1984 Interview
In reputation, Morrison resembles Moliere's misanthrope: an artist so dedicated to truth that he cannot bear any polite hypocrisy. His reclusiveness only enhances his wild reputation. Lots of people who admire Van Morrison are scared of him. Yet when we met in London in the autumn of 1984, Morrison turned out to be cordial, friendly, and ready to talk. Morrison believes in the muse, that his songs come through him. When I mentioned the common philosophy--pro-work and anti-glamor--that unites "Saint Dominic's Preview", "The Great Deception" (Hard Nose the Highway), "Satisfied" (Common One), and "Cleaning Windows" (Beautiful Vision), Morrison said, "Yeah...but you see, when I write songs I don't think. There's no thinking process. In fact, it's a non-thinking process. It's very difficult for me to talk about it because when I write I'm not thinking about it. I'm just doing it." Bill Flanagan: I'd like to talk about being an artist as opposed to being a pop star. There's a great tendency now toward singers who look like fashion models and songs that go for the simplest common appeal. You made your greatest imprint in the early seventies--a time when, in the wake of Dylan and the Beatles, pop stars were expected to be serious artists. Van Morrison: Yeah, I think there was a period of time when that was expected more than it is now. In my particular case I couldn't do it any other way. I'd *done* the rock thing early on. One of my big disadvantages in the music business is that I've done a lot of things. I've covered a lot of territory that acts coming in from the seventies up are just getting to now. I started in folk music, and then I progressed to touring with rock & roll groups. So by the time my first album appeared with Warner Brothers, I wanted to leave all that behind; I'd already *done* it. Now I find myself in a business that is primarily catering to juvenilia. And I find that quite disturbing. Because I've already done my juvenilia period a long time ago, when I was that age. My belief is that rock & roll is for teenagers. When I was a teenager I did it. I did it to the hilt. I did it to death. I did rock & roll. And after I came out of my teenage years I forgot about it and moved on. It was a natural progression for me to approach things in a different way. I think it was for a lot of people during that period. But now the music industry has turned into a completely different animal. BF: Can we ever get to the point where rock or pop artists can be free of glamor? VM: See, I don't consider myself to be "pop"--or as Stephen Stills calls it, "pap"--and I never have. I've never considered myself to be pop even when I was doing rock & roll. When I was growing up we did the old style rock & roll. We did the Jerry Lee Lewis/Carl Perkins/Little Richard style. That was not pop music at that time. During the fifties pop was Rosemary Clooney. It was a different thing. After that it was the R&B movement. The R&B movement over here was actually an antiestablishment stance against the Beatles. This is something that didn't happen in America. It was against that silly image. Here you had people who wanted to play this particular form of music, and the way we had to do it was start in clubs. It was in no shape or form meant to be a commercial entity at all. Well, this was later picked up by the record companies and regurgitated into something that was called rock. But when it started it had nothing to do with rock. It was actually *against* the rock/pop movement. So there you have a case of big money and dollar manipulation turning something around into something that it wasn't and was never meant to be. And that's why you got people like Alexis Korner who just didn't want to know--who would prefer to go work in Germany and play what he wanted to play and not worry about singles or whatever. BF: Lou Reed said he wanted to make rock into something bigger than it's been--something capable of containing art, of being relevant to adults. Something that you grow up with. VM: I think rock has become a meaningless word. I think you have to find a better one. Or better still, categorize within that one word--make up categories, sub-words. Because it's gotten to the point where people think that the current trends are rock when they're not rock at all. I think some other word has to be invented. Because I personally don't have anything to do with rock, in any shape or form. For me, there's only a couple of people still playing rock & roll; Jerry Lee Lewis is one of them. Certainly there hasn't been any rock to come out in a long time. I wish I could find another category. Then I would be dealing with people from that mental viewpoint. It's extremely difficult to be an artist and be in the music business. Because you're dealing with conflict about motivation. To be inspired to write