Van Morrison
Van Morrison
Sir George Ivan "Van" Morrison, OBEis a Northern Irish singer, songwriter and musician. He has received six Grammy Awards, the 1994 Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, and has been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2016 he was knighted for his musical achievements and his services to tourism and charitable causes in Northern Ireland...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth31 August 1945
CityBelfast, Northern Ireland
[Jazz musicians ] couldn't cut rock. I had to be more limited and specific about what I was doing.
If you want to put your rock 'n' roll into mythology, [ A Period of Transition ] is from the Daddy Cool school.
What I really like to do is just do the twist!
Like I said, basically I'm a rocker. That's about it. Things that I've done away from that-branches that I've gotten into off of that - are just other streams, other things that I can do.
I didn't know what some of the stuff on Astral Weeks was about until years later.
I think intellectualization is what's killing most people.
I think we're going a bit too fast at the minute. The rate we're going is like we're going over the edge of the hill.
There's a realization that you have to do something but you just can't do it all the time.
[Jean-Paul ] Sartre was a throwback to the existential period. I'm not really so much into that these days. I went through a period of going over things and looking at them again to see what they were. But I'm into psychiatry type things. I'm into philosophy. I'm into that sort of thing.
We're [with Robbie Robertson ] jazz musicians. The context may be rock 'n' roll but it's still jazz. It's jazz and that means improvization...you play a tune the way it feels and you play it differently every time. It can never be the same.
I have to accept the fact that I was putting out records that reviewers were going to get an image from.
If you're with a good band and everybody's from the old school, it's different. When you're in your element, you're in your element and things just come. You don't have to drag them out or force them out. They just happen.
Whether you're writing a book or a song or whatever, you've got to be involved in it. It's got to come from the heart I think...that's what it's all about.
I haven't really heard much that's impressed me the way it was when I first heard Ray Charles or somebody like that. That was really an impression.