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Astral Weeks
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Astral Weeks is a folk-rock and R & B album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison, released in November 1968 on Warner Bros. Records (see 1968 in music). Astral Weeks received critical acclaim immediately upon its first release and subsequently has been placed on numerous
widely-circulated lists of best albums of all time. The 1995 MOJO list of 100 Best Albums, ranked it as #2, and it received the #19 ranking on Rolling Stones The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003.
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Astral Weeks is a folk-rock and R & B album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison, released in November 1968 on Warner Bros. Records (see 1968 in music). Astral Weeks received critical acclaim immediately upon its first release and subsequently has been placed on numerous
widely-circulated lists of best albums of all time. The 1995 MOJO list of 100 Best Albums, ranked it as #2, and it received the #19 ranking on Rolling Stones The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003. It became and remains a cult favourite, despite the fact that it failed to achieve significant mainstream sales success for decades. (After 33 years, it finally achieved gold in 2001).
Astral Weeks was reissued by Warner Bros. on 180 g. vinyl in December 2008.
Background
At the beginning of 1968, Van Morrison became involved in a contract dispute with Bang Records that kept him away from any recording activity. The situation was worsened by the sudden death of the label's founder Bert Berns; born with a congenital heart condition, Berns experienced a massive heart attack and was discovered dead in a New York hotel room on December 30, 1967. Prior to Berns's death, he and Morrison experienced some creative difficulties. Berns had been pushing Morrison towards a more pop-oriented direction, while Morrison wanted to explore newer musical terrain. As a result, Berns's widow, Ilene, held Morrison and this conflict as responsible for her husband's death. Years later, Ilene Berns would downplay this scenario, but several witnesses from that time, including Morrison's ex-wife Janet (Planet) Minto, have gone on record describing her initial subsequent vindictiveness towards Morrison.
Meanwhile, Ilene acquired ownership of Bang Records. Morrison's recording contract was also due roughly the same time as her inheritance. Legally bound to Bang Records, Morrison was not only kept out of the studio, but he also found himself unable to find performing work in New York as most clubs refrained from booking him, fearing reprisals. Ilene Berns then discovered that her late husband previously had been remiss in filing all the appropriate paperwork to keep Morrison (still a British citizen) in New York. She contacted immigration and attempted to have Morrison deported. However, Morrison managed to stay in the U.S. when his then-girlfriend Janet (Planet) Rigsbee agreed to marry him. Once married, Morrison and his wife moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he found work performing in the local clubs. Morrison began performing with a small electric combo consisting of local college students, with this group lasting only one summer. Two of the members left due to other commitments, but Morrison did retain the bassist, Tom Kielbania, a student at the Berklee School of Music. At that juncture, Morrison decided to try an acoustic sound, and he and Kielbania began performing shows as an acoustic duo.
Later, Kielbania heard flautist John Payne for the first time while sitting in on a jazz jam session. He took Payne to see Morrison, hoping Morrison would invite him to join them, and after allowing Payne to sit-in on one performance (switching off between flute and saxophone), Morrison did extend an invitation that Payne accepted. The trio of Payne, Kielbania, and Morrison continued performing for four months, and it was around this time that Warner Bros. Records approached Morrison, hoping to sign him to their roster. Presumably their interest focused on his prior success with "Brown-Eyed Girl", not on Morrison's current acoustic work. Regardless, their interest allowed Morrison to return to the recording studio.
At the time, Warner Bros. had a deal with Inherit Productions, the production arm of Schwaid-Merenstein which was founded by manager Bob Schwaid (who worked for Warners Publishing) and producer Lewis Merenstein. While Merestein went to see Morrison in Boston, Schwaid set to work on resolving Morrison's contractual troubles.
Still legally bound to Bang Records, Morrison would yet have more issues with them in the future. For the time being, Schwaid managed to free him from those obligations, under several conditions. First, Morrison had to write and submit to Web IV Music (Bert Berns's publishing company) three original compositions per month over the course of one year. An unusual and outrageous demand by any standard, Morrison fulfilled that obligation by recording thirty-six nonsense songs in a single session. Such action risked legal reprisals, but ultimately none transpired. Morrison then had to assign Web IV one half of the copyright to any composition written and recorded by Morrison and released as a 45 rpm single within one year from September 12, 1968. That demand became a moot point when Warner Bros. would refrain from releasing any single during that time frame. Finally, Morrison had to include two original compositions controlled by Web IV on his next album. Morrison would fulfill that demand with two of his own compositions, "Madame George" and "Beside You". (Although the versions subsequently released were vastly different musically than the original versions recorded with Bang.)
