Look at the Man

A Post About Van

Every spring, I feel a deep thrill at the changing of the weather, the changing of the guard, the pastoral renewal of infinite promise which I cannot fully express and so I put on Van Morrison's panoramic 1972 album St. Dominic's Preview and it does the job for me. In the first ebullient, solo vocal seconds of "Jackie Wilson Says," I'm in heaven.

There is an autumnal version of this as well — 1974’s Veedon Fleece. From the gorgeous jazz-inflected opener "Fair Play" until the dark, and ruminative folk of the tense closing track "Country Fair." It roams from one sublime moment to the next in an almost painfully moving tapestry. Veedon Fleece, my fall record, is Astral Weeks' older, wiser cousin — still embroidering deep Celtic mystery over the anxiety of modern life, but more mature, more lived in, and ultimately sadder and more affecting.

I’ve got a summer record too, also Van, which I will not reveal. My winter record is Merle Haggard.

A couple years back I tweeted this about Van:

Was he though? In retrospect, this seems a little harsh. Because of Astral Weeks, which my early experience of was as “mood music” for aspiring, sensitive boys, but which I later came to understand as a long form paean to a misunderstood martyr who happened to be trans and holy. Astral Weeks established Van Morrison as a young songwriter of nearly frightening depth and vulnerability. Have I discounted his trauma in my rush to taxonomize his insanity? Somebody once said to me, and I don’t remember who, so I am sorry, that between the wars and the genius and some kind of rigorously strange religious upbringing, he never really stood a chance socially. He was permanently estranged. No wonder he understood “Madame George” — no — saw her. No wonder he wrote the words:

Dry your eye, your eye, your eye, your eye

Your eye, your eye, your eye, your eye

Your eye, your eye, your eye, your eye

Your eye, your eye, your eye, your eye

Your eye, your eye, your eye, your eye

And sure, I’ve written about Van before in the media he despises. I wrote this in Stereogum, as part of a longer piece:

No one argues that Van the Man isn’t great. But despite or because of the extent of his domineering genius, he has remained a conspicuously remote rock star, with a well-earned reputation as one of the truly difficult and diffident figures in popular music. Tales of his crankiness are legendary, and include hectoring inattentive audiences, abusing fellow musicians both on and off stage, and generally creating the impression that other human beings are not his preferred life form.

And that was a rave!

Why yes, I do own a Latest Record Project: Volume 1 tee-shirt, in the event you need to borrow one.

I reviewed Van’s 2019 double album Latest Record Project: Volume 1 for Pitchfork. When you write for Pitchfork, you’re supposed to suggest a possible score on their fateful 0.0-to-10.0 scale. I really didn’t know. I proposed 0 and I proposed ten. It’s a really complicated record. They went with 5.4 which was probably judicious. Here’s an excerpt of that review:

The first track on Latest Project: Volume 1 is “Latest Record Project Volume 1,” and immediately it is impossible to know if all of this is a prank. “Have you got my/Latest/Record Project?” Van croons with insinuating casualness over a fetching jazzy stroll pitched somewhere between Frankie Avalon and go-fuck-yourself. The follow-up track doubles down on the light-jazz-dude-taking-no-shit-vibe with “Where Have All the Rebels Gone?” (Spoiler: He’s the only one left.)

Here’s the ending.

For those of us who love Van, the concern is always that his madness will overtake his judgment and something will occur that truly desecrates his legacy. He is the Belfast Cowboy, the dweller on the threshold, the king of the slipstream. He is also transparently insane, in insane times. Together we flow into the mystic.

Half a mile from the county fair, the rain came pouring down.

Beautiful vision, stay ever on my mind.