Van Morrison. The Healing Game. 3cd Deluxe Set.

HMV in Bath.

It is Sunday morning; the sun is shining and I’m listening to my new 3cd deluxe set of The Healing Game by Van Morrison. I bought it in the HMV record store in Bath yesterday afternoon. This shop had closed recently but a Canadian business man stepped in and saved it and it has re-opened. I’m pleased about that because a great city like Bath deserves to have a good music shop. When I was served at the counter the man said they had been playing it in the shop and he liked it. I told him Van was playing in Bath on June 2^nd. He knew that and said he would be going. It should be a great day seeing Van in one of his old stamping grounds, especially if the weather is nice.

Disc 1 is called The Original Album…Plus.  Is it really twenty-two years since this album came out? It seems only yesterday that Kim went away for a week to Torquay with her residents from work.  When she returned she had bought me Van's new album. I thought at the time that it was a huge return to form after the disappointment of Tell Me Something and How Long Has This Been Going On? when I thought Van had just been treading water for a couple of years. In the 22 years since this album came out Van has written some great songs and released some excellent albums, but I don’t think he ever again quite reached the brilliance of The Healing Game. About the album, I think the rough god referred to in the opening track has something to do with a Yeats poem or it might be about Van having a go at the press who gave him a hard time the previous year. Fire In The Belly has the same title as a book by Sam Keen. I don't know if that’s where Van got the idea from, but I like hearing 'Gotta get through January, gotta get through February' on a nice sunny morning in March. This Weight is Van complaining about the weight of being famous and all he wants is anonymity. The Waiting Game is a great song with mysterious lyrics such as ‘I am the brother of the snake’. It’s a great song even if it is an enigma inside a mystery. It also incorporates one of Vans favourite images of leaves coming tumbling down. 

Piper At The Gates Of Dawn is based as you know on Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Grahame. It is very Irish in flavour featuring Van’s old friends Phil Coulter and Paddy Moloney. It was commissioned for a film by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame but wasn’t used so it ended up on this album and makes a nice contrast to the heavier songs. Burning Ground is a powerful song driven along by some awesome sax playing by Pee Wee and Leo Green. I have read lots of discussion between Van fans over the years about the meaning of the lyrics such as ‘Dump the jute’. It Once Was My Life has a very 1950’s feel to it. Then we get to one of Van's all-time great songs Sometimes We Cry which is a masterpiece. From Alec Dankworth’s opening notes on the bass to Pee Wee's exquisite solo and Robin’s piano playing it is faultless. I met Pee Wee once when he played in a pub in Bradford On Avon and he signed my Healing Game CD booklet on the Sometimes We Cry page and he put 'Thanks, Pee Wee Ellis’. If You Love Me is another 1950’s style song before the tour de force of the title track The Healing Game which is another of Vans greatest songs. I first heard it a year previously at Wembley Arena when Van appeared with Ray Charles. Of the bonus tracks, I sometimes think Look What The Good People Done is about Van’s friend George Best. There is a reference to the Wogan TV show on which George made a notorious drunken appearance. At The End Of The Day is a Van song that I can’t remember hearing before. It was a track on a cd single. I never have rated the Full Force Gale 96 remake all that much. I do like the version of St Dominic’s Preview included here. It is from a compilation album called Sult and produced by Donal Lunny. I wish they had included another song that Van recorded around this time with Paddy Moloney called Celtic Spring.

Disc 2 is called Sessions & Collaborations. There are three more alternate versions of The Healing Game here including one with John Lee Hooker. I really like the alternate version of Fire In The Belly which shows off the delicate piano playing of Robin Aspland to great effect. Didn’t He Ramble is a great song of Van’s that is previously unissued, maybe because the lyrics evolved into The Philosophers Stone. The full length eight minutes of Sometimes We Cry is fabulous. I have never been all that keen on Muleskinner Blues of which there are two versions here, one with Lonnie Donegan. I don’t think I have ever heard A Kiss To Build A Dream On before. It is a song first made famous by Louis Armstrong and recorded by many other people. The two songs with Van’s friend John Lee Hooker Don’t Look Back and The Healing Game are great. I bet Van enjoyed working with John Lee. He seems to have had a great time recording with Carl Perkins as well. There are five songs all recorded on March 27^th, 1996 just down the road from here at the Wool Hall in Beckington. It sounds like they had great fun and Carl loved the sound of that saxophone. The sad thing is that Carl died less that two years later in January 1998.

Disc 3 is called Live At Montreux 19 July 1997. It is a recording that is well known to Van fans as a bootleg but it’s great to hear it finally on an official release. The sound quality is excellent, and Van and the band are on top form. The band all deserve a mention, Georgie Fame, Ronnie Johnson, Geoff Dunn, Nicky Scott, Robin Aspland, Pee Wee Ellis, Leo Green, Matt Holland & Brian Kennedy.  Hearing this performance again brings lots of memories flooding back because we saw Van at Glastonbury just three weeks prior to this Montreux show and they performed all these songs if my memory serves me well. It had rained nonstop since Friday and the site was a quagmire. The sun came out on Sunday afternoon though in time for performances by Sting, Beck and Van. Van started his performance with Rough God Goes Riding, the opening track on this disc. The lyrics seemed strangely appropriate referring to the 'mud splattered victims' which was us. I remember that performance vividly because during Van singing 'Its A Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World' he stopped and asked the audience "Who is the godfather of soul?”. Quick as a flash I shouted out "James Brown”, “That’s right”, said Van. Lots of people looked at me and I felt quite brainy although I expect lots of other people also shouted it out as well. Van closed that show with a slowed down version of Burning Ground, lifting the mike stand above his shoulders before finally smashing it down on the stage and walking off in triumph with the applause of at least 50,000 people ringing in his ears.

I’m tired now after a most enjoyable morning of listening to The Healing Game for three hours and writing about it. The sun is still shining. I might go to the pub to unwind. See you later.