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Listening to Van Morrison
“Van Morrison,” says Greil Marcus, “remains a singer who can be compared to no other in the history of modern popular music.” When Astral Weeks was released in 1968, it was largely ignored. When it was rereleased as a live album in 2009 it reached the top of the Billboard charts, a first for any Van Morrison recording. The wild swings in the music, mirroring the swings in Morrison’s success and in people’s appreciation (or lack of it) of his music, make Van Morrison one of the most perplexing and mysterious figures in popular modern music, and a perfect subject for the wise and insightful scrutiny of Greil Marcus, one of America’s most dedicated cultural critics.
This book is Marcus’s quest to understand Van Morrison’s particular genius through the extraordinary and unclassifiable moments in his long career, beginning in 1965 and continuing in full force to this day. In these dislocations Marcus finds the singer on his own artistic quest precisely to reach some extreme musical threshold, the moments that are not enclosed by the will or the intention of the performer but which somehow emerge at the limits of the musician and his song.
195 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
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About the author
Greil Marcus
101 books273 followersGreil Marcus is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a broader framework of culture and politics. In recent years he has taught at Berkeley, Princeton, Minnesota, NYU, and the New School in New York. He lives in Oakland, California.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 73 reviews
March 28, 2011
Like all Marcus collections, it contains examples of him at his insightful, thought-provoking best and at his blustery, bullshitting worst, at times in the same long, rambling sentence. For some reason, every subject he writes about has to somehow be made into an exemplar of the American democratic experiment or an artist testing the boundaries of freedom or expression. The smallest throwaway moment in a song can be the launching point for pages and pages of ruminations on God and/or the blues. When he's on to something this can be amazing, but the more he writes like this the more he risks turning into a parody of himself. Every note is not a life or death matter, even for a singer as weird and gifted as Van Morrison. The high points are easily worth the lows, though, and not enough people have written in depth about Morrison, a guy overdue for some serious critical study. Biggest disappointment with this book: only two mentions of "Veedon Fleece," his greatest album after "Astral Weeks." It's a minefield of literary and Celtic mythological references that I thought would surely attract Marcus.
August 21, 2013
Having read Marcus's book about Dylan's so-called "Basement Tapes," _The Old Weird America_, I was excited about his book about listening to Morrison.
Marcus addresses the central aspect of Morrison's records--the singer within the song, that voice that cries for transcendence from his first records with Them. But to identify this as the key to Morrison's genius proves to be a slim basis for this book. Morrison fans already know this quality of Morrison's voice. They already have favorite moments when the singer's delivery leaps from the vinyl and into the ether. For me, these moments are many; the last verse of "Ballerina," the wordless outro of "Angeliou," and the soulful middle of "Summertime in England," ("Holy magnet . . . ") for instance, are on my short list.
Unfortunately, Marcus struggles to capture the essence of such moments, which is hardly surprising in a book about the inarticulable. At his best, Marcus brilliantly describes the interplay between Morrison (as a singer) and the musicians with whom he has recorded. Thus the author offers authoritative readings of Morrison's performances with Richard Davis and Connie Kay on "Astral Weeks" in 1968, with the Caledonia Soul Orchestra in the early 1970s, and with violinist Toni Marcus on 1979's "Into the Music."
But the bulk of the book fails to illuminate the special quality of Morrison's best records, a failure that proceeds not so much from what Marcus says as from what he doesn't say. While _The Old Weird America_ succeeds largely on the basis of the author's situation of Dylan's '60s records within the context of the national imagination, in this book Marcus explicitly refuses to put Morrison's records in context.
This is permissible in many respects, and I've always believed (like Marcus) that social or historical context matters little in "Astral Weeks." In _Rough God_, however, Marcus's hermetic approach results in a narrow view of the music.
Marcus implies that Morrison was unique and alone among his peers as a singer. The most direct comparison he draws is to Elvis, as though Morrison _must_ be judged as a "white singer." Yet any discussion of Morrison's singing necessitates a discussion of soul music in the 1960s. If Dylan can be seen as re-working the materials of Harry Smith's "Anthology of American Folk Music," then Morrison can be seen as re-working James Brown's "Live at the Apollo" for a white, post-Dylan audience. What Marcus terms the "yarragh" is really "soul." How can a critic address Morrison's singing on "Astral Weeks" without referencing Brown or any of the other great soul singers of the 1960s?
Similarly, Marcus tends to dismiss Morrison's songwriting. _Rough God_ features few remarks on Morrison's accomplishments as a lyricist, in what amounts to a sin of omission. Morrison's songs hold their own against those penned by any contemporary not named Bob Dylan.
Like Dylan, Morrison made great albums that were tied together conceptually, from the lyrics to the arrangements. That Morrison is first and foremost an album artist is lost in _Rough God_. The brilliant conceptual aspects of records such as "Veedon Fleece," for instance, begs commentary. Unfortunately, it is this same dismissal of Morrison's lyrics that leads Marcus to brush off fifteen albums' worth of his career from 1980 to 1997.
In short, the book is an interesting look at Morrison's oeuvre, but, simply put, Marcus's response seems limited. Generally, he has excellent taste as a listener, and he does significantly _engage_ the music itself. Nevertheless, _Rough God_ tells only part of the story when it comes to Morrison's recorded output.
