It would be long-winded and pointless (not to mention the amount of required research which I could not be arsed doing) to list the various members of Them that supported Van for varying periods of time. No other particularly famous musician originated from the band, although the remaining members did make the optimistic decision to carry on after he left, as it was pretty much a vehicle for Van's brutish vocals and burgeoning songwriting talent. Van was a precocious talent and was still in his teens when Them released their eponymous debut back in 1965. This compilation is an essential one in that it compiles together everything the band released with Van (although only a second album, Them Again, followed before Van quit). Although the snap-shot is a brief one it is, of course, comprehensive and, considering it contains every song they ever released, shows a quite fantastic consistency for a band in their era, before the really great music had started to come out. Although the band obviously did not go on to progress artistically in the way their beat-combo buddies like the Stones or Kinks did it is a salient point that the band were probably just as strong as the two aforementioned rock giants at the point at which they came out. The three classics on the first CD are as energetic and as powerful as anything the Stones put out - the two covers they made their own ("Baby, Please Don't Go" and "Here Comes the Night") and Van's immortal "G-L-O-RIA" which, along with "Louie Louie", has become the lifeblood of rock'n'roll, covered by any band with any aspirations of capturing the music's purest spirit. As if to prove their worth as rivals to the Stones the band rip through the omnipresent "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66" with Van's vocals reducing Jagger's Southern softie slur to a whimper. Similarly, it is Van's impassioned hollering that elevates the likes of "I Gave My Love a Diamond" and "My Baby's Going to Dress in Black" into white-boy r'n'b to match that of the Animals, probably their most similar rivals. The second CD, covering only the second year Them were in existence, shows considerable artistic progress with Van growing in confidence as a vocalist with his show-stopping performances of the soul classics "Out of Sight" and "I Put a Spell on You" and the hi-octane r'n'b of "Call My Name", "I Got a Woman", and "Hello Josephine". Van's talent and ambition as an arranger was growing beyond the bounds of boyish beat combos, though, with his superlative reading of Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" and the rural folk influences of "Hey Girl". Most of the second CD could reasonably be mistaken as a carefully selected greatest hits, such is its consistent quality, and, even forgetting his pioneering adventures as a singer-songwriter, Van's influence on plain ol' rock'n'roll is evident with his self-penned "I Can Only Give You Everything" becoming one of the first songs the MC5 ever recorded together. Indeed, even if one ignores the evidence on display here that Them were one of the best bands of their era, albeit briefly, the likes of "Gloria" and "Here Comes the Night" alone suffice to show that Van was setting standards long before the scores of hippies were sticking Moondance on their stereos.

 

But Van's career as an angry young rock'n'roller was brief. Van had worked with producer Bert Berns previously (who actually co-wrote "Here Comes the Night") and so was quick to jump on a steamer across the Atlantic to New York to record his first solo LP. Mr Berns was a pop man, though, so, unsurprisingly, it soon transpired that his idea about what Van's debut album was going to be like was rather different from what Van thought. They did agree on the classic single "Brown Eyed Girl" which is almost certainly now Van's most famous song and one ruined, for me at least, by the sight of drunken buffoons screaming to the dance-floor in lugubrious nightspots when its dinky guitar fill first spits forth from the speakers. Indeed, much as I like Van, the handiest indicator as to whether a nightclub is worth avoiding is whether it will play "Brown Eyed Girl" at some stage, usually late. In any event, "Brown Eyed Girl" apart, Van and Berns disagreed on practically everything. As has been pointed out, the material that resulted from those sessions represents not so much a collaboration as a battle, with Berns sometimes winning with Van grimacing his way through the trite pop of "Chick-a-Boom", "Goodbye Baby" and "Midnight Special", whilst Van repostes with the nine-and-a-half minute epic "T.B. Sheets" or the mournful blues of "Who Drove the Red Sports Car". In fact, the only time the stand-off produces favourable results is on the embryonic version of "Beside You" with the traditional guitar-picking on here reigning in Van's wild impulses on the version on Astral Weeks and thereby actually improving the song by showing us more of the melody. Unfortunately, Astral Weeks did not succeed in becoming Van's debut solo offering, despite his intention, as Berns rushed out a full album to accompany the single release of "Brown Eyed Girl", against Van's wishes, called Blowin' Your Mind and featuring a hideous mock-psychedelic album cover. Luckily for Berns he died not long after and so was never able to fully feel Van's wrath (Northern Irishmen are particularly angry beings). Van was not exactly thrilled, however, when this material was again rehashed in the seventies as T.B. Sheets and the scandalously incorrectly titled The Best of Van Morrison. Thankfully, in the nineties, the seventeen songs Van recorded during those sessions was collected all on one CD and this is therefore the only CD one should ever consider purchasing out of the four to contain this material ('Bang' was the name of old man Berns's record label). The pop material is all pretty worthless, apart from hearing Van's vocals containing barbed glimpses of his seething anger behind apparently half-arsed performances, but the second half of the CD is more reflective of what Van actually wanted to attempt during his solo career and therefore quite interesting. There is nothing to really match the quality of his best material - "T.B. Sheets" comes closest with its repetitive groove giving prominence to Van's cynical-yet-poignant lyrics - but the laidback blues of "He Ain't Give You None" (which begins with Van baracking his pop-trained session band), "Who Drove the Red Sports Car", and particularly the excellent "Joe Harper Saturday Morning" are all the work of a talented young songwriter with a methodical musical education. As with "Beside You" there is an early version of "Madame George" but it is played up-tempo and fails to even hint at the majesty of the definitive version. Certainly the astonishing ambition of Astral Weeks could not be predicted from the material on here but, nonetheless, there are traces of what makes Van (sporadically) great and, of course, not even the lecherous screams of a drunken hen night can diminish the quality of "Brown Eyed Girl", even if it will still send me shooting to the exit.

