1997 Music Central interview

by Edna Gundersen
From Music Central online, sometime in 1997

Media-shy Morrison breaks radio silence on songwriting, the music business, and why he doesn't sing Brown Eyed Girl anymore.

Musical legend and mercurial curmudgeon Van Morrison, 51, seldom grants interviews. When he does, the result tends to be a series of monosyllabic or cryptic responses, if he in fact parks long enough to answer questions. He's been known to bolt for the door and flee if the line of questioning perturbs him. We caught the Irish singer-songwriter on a particularly good day between gigs in Southern Florida. Relaxing with fiancee Michelle Rocca (a former Miss Ireland) at a seaside resort in Fort Lauderdale, Morrison expounded on the burdens of fame and mythology, his mood fluctuating from testy to chatty to facetious to reflective. The interview took place in the midst of a crowded schedule that includes a European tour and the headline slot on the mostly Irish bill at the Guinness Fleadh in New York.

During his storied career, Morrison has written 250 songs, including 1967's "Brown Eyed Girl," and released 27 solo albums. The latest is The Healing Game, featuring "Rough God Goes Riding," a look at the making and dismantling of heroes. It entered Billboard at No. 32, his highest chart debut ever. On the heels of the new album, Polydor/A&M has reissued seven remastered classics: Tupelo Honey, Saint Dominic's Preview, Wavelength, Hard Nose The Highway, It's Too Late To Stop Now, Veedon Fleece, and A Period Of Transition.

Part I: Cues from the Muse:
Inspiration and perspiration in songwriting, keeping the customers satisfied, and the wages of fame.

Question: Is songwriting a process you can force, or do you have to wait for inspiration?

Answer: It's both in everything. It comes in different shapes or forms. It can be forced or it can come spontaneously. You carry ideas around until they germinate.

Question: How do you maintain enthusiasm for recording and performing? This is your 27th solo album, not counting compilations and so forth.

Answer: It is? That's too many. I can't keep track. You just have to keep shuffling it like a deck of cards and deal yourself different hands. You change the arrangements and the set. I try to change the set as much as possible. You can get in a rut if you got a set worked out and it's really good and you keep doing it. You can get into a stalemate situation. Changing the set is part of it for me. Some people are satisfied to do the same thing all the time. But I can't do that. I get very bored with it. I know other people, they get a set down and do the same songs the rest of their life. I can't do that, unfortunately.

Question: How much do the set lists vary from night to night?

Answer: There's a basic structure. The band has to know 90 percent of it. There's about 60 songs in rotation. Some songs you give a rest, and bring other ones back again.

Question: Many fans seem to favor nostalgic favorites over new material. Are you more connected to the current songs?

Answer: Yes, the answer is yes, I am more connected to the current songs. I think there's a big mystery about that. Some people just buy the ones they call the hits, and other people like the whole album. Other people like specific songs. Some are more esoteric. You get a whole cross-section in the audience, and it's hard to figure it out. When you're doing gigs, sometimes you don't know who you're playing to - whether it's the greatest-hits people or the '90s people.

Question: Does it matter what they want?

Answer: Well, it matters in concert situations. If it's a stand-up audience, they want dance music. It varies in different countries. Some places are very reserved; some are upfront. A couple of weeks ago, we played a couple gigs in Spain; it was like night and day. In one place, the audience was very extroverted. In the next place, they were completely the opposite. It's hard to gauge. What I'm trying to say, really, is my music is not that commercial. Some people think it is, because they identify with certain songs, so they assume it's going to be a commercial show, and it very rarely is. It's predominantly a very introverted type of musical experience - more esoteric than people expect.

Question: Has your disdain for fame lessened over the years?

Answer: Fame is something that happened to me. I was just a working musician. It happened to be at a time when they were looking for candidates to be things, that '60s period. It was the time more than anything else. If it hadn't been that band [Them], it would have been any band. It's not something I set out to be. I'm still basically a working musician, with or without the agenda and trappings. For me, [fame] is just in the way. I'm just doing the work. That's what I've always done. During that time period, if you did anything then, they called it all pop music, even if you were jazz or soul or folk. They called you pop because that's what they called everything in the '60s.

