See also: Morrison

George Ivan Morrison , known as Van Morrison or Van the Man , born with Belfast the August 31st 1945, is an author and type-setter north-Irish.

Biography

Childhood

George Ivan Morrison is born on August 31st, 1945 in a small house from the part is of Belfast, with the edge of the countryside. He is the single child of a young couple resulting from the working class: his/her Violet mother works in a mill, and his/her George father is an electrician who exerts in the neighbouring shipyards. This last is a rather timid and introverted man, but also one impassioned of music holder of improbable a enough collection of discs for the place and the time. By opposition, Violet is an exuberant personality, singer and occasional dancer always ready to use of its talents to animate the festivals. Within this framework favorable to the development of his ear, the Van young person (as everyone calls it) discovers some great names of the American music among which Muddy Waters, Hank Williams, Woodie Guthrie, Charlie Parker, Mahalia Jackson and especially Leadbelly, its preferred which decides it to sing and will be for a time an absolute model, its " gourou" as it will qualify it itself. This precociously acquired knowledge distinguishes it from about all its contemporaries musicians, who often discovered their principal influences only once student. Van Morrison also listens to the musicians of its district who play much in the streets, and unconsciously give birth to its interest for the traditional Celtic music. The Morrison family is Protestant, but little practicing. Van will be besides sent to the laic college of Orangefield, and will observe always the problems which tear its country with distance and incomprehension: " I was not even aware of these religious confrontations before being one day apostrophized and struck by an group of youth whom I had never seen before. They left with the intention to attack the catholics or the Protestants, I do not know any more. They stopped typing when it was said to them that one was not what they believed. All that seemed to me irréel." Purple however its religious enthusiasm expressed while going for one short period to meetings of the Témoins of Jéhovah, sometimes accompanied by his/her son. This open-minded and this tolerance with regard to the religions will announce the spiritual search that the singer will continue during his work, without never showing the arrogance of a new convert who characterized Bob Dylan in the end of the year 1970 and the beginning of the year 1980.

In 1956, a resumption Skiffle with success of Leadbelly by the Scot Lonnie Donegan encourages Van Morrison and much others, the Beatles at the head, to found at eleven years a first group of Skiffle with some friends of its district, the Sputniks . It holds to with it the roles of guitarist and singer, armed with the Guitare of occasion which his/her father offered to him. The group of schoolboys occurs mainly during marriages or other religious holidays, of contest of young talents or in hearths of young people. As from this time Van studies with assiduity the music, learns some rudiments from Piano and develops an impressive technique with the Harmonica. With the Rock' roll falls down one second wave of models which will influence it considerably, in particular Bill Halley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly. It also attends with enthusiasm the advent of the first British stars of the kind, like Tommy Steele or Cliff Richard with which it will sing in duet in 1989 on Whenever God Shines His Light One Me , and starts to write a little prose like some fragments of verses for still non-existent songs.

In 1960, the Van young person does not have a appointed group and changes some constantly, but more particularly points out themselves as a guitarist of Deanie Sands and The Javelins . It gives up the school in July of this same year without any qualification, at the fifteen years age. It is the time of the odd jobs for the future singer, who exerts in many fields and assembles even with a partner of his age a company of window cleaners, an experiment which it will evoke well later with humor in his song Cleaning Windows . The formation The Javelins (now without Deanie Sands) in which it plays more and more regularly undergoes multiple metamorphoses then: additions of a pianist then of a copper section under the impulse of Van which passes to the saxophone tenor. " One evening it appeared to us with a strange case with instrument. It was a saxophone which his/her father had bought to him. We asked to him whether it could play about it and it answered: " A note! " And this note was F. At this time we learned a topic from Peter Gunn, then transposed we it in tonality of F, and it joined us with the sax by hooting its single note. Suddenly we had a large sound! It continued the study of this instrument - it did not sing yet much, one was already several to do it - and we thus evolved/moved to become a showband." The specifically Irish concept of showband indicates a group of at least eight musicians, of which a copper good portion, which animates in uniform traditionally festive saturdays of the surrounding rural population. That does not correspond obviously so that would wish to play Van, but the context does not leave him for the moment not alternative. Consequently of these important modifications, the Javelins rename The Monarchs .