Recording sessions
With his legal matters resolved, Morrison now had the freedom to proceed with recording his Warner Bros. debut album, with the recording sessions taking place at the Century Sound Studios in New York on September 25, October 01 and October 15, 1968.
Recording adjacent to Van Morrison's studio, musician John Cale reported, "Morrison couldn't work with anybody, so finally they just shut him in the studio by himself. He did all the songs with just an acoustic guitar, and later they overdubbed the rest of it around his tapes." This is, in fact, completely untrue — the live tracks for the sessions were performed by Van on vocals and acoustic guitar, along with upright bass (not bass guitar), second acoustic guitar, vibes, flute, and drums. The strings, horns, and the occasional drum part constituted the only instruments added subsequently to the initial recording sessions.
Producer Lewis Merenstein had a background in jazz, and according to Merenstein, Morrison "was not an aficionado of jazz when I met him. R&B and soul, yes; but jazz, no." For these sessions, Merenstein first contacted veteran bassist Richard Davis. Perhaps best known for his work with Eric Dolphy, Davis essentially served as the session leader, and it was through Davis that Merenstein recruited guitarist Jay Berliner, percussionist Warren Smith, Jr., and drummer Connie Kay. All of these musicians had strong backgrounds in jazz; Berliner had worked closely with Charles Mingus and Kay was part of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Morrison was still working with Kielbania and Payne, but for these sessions, they were essentially replaced. According to Kielbania, "I got to show all the bass lines to Richard Davis. He embellished a lot of them, but I gave him the feeling."
Davis proved, perhaps, to be the most pivotal instrumentalist during these sessions. "If you listen to the album, every tune is led by Richard and everybody followed Richard and Van's voice," says Merenstein. "I knew if I brought Richard in, he would put the bottom on to support what Van wanted to do vocally, or acoustically. Then you get Jay playing those beautiful counter-lines to Van." Davis was not impressed by Morrison, but not out of disdain or any preconceived notions, but rather because Morrison's professional comportment generally did not meet Davis's expectations. "No prep, no meeting," recalls Davis. "He was remote from us, 'cause he came in and went into a booth... And that's where he stayed, isolated in a booth. I don't think he ever introduced himself to us, nor we to him... he seemed very shy..." Drummer Connie Kay later told Rolling Stone that he approached Morrison and asked "what he wanted me to play, and he said to play whatever I felt like playing. We more or less sat there and jammed." Davis explained that "jamming" is typically not merely random improvisation; it starts with a lead sheet, which is "a skeletal frame of what is to be done, and you fill in the flesh. What you fill in [comes] through your own imagination — nobody can tell you what to do. You just play it."
But for the Astral Weeks sessions, apparently they did not employ any lead sheets, or at least none were distributed to the musicians. "What stood out in my mind was the fact that he allowed us to stretch out," recalls Berliner. "We were used to playing to charts, but Van just played us the songs on his guitar and then told us to go ahead and play exactly what he felt." Berliner actually had great appreciation for the freedom given to him and the band; something few, if any, of them were used to. "I played a lot of classical guitar on those sessions and it was very unusual to play classical guitar in that context," says Berliner. Morrison recalled in a 2009 radio interview with Don Imus: "They were jazz musicians and the approach was jazz. They were able to follow me. I'd tell them: Just follow where I'm going...follow my vocal, and follow the best way you can, and don't get in the way."
The first session held on September 25, 1968 produced four recordings that made it to the album. Only three had initially been intended for inclusion: "Cyprus Avenue," "Madame George," and "Beside You". Although not scheduled to play, Payne still attended the first session and listened as another flautist played his parts. To this day, nobody recalls the name of this flautist, nor has he been identified on any of the surviving documentation; he does play flute on the released takes of "Beside You" and "Cyprus Avenue" but is not included in the album credits. When Morrison tried to squeeze in one last tune during the end of that first session, Payne spoke up and pleaded to Merenstein to permit him to participate. Payne was then allowed to play on what became the title track of the album - "Astral Weeks" - the fourth song produced from this initial session. For the remainder of the sessions, John Payne played on every song.