Question: Were you surprised by the amount of attention and commercial acceptance you got early in your career?

Answer: No, I didn't just get that overnight. It was a long, hard slog to get to the point where I could do what I wanted to do in the way I wanted to do it. It took a long time before I got to the point where the records were selling to the point where I could pick or choose gigs. It was the mid-'70s before I could really do that. I started in the early '60s.

Question: Were the early years of anonymity more rewarding in any ways?

Answer: The early days were more rewarding for the experience. When I started out, more people were involved in the actual music. That's the kind of people I hung out with. If I started a band or joined another band, for instance, it was with people who had an affinity for a certain kind of music. Nowadays, it's different because you're dealing with people from various musical backgrounds and it's much more fragmented.

Question: Did it surprise you that Astral Weeks became such a defining work in the minds of critics?

Answer: I'm not surprised, because there was something in there that was very different. What I'm surprised at is it's gone into rock history. There's nothing about it in any shape or form that's rock. You've got folk music and classical music and a bit of blues. There's nothing that can be construed to be rock, and that was the whole point of making it. I was so fed up. I wanted to get away from the stuff that was the psychedelic era, when soul music was becoming very plastic. I just withdrew from everything I'd known and went to the extreme. They just called it rock because everything was called rock then. It's more a folk album.

Question: How do you dispel public misconceptions about you?

Answer: You can't. There's nothing you can do about it, because if you try to dispel it, they use that as well. It used to be that there was more room to dispel myths, but everything's very black and white now. Several books came out on me, and they're so bad. I'm reading one at the moment. They take quotes from interviews and twist them around and take words away and add and subtract words and manipulate the words to come out a different way. But there's nothing you can do about it. It's whatever they want to impose on you that comes across.

Question: Have you considered setting the record straight with an autobiography?

Answer: I've considered it. It's very, very difficult. I'm trying to put out a book of interviews, because I'm not going to write it any better than I've said it in interviews.

Question: In addition to the misinterpretations of your personality or work, has the media invaded your personal life?

Answer: Yeah. I can understand if you're someone who presents themselves in that way, someone who does have a profile. But with what I do, there's absolutely no mystery. I have no profile and no agenda outside of what I'm doing, which is writing songs, making records, and doing gigs. Outside of that, my profile is very limited. People that have other profiles, they're in People magazine. When they do that to somebody like me, it's even more mysterious. That's not the type of musician I am or the type of thing I put out. A lot of that [coverage] is done to people that wanted to be musicians or people that are jealous. They just get an idea, "His life must be better than mine, so let's try to get at him, let's get an angle on it."

Part II: Rough Gods, Tough Heroes:
Quests of the spirit, musical icons, and fellow soul survivors.

Question: In "Rough God Goes Riding," you sing, "There are no more heroes, they have been reduced to zeros." What did you mean?

Answer: It's the idea of king for a day. Even if you're the world champion, you can't be world champion forever. That's what the concept is. Life isn't so simple where people believe in Jesus Christ and that's the end of it. With computers and extraterrestrials, it's not that simple anymore.

Question: In interviews, you've tried to demystify your image, but much of your music does seem to stem from a spiritual yearning. Is there a contradiction here?

Answer: It's just phases. At one period in the '80s, I was searching for something, just for peace of mind. But I went on to something else after that. I don't just stay in one place. This book written about me, a new one, he'll talk to someone I worked with 20 years ago, and he'll be saying, "Oh, he's like this." I was like that 20 years ago! I'm not like that today. Life has changed, and other things have happened to me. I've had more experience. There's more knowledge.

Question: Several references say you were raised a Jehovah's Witness. Is that true?

Answer: No, no, no. I wasn't raised anything. My mother went to some meetings at some point. She took me to some meetings. She didn't call herself that. It was only for a couple years' period. My father was an atheist. My mother was what you would describe as a freethinker. She would check things out and read about things, but she never joined anything.

Question: Did your mother influence your religious curiosity?

Answer: I got interested in studying the religious thing because it was never shoved down my throat, whereas most of the people I grew up with or went to school with, it was really imposed on them. They didn't have any free will. It was never like that with me. So I just studied religion on my own.

Question: Was it a gratifying search?

