1994 Vox Magazine interview

By Michelle Rocca
From the January 1995 edition of Vox Magazine
Transcribed by David Chance

He accepted a Lifetime Achievement award at this year's Brits, but Van Morrison remains media-hostile. He did, however, consent to being interviewed by a former Miss Ireland, Michelle Rocca. Coincidentally, Ms Rocca happens to be his girlfriend.

Van Morrison is not renowned for his love of the media. Throughout his 30-year recording career, he has articulated himself through his work rather than in interviews. In recent years, he has subverted the whole media process by speaking to his heroes, fellow musicians and friends rather than established journalists. Among the few who have been granted an interview with Morrison over the past five years are Spike Milligan, Bob Geldof and Shane MacGowan's longtime girlfriend Victoria Clarke.

MacGowan is one of the few contemporary musicians that Morrison, now 49, admires. They have made a series of impromptu live appearances together, most memorably at this year's Brits Ceremony, where Morrison was given a Lifetime Achievement award and MacGowan joined him for a closing rendition of 'Gloria'. MacGowan makes a humorous reference to that song on his solo debut, "The Snake", on a track called "Victoria": "Victoria, left me in an opium euphoria / With a fat monk singing Gloria," he sang, but denied that he was referring to a possible rival for his girlfriend's affections with the spurious suggestions that fat monks had been singing "Gloria" for a long time before Morrison had conceived his.

This year has seen the release of two albums bearing Morrison's name: a live album, A Night In San Francisco, and a tribute album called No Prima Donna - The Songs Of Van Morrison, which featured the likes of Sinead O'Connor, Elvis Costello and actor Liam Neeson reinterpreting Morrison's songs.

Morrison promoted the albums by doing an interview with his girlfriend and former Miss Ireland Michelle Rocca. The relationship between interviewer and interviewee ensured that Morrison was as relaxed as possible, with Rocca noting: "Despite Van's reputation for being impenetrable and deliberately vague in interviews, he's in a jocular, almost playful mood, often laughing at his own answers in a self-deprecating manner and only drawing a veil when the questioning steers round to his personal life."

Michelle Rocca: When you do an album it must feel special at the moment of creation. But once it's released, do you feel you've let it go?

Van Morrison: This minute you put it on tape and you think it's as close as you can get it, then you move on. If you don't let go, you'll get stuck there--it's like giving birth. You must go on. The whole thing about creativity is to go on. Movement!

MR: On "Make It Real One More Time" (from A Night In San Francisco), the chorus becomes a mantra.

VM: That's the way it comes out, yeah, but it's not intentional. You just go with it. Music is very difficult to analyse. In fact, you can't analyse it. It's all instinct.

MR: Your daughter Shana appeared on No Prima Donna and also accompanies you on stage these days. Would you like that to continue?

VM: Yeah. As long as I'm doing gigs, yeah.

MR: Are you very close to your daughter?

VM: I don't want to go into personal stuff.

MR: Where do your lyrics come from?

VM: All different places. Conversations. Books. Thoughts. Ideas. Everywhere.

MR: I've got the idea that your lyrics come from somewhere between sleeping and reality.

VM: Some of them might. There's no one direct source. They come from anything: from reading a paper, seeing something, having a conversation. [He lifts a carton of milk.] That could be a song, y'know.

MR: A carton of milk?

VM: Anything! Maybe the label.

MR: What goes through your mind when you do your talking-in-tongues section on stage?

VM: Nothing. It's not mental at all. It's intuition.

MR: "Tupelo Honey" obviously has a different meaning now to when you wrote it over 20 years ago.

VM: Yeah, they're always different. The more you sing songs, the more they change. Sometimes a song turns out to be the complete opposite of what you thought it was.

MR: Is what you do on stage more for yourself than for your audience?

VM: Yeah. I try to do something that's where I'm at now.

MR: This is Van Morrison refusing to play the music industry game!

VM: [Laughs] I've never done that. These people who write about me in that way...I mean, if they did some research, if they bothered to look, they'd know.