The next session, according to John Payne, occurred early in the morning, possibly the next day, but it did not work and nothing from this session worked for the final album. "It just didn't happen'" says Payne. "It was the wrong time of day for jazz musicians to create. I think that by the end of that session we all knew that nothing was going to be used. They just said, let's forget it." According to Merenstein, there was tension at this second session and it was stopped after about three hours.
The third and final session on October 15th produced four more recordings that completed the album — "The Way Young Lovers Do" "Sweet Thing", "Ballerina" and "Slim Slow Slider". Both "Sweet Thing" and "Ballerina" were originally scheduled for the session, searching for a 'closer' consumed a considerable amount of time. They attempted (and rejected) a number of songs until Morrison suggested "Slim Slow Slider". "I don't think we'd ever done [it] live," recalls Payne. "[Morrison] had a book full of songs... I don't know why he decided to do it...And we were first doing it with the drums, with Richard Davis and Connie Kay and the guitar player and the vibe player and me and Van — all of us were playing. Then I started playing soprano sax on the thing, and Lew said, 'OK, I wanna try it again. Start again. And I want just the bass, the soprano sax, and Van.'" It was a successful take, but it also came with a very long coda, prompting Merenstein to make a large cut during the editing process. Many of the tracks on Astral Weeks would be subjected to edits (mainly to tighten the performances), but the one on "Slim Slow Slider" was easily the most substantial. "I would estimate three, five minutes of instrumental stuff," says Payne. "We went through stages [until] we got to be avant-garde kind of weird, which is what you hear after the splice- all that weird stuff we're playing — but there was a whole progression to that." According to Merenstein, before he cut it, the coda "was a long, long ending that went nowhere, that just carried on from minute to minute...If it had [some] relativity to the tune itself, I would have left it there."
In a Rolling Stone interview four years later in 1972, Morrison told John Grissim, Jr.: "I was really pretty happy with the album. The only complaint I had was that it was rather rushed. But I thought it was closer to the type of music I wanted to put out. And still is, actually."
Music and songs
With varied rhythms and frenzied vocals, mixed with bizarre lyrics that evoke images instead of coherent ideas and narratives, Astral Weeks has been compared to the school of Impressionism in painting, which similarly seeks to evoke emotions associated with an image. Although usually described as a "song cycle" rather than a concept album, the songs do (when considered in their totality) seem to link together, forming a loose narrative.
The album embraces a form of symbolism that would eventually become a staple of Morrison's songs, equating earthly love and heaven, or as close as a living being can approach it. Morrison and Berliner's guitars and Davis's upright bass can be interpreted as the earth opposing the tuneful horns and Kay's percussion.
Morrison said the song "Astral Weeks" is "one of those songs where you can see the light at the end of the tunnel... I don't think I can elaborate on it any more than that."The words in the song: "Talkin' to Huddie Ledbetter/Showin' pictures on the wall/" appear to be based on Morrison's real life custom of carrying around a poster of Lead Belly and hanging it on the wall wherever he lived. (This was revealed in a Rolling Stone interview in 1978.)
The song "Cyprus Avenue" is a live favourite of Van Morrison's fans, which served for many years as the closing song for most of his live shows. According to Roy Kane, who grew up with Morrison in Belfast, Cyprus Avenue "...was the street that we would all aspire to — the other side of the tracks ... the Beersbridge Road had the railway line cut across it; and our side of it was one side of the tracks and Cyprus Avenue was the other... there was an Italian shop up in Ballyhackamore, that's where all the young ones used to go of a Sunday... we used to walk up to the Sky Beam for an ice cream or a cup of mushy peas and vinegar... We used to take a short cut up Cyprus Avenue, 'cause that's where all the expensive houses and all the good-looking totty came from...mostly upper-crusty totty...There's a couple of big girls' grammar schools up 'round that direction...That would have sunk in my head as [much] as his."