Answer: Um, I don't know. In some ways, who knows? Sometimes it's gratifying and other times it's bleak.

Question: Your mother was also a singer. Did she inspire you?

Answer: Not really. She sang at parties and things like that. She could have become a singer, but decided not to be a professional. She used to sing around the house. It was a natural thing. People would come over and sing. My father had a record collection and I just heard singing all the time. I didn't know till I was much older that other people weren't doing this.

Question: From an early age, you were drawn to blues and soul music. Did you get to meet your musical heroes?

Answer: Some. In the beginning, I was into mainly Leadbelly, Hank Williams, Mahalia Jackson, Sonny Terry, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Ray Charles. It was lucky I saw John Lee Hooker. I met him when I was a kid and I played with him and Little Walter. Last year, I performed with Ray Charles. I saw Muddy Waters live several times. I've done quite a bit with Junior Wells.

Question: You recently worked with Hooker on his album, producing most of the tracks and singing on four. Was that a comfortable collaboration?

Answer: It was great. I've known him a long time. He's made so many records. He's got a couple hundred records out. It's great. He's very cool. He knows where I'm at, I know where he's at, so it's very easy. When he's in the studio, he wants to chill out.

Question: You're not a big fan of modern-day pop. Why not?

Answer: It's just personal taste and preference. I like good singers. And most of the pop stuff doesn't have good singers. It's just imitations of imitations of imitations. I just prefer the real thing.

Part III: The Work Ethic
Morrison's take on the music industry, how the work has (and hasn't) changed, and what the media doesn't know (but the fans understand).

Question: Have you made peace with the business end of the music industry?

Answer: That's all overblown. You have to put this in perspective. In the old days, a lot of people like me - not just me, it sounds like I'm a one-man attack on the music business and I'm not - a lot of people didn't get paid properly, didn't get royalties; just got an advance and that was it. We were touring and working for very little money. That was my experience for about the first 15 years in the music business. Before I could get to the point where I could do my own thing, that was a bone of contention. But that's no longer a bone of contention. I've moved on since then. If you weren't the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, you had a very hard time. A lot of people disappeared. I didn't disappear.

Question: Are you a workaholic?

Answer: No. The way it's set up, it seems like a workaholic situation, but it actually isn't. I don't do that many gigs, and I don't go out on tour. In the '70s or early '80s, it was a real tour. You'd go out for weeks. I cut it to two weeks; then one week. Now I just do a few gigs a month, to keep playing and have musicians together if I need to record. Then I have people who know the material and know me and know how to work with me. It's much different from touring. The last real tour I did was for three months in the U.S., a long, long time ago, and I decided I'm not going to do this anymore. I'd had enough of that. That was the end of that. I decided not to tour anymore, and I stuck to it.

Question: Are you a perfectionist?

Answer: To a degree. I used to be much more than I am.

Question: You've cut back on touring, but what about recording? Do you enjoy working in the studio?

Answer: Not anymore. I've made a lot of records. It's worn off. In the old days, it was interesting, because you didn't have so much bullshit. You just went in and recorded. You rehearsed the stuff before. There were no overdubs. It was exciting. You only had a couple days in the studio and you just played whatever ideas you were working on, and that was a record. That was no big deal. Now the state-of-the-art equipment has taken over the business, and it's much more difficult. Everything's gotta be exactly status quo. It cuts the heart out of music.

Question: How do you combat that?

Answer: You don't combat it. You just have to go along with it, because that's what's happening. You have to live with whatever the times are. You try to limit the technology because it ruins the spontaneity.

Question: A number of pop singers have modeled their voices after yours. Do you find that flattering or annoying?

Answer: It's flattering, I suppose. It's OK.

Question: And are you pleased when people cover your songs?

Answer: Not all the time, but generally.

Question: A lot of people presume your songs are autobiographical. Is that a fair assumption?

Answer: The critics believe that. The public are much smarter than people give them credit for. Rock journalists have this thing with mythology. There's so much crap, I don't know how to wade through it. I'm reading a book supposedly about me and it seems like it's about someone I don't know. It's not about me. I don't know how to wade through an invention of someone else's mind set. I'm still trying to work out where these people are at and why. Maybe it's something in them that's fucked up. They can't redress; they have to project. I think that's what they do to so-called famous people, project their own bullshit.