 

After his aborted first attempt at a solo career Van remained in New York and, exasperated by the constraints of working with pop musicians, insisted on recruiting traditional jazz musicians instead. The entire album was recorded in a matter of days as Van deliberately eschewed the usual reliance on strict rehearsing and instead opted to risk an album based on an instant intuitive relationship with musicians he had never worked with before and who came from a completely different musical background. The results not only sound unlike anything else in his career (either before or after) but quite unlike anything else that had ever been released by anyone. As The Bang Masters showed, Van had clearly been sitting on some of this material for a while but I doubt even he could imagine the astonishing results he was to produce. Apart from the dramatic pop song "The Way Young Lovers Do" (the first of his peerless attempts to infuse jazz with superb pop melodies) the songs do not suggest he had conceived of much of a structure or arrangement to them. Instead, he merely strums away on his acoustic guitar and explores his stream-of-consciousness lyrics with a diverse and impulsive vocal performance, drawing forth subtle observations or crying out his emotional denouements. Despite the unfamiliarity of Van and the musicians they combine almost telepathically. The flutes and strings swirl in tandem with his vocals and grant a poignancy to his lyrics that is simply out of this world ('in another place, in another time' to quote Van himself). The epic "Madame George" would be heart-wrenching enough played at its reflective march, with its poignant narration of the protagonist outgrowing his childhood friends and finally catching a train to a new town and a new life whilst still hearing the strains of the party he has left behind reverberating through the streets, but the moment at which Van coaxes the protagonist onto the train and the strings swirl up behind him and the drums break into a canter is possibly the most emotional moment ever committed to tape. Similarly, the strings guide Van through the sublime beauty of "Sweet Thing", drawing out his confidence as vocalist before showering the 'fields misty wet with rain' with a cascading crescendo. The opening title track immediately sets out the template for the album, with its flutes and strings supporting Van's emotional prayer 'to be born again in another time and another place', whilst "Sweet Thing" continues Van's obsession with youth with the defiant cry 'I will never grow so old again'. Indeed, youth dominates the entire album with much of it focusing on his memories of growing up in Belfast, with his reminiscing falling somewhere between Joyce and Proust. It is a practical paradox of the album, though, and somewhat misleading that Van should paint such immaculate pastoral portraits despite the overwhelming urbanity of Belfast. Similarly, it has been noted that the leafy suburbs of "Cypress Avenue" belonged to a completely different area from the working class constraints of Van's upbringing. Given the lyrics concern the naivity of young love one can presume it is Van's girl that comes from such an affluent setting. In any event, it is another classic song, with the harpsichord riff propelling the song along in the album's typically attractive manner. Such is the quality of the album, though, that the band are often at their most impressive at their most sparse, particularly the concise closer "Slim Slow Slider" which compliments Van's desolate poetic imagery with refrained and almost eerie musical support. The album then scatters out into nothingness with Van's tortured refrain 'everytime I see you I just don't know what to do' in a way that would never have been predicted but yet still seems so appropriate. This album is not without its faults, even if they are close to insignificance, as the sprawling "Beside You" is perhaps too formless and the only instance where Van and the band fail to click into gear and the seven minute "Ballerina" is pretty but pedestrian. You may note that, bar those two, every other song I have listed as a best track as it is simply impossible to rank them apart. In any event, the album is so cohesive it is one of the very few masterpieces where the whole and the sum of the parts are one and the same. Perhaps it was inevitable Van would never reach this height again, as there are only a handful of others who ever have, but, regardless of his subsequent almost churlish inconsistency he will still go to his grave and into the history books as creator of one of the finest works of art of the twentieth century.