MR: And you never wanted to be famous at all?

VM: No. I never wanted to be famous.

MR: But you're no fool; didn't you know what you were letting yourself in for?

VM: No, I didn't, because people could make music in those days, and there were lots of professional musicians who were never famous. They made a living playing music, but they were never famous. I did it for a job, but also because I loved music. I heard all this black music in my house when I was a kid: blues, Gospel, Leadbelly, Mahalia Jackson, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson. This music inspired me to start playing gigs and joining bands.

MR: But your father inspired you, too.

VM: Yeah, yeah. My father was a collector. There were probably only ten big collectors in Belfast, and he was one. Like all the Gospel stuff: Sister Rosetta, Mahalia Jackson; all the traditional jazz things: Bunk Johnson, Kid Ory, early Armstrong. My father also had all the swing band stuff: Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Harry James. He had Charlie Parker's first ever record.

I think he heard all the Tommy Dorsey stuff and then he went down to the record shop and gradually got into what came before that. Jazz as we know it was supposed to have started with Jelly Roll Morton and my father had all the Jelly Roll 78s.

MR: You once said you were a black man in a white man's body.

VM: As far as performing goes, yeah, that's true.

MR: The contemporary poet Paul Durcan called you the greatest Irish poet since Patrick Kavanaugh. That must have been gratifying.

VM: Yeah, sure it is. It is gratifying.

MR: When was the last time you read James Joyce?

VM: I haven't read him for 25 to 35 years.

MR: What are you reading right now?

VM: Nothing. I don't have time to read.

MR: Do you think about death at all?

VM: No, I don't. I don't think about death. Do you?

MR: Yes, it's inevitable. And that's why I find it hard to believe that a man of your intellect doesn't think about his own mortality.

VM: I'm sure I have thought about death, but not on a daily basis. I wouldn't dwell on it.

MR: Do you believe in the afterlife?

VM: No, no. No.

MR: Do you believe in the blood sacrifice of Jesus?

VM: I wouldn't get into that. That's another taboo subject, because people read this stuff and you get them coming after you wanting to find out more. No matter how much they get, they always want more.

MR: Do you ever switch off totally?

VM: Yeah, when I'm not working or when I'm not thinking about work. Just normal things: watch TV, go for a walk. Being switched off for me is not having to go to the airport, because once people know who I am or recognise me, then they want an autograph or something. People who buy my records travel as well!

MR: But not everyone at the airport is a Van Morrison fan hounding you for your autograph!

VM: But it doesn't take everyone. You always get these people at airports, I've got them everywhere. I've gone places to get away, and there they are!

MR: You seem uncomfortable with fame, yet you accepted a Lifetime Achievement award at this year's Brits ceremony.

VM: Well, I felt it was a great honour.

MR: Even though you hate the music business?

VM: Yeah. I've always had the stance of being anti all that. I was never interested in commercial music.

MR: So what do you think of other artists--like The Waterboys, Dexy's Midnight Runners and Wet Wet Wet--covering your work for commercial success?

VM: I don't really know enough about it. I never listen to them myself. If it's their way of recognizing what I mean to them or whatever, then that's fine.

MR: Do U2 and Pet Shop Boys mean much to you?

VM: Well, I like Bono's music, yeah. The Pet Shop Boys? I don't know anything about them. I don't think I've ever heard them.

MR: Are you familiar with Nirvana?

MR: No. That doesn't mean anything to me.

MR: Their singer committed suicide earlier this year, and I wonder if you empathized with the fact that he couldn't take the pressure of being a rock star.

VM: I've got no idea at all. See, that's another one of those tricky questions. That's something that's in the public eye so I wouldn't want to answer that one.

MR: But you could appreciate the pressures of success?

VM: Well, I never went down that commercial road. You know, there were people who tried to shove me down there, but I'm not made that way.

MR: But if you were starving tomorrow, you could go down that road?