Morrison has denied that "Madame George" is about a transvestite, as many have believed. The original title of the song is "Madame Joy" and Morrison later changed the title although he actually sings the words "Madame Joy" in the song. An earlier recording with slightly altered lyrics and a much swifter tempo changes the tone considerably from the Astral Weeks recording, which is downbeat and nostalgic; the earlier recording is joyous, and seems to be from the point-of-view of a partygoer who sees the titular character.
Van Morrison told Ritchie Yorke, one of his biographers, he wrote both of the songs "Madame George" and "Cyprus Avenue" in stream of consciousness: "['Madame George'] just came right out...The song is just a stream of consciousness thing, as is 'Cyprus Avenue'...I didn't even think about what I was writing."
The oldest composition on Astral Weeks is "Ballerina", which Morrison composed in 1966 when still a member of Them and about the same time he first met his future wife, Janet. Inspired by "a flash about an actress in an opera house appearing in a ballet" (according to Morrison), former Them guitarist Jim Armstrong recalls the band working on the song between engagements. "[Morrison] had all these words", Armstrong says, "we sort of formalized it, 'cause there was no structure to it". Them would perform the song one night in Hawaii, but it would not be recorded until Astral Weeks.
In an interview with Paste in 2009, Morrison said the songs on Astral Weeks were written "prior to 1968 over a period of five years". In an NPR review he comments: "It's not about me. It's totally fictional. It's put together of composites, of conversations I heard—you know, things I saw in movies, newspapers, books, whatever. It comes out as stories. That's it. There's no more."
Critical acclaim and influence
Besides the #2 rating by Mojo In 1995 and the #19 ranking by Rolling Stone magazine in 2003, The Times Magazine listed Astral Weeks at #3 of The Times All Time Top 100 Albums. In 1997, it came in at the 9th greatest album of all time in a "Music of the Millennium" poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM. A separate readers' poll published in January 1996 placed Astral Weeks at #5 behind three Beatles albums and the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds.
In 1998, Q magazine readers placed it at #52, and in 2000 the same magazine placed it at #6 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever. The TV network VH1 named it the 40th greatest album ever in 2003.
In 1999 Astral Weeks and Moondance, Morrison's next album, were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
It was listed along with Moondance among the All-Time 100 albums by CNNTime magazine in November 2006.
The influential rock journalist Lester Bangs wrote in 1979: "It sounded like the man who made Astral Weeks was in terrible pain, pain most of Van Morrison's previous works had only suggested; but like the later albums by The Velvet Underground, there was a redemptive element in the blackness, ultimate compassion for the suffering of others, and a swath of pure beauty and mystical awe that cut right through the heart of the work."
Alan Light of CNNTime magazine wrote in 2006:
"Morrison sings of lost love, death and nostalgia for childhood in the Celtic soul that would become his signature. Astral Weeks didn't reach the charts, but it's mystic poetry, spacious grooves, and romantic incantations still resonate in ways no other music can."
Elvis Costello described Astral Weeks as "still the most adventurous record made in the rock medium, and there hasn't been a record with that amount of daring made since."
Sean O'Hagan with The Observer in a 2003 review described the album, Astral Weeks as:
"Ultimately unreadable, utterly singular, it remains one of those rare albums that actually lives up to the extravagant claims made on its behalf." In another article about Astral Weeks in November 2008, O'Hagan wrote: "Its singularity lies, as Costello points out, in its vaulting ambition. It is neither folk nor jazz nor blues, though there are traces of all three in the music and in Morrison's raw and emotionally charged singing. There are no solos save for the ethereal flute and soprano saxophone improvisations that are woven through the last, and shortest, song, 'Slim Slow Slider', the album's elegaic coda. Throughout, there are interludes of breathtaking beauty when the music surges and subsides, rises and falls, around Morrison's voice."
Music critic Greil Marcus, in a 2006 interview in The Believer, said that Martin Scorsese told him that the first half of his movie Taxi Driver was based on Astral Weeks. In an NPR review, Marcus who says he has listened to the Astral Weeks record more than any other comments about it: "You can hear these moments of invention and gasping for air, and you reach your hand and close your fist and when you open your fist there's a butterfly in it. There was really something there, but you couldn't have seen it. You couldn't have known."