 

Despite the brilliance of Van's first truly independent venture it was his third album that really set the template for the rest of his career. Moondance was his first significant commercial success and cynics may hold that out as the reason behind his change in focus. More likely, though, after the stand-off with Berns Van needed to get his pent-up arty impulses out of his system and with that aim accomplished (in more ways than one) he was free to concentrate on his more accessible approach to popular music. Not that this is a particularly conventional album as Van's obsession with Celtic folk ensured this was an album still aesthetically distinct from his American singer-songwriter peers (Crosby, Stills, Nash, Joni Mitchell, and their similarly whimsical hippy friends). That said, Van still claimed allegiance to the same out-dated ideals of universal love and lacksadaisical mysticism and it is amusing to highlight the obvious insincerity of the times in that a man as spiteful as Van could go about preaching free love for everyone. In fairness, it was on the two following albums when Van briefly displayed a love for someone other than himself (his wonderfully named wife Janet Planet) and on here Van sticks mainly to the idea of a rural romance and a mythical exploration of the self. The reminiscing of Astral Weeks is almost entirely absent, although Van's lyrics still recall the pastoral ambience of his native Northern Ireland rather than his newly-settled American homeland. In any event, this album proved to be a massive success at the time (the biggest-selling album by a solo artist in the sixties, I gather) as the ten songs rarely venture beyond pop melodies and tight arrangements. It is to Van's credit, though, that he was able to produce a pop album that was so uniquely flavoured by so many diverse influences. Like the best such works, it produces results that are so diverse yet so fluid that it is almost as if an entirely new genre is invented from the combination of other ones. The band that back him up here obviously impressed him enough to earn a contract of employment for most of the first half of the decade and thus the trademarks of much of his material, such as the country-flavoured guitars and soulful brass, are already present. Furthermore, the first side of material represents the very peak of his soulful folk pop with an immaculate quintet. "And it Stoned Me" sets the ball rolling without any kind of ado, launching straight into the first line of Van's narrative about, er, getting rained on, and the classic "Caravan" also stands out as one of Van's best and most popular crossovers of folk and soul. The title track is another Greatest Hit of Van's, with the mystic flute adding to the almost supernatural ambience and bringing to mind the fairies' midnight escapades in 'A Midsummer's Night Dream'. "Crazy Love" shows Van flexing his vocal chords with a yearning falsetto and therefore displaying his effortless range as a vocalist, whilst the side-closer "Into the Mystic" is one of his finest ever songs with its mystical lyrics, swelling strings, unforgettable chorus, and defiant finale - 'it's too late to stop now'. It would be hard to continue such form into the second side but in any event it appears Van consciously decided to reduce the scope, with the songs all enjoyable enough but without pushing the same buttons that the first half did. In terms of his pleasant pop it ranks as some of his best but, as I already explained, to me it seems like a great artist restraining some of his most intriguing urges. It is clear why all the hippies of the time were so enamoured with this album as it provided an easily accessible soundtrack where so many of Van's peers wouldn't have known a decent pop melody if it handed a joint to them. I might prefer it when Van plays to the arty crowd but a better combination of pop music with jazz, soul and folk I have yet to hear.

 

It is safe to say Van had something of a round-about start to his career, what with serving his apprenticeship in Them and the false start of Blowin' Your Mind, but the release of this album proved that he was finally settling down into something of a niche. Although he would occasionally wander away from his template on future efforts this album represents the least ambitious extent of his general shtick. Indeed, this album sounds mostly like he has continued the material on the second half of Moondance over two more sides of vinyl. It is all pleasant enough stuff, of course, but a far cry from the intriguing and compelling explorations of Astral Weeks. The clue comes in the inlay of the gate-fold sleeve with a message to Van's fans from his newly acquired wife Janet Planet. She acknowledges that his earlier material was far more ambiguous and polemical than this album but attributes such restlessness to the insecurity of solitude and insists that the up-beat undemanding material on here arises from Van's joyous desire for us to share in his newly discovered love. I might be a bitter killjoy but I cannot help but feel a love-struck Van shouting out simple odes to his missus does not make for the most in-depth and compelling of music. I am not saying Van's catalogue should be devoid of light relief but a whole album of such simply fails to draw upon his greatest strengths as an artist. There is one classic song on the album, the opening "Domino", which was a massive chart success. Certainly, I would not dissent from the general view of it being an irrepressible burst of soulful pop and an obvious example of when Van really succeeded with such an approach. Unfortunately, the rest of this material, whilst catchy and pleasant enough, never really sets pulses racing. In fact, this album is probably one of his most chorus-centred affairs with most of the songs, but in particular "Call Me Up in Dreamland" and "Blue Money", relying on ridiculously catchy choruses (almost suspiciously so). Unsurprisingly, I prefer the songs that venture away from his pop-based template and, although the up-beat r'n'b of "I've Been Working" and the delicate falsetto of "Gypsy Queen" are nice enough, it is the melodic blues of "Crazy Face" and the sparse acoustic ballad "I'll Be Your Lover, Too" that stand out the most. Indeed, the latter is not one of his best ballads by a long stretch but it is intense enough on here to see it elevated to a position distinct from the rest of this material. Overall, it is all a pleasant enough listen and another obviously adept bash at combining soul, folk, and jazz with pop melodies but, unlike Mrs Planet, I cannot help but feel I would rather listen to Van with greater concerns on his mind than his temporary haven of domestic bliss.

