June 2005 interview

by Nigel Williamson

"If it's what you do and you can do it, then you do it..."

An exclusive interview posted originally at the official Van Morrison website and included here (with hypertext glosses) for posterity in our interview archives. Van Morrison speaks to Nigel Williamson about his new album, his musical roots, the poetry of the blues and much else besides. The interview took place at Hampton Court Palace, before his concert on June 21, 2005.

Q: The new album, Magic Time, has been very well received and got some excellent reviews. Does that still matter to you?

A: You put a lot of work into making a record and it's good to see that it's being appreciated, so of course it does. It also helps the promotion and marketing team to follow up and get the record out there.

Q: But after so long, do you learn to take what the reviewers and critics say with a pinch of salt?

A: You have to when you've been making albums for 40 years! But my thing is that I like to get new stuff out there. I've noticed in recent years that it seems to be reverting back to a syndrome where people are required to promote their old hits rather than new stuff. What I do is just not about that. I want to get out the stuff I'm currently working on and then get exposure for it. What's Wrong With This Picture, the last album before this one, which was on Blue Note, just didn't get much exposure. Basically they just released it and that was the end of it. There wasn't any follow-up so people didn't even know it was out. That made it difficult to get it across to the audience because most of them hadn't heard it. With this album more people have heard it already and they're starting to recognise the songs from it.

Q: Can we talk about a few of those songs on Magic Time? Keeping Mediocrity At Bay seems a great motto or code to live your life by...

A: Well thanks. It basically comes from a non-religious stance. These days politics, religion, media seem to get all mixed up. Television became the new religion a long time back and the media has taken over. That's what it's about, really.

Q: You cover This Love Of Mine, a song associated with Frank Sinatra. What made you chose that number?

A: There was a version on a Sam Butera album and I liked the sound and the arrangement and it was fun to do. The album is basically my songs with a few covers that felt like a good idea at the time.

Q: But is there also a sense of the covers creating a sense of continuity and illustrating how your music is part of a greater tradition?

A: Absolutely - the r&b tradition and going back even before that to Louis Armstrong. I've been into Armstrong since the first time I heard him in the '50s and I still listen to him today. And Louis Prima reinvented Louis Armstrong in an r&b version, so it's in that kind of lineage. I was brought up on traditional jazz. My father had all these records and he just played them all the time, so I absorbed that kind of music very early on. British trad as well - Ken Colyer, Chris Barber, Acker Bilk. All of that. On the previous record , What's Wrong With This Picture, we did St James Infirmary, which was based on the version Armstrong recorded in the '50s. So yes. That music has always been in the background for me, along with rhythm and blues, blues, folk blues, country, gospel...

Q: Which presumably was what the front cover of the Down The Road album was about, showing all those old records by people like Armstrong, Leadbelly, Lightnin' Hopkins and so on? You seemed to be saying, 'if you like my music, here are some signposts to where it all came from...'

A: I'm glad somebody got that because a lot of people didn't. Some people even thought it was an album of covers. Musicians and people who know that stuff got it. But a lot didn't. You win some, you lose some...

Q: But that sense of tradition is also very important in your own songwriting, isn't it? You use these phrases like 'further on up the road' and hearing 'that lonesome whistle blow' on the new record and you're taking this language and vocabulary which is so evocative and redolent of the music that inspired you and you're reinventing it anew...

A: Yes, that's the lineage again. You have to understand a bit about the poetry of the blues to know where the references are coming from - whether it's Sonny Boy Williamson, or Lightnin' Hopkins or Bobby Bland. It's all part of the songwriting process for me because the first poetry I ever connected with was actually the poetry of the blues, via a book by Paul Oliver called Blues Fell This Morning .

Q: There's a huge diversity of styles on the new album - blues, swing, r&b , jazz and so on. When you're putting a record together do you consciously try to represent all the different facets of your music?

A: I always record far more than I can use and it's then a matter of editing that down. There's probably twice as much recorded as comes out. What I go for mainly is how it sounds in terms of the flow and how the record works momentum-wise. There's always a lot of stuff left off, and then the unreleased material has to be dealt with at a later date.

Q: Like the Philosopher's Stone album, which was a compilation of unreleased material from your archives. Is there a programme to release more stuff like that which we haven't heard?

A: It's on-going. The period we dealt with on Philosopher's Stone was the '70s. But there's lots more from all periods, right the way through. It's just a question of what is the vehicle for getting it out and how to slot it in when you're putting out new stuff as well. There's so much of it that it's a case of getting it down to a manageable size and creating some sort of continuity. It's a huge job. I've been working on it for a couple of years. It'll come out. It's just a question of when. Record companies can only deal with one release every 18 months or at best one a year, and I've already got something new that's ready to go for next year as well as all this unreleased stuff'

Q: Is that frustrating? Because in the '70s you could put out two records a year without any problem...

A: It is frustrating. But it's built up over a long period of time because when I was doing two a year, I was actually making four. But that's what happens when you're dealing with major distributors. They can only handle so much, so you need to sort out other ways of getting it out, whether it's a limited edition or on a different label or an independent thing. That's the only way it can really work, because it needs to be like a series.

Q: Going back to the new album, on Just Like Greta you say that some days you feel like 'howling at the moon' and other days you feel like you were 'born with a silver spoon'. What's the balance between the two?

A: I've never felt like I was born with a silver spoon at all, although I've felt like howling at the moon a lot of times! I was born into a working class background with nothing and worked my way up from there, so the silver spoon can't possibly apply to me. That shows you how the writing process works. You take stuff from different places and sometimes you stick a line in because it rhymes, not because it makes sense (laughs).

Q: So all the people who've spent 30 years analysing the lyrics of Astral Weeks, please take note!