Marcus addresses the central aspect of Morrison's records--the singer within the song, that voice that cries for transcendence from his first records with Them. But to identify this as the key to Morrison's genius proves to be a slim basis for this book. Morrison fans already know this quality of Morrison's voice. They already have favorite moments when the singer's delivery leaps from the vinyl and into the ether. For me, these moments are many; the last verse of "Ballerina," the wordless outro of "Angeliou," and the soulful middle of "Summertime in England," ("Holy magnet . . . ") for instance, are on my short list.
Unfortunately, Marcus struggles to capture the essence of such moments, which is hardly surprising in a book about the inarticulable. At his best, Marcus brilliantly describes the interplay between Morrison (as a singer) and the musicians with whom he has recorded. Thus the author offers authoritative readings of Morrison's performances with Richard Davis and Connie Kay on "Astral Weeks" in 1968, with the Caledonia Soul Orchestra in the early 1970s, and with violinist Toni Marcus on 1979's "Into the Music."
But the bulk of the book fails to illuminate the special quality of Morrison's best records, a failure that proceeds not so much from what Marcus says as from what he doesn't say. While _The Old Weird America_ succeeds largely on the basis of the author's situation of Dylan's '60s records within the context of the national imagination, in this book Marcus explicitly refuses to put Morrison's records in context.
This is permissible in many respects, and I've always believed (like Marcus) that social or historical context matters little in "Astral Weeks." In _Rough God_, however, Marcus's hermetic approach results in a narrow view of the music.
Marcus implies that Morrison was unique and alone among his peers as a singer. The most direct comparison he draws is to Elvis, as though Morrison _must_ be judged as a "white singer." Yet any discussion of Morrison's singing necessitates a discussion of soul music in the 1960s. If Dylan can be seen as re-working the materials of Harry Smith's "Anthology of American Folk Music," then Morrison can be seen as re-working James Brown's "Live at the Apollo" for a white, post-Dylan audience. What Marcus terms the "yarragh" is really "soul." How can a critic address Morrison's singing on "Astral Weeks" without referencing Brown or any of the other great soul singers of the 1960s?
Similarly, Marcus tends to dismiss Morrison's songwriting. _Rough God_ features few remarks on Morrison's accomplishments as a lyricist, in what amounts to a sin of omission. Morrison's songs hold their own against those penned by any contemporary not named Bob Dylan.
Like Dylan, Morrison made great albums that were tied together conceptually, from the lyrics to the arrangements. That Morrison is first and foremost an album artist is lost in _Rough God_. The brilliant conceptual aspects of records such as "Veedon Fleece," for instance, begs commentary. Unfortunately, it is this same dismissal of Morrison's lyrics that leads Marcus to brush off fifteen albums' worth of his career from 1980 to 1997.
In short, the book is an interesting look at Morrison's oeuvre, but, simply put, Marcus's response seems limited. Generally, he has excellent taste as a listener, and he does significantly _engage_ the music itself. Nevertheless, _Rough God_ tells only part of the story when it comes to Morrison's recorded output.
July 28, 2011
Terribly disappointing. This is not a portrait of Morrison by someone who appreciates his work and his great depth of soul. This is the pretentious abstract meanderings of an overly analytical listener who stretches the capacity to see and hear what isn't there, and verbalize it in a lot of meaningless symbolisis. To digress, in his overblown adulation of Morrison he unfarily criticizes great artists Mark Knopfler and Bob Dylan in the process. I personally think Morrison himself would politely think "Rubbish" to himself were he attempt to read this book. It would be like standing in front of a lovely abstract piece and not just acknowledging the gestalt, genius, and natural soul of it, but taking it to levels of perception and meaning that are absurd, if not annoying. Not only that, he writes off 15 years of Morrison's work as insignificant, when it is this very body of work that I think was Morrison's best. I couldn't disagree with the author more.
Read
July 8, 2021if I ventured in the slipstream...
I'm inclined to agree Astral Weeks is the single greatest work of art ever created in the idiom of rock/pop music. All the critic can really do is gape in awe. When it comes to the rest of Van's oeuvre, things get a bit trickier. What is one to make of, say, the Inarticulate Speech of the Heart? Other readers have noted that Marcus is entirely too dismissive of Van's eighties output. My own feeling is that the intense spiritual questing of AW, St. Dominic's Preview, and Veedon Fleece finally found religious contentment with Full Force Gale (surely one of the world's loveliest gospel songs) in '79, and what followed could be a bit bland and complacent at times. Even so, he definitely still had his moments. The aching middle-aged nostalgia of Got to Go Back deserves a closer listen than Marcus is willing to give it. At 22 the artist was already singing that he'd never grow so old again. The question of how he experienced aging then ought to be more interesting to the critic.
October 31, 2023
This book is a great example of a certain impressionistic, overwrought style in pop criticism, one that replaces critical analysis with sentimental musings and with the glorification of random tidbits. Like, Morrison singing "Chiney" instead of "China" in Tupelo Honey: that's the kind of questionable observation which Marcus latches onto. I guess you had to be there.