Johnny Depp, in a Rolling Stone interview in 2008, recalled how when he was a preteen his older brother (by ten years) tiring of Johnny's favorite music of the time said, "'Try this.' And he put on Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. And it stirred me. I'd never heard anything like it."
Steven Van Zandt (Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band) has said: "Astral Weeks was like a religion to us."
Glen Hansard of The Frames says that he was captivated by the feeling of freedom when he first heard the album. Hansard says: "It made me realize that so much of what makes music great is courage, and up to that, what I thought made music great was practice and study...This album says there's more to life than you thought. Life can be lived more deeply, with a greater sense of fear and horror and desire than you ever imagined."
Origin of the title of the album
Steve Turner, one of Van Morrison's biographers, has said: "Eccentric Irish painter Cecil McCartney...was an influence on the titling of Astral Weeks." 'A friend of mine had drawings in his flat of astral projection,' "Van told me": 'I was at his house when I was working on a song which began, "If I venture down the slipstream" and that's why I called it "Astral Weeks".' "It was a painting," McCartney corrects. "There were several paintings in the studio at the time. Van looked at the painting and it suggested astral travelling to him."
In a 2008 interview prior to his "Astral Weeks at the Hollywood Bowl" concerts, Morrison provided further context to the album's name:
“Astral Weeks” songs...were from another sort of place—not what is at all obvious. They are poetry and mythical musings channeled from my imagination...[They] are little poetic stories I made up and set to music. The album is about song craft for me—making things up and making them fit to a tune I have arranged. The songs were somewhat channeled works—that is why I called it “Astral Weeks.” As my songwriting has gone on I tend to do the same channeling, so it’s sort of like “Astral Decades,” I guess.
Album sleeve notes
On the back cover of the album sleeve is printed a poem with Van Morrison's signature:
I close my eyes and sleep for love comes flowing streams of consciousnessSoft like snow, to and fro,Let us go there together, darlin', way from the river to here and nowAnd carry it with a smile, bumper to bumperStepping lightly, just like a ballerina.
Album cover image
The album cover photograph of Van Morrison was taken by Joel Brodsky, best known for his "Young Lions" photoshoot with Jim Morrison that resulted in the photograph of Jim used on the 1985 album cover of The Best of the Doors.
Astral Weeks revisited
On November 07 and 08, 2008 Van Morrison performed two concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California playing the entire Astral Weeks album. The band featured guitarist Jay Berliner who played on the classic album released forty years previously.
A live album entitled Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl was released by Van Morrison's record label, Listen to the Lion on February 24, 2009. There will also be a double vinyl LP album released the same date. A DVD featuring the Hollywood Bowl performances will also be issued at a later date in 2009.
When asked by Rolling Stone contributing editor, David Wild why he is performing the album again live after forty years, Morrison replied: "It received no promotion, from Warner Bros.—that's why I never got to play the songs live. I had always wanted to play the record live and fully orchestrated—that is what this is all about. I always like live recording and I like listening to live records too. I'm not too fond of being in a studio—it's too contrived and too confining. I like the freedom of live, in-the-moment sound."
As for the songs on the original album, Morrison told Los Angeles Times columnist Randy Lewis: "The songs are poetic stories, so the meaning is the same as always—timeless and unchanging. The songs are works of fiction that will inherently have a different meaning for different people. People take from it whatever their disposition to take from it is."
Track listing
All songs written by Van Morrison.
Side one - "In the Beginning"
- "Astral Weeks" – 7:06
- "Beside You" – 5:16
- "Sweet Thing" – 4:25
- "Cyprus Avenue" – 7:00
Side two - "Afterwards"
- "The Way Young Lovers Do" – 3:18
- "Madame George" – 9:45
- "Ballerina" – 7:03
- "Slim Slow Slider" – 3:17
Personnel
Production
- Producer: Lewis Merenstein
- Engineer: Brooks Arthur
- Arranger and Conductor: Larry Fallon
External links
- Stranded 1979
- on Astral Weeks, 2004 for The Observer
- on Popmatters
- "The Masterpiece that is Astral Weeks" 2003-06-23
- Timepieces
- Sean O'Hagan on Astral Weeks, 2008-11-02 for The Observer
- Review by Rolling Stone: Gavin Edwards
- by Jesse Kornbluth
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