Van Morrison develops for the occasion an exuberant stage business which is worth a beautiful reputation to him and constitutes one of principal attractions of the showband: he does not hesitate to tear shirt and pants to roll himself over the scene. " He was usually very calm, but as soon as he heard music, it animait" , will explain a witness. A meeting with a Scottish singer will determine the Monarchs the most justified to embark for the Scotland and to make there a first round, following which they will move towards London on the council of the singer Don Thomas. Van is not whereas a sixteen year old teenager, but formed of course part of the voyage. After one difficult period during which they carry out a bohemian life, the young musicians take down a hearing which gives them the right to go in the south of the Germany, and to play for a public mainly made up of magic GI to hear the few songs of Ray Charles or James Brown which one wants to grant well to Van, which is only able to compete with American when it is question of their music. This initiatory voyage will include/understand even the recording of one 45 turns with imposed songs, under the name of Georgia And The Monarchs (in which Van does nothing but play of the saxophone) organized at the request of an eminent member of the German sector of a large recording company, which will appear during the summer 1963 and will be a small success in Germany. " The song was really bad, but equipped we it with instrumental a détonant" , Van will estimate a few years later. The titles of these pieces are Boozoo Hully Gully (face A) and Twingy Baby (face B).

Of return to Belfast with the end of the year 1963, Van Morrison integrates new a showband whose guitarist is Herbie Armstrong, an Irish colleague with whom it will work again during his career solo. They thus carry out a round in England in spring 1964, from which Van profits by observing with amazement the radical changes that the explosion of the Beatles allowed; the young English groups which begin again of the old standards of blues, like the Rolling Stones and the Animals , interest it more particularly and give him the feeling of one return to the music of its childhood. Under their influence, it composes of the songs then returns to Belfast with the obsession to found its own training with their image in a country remained in withdrawal compared to this new British effervescence. To mark the blow, it is let push the hair, and jumps on the occasion when it learns that a club of rythm and blues wants to launch a group. Not being able to bring together the musicians who it wishes, Van is folded back on The Gamblers , a formation founded in 1962 qu' it integrates as a simple saxophonist, but its influence will not cease D `increasing during the following years. The group will rename quickly Them to avoid confusion with a homonym.

Them

See also: Them

The years that Van Morrison passes with Them are very formative for the singer. A first consequence is that it settles durably in London where the meetings of recordings with the group take place. There, it makes play and engrave its first compositions, among which the very famous Gloria which will be taken again by many musicians, of which Patti Smith on the album Horses . A few years before the publication of the Sgt. Pepper' S Lonely Hearts Club Band of the Beatles which will develop radically the techniques D `recording, Morrison also takes the practice to test in studio and announces the career D `own-produced artist which he will embrace later by concern D `independence. In addition, it inaugurates its legendary bad relationship with the industry of the disc and the media (see the article Them for more details).

Lastly, some outstanding meetings marked out the course of the Irishman within Them : in particular those of the producer Bert Berns, the clavierists Peter Gardens and Phil Coulter which will intervene in later albums, and of his future wife Janet Planet of which it is already in love lorsqu `it gives up the group in 1966. The latter is a young Californian actress that Van probably met during a concert of the American round of Them . However, Morrison since clearly relativized the importance of this group in the development of its career: “If I had not belonged to Them , I would have just integrated another group… it was not very important for me. ”

The period Bang

When Van Morrison leaves Them in July 1966, he is only the ex-singer of a group having had his hour of glory, like many of his young contemporaries. Into the majority of the cases, the latter were finally reconverted into an absolutely foreign field with the music, or became industrialists about it after being engaged by any recording company. Morrison, which ardently wishes to continue to sing and compose, is thus in a situation more delicate than it does not appear to with it, more especially as the concerts of Them in Belfast were worth a passably bad reputation to him. On the council of Phil Coulter, Van gets a tape recorder with which it can record only models of songs in a spirit very different from that which animated the music of Them , being accompanied only by one acoustic guitar. It thus starts the search for a primarily personal music which will succeed two years later, when designing its early masterpiece Astral Weeks . For the time being, Morrison obtained only to one invitation of his/her friend the guitarist Herbie Armstrong to join her group The Wheels , as well as a vague proposal for a launching of a career solo at Philips whose drafting of the contract trails in length. The offer of Armstrong does not satisfy it truly either, since he does not want to renew an experiment similar to that of Them and hears as of now playing what it likes. Whereas it has more and more difficulties of being made engage to ensure in the concerts, the singer receives a providential telephone call of American Bert Berns (see Them ) to propose to him to produce four 45 turns, that is to say eight songs, in the only condition which it moves to carry out the recordings in a studio of New York.