is what it is. There is no motivation when you're giving it; you just give it. I just find it hard to be a so-called pop star. It conflicts with creativity. You're expected to be at certain places at certain times and do certain things. Which is contrary to the muse. I mean, you get it when you get it. BF: So many artists imitate you. A lot of Bob Seger songs, things like John Cougar's "A Little Night Dancin'," are direct cops. But among the people obviously in your debt are some--Springsteen, Joan Armatrading, Rickie Lee Jones--who are fine artists in their own rights. Do you take their borrowings as a compliment or a rip-off? VM: Well, it's both. And I'm flattered by the compliment. Especially since a lot of these people have said it. Springsteen's acknowledged it, and he's doing his own thing. Seger's acknowledged it. But at the same time you feel sort of ripped off--not in the way one would think you would feel, but in the way that there's just people who *don't know*. That's the way you feel ripped off--in an academic context. BF: Your love for Blake and Yeats comes through in your records. You've made me go back and look into some poets more deeply. Have you ever thought about being a teacher? VM: I've thought about it quite a bit. But nobody's offered it. I've had no offers, but I've thought about it quite a bit. That's the kind of thing I'd like to do, actually. I don't know how you picked up on that. BF: You sing in "Listen to the Lion" (Saint Dominic's Preview) of sailing to Caledonia, "looking for a brand new start." It's a theme you often come back to. One often gets the feeling from your music of a quest, of a restless desire to get to a better place. VM: I don't really feel like I'm on any particular quest. I feel like you're just rediscovering things which you already know. That's what it feels like to be me. There was a time when I thought I was on some kind of journey. But then you find out that the journey's just uncovering stuff that already exists--where you are already. BF: What keeps you moving? VM: It's not a matter of something from outside keeping me moving to different places. It's just an internal thing. It's like getting back to your roots. You live in a lot of different places and it gives you a broader perspective on life in general. One becomes very cosmopolitan. But there's a big part of me that's just strictly involved with the island of Ireland. BF: Have you lived in Ireland since you were young? VM: No, but I spend a lot of time there. I think at a certain point you become a citizen of the world but you *belong* to a certain place. So I'd say I'm a citizen of Europe and America but I belong to, specifically, Ulster. BF: The British Isles are so divided, so different. Coming from Ulster you must be especially sensitive to that. Yet when you sing, "Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales / I can hear the mothers' voices calling 'Children, children'" (in "Celtic Ray"), you put forth a vision of one place, one people. VM: Well, I wouldn't want to get into that kind of territory. But...it's just basically a Celtic invocation. There's nothing political about it. BF: What musical influences have remained strong? VM: Ray Charles and James Brown still get me off. But they're not influences now. Ray Charles got me motivated. He was an early influence. But I don't really have any influences since I've done my own thing. But there's still some people I admire and listen to who can't be ignored. You were talking about poetry. Dylan is the greatest living poet. BF: Dylan seems to feel a special kinship for you. You're the only musical figure I see him quote in interviews. Even at your most popular you both seemed committed to your art, to personal visions, to creating something that would outlive you. VM: Yeah, I think that's true. Dylan's not pop. No way. We're definitely connected on various levels. It was interesting because I'd stopped thinking about the whole music business, making albums. I was quite fed up with it. Then I saw him recently and I thought, "Well, here's somebody who's still doing it and he's *good*." It sort of gave me a kick in the ass. BF: The albums that you, the Band, and Dylan made when you were all living in Woodstock projected a feeling very different from the counterculture associations "Woodstock" evoked in later years. VM: I don't know. Because I didn't really see anyone up there. I can't remember. There was definitely a vibe to that place but I don't remember. I can't remember last week. BF: Do you remember writing "Almost Independence Day" (Saint Dominic's Preview)? VM: Yeah, I remember that. I picked up the phone and the operator said, "You have a phone call from Oregon. It's Mister So-and-So." It was a guy from the group Them. And then there was nobody on the other end. So out of that I started writing, "I