Van Morrison & Literature.

The big news today in the Van Morrison fan world is that Van has a new double album imaginatively titled Latest Record Project: Volume 1 coming out in May. A new album by Van is always something to look forward to. As well as listening to the music, I like poring over the lyrics looking for meanings in them. One thing I have noticed over the years is how well-read Van is. His lyrics are strewn with literary references. Thinking about that today reminded me of a piece that I wrote ages ago and I thought I should revisit it, update it, and hopefully improve it. This is it. 

I bought a book on eBay called The Dweller On The Threshold by Robert Hichens. It was published in 1909. I bought it because it had the same title as a song by Van Morrison from his 1982 album Beautiful Vision and I thought that it might help towards my understanding of Van's music. I thought this book might be where Van got the inspiration for his song from, but I have found out since that the expression Dweller On The Threshold was first used in 1842 in a book by Edward Bulwer-Llyton called Zanoni which was his interpretation of an ancient Rosicrucian manuscript. The Dweller is an invisible and possibly malevolent spirit that attaches itself to a human being. It is also mentioned in books by Rudolf Steiner and Madame Blavatsky who was a big influence on Van in the 1980's. Madame Blavatsky who was a theosophist said that the Dweller On The Threshold was separated from the angel of the presence by the burning ground, so I think we can see where Van got his song The Burning Ground from.

All this got me wondering how many more songs of Van are also the titles of books, and I was surprised to find that there are quite a few. Haunts Of Ancient Peace is the opening track on the Common One album and it is also the title of a book by Alfred Austin published in 1902. Alfred Austin was appointed Poet Laureate following the death of Lord Tennyson. I am not sure if Van read the book or just liked the title. Avalon Of The Heart from the Enlightenment album is also a book by Dion Fortune which was first published in 1934. I am sure that Van read this book because of his huge interest in Glastonbury and Avalon which is the New Jerusalem. Dion Fortune described Glastonbury as one of the green roads to the soul and I’m sure Van was inspired to write much of his music after visiting the Abbey, The Chalice Well and The Tor. Avalon was the source of some of Van's greatest work in the 1980's. Dion Fortune died in 1946 and she is buried in Glastonbury. I have previously written a story on this blog page about the time I visited her grave. 

Another book that I am quite confident that Van has read is Don't Push The River (It Flows By Itself) by Barry Stevens. I am sure it inspired his song You Don't Pull No Punches, But You Don't Push The River from the Veedon Fleece album of 1974. This album is full of literary references such as Poe, Wilde and Thoreau, and Van has acknowledged that this particular track was influenced by his reading of Gestalt therapy. The author of the book Barry Stevens was a gestalt therapist who also investigated the writings of Jiddu Krishnamurti another huge influence on Van and gave Van the title of his No Guru, No Method, No Teacher album. It is in the lyrics of this song that Van first mentions William Blake whose name occurs many more times in Van's subsequent career. There is a book called A New Kind Of Man which is a biography of Blake by Michael Davis. I wonder if Van has read it because it is the title of one of his songs on the Sense Of Wonder album. Ancient of Days on the same album is taken from a painting by Blake.

Van has said that his song Fire In The Belly from his album The Healing Game was inspired by the book of the same name by Sam Keen. He is an American writer, professor and philosopher who has written many books on life, love and being a man in modern society. Van has also definitely read Cloud Hidden Whereabouts Unknown by Alan Watts because he called A song on Poetic Champions Compose Alan Watts Blues and uses the book title freely in the lyrics of the song. Green Mansions is the best-known novel by W.H. Hudson published in 1904.It was made into a film in 1959 starring Audrey Hepburn and Anthony Perkins and flopped at the box-office. It is also the title of one of the lesser-known songs on Van’s Hymns To The Silence album. I don't know if Van has read the book or seen the film but he got the title from somewhere. Whilst on the subject of film there is a film called Cold Wind In August. made in 1961 from a novel by Burton Wohl starring Lola Albright and also the title of a song on A Period Of Transition.

One of my favourite songs on the Into The Music album is Angelou. I have never heard of anyone with that first name. I have sometimes wondered if Van got it from the famous author Maya Angelou. The Beat Generation writers have always been an influence on Van, especially Jack Kerouac who he has mentioned more than once in his lyrics. More recently on his 2016 album Keep Me Singing in the song In Tiburon he says, ‘Across the bay in San Francisco, Where city lights and Ferlinghetti stay, North Beach alleyways and cafés, Kerouac and Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Neal Cassady all held sway’. The song Meaning Of Loneliness on What’s Wrong With This Picture? mentions Dante, Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche and Hesse. This is equalled by Rave On John Donne which along with the metaphysical poet of the title also name-checks Walt Whitman, Omar Khayyam, Kahlil Gibran, and W.B. Yeats. Let's not forget Lord Byron and Rimbaud in the song Foreign Window and Rimbaud also provides the title for one of Van's greatest songs Tore Down A La Rimbaud. I am sure I could find even more literary names if I really searched. I think with all this name-dropping Van is encouraging the listener to check these people out. It is the same with his musical influences who he often draws our attention to in his lyrics.  If they did a course at a University in Van Morrison studies, I think any student would receive a first-rate education.