 

Van had been living in the States permanently since the very start of his solo career and by the time of this release he was comfortably settling down with his wife and kids. This reflects in this album in two ways. Firstly, he sings a lot of songs about how much he loves his wife and kids. Secondly, he has enlisted that most traditional of American instruments - the steel guitar (played by John McFee). Therefore, although this album still echoes with Celtic folk music and cuddles up to classic soul and brassy jazz, it does so with the unmistakable twang of one of country and western's most revered employees. Such a combination works wonderfully on one occasion: the opening "Wild Night", which rushes by in a blast of stop-start rhythms, intense brass embellishments, belting vocals from Van, and - yes - prominent steel guitar, which adds a certain slickness to proceedings. Like "Domino" on the preceding release, it is barnstorming start and it is unsurprising the rest of the album simply cannot maintain such momentum. Half of the album is made up of Van's attempt to come across as Belfast's coolest cowboy (not that the city isn't full with violent, amoral gun-slingers) but one cannot help but feel, like the last album, there just is not enough substance to his light-hearted compositions. The unpretentious, rollicking "(Straight to Your Heart) Like a Cannonball" is another enjoyable combination of Irish folk and American country but I'm sure not even Van himself can insist the likes of "Starting a New Life", "I Wanna Roo You" and "When That Evening Sun Goes Down" are anything close to the quality of the material on Astral Weeks. As I've said, there is nothing to prevent the casual listener or the committed Van fan from enjoying them but one can still be forgiven for expecting better. The closing "Moonshine Whiskey" is at least an interesting effort, clocking in at almost seven minutes, and rebounds between two different songs (one slow, one fast) in an almost incongruous fashion. It is probably sheer coincidence but its structure is similar-ish to the Doors' "Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)" which also features a homage to the malt-based liquor. The rest of the album, true to his personal circumstances at the time, is made up of soppy love ballads. "Old Old Woodstock" is overwhelmingly generic and the lengthy "You're My Woman" takes a long time to make the same point over and over (apparently she is his woman). The best ballad by a stretch is the title track with its undisguised devotion and soppy chorus of angelic proportions. There is always the debate about whether content artists can be great ones but certainly as far as a man as bullish and sardonic as Van is concerned his work is infinitely more exciting when he is in search for something beyond his normal bounds and obvious grasp. It is not that his marital contentment did not produce two nice albums, of course, but it was his mid-seventies work, particularly the renewed restlessness of St. Dominic's Preview and Veedon Fleece, that came closest to recreating the premature glories of his first two albums. Good though much of this album is, you cannot help but feel you might as well just be shown the wedding photos.

 

In all honesty, I could not tell you for certain that Van's marital bliss had come to an end at this point. However, the album cover alone suggests so. The image obviously casts him once more as the solipsistic troubadour, with his queried face glancing afar, again searching for a truth that is out of reach. Plus, the prominent hole in his trousers suggests he is missing a woman's touch. In any event, the music matches the restless image on the cover with Van once again exploring both the lyrical and musical aspects to his art, with the album centring around two rambling epic journeys. He still throws in some slick jazz-pop, though, with the result that this album represents the closest he ever came to effecting a combination between Astral Weeks and Moondance and, as an obvious result, it is certainly the second finest release in his career. Like the previous two albums (obviously becoming something of a trademark) he kicks things off with an immense bang of jazz and soul fusion with the glorious up-tempo r'n'b of "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)". It is yet another example of his unrivalled success in such a field and the vitality with which it is performed ensures it is a joyous burst of melodic rhythm and blues. Even the more lightweight material is superior to the efforts from the previous albums (and indeed future ones) with "Gypsy" and "Redwood Tree" relying on peerless pop melodies and Van's slick contemporary folk arrangements. Only the generic big-band of "I Will Be There" disappoints with its unmemorable melody and pedestrian arrangement. The title track reflects back to the narratives on Moondance with it capturing Van's indecision in choosing to make a new home in the States, after leaving Belfast half a decade earlier. The arrangement is certainly more Moondance than Astral Weeks, though, with its brassy interpretation of Van's soul obsession. As I said, though, the reason this album stands out so much is because, finally, Van does return once more to the aesthetics and dynamics of Astral Weeks with both "Listen to the Lion" and "Almost Independence Day" being ten-minute free-form stream-of-consciousness explorations, with Van again toying with his lyrics and vocals at the same time. The former deals with his littlest hobo status, with Van's soul searching drawing upon metaphors of travelling to mystical destinations, whilst the latter is an almost matter-of-fact portrait of San Francisco on a summer's night. The closing "Almost Independence Day" is, at a push, the superior effort with Van adding the sinister drone of a moog synthesiser to the desolate reverberations of his twelve-string guitar, whilst blending in the lyrics with his measured, evocative vocals. Certainly, along with moments on Veedon Fleece, it is the only time in his career when he comes close to recapturing the over-worldly glory of Astral Weeks. It should come as no surprise, as a result, that this album is the one that comes closest to matching such quality overall. Furthermore, given he lightens the mood and increases the diversity with his soul-pop this album comes across as perhaps his most quintessential. After a worrying period of contentment in the early seventies it is good to see the old bastard back to his difficult best.

