Astral Weeks
| Astral Weeks | ||||
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| Van Morrison studio album | ||||
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admission |
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| Label (s) | Warner Bros. Records | |||
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Title (number) |
8th |
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running time |
46:05 |
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Lewis Merenstein |
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Studio (s) |
Century Sound Studios, New York City |
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Astral Weeks is the second solo album by Northern Irish singer and musician Van Morrison . It was recorded in two days - on September 25th and October 15th, 1968 - together with renowned jazz musicians in New York in the Century Sound Studios there and released in November 1968. The unusual fusion of folk , blues , soul and jazz elements soon achieved cult status , but did not sell particularly well. The production was Morrison's first collaboration with the Warner Brothers record label .
Astral Weeks is at the top of various leaderboards, including 19th place of the 500 best albums of all time in the list of the music magazine Rolling Stone .
prehistory
Van Morrison was signed to Bang Records by the former producer of his band Them , which split up in 1967 after the hit "Brown Eyed Girl" and a US tour, Bert Berns . Morrison stayed in the US. At the end of 1967 he had artistic differences with Berns. When he suddenly died of a heart condition at the end of December, Morrison was initially unable to perform in the New York area due to a dispute with Bern's widow and successor as the owner of Bang Records (which blamed the dispute with Morrison for his death). In the summer of 1968 he played in the Cambridge (Massachusetts) area in an acoustic duo or trio with bassist Tom Kielbania, supplemented by flutist and saxophonist John Payne.
Around this time, Warner Brothers contacted Morrison through independent producers Bob Schwaid and Lewis Merenstein to produce a record. They managed to break Morrison out of the contract with Bang Records under acceptable terms. For the following album project they essentially only resulted in two compositions to which Bang Records had the rights to be recorded ( Besides You , Madame George ). In addition, no singles were allowed to be released for a year . Nothing stood in the way of his Warner Brothers debut album, produced by Merenstein.
Recording session and musician
The recordings took place on September 25, October 1 and October 15, 1968 at Century Sound Studios in New York. In contrast to the claims of John Cale , who was recording in the same studio at the same time, that Van Morrison would not have been able to work with the accompanying musicians and would initially have been recorded with acoustic guitar alone, adding the other musicians in overdub technique, one thing is certain: Morrison (vocals and acoustic guitar) had recorded with double bass, second acoustic guitar, flute, vibraphone and drums. Later only strings, percussion parts and wind instruments were added.
The accompanying musicians came mostly from a jazz background, which Van Morrison, although he learned in his youth under the influence of Jimmy Giuffre and his The Train and the River saxophone, was rather distant. Merenstein brought the jazz bassist Richard Davis (known among others from Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch , at the time of the recording with the big band Thad Jones / Mel Lewis Orchestra ) to compose the accompanying musicians . There was also the guitarist Jay Berliner, who had worked closely with Charles Mingus and a. starred on The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady , Warren Smith Jr. (percussion, vibraphone) and drummer Connie Kay from the Modern Jazz Quartet . From Morrison's own group, only John Payne succeeded on the flute at the end of the first session in "Astral Weeks". Morrison did not have any preparatory sessions and did not hand out lead sheets , but played his songs to the musicians on the guitar. Otherwise he gave them a free hand, almost like in a jam session (according to Connie Kay), held together in the background by Richard Davis on bass. The string arranger (and can be heard on the harpsichord on Cyprus Avenue ) was Larry Fallon.
On the first day of recording, “Madame George”, “Cyprus Avenue”, “Beside you” and “Astral Weeks” were recorded. No recordings were made in the second session. The collaboration did not work - possibly because it took place in the morning, i.e. at a rather unsuitable time for jazz musicians. The rest of the recordings on the album were completed on October 15th. Several songs were tried for the final piece before Morrison decided on "Slim Slow Slider". He was only accompanied by Payne on soprano saxophone and Davis on bass. The recording was severely shortened by Merenstein in order to adapt it to the playing time of an LP.
In 2008 Van Morrison played the full album live in front of an audience in Los Angeles. The recording of the concert was released in early 2009 as a live album under the title Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl .
title
All songs are written by Van Morrison .
