Van Morrison
Northern Ireland | Rock / Blue-Eyed Soul / Folk / Blues / Jazz | 1945
George Ivan Morrison OBE (generally known as Van Morrison) is a Grammy Award-winning Ulster Scot Northern Irish singer, songwriter, author, poet and multi-instrumentalist, who has been a professional musician since the late 1950s. He plays a variety of instruments, including the guitar, harmonica, keyboards, drums, and saxophone. Featuring his characteristic growl — a unique mix of folk, blues, soul, jazz, gospel, and Ulster Scots Celtic influences — Morrison is widely considered one of the most unusual and influential vocalists in the history of rock and roll. Critic Greil Marcus has gone so far as to say that "no white man sings like Van Morrison."
Known as "Van the Man" by his fans, Morrison first rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Northern Irish band Them, writing their 1964 hit "Gloria". A few years later, Morrison left the band and embarked on a successful solo career.
Morrison has pursued an idiosyncratic musical path. Much of his music is tightly structured around the conventions of American soul and R&B, such as the popular singles "Brown Eyed Girl", "Moondance", "Into the Mystic","Domino" and "Wild Night". An equal part of his catalogue consists of lengthy, loosely connected, spiritually inspired musical journeys that show the influence of Celtic tradition, jazz, and stream-of-consciousness narrative, such as his classic album Astral Weeks and lesser known works such as Veedon Fleece and Common One. The two strains together are sometimes referred to as "Celtic Soul".
Morrison's career, spanning some five decades, has influenced many popular musical artists. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2000, Morrison ranked #25 on American cable music channel VH1's list of its 100 greatest artists of rock and roll, and in 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Van Morrison 42nd on their list of The Immortals: 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Paste Magazine ranked him 20th in their list of 100 Greatest Living Songwriters in 2006 and Q Magazine ranked him 22nd on their list of 100 Greatest Singers in April 2007.
The young Morrison was exposed to music from an early age, as his father, having worked for a while in Detroit, Michigan, collected American jazz, country and western, and blues albums.[15] His father passed his own taste in music on to his son, and he grew up listening to artists such as Jelly Roll Morton, Ray Charles, Lead Belly, and Solomon Burke. In a 2005 Rolling Stone article, Morrison said, "Those guys were the inspiration that got me going. If it wasn't for that kind of music, I couldn't do what I'm doing now."
In a taped 1969 interview, his mother said that he listened to recordings from the age of two, when he would tug at her apron strings urging her to play more records. His grandmother, Alice Stitt, "used to come up and take turns, because he'd have you play them morning, noon and night." There were sing-songs in the house on Saturday nights with family and friends, and the young Morrison (although shy) would always sing upon request. He gave his first performance as a child with a rendition of Lead Belly's "Goodnight Irene".[17] Over forty years later, he would perform this same song with another of his boyhood idols, Lonnie Donegan, on his album, The Skiffle Sessions - Live in Belfast 1998.
Morrison's influence can readily be heard in the music of a diverse array of major artists and according to The Rolling Stone's Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll (Simon & Shuster, 2001), "his influence among rock singers/song writers is unrivaled by any living artist outside of that other prickly legend, Bob Dylan. Echoes of Morrison's rugged literateness and his gruff, feverish emotive vocals can be heard in latter day icons ranging from Bruce Springsteen to Elvis Costello". His influence includes U2 (much of The Unforgettable Fire); John Mellencamp ("A Little Night Dancin'", a cover of Morrison's "Wild Night"); Jim Morrison; Joan Armatrading (the only musical influence she will acknowledge); Rickie Lee Jones; Rod Stewart; Tom Petty; Elton John; Bono ("I am in awe of a musician like Van Morrison. I had to stop listening to Van Morrison records about six months before we made The Unforgettable Fire because I didn't want his very original soul voice to overpower my own"); Jimi Hendrix ("Gloria"); Jeff Buckley ("The Way Young Lovers Do", "Sweet Thing"); -- and numerous others.
In the end, however, one critic argues that given the truly distinctive breadth and complexity of Morrison's work, it is almost impossible to cast his work among that of others: "Morrison remains a singer who can be compared to no other in the history of rock & roll, a singer who cannot be pinned down, dismissed, or fitted into anyone's expectations".