VM: Well, I have been in that position where I'm starving and a record is dictated by the people who are in charge of the money. Some of the early records I made, I didn't particularly like. For example, on the first couple of Them albums, there was stuff I wouldn't have done, but we had to do because somebody was paying the cheque. One of them was "Here Comes The Night".

MR: But that's a good song!

VM: It's a good song, but I didn't like the way it was deliberately tarted up. "Brown Eyed Girl", the same thing.

MR: What about "Gloria"?

VM: No, "Gloria" was different. That's just raw. "Gloria" is raw blues. That's OK.

MR: When you wrote your first song, "I Think I'm In Love With You", how did you feel?

VM: It was a feeling of exhilaration.

MR: Now you've written over 300 songs, which of those still move you?

VM: "Soldier Of Fortune". It's archetypally right for me. In a way, I feel that's my situation. I'm a soldier of fortune. A mercenary soldier in my field.

MR: What is Astral Weeks about?

VM: I haven't a clue what it's about. Y'know, whatever was coming in to my head at the time.

MR: But that album has inspired so many people. Why?

VM: Because it was different.

MR: Where did the ideas come from?

VM: From what was happening at the time. That's when the world started to change into the chaos.

MR: Was that change drug-induced?

VM: No, I wasn't into drugs. To write about things, you don't have to be into them. I did a bit of hash years ago, but it wasn't my scene. If musicians need drugs for inspiration, they're not real musicians.

MR: When you look back on Astral Weeks...

VM: I don't look back! I never look back. I don't remember. It's almost 30 years.

MR: Have you been to hell and back, emotionally, for your music?

VM: Well, yeah, I think so. For me, yeah.

MR: Which song best portrays the pain in your life?

VM: "Thanks For The Information" on No Guru, No Method, No Teacher. Ideally, what it would inspire is love, but it's not an ideal world, is it?

MR: Did you write "I Forgot That Love Existed" from the heart?

VM: Both heart and head. I got the idea from Steiner, who said that if you could feel with your head and think with your heart then you'd have it made.

MR: And which do you think with: your heart or your head?

VM: I'm very much head-oriented.

MR: The mood in your music, is it your mood, too?

VM: It's not my mood. At that time on stage, I could be singing in a different mood from what I'm feeling inside. So it's not me, no. It's a performance.

MR: So it's a job, this performance?

VM: Well, yeah, it's just a job.

MR: But I've watched you give your all for the audience. Surely it's not financial any more, you must be enjoying it at some level?

VM: I don't know. Maybe. I mean, there're easier ways to make money.

MR: But you don't need to work any more!

VM: [Laughs] Of course I do! What else am I going to do? If you're a singer, you have to sing. That's a myth made up by the same people who call me a rock star.

MR: How important was money when you started?

VM: I was Hank Marvin--starvin'! But it was about the love of the music, and always will be.

MR: In a way, you're a tortured soul, and...

VM: [Laughs] Why am I a tortured soul? That's the kind of thing that assholes pick up on. They'd write: "Van is a tortured soul." I'm not.

MR: At 49, do you feel you're entering a new era for Van Morrison? You certainly seem happier of late.

VM: [Long pause] I think I'm more comfortable. Or something.

MR: With what?

VM: [Another long pause] With myself.

MR: Why?

VM: I don't know. It didn't happen overnight.

MR: You once told me you were really happy in your late-teens--in other words, before you became famous. Have you ever been really happy since then?

VM: Well, for periods, certainly. Maybe a few months, a few weeks, a few years sometimes. I was stretching myself actually to get to that place that you're talking about. Happiness and serenity. I didn't get there, no. Some of the songs came out of having it momentarily, but then it was so fleeting.

MR: But if you ever got there, would you be truly happy? Isn't the hunger in you what makes you an artist?

VM: Whoever said it was probably very wise: "It's not the getting there, it's the journey." That's what it's worth.

MR: Do you believe there's a message in your music?

VM: No, I'm just communicating. I'm compelled to communicate in some way. The energy is whatever makes someone pick up an instrument or sing or write songs or write a book. But I don't know what that energy is. If I knew, maybe I wouldn't have to perform.

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