Beat Writers, Bob Donlon, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Robert La Vigne and Lawrence Ferlinghetti 

 

An Enjoyable Discussion.

I watched an online event tonight. It was organised by The Guardian and introduced by the literary journalist Alex Clark who was in discussion with the writer and Nobel Prize laureate Kazuo Ishiguro whose new novel Klara and the Sun was published today. There were also questions from guest celebrities such as writers Daisy Johnson, Bernardine Evaristo, and David Mitchell, and actress Emma Thompson who starred in the film adaption of The Remains Of The Day. I thought she asked a particularly good question when she asked if Kazuo thought that films can ever do the original book justice. He replied that writing books and making films are completely different art forms, so film makers should not try and replicate the book exactly but create something entirely new.

Music is obviously especially important to Kazuo Ishiguro and he revealed that in his youth he hoped to be a singer-songwriter and wrote about a hundred songs. The song writing helped when he started writing short stories in showing him the discipline of what words to leave out. He is a fan of Bob Dylan and said that after the success of Remains Of The Day he felt he had to move on like Dylan did and do something completely different, such as when Dylan went electric and got booed by the audience. He also mentioned Stanley Kubrick as another example of someone who always did something different.

There was one awkward moment when Alex Clark described his book The Unconsoled as ‘bonkers’. He was not offended though and took it as praise, with his usual good humour. He talked very seriously about the effect of the pandemic, also the world situation in the last year with people needing scientific truth to find a way out and develop vaccines whilst at the same time half the voters in America believing that the election was stolen from Trump. He questioned what writers like himself are contributing by putting forward emotional truths when scientific truth seems more important. He also talked about the amnesia of history where painful truths about our past are conveniently forgotten. This was brought to the fore last year by such things as the killing of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter movement and the pulling down of statues of slave traders.

The way he spoke so intelligently made me think that he would have made a great politician, but on reflection I think he is making a much better contribution to society as a writer. If you look back in history, it is writers and artists who have changed the world in a much more beneficial way than politicians. Take the Renaissance for instance. The pen is definitely mightier than the sword. After this most enjoyable discussion I am eagerly looking forward to reading Klara And The Sun in the very near future.

 

The Angry Young Them.

Today I thought I would revisit the very first album which Van Morrison made which is called The Angry Young Them from 1965 when he was in the group called Them. The title of the album is a play on words of  The Angry Young Men, a term applied to a group of working class British writers and playwrights of the late 50's and early sixties. They included such people as John Osbourne who wrote Look Back In Anger, Harold Pinter, John Braine, Alan Sillitoe, Arnold Wesker, Colin Wilson,and others.  Shelagh Delaney who wrote A Taste Of Honey is also associated with these writers. I think Them's manager Philip Solomon chose that name for the album to give Them a gritty hard image. I don't think they were particularly angry in a political sense but they could be quite confrontational in interviews.

The first song is Mystic Eyes. It must have been quite an experience for music fans at the Maritime Hotel in Belfast to have seen this song performed live. I think originally it was seven minutes long and evolved from a jam session in the studio with Van making the words up on the spur of the moment. The word mystic was to figure large in his subsequent career. The next track If You And I Could Be As Two opens with Van's spoken voice talking about autumn leaves being on the ground. This is another image that would crop up again much later in his career. Then it is Little Girl which is about watching a school girl on her way to school, which might not be acceptable these days, but you have to remember that Van was only a teenager himself when he wrote this song. It features the late great Pete Bardens on keyboards. He would re-emerge 13 years later on Vans Wavelength album. Pete was the only member of Them apart from Van to achieve huge success when he formed the band Camel and made the Snowgoose album. Just A Little Bit features  saxophone and keyboards and throaty vocals by Van. It was written by Rosco Gordon in 1959. I Gave My Love A Diamond' written by Bert Berns and Wes Farrell is next and Bert  played a major part in Vans future career. This is a great example of the British R & B sound of the sixties. Gloria is next, one of the greatest rock songs ever written. It brings Van's concerts to a rousing finale to this very day. You Just Can't Win is penned by Van and mentions his London haunts such as Camden Town and the Tottenham Court Road.

Go On Home Baby is another Berns/Farrell composition and Van sounds very much like Mick Jagger.  Don't Look Back  is a John Lee Hooker song that Van would continue to perform later in his career. I Like It Like That is a Van song and one of his lesser ones from this era in my opinion. I'm Gonna Dress In Black follows and this has quite an Animals sound to me. The keyboards remind me of Alan Price on House Of The Rising Sun. According to Wikipedia it was written by Gillon and Howe. I don't think i have heard the song by anybody else so  assume it is a Them original. Bright Lights/Big City was written by Jimmy Reed in 1961 and was also recorded by The Animals. My Little Baby' is the third Berns/Farrell song on the album. Get Your Kicks On Route 66 brings the album to a close.This Bobby Troup song was performed by nearly every band in the 60's,most famously by the Stones and Van still sings it occasionally when he is in the mood.

