Van Morrison on Astral Weeks:

[dweller]

why I had to go back to my soul classic
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandjazzmusic/4806597/Van-Morrison-on-Astral-Weeks-why-I-had-to-go-back-to-my-soul-classic.html

<snip>
SF: I mentioned before that, as you yourself have said, there's a cinematic quality to Astral Weeks. I think there's a cinematic quality to a lot of your music. A song that I listened to obsessively when it was new is "Ancient Highway" from the Days Like This album, and that seemed like a movie to me, that song–I could see these places you were talking about. And I think that a lot of your songs seem to be describing a place, whether it's a real place or an imaginary place. There are these physical locations.

VM: That song if the archetypal fugitive song; that's what that is. There used to be an old TV program years ago, The Fugitive–not exactly like that, but similar, in another kind of way. I've written several songs with that theme. That's the theme.

SF: There's also a sense in a lot of these songs of a journey or some sort of search or a quest–that we're going somewhere, that we're moving through space and time.

VM: It's more like space, creating space... it's not a journey, it's just about people, you know? Any people. It's not in particular about me. In that case it's about a concept. But as far as me, the way I relate to it, is creating space, the same was as creating space in dynamics, it's like creating space with lyrics and music. That's what that's about. You can call it like... I mean I know these words become redundant after a while, but meditative, or "trance" is more like it, trance-like explorations.

SF: Maybe it's a bit abstract to ask this, but another idea that comes up a lot is healing, whether it's that "the healing has begun" or "the healing game." There's a sense that this is something we're searching for in life, maybe, this healing.

VM: I think it's more uncovering than searching or going into it. The thread of it is that... if you study psychology, philosophy, and you look at various types of religion, what you find out is that people call this these different names. Carl Jung would look at it one way, and Adler would look at it another way, Aristotle would maybe look at it a different way, Sartre would look at it some other way, Beckett would look at it a different way. If you go through all this, what I end up with is energy, and I can't name it and no one can really say what this energy is. So the healing thing is tapping into that energy, because I can't find a name for it, and I can't find it in any books. There was a time when I read everything I could get my hands on because I was looking to find out what this is–is anybody writing about this energy? And not really. There's not really anyone that can describe the energy, really. OK, well, you can end up in a place where you go, yeah, it's shamanistic or whatever, and that's where I'm at with the healing thing. That's where I end up is that. If I was living in another time, another era, another century, or way back when, then that's what I would be. You can call it that, witch doctor, whatever you want... that's really what it is.

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fairly long interview, interesting read, should be a fun concert.
Mods, feel free to stick this wherever you feel appropriate, i chose this forum for fun.
dp

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. Van the Man

thanks for the link.

[bleever]

2. I love that man

and I've never read this interview before. Now I really want to have coffee with him.

[11cents]

3. I was at one of the Hollywood Bowl shows a few months ago, where he performed Astral Weeks.

Incredible concert.