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
I'll tell you what does impress me: the fact that a lot of the cats who were our idols are still out there doing it. That impresses me very much.
There's quite a few people getting into that - new acts coming along that are using a lot of stuff that happened in the 50s and 60s. They're completely ignoring the 70s which is kind of a turn on because to me nothing has really gone down in the 70s.
I just can't stand it [ jazz/rock]. It just doesn't sound right to me. It doesn't hit me...it doesn't get me...it just doesn't grab me.
I'm talking about noise rock. I don't think that noise rock element belongs in jazz. It's not for me anyway; it just doesn't fit.
Everybody's got their own particular vision which is a personal thing.
There's no man alive who has any answers. We all know that. It's like the guru trip. All a guru can do is direct you to something that you probably already know about yourself, something you might want to followup on. Apply the same thing to music and records. You might get something from a particular record that hits a nerve and something inside you. But that's your vision of it.
I realized that what I was looking for was doing collaborations with other people - people who can play a ballad, rock, jazz. I was looking for more co-op type things than what I had been doing, which had been completely my own trip.
It was like I had evolved to a certain stage where I was stuck in this songwriter bag as an image. But basically at heart, I'm a rocker. And I still am. But I was caught up in the singer/songwriter bag and I wasn't really enjoying it.
I was all caught up with identifying with certain things. They just weren't very stimulating things.
The fact I wasn't getting off made me realize that I really had to take a hard look at it and at the type of music that I played, which ranges from ballads to country type stuff to rock and rhythm 'n' blues. It takes in a wider spectrum.
The whole trip that happened in the late 60s and 70s was kind of a throwback to a lot of folk styles. I got into it as well 'cause I started with the folk styles.
I wanted to find out why I wasn't getting off on what I was doing and try and make some sense out of the evolution of it.
You can put out an album and it could be totally out of the window as far as what you want to do performance-wise.
I'd come to the point where I wasn't really putting out creatively. I didn't seem to have anything to say in that period of time after the '74 tour. There was nothing definite that I wanted to record.