May 30, 2010
Greil Marcus's short book (less than 200 pages) on the music of Van Morrison is both a celebration and a reminder of the subjective pleasures of writing about music. Marcus claims to have listened to Morrison's 1968 album Astral Weeks more than any other in his collection and When That Rough God Goes Riding is in large part about how one experiences Morrison's singular masterpiece. But how to describe the warm interplay of Morrison's voice and Richard Davis's bass or the emotional arc of the epic "Madame George"? The idea of the "yarragh" unifies Marcus's search for the sublime underneath Morrison's songs. What is the yarragh?
Got that? The rooting of Morrison's music is a particular cultural tradition provides a starting point for talking about the unquantifiable feelings that Astral Weeks induces. Morrison himself seems to suggest that his songs are after something in the air. Marcus quotes a 1978 interview:
Marcus unpacks Astral Weeks admirably but the yarragh also provides too easy a yardstick for dismissing some of Morrison's lesser albums. Over fifteen years of work gets dismissed in one chapter while the use of Morrison's songs in the films Breakfast on Pluto and Georgia receives too much attention. Live performances not available to the general listener (the bibliography is full of bootlegs) are cited too often, sometimes as counterexamples. Marcus zips all over Morrison's career, closing with an analysis of a track off Morrison's last album called "Behind the Ritual." The song celebrates the themes of Astral Weeks even if it isn't as musically memorable, and it's a fitting place for us to part company with this still-searching genius. Greil Marcus wisely doesn't try to pin Morrison's work to his biography, in fact he disdains the idea; When That Rough God Goes Riding peeks behind the curtain but wisely doesn't try to solve the mystery of Van Morrison.
William Butler Yeats, a conflicted soul and superb poet, once wrote about the �yarragh.� For Yeats, the yarragh was a cry of the heart, a haunting and haunted sound that could be found in Celtic (and particularly Irish) song and poetry. It was sorrow and lamentation for what had been lost, and for centuries of foreign oppression. It was anger and self-righteousness, a loud and belligerent cry that insisted on the inherent dignity and worth of a people. In short, it was soul, but soul with a particularly nationalistic fervor.
Got that? The rooting of Morrison's music is a particular cultural tradition provides a starting point for talking about the unquantifiable feelings that Astral Weeks induces. Morrison himself seems to suggest that his songs are after something in the air. Marcus quotes a 1978 interview:
"The only time I actually work with words is when I'm writing a song. After it's written, I release the words; and every time I'm singing, I'm singing syllables. I'm singing signs and phrases."
Marcus unpacks Astral Weeks admirably but the yarragh also provides too easy a yardstick for dismissing some of Morrison's lesser albums. Over fifteen years of work gets dismissed in one chapter while the use of Morrison's songs in the films Breakfast on Pluto and Georgia receives too much attention. Live performances not available to the general listener (the bibliography is full of bootlegs) are cited too often, sometimes as counterexamples. Marcus zips all over Morrison's career, closing with an analysis of a track off Morrison's last album called "Behind the Ritual." The song celebrates the themes of Astral Weeks even if it isn't as musically memorable, and it's a fitting place for us to part company with this still-searching genius. Greil Marcus wisely doesn't try to pin Morrison's work to his biography, in fact he disdains the idea; When That Rough God Goes Riding peeks behind the curtain but wisely doesn't try to solve the mystery of Van Morrison.
February 1, 2011
I first heard Van Morrison's ASTRAL WEEKS in 1971. It opened up my head, yet no one I knew around me seemed to know anything of it. TUPELO HONEY was much played on stereos back then, but ASTRAL WEEKS was a secret, I assumed, that only I knew of. Since that initial introduction, I've followed Morrison's work and found much to enjoy and wonder at, though nothing in his immense catalog came close to that initial encounter. And Greil Marcus has been a favorite writer of mine since my first reading of LIPSTICK TRACES. That book with its wide-ranging associative energy, and its deep feeling for history, struck me as a special kind of criticism, the best kind one could hope to find, a work nearly epic in its reach and power. So I was excited by the prospect of Marcus writing on Morrison, Marcus bringing his intellect and love of music to various recordings. To say this book was a disappointment is to speak too harshly, because I did enjoy and finished it in a single day and short night. It wasn't disappointing yet came close to being so. At times, Marcus seems tired, exhausted by his own enthusiasm: he seems spent, and the fragmented expressiveness of a fan too incoherent to be left on its own, unsupported by those wonderful tales Marcus draws from history. (Marcus is at his best when his historical expertise is combined with an innocent fanaticism.) Still, there's much to appreciate in this book and the fans of both Morrison and Marcus will easily endure those parts where the prose forces itself into the waters this side of mystery, of incoherence -- that is one difficulty -- or, and this is worse, in my opinion, the prose devolves into discography where he isn't so much writing about music as demonstrating to the reader how much he doesn't know and how many records he's never heard and, for that matter, never will. Perhaps that isn't a problem on the internet, perhaps. I have no money, I need a better job, my kness ache and I worry about them. "The love that loves to love the love that loves the love that loves to love the love."
October 24, 2020
I found this to be a rather uneven, at times impenetrable, book, but with enough going for it to salvage it from being two stars.