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Astral Weeks
Regarding “Astral Weeks”, Morrison said that it was one of the songs where you “see light at the end of the tunnel”, which deals with the possibility of rebirth after death and the transformation of energy (“To lay me down, In Silence easy, To be born again ", [...]" In another time, in another place "). The song and title were written in Belfast in 1966 when Morrison saw drawings with star maps by the painter Cezil McCartney. There is talk of a woman and her child and of the feeling of foreignness ( Ain't nothing but a stranger in this world ). The line “Talking to Huddie Ledbetter” alludes to Morrison's musical role model, the blues singer Leadbelly , whose poster he always carried with him. His trio partner John Payne, who stepped in on the flute, later claimed that he had never heard the song before and that it was recorded in one take without a rehearsal .
Beside you
According to Van Morrison, “Beside you” is a song that you sing for a child or someone you love. The boy to whom the song is directed ( Beside you, oh child, to never never never wonder why ) and who wanders out into the night is the son of his then-wife, Janet, who was adopted by Morrison. This is also mixed with Morrison's memories of his own childhood. Morrison is accompanied by Davis Bass, Berliner's acoustic guitar and the flutist on the first day of recording.
Sweet thing
"Sweet Thing" is about his wife Janet, whom he met on the US tour in 1966 and from whom he was separated for a year in Belfast. A romantic love song after Morrison. With its forward-pressing string accompaniment, it sets an optimistic accent on the album.
Cyprus Avenue
According to Van Morrison, "Cyprus Avenue" is about a street of the same name in Belfast, where wealthier people lived, away from the milieu in which Van Morrison grew up, but in his neighborhood. For him a mystical place in which to think. It was the end piece of Van Morrison's concerts in the 1970s, before he left the stage with “Its too late to stop now”. Van Morrison is accompanied in the recording by flute (not John Payne), violin and Larry Fallon on harpsichord.
The Way Young Lovers Thu
“The Way young lovers do”, an up-tempo piece, is the most jazz-influenced part of the album, also noticeable in Morrison's short scat interludes, e.g. B. before the music fades out. He is accompanied by wind instruments and vibraphone as well as Barry Kornfeld on guitar.
Madame George
"Madame George" is one of the most famous songs on the album, at the same time the longest track with nine and a half minutes. Like Cyprus Avenue, it was created in a " Stream of Consciousness ", according to Morrison . Who is the sung-about Madame George or Madame Joy, as the title should originally be according to Morrison, remains open. Van Morrison denied in an interview that he was a transvestite, as the title suggests. The song spreads a goodbye mood (“Say goodbye to Madame Joy”) and is permeated with memories of Belfast - the song starts again “with a childlike vision” in Cyprus Avenue, further childhood memories follow (“On the train from Dublin up to Sandy Row "Throwing pennies at the bridges down below"). Accompaniment is Payne on the flute, violins and bass lines by Richard Davis in the background. The later cover version by Marianne Faithfull is also known .
ballerina
"Ballerina" is another love song, after Van Morrison written in 1966 in a hotel in San Francisco with the picture of a ballet dancer in mind. At the time, he met his wife Janet and toured with Them, with whom he also performed it once in Hawaii.
Slim slow slider
According to Van Morrison, “Slim Slow Slider”, the final piece, is about everyone who is stranded or on drugs in a big city like London, and the lyrics speak of dying ( I know you're dying, baby, and I know you know it too ). Payne's soprano saxophone can be heard in the background, at the end the beginning of five to ten minutes of “instrumental jamming, semi-baroque and jazz stuff” can be heard, cut off by Merenstein.
reception
| source | rating |
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| Allmusic |
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| Rolling Stone |
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| Pitchfork |
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| Laut.de |
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The album has legendary status in the eyes of many rock and pop critics, as shown by its regular inclusion in leaderboards. Astral Weeks is ranked 19 of the 500 best albums of all time of Rolling Stone , 3rd place of the 100 best albums of the Times , 10th place of the 100 best albums of the Guardians and 68th place of the 500 best albums of all time in the selection of the New Musical Express . The British music magazine Mojo chose it at number 2 of the 100 best albums and Uncut magazine at number 3 of the 200 best albums. The website Pitchfork leads Astral Weeks at No. 24 of the 200 best albums of the 1960s and Sweet Thing at number 72 of the 200 best songs of the decade.
The magazine Time took Astral Weeks on in the selection of the top 100 albums. It belongs to the 1001 albums You Must Hear Before You Die .
In 1999 Astral Weeks was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame with Morrison's Moondance . After Van Morrison's ( Gloria ) Them past, it seemed surprising to contemporaries and the unusual lyrical and musical range was only slowly opening up. To critics like Billboard's , the album revealed Morrison's vocal spectrum: "Morrison uses his voice like an instrumental band - melody and drums at the same time, with a result that is artistically elegant."