The situation of Berns in addition developed considerably since the time when Van had met it within Them : it indeed obtained the authorization of the recording company Atlantic Records , in which it worked, to found its own label Bang Records mainly financed by its old company. Van is solved to accept the proposal, initially by need and in the intention to find Janet Planet, but also because Berns is hitherto the only man whom he known in the medium of the music on which he thinks of being able to count. It thus buys its place of plane with conviction qu `it will avoid as much compromise than possible. As of its arrival, he entrusts his cassettes to Berns which seems allured, but déchante quickly when he meets the musicians who are paid to accompany it: he does not count less than three guitarists in the formation! In two days, March 28th and 29th 1967, are recorded the eight titles with a style quite far away from the examination which Morrison for its songs had dreamed. The first 45 turns resulting from these meetings appears in July 1967, and is entitled Brown Eyed Girl ; it is essential gradually like a success on the United States and enters signal 20, to date constituting one of the largest tubes of Van Morrison in this country.

Morrison, which was gone back to Belfast shortly after the session, is recalled by Berns to ensure the promotion of the 45 turns. It occupies then with the young mother Janet Planet and her son Peter a hotel room in New York, and passively undergoes the various promotional appearances which are imposed to him. Shortly after the exit of the second 45 turns Ro Ro Rosey appears in September 1967 the first album of Van Morrison Blowin' Your Mind! which gathers all the titles of the first session, without the agreement of Van and even without he being informed by it. In spite of or because of the not very convenient exit of this disc, the singer agrees once again to trust Bert Berns which proposes to him one second meeting of recording for the month of November 1967, by promising this time to him a total artistic freedom. It is however in circumstances very close to those of the first session that eight new songs are recorded. Among those, one finds in particular the first grindings of Mrs George and Beside You that Morrison will begin again later on Astral Weeks . In December 1967 occurs the brutal death of Berns embanked by an heart attack.

Promising beginnings

The frame of mind which lives Van Morrison at this crucial period of its career is clearly restored by this extract of an interview going back to this time: “Sometimes I think that I am only one confidential artist. I cannot make compromise, you see, it is my problem. One must be able about it if one wants to belong to the show business. ” Extremely of this revelation, after a removal in Cambridge then its marriage with Janet Planet, Morrison forms an electric group which is reduced quickly to an acoustic trio, with the double bass player Tom Kielbania and the flutist John Payne. The hour is with the experimentation, and the strange synthesis of Jazz, Rock and Poésie proposed by the Irishman is not voted by plebiscite. “They are only afterwards that people collected this one made. Perhaps that maintaining it is obvious, but at the time anybody did not have the least idea of it. We played in clubs, and private individuals as Jimi Hendrix came, took seat in front of us and remained all the night. It seemed that the musicians understood us, but that the general public did not know where we were. ”, will explain the singer.

Recommended to the Warner Bros by an old knowledge of the time of Them , Van Morrison offers the services of management of the company Inherit Productions which acts as intermediary by obtaining a contract to him the binder with the Warner the time of two discs. In addition, the label Bang Records still claims an album with Morrison. The artist yields by provocation the bands of about thirty bâclées improvisations, recorded during the two problematic sessions of 1967 qu' had financed Bert Berns (for more details, to see Payin' Dues ). This thumb your nose puts a term at the difficult reports/ratios that maintained the singer with his old recording company. Inherit Productions deals with the production of the first album that Van must provide to the Warner , and urges a senior small group of jazzmen to accompany the young man during two sessions in September and October 1968, which lead to the exit of the brilliance album Astral Weeks in November of the same year.

In February 1969, Van Morrison and his wife Janet Planet move in with Woodstock, not far from at Bob Dylan and of The Band . There, probably influenced by the latter, it assembles its own electric group, and records Moondance which will leave in February 1970. For the first time, the singer produces itself his album, which confers an almost total artistic freedom to him. More luminous than the precedent, good business success, this disc seems to be a good introduction to the music of Van Morrison. The songs all are there memorable, but quote more particularly And It Stoned Me , Moondance , Caravan and Into the Mystic , which appears all among most known of the singer.

The intense love of life which illuminates its music then will be partly explained by the birth of his/her daughter Shannon in July 1970. Lastly, this year filled well is completed with the recording and the exit of the album entitled His Band and the Street Choir . A little more directed Rythm and blues than Moondance , it lets once again the domestic happiness of Van Morrison show through in its compositions.