I stopped reading music newspapers like NME a couple of decades ago as I couldn't understand what the hell the journalists were talking about, even when they were writing about music I knew very well. It all seemed like they were trying to prove how clever they were and, maybe showing that I'm not so clever, I just didn't get it. This is the tone that carries across in this book - Marcus has clearly thought a lot about Morrison's music, and he really wants you to know that he has.
So, while there's too much "clever-cloggery", there isn't enough of the stuff that partially redeems the book: background to the writing and recording of the songs featured; Morrison's own thoughts about the songs (though, granted, he doesn't talk much about his work); and just why Morrison's music, and these songs in particular, are so important to Marcus.
Maybe that stuff is in there and I just wasn't paying enough attention, but I had to force myself to finish the book and, while I'm glad I did, it's not an experience I'd care to repeat, at least not all in one go. I might re-read a chapter about a particular song as I'm listening to it - but then again, I might not.
I bought this book thinking it might give me some insight into what I find so appealing about Van Morrison's wonderful music. In the end, I guess I've decided that Marcus's opinions about Morrison just don't matter to me all that much, and I'm glad: I'm happy to leave my fascination with Van Morrison's music somewhat unexamined. As Billy Bragg said:
The temptation
To take the precious things we have apart
To see how they work
Must be resisted for they never fit together again.
Edit: This book did not survive my recent book cull.
I stopped reading music newspapers like NME a couple of decades ago as I couldn't understand what the hell the journalists were talking about, even when they were writing about music I knew very well. It all seemed like they were trying to prove how clever they were and, maybe showing that I'm not so clever, I just didn't get it. This is the tone that carries across in this book - Marcus has clearly thought a lot about Morrison's music, and he really wants you to know that he has.
So, while there's too much "clever-cloggery", there isn't enough of the stuff that partially redeems the book: background to the writing and recording of the songs featured; Morrison's own thoughts about the songs (though, granted, he doesn't talk much about his work); and just why Morrison's music, and these songs in particular, are so important to Marcus.
Maybe that stuff is in there and I just wasn't paying enough attention, but I had to force myself to finish the book and, while I'm glad I did, it's not an experience I'd care to repeat, at least not all in one go. I might re-read a chapter about a particular song as I'm listening to it - but then again, I might not.
I bought this book thinking it might give me some insight into what I find so appealing about Van Morrison's wonderful music. In the end, I guess I've decided that Marcus's opinions about Morrison just don't matter to me all that much, and I'm glad: I'm happy to leave my fascination with Van Morrison's music somewhat unexamined. As Billy Bragg said:
The temptation
To take the precious things we have apart
To see how they work
Must be resisted for they never fit together again.
Edit: This book did not survive my recent book cull.
August 19, 2012
Another terrific book from Greil Marcus, who remains that oxymoronic thing: the greatest writer on rock n' roll.
It won't be everyone's choice of Van Morrison songs and albums: Greil privileges the moments of self-revelation and the rawest music that makes them possible. The book, though, is a full of insight into one of the most important pop artists.
It won't be everyone's choice of Van Morrison songs and albums: Greil privileges the moments of self-revelation and the rawest music that makes them possible. The book, though, is a full of insight into one of the most important pop artists.
June 15, 2019
Marcus doesn't engage as much as he did with his book on the Basement Tapes, although the keen listening is there, his comments seem a little scattergun,and the book lacks coherence.
June 20, 2016
I was moved by the outpouring of affection following Prince’s death. Although he was never someone I listened to (generational thing) I wondered if there was a living artist that could still produce that sort of reaction from me. Certainly I remember being shocked and mournful at the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and John Lennon, but that happened in a pre-social media world so the impact was much more singular. Looking at living artists I still listen to I fixed on Springsteen and Van Morrison. Thinking a bit more I decided that Morrison was the one artist whose music originally affected me in what I think is similar to other people with Prince. So I picked up this book to see why I felt like that, Greil Marcus is a polarizing critic but I haven't found anyone else who can describe some of the emotions that a great song will provoke. Like me he considers Astral Weeks, Morrison’s true masterpiece, although, as he points out, there are others, Moondance, Tupelo Honey etc. that are equally wonderful.
Here's a good clip. The scene is The Band's "Last Waltz" concert. If you've seen Scorsese's film he shows the Thanksgiving Dinner the Band laid on. The initial "I" in this is Marcus:
And also this:
“Van always looked to me like a half-homicidal leprechaun who lived under the bridge,” the critic Jay Cocks likes to say. For a night he came out from under the bridge. Then he went back. It was stunning; no one remarked on the slime dripping from his elbows, the bits of dead rats on his shoes.
You get that sort of thing right alongside rhapsodic analysis of the songs.