can hear Them calling, 'way from Oregon." That's where that came from. BF: People in Boston claim you wrote Astral Weeks when you were living up there, but everything about the album feels like Ireland. VM: No, I didn't write it in Boston. I wrote most of that in Belfast. I was carrying around those songs for a couple of years before I recorded them. One of them was written in '66, some of them in '67. But they were mostly written in Belfast. I think I wrote one of them in New York. BF: Is there a long unreleased track from the Astral Weeks sessions? I read years ago that you didn't include it because it would have made Astral Weeks a double album. VM: Yeah, but it was just recorded on a two-track tape. I never did it in a studio because I realized I couldn't do it again. It's probably thrown out by now. BF: Did the real Madame George recognize herself in your song? VM: Well, no. Because Madame George was about six or seven different people who probably couldn't find themselves in there if they tried. BF: In your 1970 Rolling Stone interview you told Happy Traum that Astral Weeks was a rock opera. Did you really mean that? VM: No. "Rock opera" was wrong. When I did that interview I'd had a few drinks. This is the problem with doing interviews. You see it later and you realize that you said things that were nonsense. That was one of them. I meant that the approach was operatic. BF: A lot of your stuff feels like it's part of something bigger than our usual experience. Dylan said once that songs come through the writer, and he cited "Tupelo Honey," saying that that song always existed, and you were the vehicle it came through. VM: That's the only way I write. That's the only way I can write. See, the unfortunate thing is getting caught up in the business of music. It tends to throw a shape on my creativity. When I was doing those albums, for instance, I really just wanted to write and record. Then there's the whole thing of, "Well, you have to go out and promote these albums," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So then it becomes a business. And the more involved in business I get, the less I write. For me writing means getting the right kind of space to write. And that's less and less frequent because I'm not in the space to write, for this to come through. It's not just a matter of sittin' down at the typewriter and bangin' away. Which sometimes I have to resort to. BF: The Wavelength album and tour seemed to be an attempt by you to satisfy the marketplace. VM: But actually it wasn't. The Wavelength album was sort of a diversion. It was just to have a bit of fun and go back to how it felt to play rock & roll. That's all it was. I think the fact that it was commercially successful really didn't have anything to do with anything. It's just the way it went down. It was intended to be a bit less serious than my other projects. BF: The Wavelength tour was the only one where you pretty much came out and played all the hits. I saw a show in Boston and it was "Caravan," "Wild Night," "Domino," and so on. Then I saw you at the Paladium in New York the next week when you stopped the show and walked off. Was one the result of the other? VM: No. That was a result of playing with a rock band. And traveling with a bunch of people who did things like stay up playing piano all night long--stupid things that you do when you're a teenager. With the result that I didn't get as much rest as I should have and I was completely exhausted. I just didn't have whatever it takes to perform. I was just, in short, fed up. I felt about as much like performing as I did like going to the moon. And the tour was too long. When the tour was originally being booked I told the Bill Graham organization [then Morrison's management] and everyone involved, "This is what I do." I mean, I've been in it long enough to know what I do. I said, "I'll do a certain amount of weeks and I'll do a certain amount of time." And they proceeded to convince me that I should do more than that. I compromised when I shouldn't have. A terrible thing to do as an artist is to compromise when you know better. So I said, "Okay." And consequently more dates were booked than I was physically capable of doing. By the time I got to New York I'd already *done* it and I was completely exhausted. I had so many nights in New York to do which I wasn't capable of doing from physical exhaustion. BF: How strict a bandleader are you? When you bring a song in to record do you tell people what to play or do you let musicians work out their own parts? VM: As far as that goes, it's got nothing to do with music. For me it's a magical event. When I go into the studio, I'm a magician. I make things happen. That's the way it is. Whatever is working in that particular time, I use, I take advantage of. It's got nothing to do with *parts*, with who