 

In retrospect, it is clear Van was beginning to struggle with the pressure of releasing a new album each year and eventually broke down, creatively, after the flawed brilliance of 1974's Veedon Fleece with a three year absence and a conspicuous inconsistency in his releases thereafter. The writing was appearing on the wall earlier, however. Although Street Choir and Tupelo Honey set off few fireworks it is clear Van was content in his complacency and therefore deliberately modest in his ambitions. After the visionary success of St. Dominic's Preview, though, and his obvious falling out of love (one of music's most obvious 'come-downs') Van was clearly wrestling with his muse. The resulting album comes across as one of his most inconsistent, with him at times struggling either to produce the slick soul pop or match the majesty of his rambling epics on St. Dominic's. "Wild Children", for instance, slips by without any discernable melody, with Van apparently fumbling to find one to support his disappointingly trite nostalgic lyrics. Similarly, the ten minute "Autumn Song" was obviously meant to represent the album's summit and centre-piece but, instead, only leads the listener's attention down the garden path and away from the meat of the material. It represents poor judgement to include such an unmemorable song in the first place but to then drag it out interminably only spites his own success. Of course, those two numbers are the weak links and although the failure is more conspicuous on here than it is on, say, Street Choir it is mainly because Van is attemping to reach far beyond his grasp and, for me, that will always be more deserving of praise. In contrast, for instance, "The Great Deception" is a delightfully dry tirade with possibly the most cynical set of verse Van ever penned, with everyone (including his once-beloved hippies) being derided as liars and fraudsters. If we are to talk templates, "Warm Love" is the re-run of "Crazy Love" and "Gypsy Queen" but equal to the former and superior to the latter with Van's beautiful falsetto enriching a pastoral sonnet. As a whole, this album is one of his most obviously jazz influenced efforts, with his next studio album having the strongest ties to traditional folk, and is evidence that he had grown disillusioned with the more straight-forward soul-pop and soppy ballads. The opening "Snow in San Anselmo" is certainly one of his queerest sounding songs with an eerie angelic choir and diversions into jazz-style instrumental passages. It is far from an accessible, welcoming start and, along with the bristling cynicism of "The Great Deception", suggests Van was no longer in a crowd-pleasing mood. Superficial proof of his dwindling inspiration comes with the fact he includes two covers but, although "Bein' Green" is nothing special, his closing string-laden interpretation of the traditional classic "Wild Mountain Thyme" (called "Purple Heather" on here) is a delightfully atmospheric reading and points towards his return to his quasi-Celtic roots on Veedon Fleece. Like that album, the weaker material on here can be somewhat overlooked on the basis it is good to see Van trying to communicate something deeper than how great married life is. An inconsistent listen, for sure, but with enough layers to warrant regular returns.

 