I think it is a shame that Them never made a live album when these songs could have been really stretched out and displayed the raw energy of this band. A year later Van would leave Them and begin his solo career. Who would have thought only three short years after this album came out that Van would enter a New York recording studio to make one the greatest albums of all time Astral Weeks.

Touchstone by Brigid O'Neill.

Thursday morning, and the sound of Touchstone by Brigid O’Neill is filling my kitchen. It is my new CD which arrived yesterday. I am on my third listen now and I must say it is a most enjoyable album indeed. I did not know anything about Brigid or her music until a few nights ago when I saw on Facebook ‘Brigid O’Neill is live now’. I thought I would watch for a few minutes and ended up watching until the end of her set. I thought she was great. Irish, (which is always a good start!), a nice personality, and a beautiful mellifluous voice. I loved her own songs, and it was her version of an Emmylou Harris song which finally did it for me. I decided to order an album because I think musicians should be rewarded for their efforts. They have really suffered during this pandemic. We would not expect a plumber to work for nothing just because we are in lockdown, so why should musicians. In the absence of live gigs, watching live sessions on the internet by the likes of Christy Moore, Richard Thompson, Cara Dillon, Ger Wolfe, Brigid and many others has helped enormously in getting through the last year. That is why we should support them if we can.

This CD is very attractively packaged with all the lyrics and information you might need. There is quite an ensemble of musicians on this album. Gareth Dunlop gets special thanks for his important input into the album. I love the opening song little Birds. When I heard the words birds sitting on a wire it reminded me of a famous song by Leonard Cohen, but this is nothing like Leonard, it is just Brigid’s crystal-clear voice accompanied by uillean pipes. I think the birds might be a metaphor for children. Turn And Face The Sun is an optimistic, cheerful, catchy song.The line 'The Best Is Yet To Come' reminded me of   Someone Like You by Van Morrison. Refugees is a much more serious song, and I think might be inspired by the war in Syria. Iron In Your Fire has a more jazzy bluesy feel to it, written with Gareth Dunlop and Dean Stevens and recorded in Nashville. Brigid was inspired to write Rumours after reading Hello magazine at the hairdressers. Breathe Slow is possibly my favourite track, dreamy and atmospheric. Running Back To You is co-written with Matt McGinn and inspired by the musical TV series Nashville. I love the background harmonies on Misunderstanding. They All Said has very clever lyrics which seem to be inspired by the sky at night, with mention of a lunar eclipse, meteorites, shooting stars, and the Milky Way. The title song Touchstone brings the album to a close in fine style. It was written in Nashville but seems to suggest someone missing home.

I have enjoyed hearing this wonderful album the last two days, although I think I have arrived late on the scene as the album came out in 2017.  I have shared a video Turn And Face The Sun to this blog site for you to enjoy..

Brigid has her own website if you want to find out more.

https://www.brigidoneill.com/

And Facebook page. Brigid O'Neill Music.

Brigid O'Neill Turn and Face the Sun

"Sweet Sixteen” Jackie DeShannon & Van Morrison

R.I.P. Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Jack Kerouac & Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am very sorry to hear that Lawrence Ferlinghetti , poet & publisher has passed away aged 101. I think it is quite touching that he has died on the 200th anniversary of John Keats. As a tribute to him I thought I would repeat this little piece I wrote about him for his 100th birthday in 2019.........

The thing I want to say today is to wish a belated happy 100^th birthday to Lawrence Ferlinghetti who reached that remarkable milestone yesterday. He was born on March 24^th, 1919 in New York. He was a poet first and foremost. You may recall him reciting one of his poems in the film of The Last Waltz. I have always liked his poems because they are very easy to understand, not high-brow stuff at all. With some so-called great poets you need a master’s degree in English literature to even begin to understand what they are talking about. Lawrence believes that poetry should be for the people and accessible. There is also a lot of humour in his work which I like.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti & Allen Ginsberg.

He also has a reputation as a painter, but I don’t feel qualified to talk about that aspect of his career. One of the main things I like about him is his friendship with the Beat Generation writers, especially Jack Kerouac. Lawrence was instrumental in the creation of Jack Kerouac Alley in San Francisco. Jack referred to him as Lorenzo Monsanto in his book Big Sur.  He created City Lights Bookshop which is one of the worlds most famous bookshops. City Lights also published many authors that nobody else would touch. He was even arrested for publishing Howl by Allen Ginsberg.

Lawrence at Jack Kerouac's grave.

My Van Morrison fan buddies will know there are links between Lawrence and Van. Lawrence is mentioned in a recent song by Van called In Tiburon and City Lights Books also were the American publishers for Van’s book of lyrics called Lit Up Inside.

Van Morrison at City Lights Bookshop.