…Sir Van Morrison releases the 51st (give or take) solo album of a stellar career spanning more than 60 years across a wide range of musical genres; and, extraordinarily, he has become even more prolific in the last 10 years since turning 70, releasing more than an album a year, culminating in an album of predominantly blues covers sprinkled with a few new songs of his own.
Morrison’s musical career began in the late 50s as he learned to play guitar and saxophone as a teenager and featured in a variety of bands before forming Them in 1963, a quasi R’n’B group that released a string of singles, including rock standards such as ‘Gloria’ and ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’. He left to go solo in 1967 after monetary disputes arising from the band’s…
Tag Archive: Van Morrison
“Pretending my life is not in ruins/Pretending I’m not depressed.” So ran the opening lines on Pretending, the quietly devastating final song of Van Morrison’s last album of new music, 2022’s What’s It Gonna Take. Maybe you didn’t make it that far, beaten down by all those songs about government mind control and the World Economic Forum. But here was the sound of a man in crisis, unsure whether he was having “some kind of breakthrough [or] a nervous breakdown” and putting it all in song.
Well, something has changed, and maybe it was that act of excoriating self-analysis. Because, after two restorative 2022 covers albums (Moving On Skiffle and the pointedly titled Accentuate the Positive) and last year’s archive…