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
Once you start to analyze it [Joyous Sound], you've completely lost it. That one just came.
We might think that we're really intellectual and we're going to check out the library to research the meaning every time somebody puts out a new record. It's still primitive stuff. It's the same now as it was at the beginning. It's no different now. Rock 'n' roll is spirit music-it's just coming through people.
When I started out in this business, I was a performer before I was a songwriter, I was a performer before I was recording. Performing is the roots. That's where it all came from. You didn't start out doing it because you wanted to make an album.
If you're putting somebody down, you're doing it because you're just seeing a part of yourself that you don't like. That's all that is.
When I first started drinking, it was working for me. It was great. Like when you're doing a gig and you're in a band and you're in the truck and there's nothing to do in the truck and the gigs are all the same and the hotels are all the same...it's the hotels, the car, the gig.
Definitely Muddy Waters has been a prime influence for anybody who's ever done anything rock 'n' roll.
I just like any music to swing, no matter what it is.
Jazz comes from a tradition where it swings. Swing was the main ingredient of jazz. And once it loses the swing...well, that's it.
[Jazz musicians ] couldn't cut rock. I had to be more limited and specific about what I was doing.
If you want to put your rock 'n' roll into mythology, [ A Period of Transition ] is from the Daddy Cool school.
What I really like to do is just do the twist!
Like I said, basically I'm a rocker. That's about it. Things that I've done away from that-branches that I've gotten into off of that - are just other streams, other things that I can do.
I didn't know what some of the stuff on Astral Weeks was about until years later.
I think intellectualization is what's killing most people.