Here's a good clip. The scene is The Band's "Last Waltz" concert. If you've seen Scorsese's film he shows the Thanksgiving Dinner the Band laid on. The initial "I" in this is Marcus:
As the dishes were being cleared from the Thanksgiving tables, I’d seen Morrison wandering the still mostly empty aisles in Winterland, dressed in his raincoat, scowling. He was thirty; he looked older, pudgy and losing his hair. It was surprising to see him appear onstage like a grimy Cinderella in a purple stage suit: a spangled bolero jacket, sausage pants with contrasting lacing up the crotch, a green top with a scoop neck that produced what could only be called cleavage. God, you thought—where did he get this thing? Who drugged him, knocked him out, dragged him into a costume store, and put this on him and said, Well, here you are, you look great, Van, you look just terrific! It was as if he was daring the audience, or for that matter the Band, not to see past the ludicrousness of his costume (“I remember a couple of times becoming completely distracted and felt like I was in the audience,” [Robbie] Robertson said), not to see what he was doing, not to hear the music.
And also this:
“Van always looked to me like a half-homicidal leprechaun who lived under the bridge,” the critic Jay Cocks likes to say. For a night he came out from under the bridge. Then he went back. It was stunning; no one remarked on the slime dripping from his elbows, the bits of dead rats on his shoes.
You get that sort of thing right alongside rhapsodic analysis of the songs.
February 11, 2015
Van Morrison has always been an enigma for me. One of my formative memories as a serious music fan was watching him perform "Madame George" at the Fillmore on NET (it wasn't even PBS yet). And of course he was ubiquitous on the "underground" AOR radio stations of the Sixties and Seventies. But I never made the sort of emotional connection with him that I did with Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, or even Cat Stevens on the one hand, or Bowie, Bush, or Byrne on the other. I was put off by his stolid manner, his religiosity, even his wardrobe, which sometimes reminded me of a grocery store manager dressed to go nightclubbing.
But my wife adores his music, which means I listen to more of it than I would of my own accord. Which made me curious about what I may have been missing with this obviously very serious, significant, and accomplished musical artist.
I don't know if Greil Marcus is the best man for the job, since his critical analyses are characteristically as idiosyncratic and impenetrable as Morrison's lyrics. He reminded me, though, to pay attention to the sublime expressiveness of Van's singing, as he holds or rushes through notes and pauses, repeats words, and doubles back on himself as if he were embodying poetry or performing a vocal meditation.
I was sitting in bed reading, one recent Saturday morning, immersing myself in Marcus's reflections on Morrison's artistry. A whole new dimension of appreciation was opening up for me as I began to dimly comprehend the profundity of Morrison's accomplishment. My wife, next to me, set her laptop between us and played a video she'd just found, of the Milky Way seen in clear night skies, undimmed by light pollution. I was surprised how deeply moved I was by the beauty of this vista. It isn't often that reading criticism leaves my heart so open and vulnerable. I was ravished. To my astonishment, I wept.
But my wife adores his music, which means I listen to more of it than I would of my own accord. Which made me curious about what I may have been missing with this obviously very serious, significant, and accomplished musical artist.
I don't know if Greil Marcus is the best man for the job, since his critical analyses are characteristically as idiosyncratic and impenetrable as Morrison's lyrics. He reminded me, though, to pay attention to the sublime expressiveness of Van's singing, as he holds or rushes through notes and pauses, repeats words, and doubles back on himself as if he were embodying poetry or performing a vocal meditation.
I was sitting in bed reading, one recent Saturday morning, immersing myself in Marcus's reflections on Morrison's artistry. A whole new dimension of appreciation was opening up for me as I began to dimly comprehend the profundity of Morrison's accomplishment. My wife, next to me, set her laptop between us and played a video she'd just found, of the Milky Way seen in clear night skies, undimmed by light pollution. I was surprised how deeply moved I was by the beauty of this vista. It isn't often that reading criticism leaves my heart so open and vulnerable. I was ravished. To my astonishment, I wept.
February 8, 2018
Good God, the purple prose and ENDLESS, meandering sentence length of just about every passage renders this gaudily written book almost unreadable. I am used to clear and concise writing, and this is about as far from it as I have seen in a long while.
Among other things, Van Morrison is infamous for having vigorously opposed and openly denounced any and all previous attempts to have unauthorized biographies written about him, contributing to his mystique as a private, eccentric artist. But in this case, I have to think he opposed this book on him simply because of how poorly it is written. It's as if the author wanted to cash in on Morrison's fame and was being paid by the word to do so.
The author seems to genuinely appreciate Van Morrison's musical genius, but really: how many pages of gushing, bloated, stream-of-consciousness type writing on the author's *opinion* on Morrison's music can we take? Imagine a musical biography written in the painful style of Joyce's 'Ulysses' but without the originality and you start to approach what this book is like. This guy gives even music critics a bad name.
Among other things, Van Morrison is infamous for having vigorously opposed and openly denounced any and all previous attempts to have unauthorized biographies written about him, contributing to his mystique as a private, eccentric artist. But in this case, I have to think he opposed this book on him simply because of how poorly it is written. It's as if the author wanted to cash in on Morrison's fame and was being paid by the word to do so.
The author seems to genuinely appreciate Van Morrison's musical genius, but really: how many pages of gushing, bloated, stream-of-consciousness type writing on the author's *opinion* on Morrison's music can we take? Imagine a musical biography written in the painful style of Joyce's 'Ulysses' but without the originality and you start to approach what this book is like. This guy gives even music critics a bad name.