A: Well Astral Weeks had several different sets of lyrics at different times and was edited down. Maybe some of the songs had seven verses and ended up with four or five. The writing process is never set in cement and you need flexibility. But Astral Weeks was more to do with a specific time period, which was from say late '66 to about '68, and observing and getting those impressions down in some kind of form, lyrically and poetically. It was right for that time.

Q: While we're talking about your back catalogue, does The Lion This Time on the new record relate back in any way to Listen To The Lion from St Dominic's Preview?

A: Not really. It's a different kind of song. Listen To The Lion was a strange one, because it came out of stuff I was reading at the time about the Phoenicians, who were one of the first seafaring races and came to Ireland way back. I read that they had lions carved on their boats and that song came from that idea. The Lion This Time is different again. It's more to do with 'well who are you?' I'm not always totally sure because some of this stuff comes through from the unconscious level and sometimes it's not that specific. The Lion This Time has more of a mediaeval or a Renaissance music feel to me, so it's a completely different form.

Q: Finally while we're discussing Magic Time , tell us about the title track...

A: That goes back to the '50s. I don't think nostalgia has to be negative and there's a lot of nostalgia in the song for that time when there was such a lot of good music around. And that was my period really, not the 60s. It was the end of the '50s when I was first connecting with the music and got absorbed in it and when it took me over and that's what Magic Time is about.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about how the songwriting process works for you?

A: There's no set thing. Sometimes the lyrics come first. Sometimes you have a melody and you can't find the words for it for a long time. Sometimes it's hard to finish a song and sometimes it's easy. I had a melody I was carrying around for a long time called Quality Street, so I gave it to Mac Rebennack and he wrote a lyric that fitted perfectly in half an hour. It's different every time.

Q: Is music all-consuming for you? I read something you said about how you don't choose the music, it chooses you...

A: It kind of does in a way. There's certainly an energy that chooses you. If you're an athlete or a football player, say, you spend a lot time working at it and you get this adrenaline going. But if you stop the process, what happens to all that energy? The creative process is a bit like that. It brings about ideas and concepts. Then you ask, 'OK what am I going to do with this?' Then that turns into energy. You get a momentum going. And the energy takes you over, just like you're a long-distance runner or something. I don't really like to use the word spiritual. But if there is such a thing, then I'm connected to it in that way. That's what it means to me. If you want, it's my religion. But it's a craft as well and you have to work with the energy. I feel I'm part of a lineage that goes back to John Lee Hooker and Leadbelly and it's my duty in a way to carry the lineage on.

Q: The craft you were talking about is presumably what makes your performances on stage seem so effortless. What is it you aim for when you play a gig? It is a level of consistency in the performance? Or is about waiting for moments of inspiration and being transported?

A: It's both. Every performance is different. That's the beauty of it.

Q: You certainly still seem to thrive on playing live. You appear to be on your own equivalent of Dylan's 'never ending tour'...

A: But it's completely different from that. My ambition when I started out was to play two or three gigs a week. And that's what I'm doing. It's what I always wanted to do from the beginning.

Q: But two or three gigs a week is still more than 100 gigs a year, which is a phenomenal work rate...

A: Absolutely. But it's a different concept from going out and touring for two or three months at a time. I find that incompatible. It's another way of doing it.

Q: You seem to have been playing the stately homes of England this summer, from Hampton Court to Leeds Castle. How has that been?

A: It's a good concept. It used to be that the places you could play were quite limited. Now it's moving into other areas and in the summer you've really got to play outdoors. I like doing it.

Q: Do you derive a lot of energy from the audience during a live performance?

A: That's a good question because I don't feel I'm really playing the kind of gigs that suit me and I don't know where all that has gone. Most of the gigs I play are too big for what I'm communicating and weren't built for music, so it's all about projection. My thing is best in a small theatre or club with good acoustics where people are tuned into the vibe of it. That's where I work best, but a lot of those places have gone by the wayside since music has been taken over by commercialism or capitalism or whatever it is. When I started you were more in touch with the people you were playing to. There wasn't the distance or the separation that there is now. There are still a few good places. There's a small theatre in Malvern I play that's really good and some of the festivals suit me. Hay-on-Wye is always a good one.

Q: You've carved out a position that stands above the hype of the music business and has nothing to do with celebrity or fashion or any of those ephemeral considerations. But that's been a hard won position, hasn't it?

A: Absolutely. I had to play the game for a long time because I didn't have any choice. We didn't get any money and I went through years of that before I could see any daylight. I only had a choice when I became an independent producer and I could move things around differently and play my own game. But that took a long time. Even so, you still have to compromise and play some sort of game to stay in the game.

Q: When fans come up to you and tell you that your music has shaped and inspired their lives or helped them through the darkness or whatever , how do you feel about that?

A: I've got mixed feelings. Because I'm doing it, I find it difficult to get perspective on some of that. I don't really understand the concept of how something can affect you at that level. It's hard to take on board. When I was recording Astral Weeks it really meant a lot to me. But I couldn't get arrested and that was a huge period of struggling for me, so I look back at Astral Weeks and to me it means hardship and struggle. But on the other hand, I suppose I can relate to it, because hearing the blues changed my life and Leadbelly had that effect on me.

Q: One hesitates to remind you that your 60th birthday is coming up in August. Hopefully there are no thoughts of retirement and you'll keep on keeping on?

A: But you wouldn't ask that question of someone like Jay McShann (Kansas City piano player, born 1909 - ed). You see the people who influenced me weren't young kids. Muddy Waters wasn't a kid. You never thought 'what age is Lightnin' Hopkins?', although you knew he was a lot older and he wasn't trying to be Elvis Presley. That's the tradition I came from. How old is George Melly? He was one of the first British blues singers. Would you expect him to retire? I can't really relate to that. If it's what you do and you can do it, then you do it.

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