Van Morrison, Essay Example

Van Morrison sits in the pantheon of rock-and-roll gods. A singular, unique artist, Morrison has virtually created his own style of rock music, an elegiac blend of folk, pop, and jazz wedded to a sold frame of rock-and-roll and R&B. Morrison’s career spans decades; in an era where aging rockers are busy playing their old hits on the county-fair and casino circuit, Morrison continues to build a fanbase. His shows still sell out amphitheaters and arenas, and his albums continue to sell millions in the age of free downloads. Morrison is known to turn in the occasional erratic performance, while others are sometimes simply uninspired. When he delivers, though, he delivers in a big way; it is for those shows that his fans are willing to wade through the less-than-stellar performances.

Born in 1945, Van Morrison began his life as George Ivan Morrison in Belfast, Ireland. He developed an interest in music at a young age, and his father gave him his first guitar when Morrison was only eleven years old. Morrison began to teach himself to play by learning guitar chords from books. Morrison’s love of music was matched by his talents, and he quickly became fairly adept at playing his guitar. Before he was even a teenager, Morrison had started his first band, the Sputniks. The band specialized in “Skiffle,” a popular style of music in Britain and Ireland in that era.

As his interests and tastes in music continued to grow, Morrison developed an interest in the saxophone; again, his father came through and purchased his son a tenor saxophone. This time, Morrison realized that he would have more success on the instrument if he took lessons, and his skills as a saxophonist soon matched his guitar-playing abilities. Morrison continued to network with local musicians, playing in a succession of bands in and around Belfast. He was cultivating a reputation as a vocalist, and he was the lead or co-lead singer in most of the band in which he played.

Morrison’s grades in school were unremarkable, and University did not seem to be an option. Belfast was a solid, working-class town in the 1960s, and Morrison appeared destined for a life of labor. Morrison did stints at various jobs around Belfast as he continued to play music with any and every one he could find. Like many young musicians with big dreams, Morrison’s parents discouraged his pursuit of musical success; undaunted, Morrison pressed on. By the age of seventeen, Morrison joined the Monarchs and embarked on his first tour of Europe. The Monarchs, like many of the young bands of the era, did brutal tours of duty in European nightclubs, playing five or six nights a week, sometimes for six hours each night. This kind of work could be a real proving-ground for dedicated up-and-coming bands; the Beatles did a now-historic residency in a German nightclub where they honed the skills and developed the signature sound that would later earn them millions.

His time in the Monarchs over, Morrison went on to form the band that would help to put him on the map for the first time. The band, known as Them, was formed out of necessity. Upon his return from Europe, Morrison found that a new club had opened in Belfast and was looking for musicians to fill its roster. Them, like the Monarchs, played long shows and needed a lot of material to fill the time. Them played covers of a lot of the popular songs of the day, but their long sets afforded Morrison the opportunity to try out his own songs as well. It was in Them that Morrison wrote his first hit, “Gloria,” a song that remains in his repertoire to this day. Them went on to develop moderate success, scoring a hit with a recorded version of “Gloria,” and playing shows in Europe and the United States.

Arguments over business and stress from touring led to a breakup of Them shortly after returning from their American tour. As Them disbanded, Morrison decided to strike out as a solo artist and to work on developing his own songwriting. Morrison’s success as a songwriter continued, and he had another hit on his hands within a year of leaving Them. That song, “Brown Eyed Girl,” is one of Morrison’s most well-known songs. “Brown Eyed Girl” was rushed to stores as part of an album that Morrison himself had not approved; he was not particularly pleased with the quality of the album’s production, and he intended to make sure that his next album was better.

The next album, Astral Weeks, was not initially well-received, and Morrison was unsure that his career as a musician would survive. Astral Weeks did eventually come to known not just as one of Morrison’s best albums, but as one of the best rock albums of all time. Classifying the album as “rock” is actually somewhat problematic, as it defies all conventional genre descriptions, mashing together jazz, R&B, folk, blues, and the sounds of Morrison’s Celtic homeland into a unique, unclassifiable blend. While Astral Weeks took some time to find an audience, his next album, Moondance, was his first big seller. Songs like the title track and “Into the Mystic” found regular airplay on rock stations in the U.S. and Europe, and Morrison’s success was cemented.

Morrison went on to record dozens of albums, and his success continued to grow throughout the 1970s. By the early 1980s, his sound and style fell out of favor with many record buyers, and he entered a period of experimentation. One of his albums from that time, Common One, was savaged by critics for being self-indulgent and overblown. Morrison would soon find his footing again, and return to a slightly more conventional style of songwriting. Though his record sales would never reach the same heights they had in the earlier years of his career, Morrison continued to cultivate a reputation as a compelling, if sometimes erratic, live performer. In a time where the economy is faltering and the record industry is disintegrating, Morrison continues to defy the odds, selling records and concert tickets to an adoring, faithful audience.

References

Collis, John. “Van Morrison: Inarticulate Speech of the Heart.” Perseus. London, UK. 1996.

Hage, Erik. “The Words and Music of Van Morrison.” Greenwood. Westport, CT. 2009.

Marcus, Greil. “When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison.” Perseus. New York, NY. 2010.

Wild, David. “Van Morrison.” Rolling Stone N 641. 1992.