August 11, 2012
If you have played Astral Weeks in its entirety more than 50 times, then do yourself a favor and pick this book up. While Morrison’s career has been anything but consistent, this book captures the high notes in fantastic illustrations. Other moments (like say all the albums from 1980-1996) are glossed over in a mere 12 pages. Some of the songs covered may be somewhat inaccessible to anyone but the most avid fans, but there are usually plenty of quick stories to keep the reader interested. Pick it up, grab your collection of Van or fire up Spotify, and spend part of your summer with the music of Van Morrison and this book.
April 20, 2010
I love the way Greil Marcus finds volumes in a single moment of a song. In Mystery Train, he finds the exact moment in Elvis' Sun sessions where Elvis transforms from a truck driver to a rock singer. Similarly in this book, Marcus writes paragraphs on a single bass note in Cypress Avenue, or the way Morrison pronounces "Chiney" in Tupelo Honey. Not to be missed by Morrison fans.
February 19, 2016
Greil Marcus' ode to the Belfast Cowboy takes a shillelagh to Morrison's albums.
August 7, 2017
Van Morrison is one of the most brilliant and infuriating singer-songwriters in history. Greil Marcus is one of the most brilliant and infuriating music critics in history (see "Mystery Train," among other books). To have one commenting on the other produces a book that is both brilliant and infuriating, sometimes both at once.
Do not look to Marcus for titillating gossip or biographical dirt on Van the Man. As Van would say, he ain't give you none (except for a couple of brief, hilarious anecdotes concerning his "audition" for the movie "The Commitments" and his effort to complete a recording contract for a manager who'd dropped dead).
Instead what Marcus provides by the wheelbarrow-full in this brief and engaging book is analysis and context, not to mention some fun cultural allusions and comparisons. In writing about Morrison and his music, he gives shout outs to Raymond Chandler, plate tectonics, Thomas DeQuincey, Olympic long-jumper Bob Beamon, comic Robert Klein, pre-Buckingham/Nicks Fleetwood Mac, and whether the blues came from Scotland instead of Africa. And yes, it all make sense.
Throughout most of the book, Marcus writes like a dream. I was particularly taken by an early sentence describing what Morrison looked like when he first appeared on the rock scene: "He was small and gloomy, a burly man with more black energy than he knew what to do with, the wrong guy to meet in a dark alley, or backstage on the wrong night. He didn't fit the maracas-shaking mode of the day." Nor has he yet.
Marcus shines his spotlight beam on various Morrison songs and performances, taking them apart to see what makes them tick. Some chapters go on for several pages. One is as brief as the plink of a guitar string. It concerns “Moonshine Whiskey” from the album "Tupelo Honey": "It’s the way he affirms 'I’m gonna put on my hot pants' as if he’s trying to twist himself into them. But were they pink?"
On the other hand, here's what he writes about a song called "Behind the Ritual" on a fairly recent album (one of the few newer ones that he praises): "The words are slurred, or maybe it’s that the old man singing them is singing them as clearly as he can, testing his tongue against his pursed lips, like someone whose fingers are so webbed with arthritis he has to draw words instead of writing them. Morrison lifts his saxophone, and gets the lucidity he can’t find on his own."
Marcus is especially fascinated by Morrison's groundbreaking 1968 album "Astral Weeks," which used members of the Modern Jazz Quartet as backup musicians. Although it sold poorly upon release, and became something of a one-off for the blues-and-soul-obsessed Morrison, the album is now regarded as a classic, one that Morrison played live all the way through on a 2009 tour. Marcus lifts the hood of the album and takes the engine apart to see how it runs, and later looks even more closely at a couple of songs on that album. One song, "Madame George," gets a chapter all its own, and then gets examined all over again for its use on the soundtrack to a Neil Jordan film called "Breakfast on Pluto," which is about an Irish transvestite not unlike the song's main character.
What Marcus is most concerned with are the songs on which he believes Morrison found his "yarragh," which the great Irish tenor John MacCormack defined as the element that elevates an important voice from a very good one. Marcus returns to this sound -- this inarticulate speech of the heart, if you will -- throughout the book, using it like a dipstick to check the oil level in every song Morrison recorded. Some of them pass with flying colors ("Tupelo Honey") but many do not.
"The yarragh is not," according to Marcus, "something Morrison can get at will."
The problem with this book is that if Marcus doesn't hear a yarragh, he doesn't want to hear the music. He finds most upbeat Morrison tunes tiresome, dismissing "Brown-Eyed Girl" and "Domino" as mere radio fodder that anyone could have made (they could not). He never mentions one of my favorite upbeat Morrison tunes, "Jackie Wilson Said," which is so peppy you could use it as a caffeine substitute. It has no yarragh, and thus is not worthy of his time. He waves a hand to blithely dismiss 16 (!) of Morrison’s recordings from 1980 to 1996 as an “endless stream of dull and tired albums” that carry “titles like warning labels.” simply because many are focused on Morrison's spiritual quest or his remakes of old tunes from the heroes he loved and treasured.
That said, I enjoyed reading this book, and thinking about the Morrison songs I like and will listen to over and over again. I found mentions of a few I hadn't heard before and will now go seek out. And I salute Mr. Marcus' achievement here. While we disagree often, I still find him to be, by turns, a man of insight, a man of granite, a knight in armor intent on creativity.