It is rather strange to think that an artist should release such a magnificent and unique debut and then spend the rest of their career mostly pursuing a different approach. Obviously Astral Weeks is not completely unrelated to the rest of his portfolio but, as I've said, he only rarely made much attempt to repeat it and the majority of his albums concentrate on a more accessible combination of his chief influences of soul, jazz, and blues. Testament to this is the fact that his first live album (and by no means his last) includes just one track from his magnus opus ("Cypress Avenue") and even then it is harnassed into something more akin to his Moondance material, albeit ten minutes in length. In any event, this release does much to sum up his career to date with subtlety forced to take a back seat to his distinct brand of sweaty brash r'n'b, with his belting vocals backed by powerful blasts of brass. It is appropriate, then, that this should be one of his last releases with his original band as it pretty much represents the peak of their collaboration, showcasing the 'pop' side of Van's oeuvre with far more verve and vitality than the studio counterparts. Almost in acknowledgement of this, when Van reels off his band's names at the end for appreciation it is as if he is thanking them for all the work they had put in over the years in preparation for the parting of ways. Van's live performances have never been just a rehearsal of the studio versions, though, so although the material on here is stylistically divorced from Astral Weeks it is pretty much unique to any of his studio albums. For instance, he ditches the delicate falsetto on "Warm Love" and instead rips it up with a breathless run-through. In a similar vein, the power of his live performance elevates the likes of "These Dreams of You" and "I've Been Working" beyond their comparatively restrained studio versions. Another advantage of a live set is that Van is not ashamed to pepper the line-up with covers. On the first disc, in particular, the vocal power and musical energy ensures "Ain't Nothin' You Can Do" makes for a compelling opening and the classics "I Believe to My Soul" and "I Just Want to Make Love to You" drip with intensity. Disappointingly, though, Sam Cooke's "Bring it On Home to Me" is compromised somewhat by Van's inexplicably bizarre vocal inflexions and it is somewhat ironic to think Jeff Buckley repaid the favour twenty years later with his scatting marring an otherwise excellent rendition of Van's "The Way Young Lovers Do" on Live at Sin-e. Although "Into the Mystic" has now become Van's climatic show-stopper back in his prime he was brash enough to throw it into the middle of the set, although his confidence means it hardly slips by unnoticed. Similarly, although "St. Dominic's Preview" and "Listen to the Lion" stick to the template the enthusiasm of Van, his band and the street choir produces excellent results. The only dip in quality comes with the mediocre blues cover "Help Me" and the questionable choice to include the unmemorable "Wild Children". Furthermore, the Them duo on the second half, "Gloria" and "Here Comes the Night", are not improved with big band interpretations. The set closes momentously, though, with the twenty minute finale of "Caravan" and "Cyprus Avenue" which, of course, sees Van play with the dynamics of both songs before ending the set with the triumphant cry of "it's too late to stop now!". (He does, of course, then stop but we'll forgive him that.) To tell the truth I am not overly familiar with his subsequent live albums but I would be very surprised if they surpass this effort. Although certain studio albums represent his peak as an artist, this compilation certainly presents his zenith as a performer.

 

Van is a man who is hard to pin down, something he obviously takes pride in, and he immediately followed up the big band pomp of It's Too Late to Stop Now with by far his most restless and challenging album since, yes, Astral Weeks. Finally, Van threw out his pop song-book and immersed himself one more time in the pastoral ambience and Celtic folk influences that had made for such an astonishing quasi-debut. However, although the arrangements do draw upon jazz and folk they are often more sparse than the textured brilliance of Astral Weeks and call to mind mainly the desolate beauty of the intriguing "Slim Slow Slider". Although the majority of highlights on here do not quite reach Astral Weeks standard, two come as close as anything else in his career. The emotional ballad "Who Was that Masked Man" is, at a push, my favourite Van song of all time. Against a lush and evocative backdrop of delicate strings, piano and acoustic guitar Van reaches his greatest height as a vocalist, with the most affecting and tearful of falsettos hammering home his compelling and ambiguous lyrics, ending with the perfect denouement 'no matter what they tell you, there's good and evil in everyone'. Furthermore, the album is built around another nine minute centre-piece but, like St. Dominic's Preview and unlike "Autumn Song", it is another of his works of genius. "You Don't Pull No Punches, But You Don't Push the River" dives along with a cantering rhythm and another of Van's great vocal performances, creating an urgency to his deliberately evasive and obtuse lyrics. The flute creates uniquely Celtic overtones, which are also drawn out to their extreme with the marching "Streets of Arklow" which, again, sees Van projecting his restless ruminations through a compelling vocal performance. That essentially is what grants this album its power, with the first five songs all showcasing the greatest facets of Van's artistry and capturing one of the century's most unique artists at his most challenging and provocative. The atmosphere of the first half is another dimension from the unambitious contentment of Street Choir and the laid-back rambling opener "Fair Play" and the short-but-intense bebop-inspired "Linden Arden Stole the Highlights" maintain the side's consistency, with Van remaining true to his jazz and folk heroes without feeling the need to sex them up with commercial pop melodies. He does throw in one poppy number, though - "Bulbs" - which immediately off-sets the grandiose journey of "You Don't Pull No Punches" with an up-beat country and western arrangement and a refreshingly spritely vocal performance. Unfortunately, a difficult artist is often an inconsistent one and the admiration brought on by the first six songs is unfortunately frustrated by the meandering quartet that draws the album out to a never-ending close. The sophorific "Country Fair", in particular, sees the listener desperately imploring Van to bring the album to a close - a position practically unthinkable during the compelling twists and turns of "You Don't Pull No Punches" and the other-worldly angelic power of "Who Was that Masked Man". As it is, this album stands as proof that if Astral Weeks had been a flawed masterpiece, rather than a flawless one, it would have come out much like this. Even when Van tries to do the right thing it seems he cannot help but blight his own success.

