Van Morrison
Van Morrison
Sir George Ivan "Van" Morrison, OBEis a Northern Irish singer, songwriter and musician. He has received six Grammy Awards, the 1994 Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, and has been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2016 he was knighted for his musical achievements and his services to tourism and charitable causes in Northern Ireland...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth31 August 1945
CityBelfast, Northern Ireland
These are the days of the endless summer, these are the days, the time is now. There is no past, there's only future, there's only here, there's only now.
Music is spiritual. The music business is not.
What I don't like is taking it to extremes and making all these intellectualizations about what basically is simple music. It's simple stream-of-consciousness stuff in my songs. What I'm trying to get across is misinterpreted.
The theory is that you don't play a song the same way twice because it's jazz. That's where I'm coming from.
It's real difficult to pin down directions. I just want to do collaboration-tape stuff.
My records do not require a lot of thought of 'What is this?' and 'What is that?' That would be too contrived for me.
I find it extremely difficult talking about my songs because there's so many different things that can make a song come together.
There's a lot of sub-conscious stuff you may write but you don't then suddenly sit down and take out your analytical books and say: I'm determined to find out where this came from. You'd probably be wrong anyway.
I can see more naturalness in basic blues, basic R & B, basic rock 'n' roll.
I'd much prefer to hear somebody like Ed Thigpen [drummer with New York session group Stuff, and featured on innumerable hits] take a solo. I mean, that's what it is. I'd much rather hear that than the jazz/rock thing because it's blowing an aspect of jazz that I really like...the level where you can snap your fingers to it and you can groove to it. You can do anything to it.
J.P. Donleavy - now he's one writer I am consistent with. He's written books that I can definitely connect with. He has amazing insights which other people missed out on. Even with his descriptions of Northern Ireland.
Joyous Sound evolved from a gospel influence. Actually it evolved out of sitting at a piano and just picking out a riff, a gospel type riff. It just seemed to come joyously-something about the song, about living in another place of joyous sounds. I'm not quite sure-that's one I'm trying to analyze. It just came out.