the record live and fully orchestrated—that is what this is all about. I always like live recording and I like listening to live records too. I'm not too fond of being in a studio—it's too contrived and too confining. I like the freedom of live, in-the-moment sound."
As for the songs on the original album, Morrison told Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
columnist Randy Lewis: "The songs are poetic stories, so the meaning is the same as always—timeless and unchanging. The songs are works of fiction that will inherently have a different meaning for different people. People take from it whatever their disposition to take from it is."
Track listing
All songs written by Van MorrisonVan Morrison
Van Morrison, OBE is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician. His live performances at their best are regarded as transcendental and inspired; while some of his recordings, such as the studio albums Astral Weeks and Moondance, and the live album It's Too Late to Stop Now, are widely...
Side one:
In The Beginning
- "Astral WeeksAstral Weeks (song)"Astral Weeks" is the title song and opening track on the 1968 album Astral Weeks by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison.-Recording:...
" – 7:06 - "Beside YouBeside You"Beside You" is the second track on Astral Weeks the 1968 album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison and released by Warner Bros...
" – 5:16 - "Sweet ThingSweet Thing (Van Morrison song)"Sweet Thing" is one of the songs included on Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison's 1968 acclaimed second album Astral Weeks. It was on the first side of the album, that was under the heading: In the Beginning...
" – 4:25 - "Cyprus AvenueCyprus Avenue"Cyprus Avenue" is a song written by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison and included on his 1968 album Astral Weeks.In performance it was a concert highlight and closer for years to come and would end with Morrison's command, "It's too late to stop now!" as he stalked from the stage...
" – 7:00
Side two
Afterwards
- "The Way Young Lovers DoThe Way Young Lovers Do"The Way Young Lovers Do" is one of the songs included on Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison's second solo album Astral Weeks that was recorded in 1968 in New York City...
" – 3:18 - "Madame GeorgeMadame George"Madame George" is a ten-minute song by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. It appears on the album Astral Weeks, released in 1968. The song features Morrison performing the vocals and acoustic guitar...
" – 9:45 - "BallerinaBallerina (Van Morrison song)"Ballerina" is the second to last song on Astral Weeks, the 1968 album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison.-Recording and composition:...
" – 7:03 - "Slim Slow SliderSlim Slow Slider"Slim Slow Slider" is the closing track on the 1968 album Astral Weeks by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison.-Recording and composition:...
" – 3:17
Personnel
Musicians- Van Morrison – vocals, rhythm guitar
- Jay BerlinerJay BerlinerJay Berliner is an American guitarist and multi-instrumentalist. Starting with his first television experience at age 7 on NBC’s The Children’s Hour with sister Eve, his career has spanned the globe: from the Metropolitan Opera house , where he was house guitarist and mandolinist; to...
– guitar - Richard Davis – double bassDouble bassThe double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
- Larry FallonLarry FallonLarry Fallon was an American composer, arranger and record producer.Arranger credits include Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, Nico's Chelsea Girl, Jimmy Cliff's Wonderful World, Beautiful People, the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" and Gil Scott-Heron's Bridges. He played the distinctive harpsichord...
– harpsichordHarpsichordA harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...
on "Cyprus Avenue" - Connie KayConnie KayConnie Kay was an American jazz drummer.Kay was a member of the Modern Jazz Quartet from 1955 until the group's dissolution in 1974...
– drums - Barry Kornfeld – guitar on "The Way Young Lovers Do"
- John Payne – fluteFluteThe flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
, soprano saxophoneSoprano saxophoneThe soprano saxophone is a variety of the saxophone, a woodwind instrument, invented in 1840. The soprano is the third smallest member of the saxophone family, which consists of the soprillo, sopranino, soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass, contrabass and tubax.A transposing instrument pitched in...
on "Slim Slow Slider" - Warren Smith, Jr.Warren Smith (jazz musician)Warren Smith is an American jazz percussionist.Smith was born in Chicago, Illinois, into a musical family; his father played saxophone and clarinet with Noble Sissle and Jimmy Noone, and his mother was a harpist and pianist. He studied clarinet under his father from age four...
– percussion, vibraphoneVibraphoneThe vibraphone, sometimes called the vibraharp or simply the vibes, is a musical instrument in the struck idiophone subfamily of the percussion family....
Production
- Producer: Lewis MerensteinLewis MerensteinLewis Merenstein is most famous as the record producer for the Van Morrison album, Astral Weeks, and as executive producer for Moondance, Morrison's 1970 album.Astral Weeks is listed as #19 on the Rolling Stone Magazine's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003...
- Engineer: Brooks Arthur
- Arranger and Conductor: Larry FallonLarry FallonLarry Fallon was an American composer, arranger and record producer.Arranger credits include Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, Nico's Chelsea Girl, Jimmy Cliff's Wonderful World, Beautiful People, the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" and Gil Scott-Heron's Bridges. He played the distinctive harpsichord...
External links
- neuma article by Michael Goldberg "The Masterpiece that is Astral Weeks" 2003-06-23
- Van Morrison revisits Astral Weeks at Hollywood Bowl Review by Rolling Stone: Gavin Edwards