California

After a concert of calamitous good-bye to the Fillmore East of New York and a duet with The Band for the song Per Furnace Hundred Mime of the album Cahoots , the couple settles in April 1971 with San Rafael in California under the impulse of Janet Planet. In order to be able to record an album in the next months, Van Morrison unwillingly puts at research new musicians, the precedents not having been enough available to follow it. It also decides to invest in a small home studio 16 tracks which will give him more freedom in its work, and collaborates with John Lee Hooker on the discs Never Get Out Of Thesis Blues Alive and Born In the Mississippi, Raised Up In Tennessee . In preparation for the future disc, Warner assigns the Co-producer Ted Templeman to him. But the singer does not hear it like that: " I granted the appropriations of coproduction to him so that it does what I did not want to do. To be sure mixing. I sent to him bandage and explained to him how I wanted that they are mixed. I could be anywhere, for example on vacation, I called it and said to him what I wanted. It was occupied some then with the engineer of the son." Templeman was overflowed a little, if one believes his own testimony of it: " The aptitudes of Van as a musician, arranger and producer are the most alarming thing which I saw. When it has an idea, it wants to immediately test it without Overdub S. It works quickly and requires as much of any collaborator of it. I had to replace sound engineers who did not know adapter." This little balanced collaboration ended after three discs by-products: Tupelo Honey , Holy Dominic' S Preview (partly by-product) and It' S Too Late to Stop Now . Templeman will declare later: " I will never work again with Van Morrison, even if it offered two million dollars to me. I aged ten years by producing three of his disques." It was the last time that Warner intervened in the production of a disc of the singer.

Parallel to the exit of the album Tupelo Honey in November 1971, Van Morrison carries out a life of recluse who is not taste of Janet Planet. Actress beginner, it would like émanciper by accepting certain roles that one proposes to him, but her husband discourages it, preferring to have his housewife. Janet is frustrated, and says at the time: " We never leave. We carry out an incredibly calm life, and to leave in round is the only distraction that us ayons." Very solicited by his public, the singer adapts badly to the general tendency which wants that one plays in gigantic stages in front of thousands of unverifiable fans. Petrified in turn or extremely excited by a trac that it is not always able to control, Van Morrison gives best itself only when it can disregard its audience. After the rout of Fillmore East, it offers an extraordinary service to a public of two hundred people in Pacific High Studio, with in particular a noticed recovery but ever marketed Just Like has Woman of Bob Dylan. However, a few weeks later, two days before playing in one of the more big rooms of San Francisco, he announces that he withdraws scene. Under the pressure, it gives finally a concert during which it is unaware of its public perfectly and refuses a recall until the bluesman Taj Mahal speaks to him in the slides to make it change opinion. A little later, Morrison sings in Lion' S Share de San Anselmo a few kilometres from at his place, and all is held so that it takes the practice to give spectacles impromptus to it: " It a little earlier called its musicians in the afternoon to know if they wanted to play this evening. Then I united the owner of the club, which reserved one of the scenes for the nuit." , will explain Stephen Pillster later, then to manage of the singer. Not announced and thus without any publicity, these regular appearances avoid to him facing waitings of the public which weigh to him so much. In connection with its reports/ratios complicated with the scene, Van Morrison was explained later: " I never was at ease in concert. I am still not it. I never adapted because with my beginnings when balls were animated, as soon as one some songs, one had finished mingled with the public. There was no question of being a star."

Gradually during his frequent spectacles, the singer presents some of the pieces which will constitute its imposing next album Saint Dominic' S Preview , marketed in July 1972. The exit of this disc sounds the hour of the recall for the former musicians of Woodstock who move one by one in California and reinforce the group of increasingly trustful Van. But it is only after the return of Jeff Labes, pianist key of the formation, that Morrison is accompanied by a group officially baptized Caledonia Soul Orchestrated . The addition of a section of cords will complete in April 1973 the constitution of the formation often considered as best Van Morrison ever had.