Question: Meaning you don't write autobiographical songs?

Answer: Nobody gives you a piece of paper that says: These are the rules. You make your own rules. Sometimes it's about me, sometimes about someone in my imagination, sometimes about other people. Or something put together as a composite of various people. Some of it's complete fiction. Here's an example of this bullshit I'm trying to wade through. This song I wrote called "T.B. Sheets," someone said it was about a girlfriend of mine who died. People sit around, have a few drinks, and talk bullshit. That's all this was. Somebody picked it up and wrote about it on one of the sleeves of my records. It's a completely fictitious song. It's not about anybody I knew. I wrote it at the Tropicana Motel in L.A. I never said [my songs] were confessional. I never said I'm living out my life on stage. I never implied it. I don't know where this comes from.

Question: Are there songs you no longer feel an affinity for, songs that no longer ring true or feel comfortable?

Answer: There are songs that were written in desperation or in a certain period when you were, like, starving and the ship was going down. Stuff like "Brown Eyed Girl." [The reason] I wrote it was to get out of handcuffs. It was to get out of being enslaved [by New York-based Bang Records]. How can a 51-year-old sing that? I can't relate to it. Why am I expected to, anyway, at 51? I wrote it when I was 20. I was never paid for "Brown Eyed Girl." [Bang] sold it to CBS, and they still aren't paying me record royalties. I don't do the song.

Question: Is your music in any way sacred to you?

Answer: No, not at all. I don't believe in it. For me, it's always been like I started. You play music, it's a profession, like being a dentist, or a computer operator, anything. I never hooked into the myth. I know it's difficult for people to understand that. Myth is meaningless to me, and it doesn't matter. If it does to other people, that's their problem. I don't care about it. It's not part of my existence in any shape or form. I don't pay lip service to it. I'm doing exactly what I was doing when I was a kid.

Question: Your stint with Them was very brief, yet it plays large in the history books. Was that period as crucial or fruitful as biographers suggest?

Answer: It was nothing. It was 18 months. This is another thing that's glorified in the books. It's expanded. In one book, it's a third of the book. When the shit hit the fan, we were doing about one gig a month and barely getting any work, right before we went to California. Yet in books this period is glorified. Where were these people at the time when we really needed some help and support and reviews and people to take notice and write about us?

Question: It wasn't a lucrative experience, but was it fun or instructive?

Answer: It wasn't fun at all. It was hardship. The whole thing lost its meaning because it wasn't what it was supposed to be. It came out of a club scene. We were playing blues and then being sold into the pop mainstream market, and it wasn't pop. The whole thing was a joke, really. That's why I left. It was hell. I had to get out.

Question: How difficult are you to work with?

Answer: [Laughs] You better ask them. This "difficult" thing is another misconception. I'm supposed to be difficult to work with, but ask the people that work with me and they'll tell you what it's like. They don't think it's difficult. If some journalist thinks it's difficult, that's their opinion.

Question: Is it important to you to take on new challenges musically?

Answer: No, I'm just doing it. The challenge for me would be singing different sorts of songs, like with the jazz record I did. Songs that I wouldn't usually sing. It wasn't a challenge to do The Healing Game. That's what I do. It doesn't have to be a challenge; it just has to be work. Work isn't always interesting or exciting. I wish it was, but sometimes work is just work.

Question: Ever feel like quitting?

Answer: I can't stop. How can I stop? What am I going to do? If I'm a singer and a musician, it doesn't seem logical to stop singing. I'd love to stop and say, "I'm going to sit on the beach," but that's not reality. If you're a singer, you've got to sing. There's no way out of that.

Question: You did briefly consider entering academia. What became of that idea?

Answer: I was about 15 when I decided to do this. Since then, other professions interested me, but I don't know if I could do them. I don't know if I could suddenly start working in an office from nine to five. I tried to get in on the university angle at one point, but then I discovered that they were even less clued in than Joe Blow. It surprised me. They're more susceptible to the illusions and myths than anyone else. I was interested in teaching or just sharing my knowledge of the bullshit of the star myth. It's a small minority that would be interested in that. People would rather believe the myth.

Part of the van-the-man.info unofficial website