Some of the songs were longer, others were edited down that album went through many forms. "There’s all this mythology about it but a lot of the record was written between 1964 and 66. Some of it was recorded with Bert Berns but it never came out because the songs weren’t right. “I wrote it when I was a teenager but I didn't record it until 1968. Read more: I'm a huge fan of Van Morrison says Ian Paisley as Astral Weeks album celebrates 50th anniversaryĪstral Weeks, Van Morrison's most acclaimed albums, is 50 years old this week Although recorded in America, the songs were rooted in Belfast and written as a series of coming-of-age vignettes, portraying the city’s people and their context shortly before what would become known as the Troubles began. If I do that stuff now, I do it as a 70-something-year-old.”Īstral Weeks was said to have been recorded in two eight-hour sessions in the autumn of 1968. “When I get people saying ‘that’s my favourite album’ my feeling is that I was just a kid when I made that record I didn't know what was going on. Widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of the past 50 years, how does Morrison feel about the record’s ever-growing status? Yesterday marked half a century since the seminal work’s initial release. No amount of money will see Mike part with the prized possession – and he reveals some very significant offers.
One, from Detroit, later tells me about his first-edition signed copy of Astral Weeks. Across from us are a group of fans who have travelled from far and wide to see him perform where it all began. Today we sit in the lounge of the Culloden hotel, just outside the city on the shores of Belfast Lough, overlooking its lush grounds. This only adds to the sense that Belfast is a magical place of wonder and folklore illuminated by Van Morrison. Travellers visiting Belfast to see the singer perform in a cabaret club environment at the Europa Hotel, for example, will routinely hit the Van Morrison Trail around the city and visit the many sites associated with the man and his music.
His songs have created a world submerged in as much myth and legend as the Titanic. There is,of course, the Van Morrison that exists in wider imagination. There’s a lot of mythology but you just do it, it’s not an analytical thing. When you start out it is but you soon get over all that in a couple of years so to me now it’s nothing special. Van Morrison’s response to this suggestion when we sit down face to face is typically pragmatic: “When you’ve been doing it a long time it’s nothing special. FIVE albums released in just over two years is a notable output for any artist but for Ireland’s greatest living singer-songwriter to be releasing this amount of work at 73 is considerable.
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