At that time Van Morrison works free as disc jockey of a local radio of San Rafael, which he appreciates much: " I play of the discs which would not be it if not, in a spontaneous environment and décontractée." In parallel the construction of its home studio is completed, which enables him to produce the piece Sweet Sixteen for the singer Jackie DeShannon. This one will open later in first part several concerts of Morrison, and this prolonged collaboration will make to jaser certain journalists who will not hesitate to announce a common round and an album of duets. Van will say on this subject: " They are only rumors launched by magazines. They write in connection with things of which they do not know anything, just to be made money. It is like that they existent." The relations of the singer with Janet Planet worsen more and more, leading the latter to leave the family home with their Shannon daughter (called Shana) and to require the divorce as well as an amount of money to have supported her husband lasting these a few difficult years. This sad event is immediately followed in July 1973 by the exit of the album Hard Nose the Highway , recorded with the large one of the Caledonia Soul in the personal studio of Van Morrison Orchestrated, and of which he will say that he is its first disc on which he exerted a total control.

The Irishman spends the summer 1973 in round, initially with the the United States, then in Europe and more particularly in Great Britain where it did not give concerts since the time of Them . The unanimous critic greets the return of a star adulated and immensely respected: always supported by an ideal formation, the singer gives some unforgettable scenic services for those which have the privilege to be about it. In spite of a stage business minimalist, Morrison succeeds in marking the spirits of its spectators, among whom a journalist who will write: " I was pilot of what I can describe only like one anti-performance of most incredible. Shit, it hardly moved! I must acknowledge that I was never captivated as much by such a voluntary absence of distractions visuelles". Moreover, Van évertue to be made each evening single, which it justifies with its way: " There are no model concerts. This group cannot make spectacle envisaged. We are forced of décoller". This exemplary round is completed after a return to the United States and will be used as support with the next disc live of the singer It' S Too Late to Stop Now to appear in February 1974.

In October 1973, the Irish singer agrees a few days of holidays and decides to traverse his native island. During this short stay Van Morrison revisits the places of its childhood, devotes themselves to tourism and especially prepares its next album Veedon Fleece of which it composes the majority of the titles. As of its return in California it brings together its musicians of the Caledonia Soul Orchestrated to present its new songs to them and to continue the development of two parallel projects which will not finally succeed: an album country which were partially recorded, and a disc of Christmas. The following months are thus heavily occupied by the frequent ones and erratic meetings studio whose only the album Veedon Fleece in October 1974 will emerge. In fact, Morrison takes one of the most discussed decisions there its career by dismantling the ideal formation which it had patiently constituted since Moondance , and this disc makes it possible the listener to seize a group in full change. On ashes of this mythical group (i.e. the only survivors are the beater and the bass player), Van Morrison bases transitory the Caledonia Soul Express train which leaves in round through the United States and Europe as from March 1974. There is no more section of cords nor of trumpet player, but one raises the presence of a flutist/saxophonist succeeding Jack Schroer. This last, undermined by drug and henceforth incompetent to assume his responsibilities for musician, starts a discrete career of truck-driver of which it will not deviate any more in spite of the authorities of Van itself a few years later. During a halt in Amsterdam, the singer records the two faces of one 45 turns with his new group, in a style very rythm and blues : a resumption of traditional of Louis Jordan Caldonia renamed Caledonia , and the almost instrumental What' S Up Crazy Pup . As of the end of the round, Morrison dismisses once again its group and declares: " There was not anything else to make in this contexte."

With the back of the small pocket of CD “ Inarticulate… ” (1983), Van Morrison addresses its " special thanks" in Ron L. Hubbard, the founder of the scientology.

Discography

The period Bang

Original album

  • Blowin' Your Mind ! (1967) #182 HAVE

Compilations

The years Post-Bang

Original albums

Compilations

Quotations

  • “what it does exceeds the limits of our world. ” Bono, of the group U2
  • “Van Morrison should be canonized. ” Sinéad O' Connor
  • “I was caught for Van Morrison, I wanted to make a disc like Astral Weeks , on the basis of the pure improvisation. But it should me have been admitted that I was not with the height, I found oneself on the bottom. ” Miossec
  • “I listen to the discs of Van since always, I know them by heart, they accompany my life, give him heart when it misses some. Van Morrison, it is the made heart singer: its shade does not worry me. ” Maria McKee
  • “I know that some of its albums are better than others, but me I hear only his voice. A voice whose sound in itself is already a song, with volume and heart. It is for that all the songs of Van Morrison are splendid, whatever the period. ” David Thomas, singer of the group Father Ubu
  • “If my heart could think, and if my head could feel, I would have another glance on the world. ” Van Morrison

External bonds

  • Site of English fans, very complete
  • Site general practitioner, with news on Van Morrison

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