plays what. Either you come in that day and make something happen or you don't. There's no thought involved in it. It's a different process. BF: You've recorded quite a few instrumentals in recent years. Do you know when you start to write that you're not going to put lyrics to some pieces? VM: This just came out of another expression of music. There are areas in music where you can say things that you can't possibly say within the context of a song: verse, chorus, bridge. Certain things just come out slightly differently. Sometimes when I'm playing something I'm just sort of humming along with it. And that's got a different vibration than an actual song. So the instrumentals just come from trying to get that form of expression, which is not the same as writing a song, it conveys some other kind of emotion, feeling. BF: The melody of "Boffyflow and Spike" (A Sense of Wonder) shifts ever so slightly over the course of the song from a Celtic feeling to country to something like Middle Eastern. Do you listen to Middle Eastern music? VM: No, I don't. I've heard some good Greek music, but I don't listen to Middle Eastern music. This is all part of the Celtic thing. Real Celtic music is not Western music. It's based on a different mode. There is a connection between the Celtic modes and Middle Eastern. BF: You mean the scales? VM: Yeah. BF: Lowell George said that Middle Eastern scales, the way the notes are bent, are real similar to blues. VM: Yeah, I believe that. BF: Do you have any idea how these Celtic, Middle Eastern, and Afro-American musical roots got mixed? VM: I don't think we could get into it. It's a bit like Pandora's box. If you've got about four weeks I'd be willing to get into this. That's how long it would take. BF: You released no album between Veedon Fleece in 1974 and Period of Transition in 1977. During those years there were rumors and stories in the press of you recording albums and refusing to release them. VM: No. People don't want you to have fun. That's what it comes down to. I'd taken some time off and I was enjoying myself. Everyone I'd run into would say, "What are you doing? Doing an album?" I was just sort of dabbling in things to do something, because everywhere I went people wanted something. I mean, there wasn't any album in me at the time. People just didn't feel good that I wasn't doing any albums and tours and being insane, that I was actually living life. They couldn't leave me alone. They made up stories that it was this, that, and the other thing. I did some sessions that were not an album as such. They didn't rate. Everybody said, "You should put it out." Simply 'cause they were putting albums out. That's all it was. I was just that kind of nonsense. BF: Into the Music seemed like a new beginning, and the material on Live at the Grand Opera House only goes that far back. Was that LP a cutoff point for you? VM: Yeah, I think that's when I got back into it. That's why I called it Into the Music. I think I sort of lost the thing somewhere along the line from being so involved with all those business people. You forget what you're doing. You're dealing with people telling you that they want to sell albums, and you lose track of why you're doing it. Once in a while you have to backtrack. Otherwise you just end up saying, "Well, there's easier ways of making money if that's what it's about." BF: "Full Force Gale" from Into the Music described a spiritual awakening. There's always been a spiritual content in your work, but it's more pronounced on your recent albums. Did you go through a conversion experience? VM: No, no. It's something I've always carried. There was no conversion experience. Not at all. I'd say I'm a Christian. I've been a Christian since I was born. But that's it. BF: Do you go to church? VM: Now and again. BF: Inarticulate Speech of the Heart has a thanks to L. Ron Hubbard. Were you involved with him? VM: Well, I've had Scientology auditing, but you should contact your nearest branch to find out about it. I'm not going to explain it. BF: There is in your music a sense of spiritual ecstasy. There's very little penance or fear of the Lord. VM: I don't really put it in words as such. It's very hard to answer this kind of question. I don't box that. BF: Your concerts can be riveting. On a good night you seem to go so far into yourself... VM: It's exactly the opposite. You go out of yourself. But it *appears* you're going in. I'm extremely shy about performing, which is probably the reason I like to write and record much more than I do to perform. To perform I almost have to assume another identity. I have to almost play a part and get psyched up to walk onstage. Otherwise I couldn't do it. So I'm playing a role, and doing the music within that context. 'Cause I'm really very shy, you see. Part of the van-the-man.info unofficial website |