 

One of the most fearsome things an artist can face (apart from the tax man) is waking up one morning with absolutely no idea of how to write their next song. So it was that, after at least his second most adventurous release to date, Van Morrison awoke to find his muse, like his wife, had run off with the milkman. Back in the mid-seventies three years was an age to go without releasing new material, particularly from someone who had kept up one-a-year since the beginning, but when the results finally arrived it became patently clear we might as well have carried on waiting. Clearly desperate to release something with his name on Van eventually turned up with an album barely 30 minutes in length, not just devoid of outstanding material, but with songs struggling to reach a standard of mediocrity. It is shocking, really, that an artist capable of such extraordinary visionary works should release an album as simplistic and banal as this one but, in retrospect, he was merely warming his fanbase up for the bulk of the remainder of his career. Of the seven songs, nothing would dare to grace a b-sides compilation, let alone a Greatest Hits, and it is rather sad hearing the genius behind Astral Weeks struggle to even assert himself as an average r'n'b singer. He clearly had trouble writing anything more than one hook per song so, as a result, each song usually relies on him singing the same lines over and over, with a similarly uninspired band (different from his classic early-seventies line-up) going through the motions in the background. The one wild grasp at something novel comes with the a cappela introduction to "The Eternal Kansas City" sung by a choir, before Van takes up the line, and it at least hints at former glories ("Snow in San Anselmo") even if the song itself is essentially as generic as every other one. The pedestrian soul of "Heavy Connection" probably features the best single repeated hook out of the seven but, again, it is clearly not fit to grace even his less impressive albums from the early part of the decade. One wonders whether Van needed to work an album like this out of his system, before finally rediscovering his muse, but ultimately his legacy would have been best served by simply taking five years out and blasting back into life with the indominable Into the Music. Sadly, though, that album proved to be the exception and it was boring and lazy exercises in genericism like this that would define his career from hereon in. The title itself represents something of a plea for patience but the quality of this release suggests it was a transition Van would have been better off not making. A Period of Generic Mediocrity would be a far more appropriate title. And I bet I'm the first reviewer to ever make that comment about this waste of an album.

 

Of course, Van wasn't really struggling for inspiration on the last release. He was, in fact, so pioneering that he had looked into the future and seen the kind of generic crap he was to concentrate on for the rest of his life and was merely taking the first tentative steps to securing his legacy of aural excrement. Thus, after getting the shit songwriting bit down to a tee on A Period of Transition he decided to concentrate on the sound of his material on his next release. He therefore recruited the Band's Garth Hudson to play those really tacky keyboards and drafted in some wonderfully generic rock guitarist to complete the eighties AOR feel. If we are to talk trends (and, quite frankly, who can ever resist) this album represents probably the extreme of Van's American obsession (it is almost an open plea for citizenship) and is also the release of his most dominated by electric guitars and synthesisers as Van clearly looked to solve his creative block through experimenting with new forms of music-making. Of course, 'experiment' is a rather generous way of describing it as, apart from the bizarre futuristic synthesiser opening to the title track, the new instruments merely add to the genericism, rather than dispel it. In fairness, although this album is heavily tarred by the slick sheen of bland production it does at least provide some vitality and energy that was so absent on A Period of Transition and it is nearly all listenable enough, even if the actual highlights are limited and unmiraculous. The artistic abandon exhibited on Veedon Fleece is discarded to allow Van to rehash his songwriting style of the early seventies with most of it consisting of up-beat pop songs and the album ending with two lengthy ballads. Of the ballads "Santa Fe/Beautiful Obsession" is the more impressive, with its gradual expansion from the traditional start, as the closing "Take it Where You Find it" rambles on with little focus or emotional urgency. Of the pop songs the opening "Kingdom Hall" is a generous six minutes of Van's cocky pop but it at least presents a more compelling vitality than the low-key dross on A Period of Transition. Similarly, the chirpy "Checkin' it Out" is at least a return to the form of, say, His Band and the Street Choir. "Natalia" and "Venice U.S.A." are rather too glossy, though, and seem unmistakably insincere. The title track is a nice song, though, and after the weird opening of synths and Van's falsetto it settles down into a grooving pop song. Like the album, it is inoffensive enough but the suspicion remains that almost half a decade on Van was no nearer to re-establishing himself as an artist of any significant interest. On this evidence a life time of inoffensive but inessential MOR awaited him.