Although the album is very individual to Morrison - in a transitional phase of his career - his stimulating influences on other musicians can not only be found in the cover versions of pieces on the album, but also in quotes such as that of Elvis Costello who wrote it called the "still most daring album in rock".
“ Astral Weeks is a hypnotic stream of conciousness , a self-contained musical world made of acoustic guitars, ethereal strings, vibraphones, harpsichords and Van Morrison's soulful vocals. It is a painting made of sound that at first appears inaccessible and then opens up to a whole universe of pure beauty. After Astral Weeks, Van Morrison has made many great records that have added infinite new facets to soul, folk and pop. But in 1968 he created a work that has remained unparalleled to this day. Anyone who has found the key to Astral Weeks once can consider themselves lucky: once this album has got you on the right foot, it will stay for the rest of your life. "
Commercially, the album wasn't a great success either - it only reached gold status in 2001.
Others
The cover shows Van Morrison (then 23 years old), photographed by Joel Brodsky, looking down, overlaid by branches and leaves. Ed Thrasher was responsible for creating the album design .
The first half of the movie Taxi Driver by Martin Scorsese is directly inspired by the statements of this album.
Web links
Notes and sources
- ^ Johnny Rogan: Van Morrison - no surrender , Vintage Books 2006, p. 227
- ↑ The flutist of the first three pieces on the first day is unknown. Payne played in the following recording sessions.
- ↑ Memories of Berliner, in Clinton Heylin Can you feel the silence - Van Morrison, a new biography , Chicago Review Press 2003, p. 192. Davis's memory is also cited there.
- ↑ in a Rolling Stone interview, quoted in Heylin, p. 191/2
- ^ Payne in Turner: Too late to stop now , Viking 1993
- ↑ About five minutes of purely instrumental, improvised playing, von Merenstein was removed because, in his opinion, it had no relation to the topic. Heylin, loc. Cit. P. 195 ff
- ^ "Its one of those songs where you can see light at the end of the tunnel", Heylin, p. 187
- ^ Turner, p. 89
- ↑ Turner, loc. Cit.
- ^ Hinton Celtic Crossroads - the Art of Van Morrison , Sanctuary 1997, p. 96
- ^ Ritchie Yorke "Into the music", London 1975, p. 57
- ↑ Hinton, loc. Cit. P. 96
- ↑ Yorke: "Into the music", p. 61. The metaphor of the stream of consciousness also appears in Morrison's poem on the original cover.
- ^ Van Morrison in Ritchie Yorke: "Into the music", pp. 60-61
- ^ Van Morrison in Rolling Stone 1970
- ^ "A person who is caught in a big city like London or maybe is on dope", Hinton "Celtic Crossroads", p. 98
- ↑ Payne, quoted in Rogan “No Surrender,” p. 227
- ^ Review by William Ruhlmann on AllMusic.com (accessed August 25, 2017)
- ↑ NN Review (August 27, 1987) on rollingstone.com (archived) (accessed June 8, 2020)
- ↑ Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine on pitchfork.com (accessed August 25, 2017)
- ↑ Review by Josef Gasteiger on laut.de (accessed on August 25, 2017)
- ^ Rolling Stone
- ^ Times
- ↑ The 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time: 100-1 on nme.com, accessed August 25, 2017
- ↑ The Guardian 100 Best Albums Ever by The Guardian (1997) on besteveralbums.com, accessed September 16, 2017
- ↑ (19) Astral Weeks . Rolling Stone Magazine online. Retrieved March 30, 2007.
- ↑ The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s on pitchfork.com (accessed April 23, 2018)
- ↑ The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s on pitchfork.com (accessed June 8, 2020)
- ↑ All-TIME 100 Albums on time.com (accessed April 23, 2018)
- ↑ Morrison plays his voice like a band of instruments, melody and percussion at once, with results that are artistically elegant. , quoted in Liner Notes, Astral Weeks , WEA
- ↑ Still the most adventurous record made in the rock medium, and there hasn't been a record with that amount of daring made since . Quoted in Hinton, Celtic Crossroads , 1997, p. 90
- ^ Hall of Fame: Van Morrison - Astral Weeks on br.de, accessed on September 16, 2017
- ↑ Greil Marcus in an interview with The Believer (June / July 2006, p. 78)