Do not look to Marcus for titillating gossip or biographical dirt on Van the Man. As Van would say, he ain't give you none (except for a couple of brief, hilarious anecdotes concerning his "audition" for the movie "The Commitments" and his effort to complete a recording contract for a manager who'd dropped dead).
Instead what Marcus provides by the wheelbarrow-full in this brief and engaging book is analysis and context, not to mention some fun cultural allusions and comparisons. In writing about Morrison and his music, he gives shout outs to Raymond Chandler, plate tectonics, Thomas DeQuincey, Olympic long-jumper Bob Beamon, comic Robert Klein, pre-Buckingham/Nicks Fleetwood Mac, and whether the blues came from Scotland instead of Africa. And yes, it all make sense.
Throughout most of the book, Marcus writes like a dream. I was particularly taken by an early sentence describing what Morrison looked like when he first appeared on the rock scene: "He was small and gloomy, a burly man with more black energy than he knew what to do with, the wrong guy to meet in a dark alley, or backstage on the wrong night. He didn't fit the maracas-shaking mode of the day." Nor has he yet.
Marcus shines his spotlight beam on various Morrison songs and performances, taking them apart to see what makes them tick. Some chapters go on for several pages. One is as brief as the plink of a guitar string. It concerns “Moonshine Whiskey” from the album "Tupelo Honey": "It’s the way he affirms 'I’m gonna put on my hot pants' as if he’s trying to twist himself into them. But were they pink?"
On the other hand, here's what he writes about a song called "Behind the Ritual" on a fairly recent album (one of the few newer ones that he praises): "The words are slurred, or maybe it’s that the old man singing them is singing them as clearly as he can, testing his tongue against his pursed lips, like someone whose fingers are so webbed with arthritis he has to draw words instead of writing them. Morrison lifts his saxophone, and gets the lucidity he can’t find on his own."
Marcus is especially fascinated by Morrison's groundbreaking 1968 album "Astral Weeks," which used members of the Modern Jazz Quartet as backup musicians. Although it sold poorly upon release, and became something of a one-off for the blues-and-soul-obsessed Morrison, the album is now regarded as a classic, one that Morrison played live all the way through on a 2009 tour. Marcus lifts the hood of the album and takes the engine apart to see how it runs, and later looks even more closely at a couple of songs on that album. One song, "Madame George," gets a chapter all its own, and then gets examined all over again for its use on the soundtrack to a Neil Jordan film called "Breakfast on Pluto," which is about an Irish transvestite not unlike the song's main character.
What Marcus is most concerned with are the songs on which he believes Morrison found his "yarragh," which the great Irish tenor John MacCormack defined as the element that elevates an important voice from a very good one. Marcus returns to this sound -- this inarticulate speech of the heart, if you will -- throughout the book, using it like a dipstick to check the oil level in every song Morrison recorded. Some of them pass with flying colors ("Tupelo Honey") but many do not.
"The yarragh is not," according to Marcus, "something Morrison can get at will."
The problem with this book is that if Marcus doesn't hear a yarragh, he doesn't want to hear the music. He finds most upbeat Morrison tunes tiresome, dismissing "Brown-Eyed Girl" and "Domino" as mere radio fodder that anyone could have made (they could not). He never mentions one of my favorite upbeat Morrison tunes, "Jackie Wilson Said," which is so peppy you could use it as a caffeine substitute. It has no yarragh, and thus is not worthy of his time. He waves a hand to blithely dismiss 16 (!) of Morrison’s recordings from 1980 to 1996 as an “endless stream of dull and tired albums” that carry “titles like warning labels.” simply because many are focused on Morrison's spiritual quest or his remakes of old tunes from the heroes he loved and treasured.
That said, I enjoyed reading this book, and thinking about the Morrison songs I like and will listen to over and over again. I found mentions of a few I hadn't heard before and will now go seek out. And I salute Mr. Marcus' achievement here. While we disagree often, I still find him to be, by turns, a man of insight, a man of granite, a knight in armor intent on creativity.
January 17, 2021
I have to give it to Greil Marcus: he has a way of writing sentences about pop culture that I would love to claim that I understand, especially when I don't. One of the most astute critics of rock music that there ever has been, Marcus has a way with telling us not just the story of an artist or a song, but why such things link back to older traditions that we may have never heard of if he hadn't brought them to our attention. I'm thinking of "The Old, Weird America," "The History of Rock and Roll In Ten Songs," "Lipstick Traces," and especially his first, and arguably his masterpiece of inscrutable critical writing, "Mystery Train."
"When that Rough God Goes Riding" is focused on Van Morrison, and I honestly think it's an okay book that might have benefited by me being more conversant with Morrison's body of work: I know the hits and I have a "best of" that includes his work with Them. I also have "Moondance" and "His Band and Orchestra" albums. But I'm not as well-versed on Morrison as I'd like to be, and so I feel like I'm bringing to this a certain amount of blind spots when it comes to Morrison's career. Most recently in the news for a questionable anti-quarantine tune, Morrison has made a career out of not being comfortable doing the things that would make him a huge, mainstream star ("Brown-Eyed Girl" aside, he's almost more of a rock critic's favorite than someone who moves the masses all the time, though he's had his moments and certainly has a reputation as one of the classic artists of his era). This book is not really a biography or discography, but kind of an aural tour of both Van Morrison's career and Greil Marcus' listening habits re: Morrison. It's kind of fun, but also a bit much at times.