 

Of course, the good thing about inconsistent artists is that in and amongst the period of mediocrity and dross the possibility remains that the artist will pull the rabbit out of his hat one more time. And so it proved with Van as, completely and utterly out of the blue, he threw out one final masterpiece, before descending into the obscurity of middle-aged men's car CD changers. Indeed, this album is so distinct from the albums directly preceding and succeeding it that one is left at a loss to explain how it came about. In any event, the inspiration or history behind an album should always play second fiddle to the actual music itself and the songs show a mostly immaculate quality, with the mature pop songs and reflectful ballads being equally as successful. 'Maturity' is definitely the watch-word on this release as Van consolidates his status as middle-aged music legend with a set of material that revels in a melodicism informed from a wiser, more dignified view-point, rather than the restless vitality of youth. Although Van has been fortunate in that he has never lost his vocal power in the way so many of his peers have, his voice on here reflects the experience he has acquired and, whilst certainly not weak, sounds noticeably older than on his early material. The dignity in his vocals is also matched by a newly-found dignity in the arrangements with the cheesey contemporary production tricks of Wavelength sent back to the shop and replaced, once more, by traditional instruments combining to form a unique and retrospective encapsulation of his folk origins (indeed, "Rolling Hills" is the most overtly Celtic song he has ever performed). The album is split in two with the first half consisting of Van's typical up-beat fusion of soul, folk, and r'n'b whilst the latter contains four ballads (although the last two tracks are really two stages of the same song), and the band work equally well coping with the two distinct demands. That said, it is worth noting that gospel music plays a far more prominent role than on his previous albums with the life-affirming swing of "Bright Side of the Road", "Full Force Gale", and "You Make Me Feel So Free" all blessed with female backing singers and distinctly Godly in their overtones. Indeed, Van's Christian obsession first comes to light with the second song on here, the irrepressible "Full Force Gale", due to the chorus's catchphrase of 'I was lifted up by the Lord'. The aforementioned three represent the highlights of the 'pop' first side, along with the more reflective but nonetheless charming "Steppin' Out Queen" which contains the sort of hook A Period of Transition and Wavelength were crying out for. Although, of the ballads only the mesmerising "And the Healing Has Begun" really matches his very best in that field, the second half still sees Van basking in his dignified maturity with his romantic pleas making him sound both wise and vulnerable. I have already said, of course, that I take the sadist's approach and far prefer to hear Van sound discontented. In that respect, his ruminations on here, despite them concerning life at a different stage from his early- to mid-twenties material, are reminiscent of Van at his restless best and it is surely this very reason that ensures this is one of his few post-mid-seventies albums that can confidently measure up to his early classics. Van is far too inconsistent for the chronicler to take many pointers out of the timing of this release but it certainly shows that, at any stage, he was capable of producing some of his best material, if only he was in the right frame of mind.

 

If Van was going to descend into a fat, bald middle-aged man over the next decade then, by God, he was going to take his music with him. Despite the odd successful single Van's eighties career is one that benefits from very little goodwill from anyone with a functioning critical faculty. Hearing a grumpy, fat man bellow on about God all the time is not the most attractive of propositions and, although he did so rather well on Into the Music, diminishing returns kicked in for the rest of his career. Interestingly, though, this album actually represents one of the most experimental he ever released, centring around two fifteen minute epics, one a free-form exercise in stream-of-conscious ramblings and the other a desperately slow and drawn-out ambient sound-scape. The first one, "Summertime in England", is actually rather good. The latter, "When Heart Is Open", is not. "Summertime in England" sets itself up with a nice, jazzy canter with Van wittering on about his favourite classic poets and the sublime natural beauty of the countryside in nice weather. (Indeed, if you thought it was pretentious of me to compare Van to James Joyce earlier on I feel somewhat justified by the fact he does so himself on "Summertime".) Although a quarter of an hour is an overly generous running time the swirl and cascade of the strings is often nicely evocative and pleasantly reminiscent of much of Astral Weeks. It might not match those heights but it is nice at least to see Van giving it a crack. The closing "When Heart Is Over" perhaps seeks to re-explore the sparse dynamics of the eerie "Slim Slow Slider" but, in contrast, does so with all the mystery and magic painfully sapped out. It is noticeable, I guess, that something that lasts for fifteen minutes should be forgotten in an instant but no matter how hard Van tried to come up with something memorable it makes Eno's Music for Airports sound like Slayer. The tracks in the middle are pretty much bog-standard bloated r'n'b with "Satisfied" at least worthy of note for the fact Van manages to match his literally self-satisfied lyrics with appropriately smug vocals. Apart from "Summertime in England" the only other song worthy of any real commendation is the atmospheric opener "Haunts of Ancient Peace", which does at least show Van partially succeeding with an ambient suite of music. Together with the epic ":Summertime" it actually ensures almost half of this album is actually pretty good. However, the rest of the material drags down the overall effect to one of depressing mediocrity and proves that not only was Into the Music a one-off, it also represents possibly the last time is his career Van was a man with any real artistic relevance. At least until the moment Rod Stewart appeared Top of the Pops in the early nineties singing "Have I Told You Lately".

 

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Email me at: jackfeeny@yahoo.co.uk