Greil Marcus is one of those rock critics, as the Onion AV Club once said, who isn't interested in telling you what a song sounds like so much as what it causes him to think about, especially with regards to subject matter. So be prepared for a lot of that, which can be entertaining. But this wouldn't be high on my list of favorite Marcus books. It's a bit like his book about listening to the Doors: it's nice to read, but doesn't really have an impact on you like his longer books sometimes about more than one artist.
"When that Rough God Goes Riding" is focused on Van Morrison, and I honestly think it's an okay book that might have benefited by me being more conversant with Morrison's body of work: I know the hits and I have a "best of" that includes his work with Them. I also have "Moondance" and "His Band and Orchestra" albums. But I'm not as well-versed on Morrison as I'd like to be, and so I feel like I'm bringing to this a certain amount of blind spots when it comes to Morrison's career. Most recently in the news for a questionable anti-quarantine tune, Morrison has made a career out of not being comfortable doing the things that would make him a huge, mainstream star ("Brown-Eyed Girl" aside, he's almost more of a rock critic's favorite than someone who moves the masses all the time, though he's had his moments and certainly has a reputation as one of the classic artists of his era). This book is not really a biography or discography, but kind of an aural tour of both Van Morrison's career and Greil Marcus' listening habits re: Morrison. It's kind of fun, but also a bit much at times.
Greil Marcus is one of those rock critics, as the Onion AV Club once said, who isn't interested in telling you what a song sounds like so much as what it causes him to think about, especially with regards to subject matter. So be prepared for a lot of that, which can be entertaining. But this wouldn't be high on my list of favorite Marcus books. It's a bit like his book about listening to the Doors: it's nice to read, but doesn't really have an impact on you like his longer books sometimes about more than one artist.
July 23, 2025
You don't pull no punches...
I bought this in Fopp's a month or so ago, being an intermittent admirer of both Morrison and Marcus. Others have already commented here on the way that adjective could be applied to the latter's view of the former: thus, whilst devoting whole chapters of this short book to appreciations of individual songs like Astral Weeks's Madam George and Sweet Thing, and Keep It Simple's Behind The Ritual, Marcus takes just ten pages to dismiss sixteen years of Morrison's work, beginning with 1980's Common One. Such an idiosyncratic (even inconsistent) view is bound to provoke reaction from the reader - particularly those like me who've enjoyed offerings from within that denigrated period such as Live at the Grand Opera House Belfast, A Sense of Wonder, and the remarkable Common One itself.
For the most part, Marcus makes good arguments for his views on Morrison's work, and his enthusiasm for the songs he enjoys is usually compelling. However, as I've often found to be the case elsewhere (in, e.g., his Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads and Mystery Train), this occasionally veers over to the incoherent. Here, for example, is Marcus grappling with how to describe a violin solo on Into the Music [p127]:
"The violin presses its demands, but all along there's been a screech in the background, and now as it rises little notes like birds flutter around it, to cage it, failing as the sound goes into territory first broken by John Cale's viola in 'Heroin' - which is now also the sound of a woman getting dressed."
You find yourself agreeing with - or at least understanding - him right up until that twist at the end, which comes out of nowhere, and fatally weakens the impact of what he has to say. Apart from moments like this, I enjoyed reading this book, and would recommend it to anyone interested in Morrison's music. Just don't expect to be nodding all the way through, though.
Originally reviewed 10 August 2015
I bought this in Fopp's a month or so ago, being an intermittent admirer of both Morrison and Marcus. Others have already commented here on the way that adjective could be applied to the latter's view of the former: thus, whilst devoting whole chapters of this short book to appreciations of individual songs like Astral Weeks's Madam George and Sweet Thing, and Keep It Simple's Behind The Ritual, Marcus takes just ten pages to dismiss sixteen years of Morrison's work, beginning with 1980's Common One. Such an idiosyncratic (even inconsistent) view is bound to provoke reaction from the reader - particularly those like me who've enjoyed offerings from within that denigrated period such as Live at the Grand Opera House Belfast, A Sense of Wonder, and the remarkable Common One itself.
For the most part, Marcus makes good arguments for his views on Morrison's work, and his enthusiasm for the songs he enjoys is usually compelling. However, as I've often found to be the case elsewhere (in, e.g., his Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads and Mystery Train), this occasionally veers over to the incoherent. Here, for example, is Marcus grappling with how to describe a violin solo on Into the Music [p127]:
"The violin presses its demands, but all along there's been a screech in the background, and now as it rises little notes like birds flutter around it, to cage it, failing as the sound goes into territory first broken by John Cale's viola in 'Heroin' - which is now also the sound of a woman getting dressed."
You find yourself agreeing with - or at least understanding - him right up until that twist at the end, which comes out of nowhere, and fatally weakens the impact of what he has to say. Apart from moments like this, I enjoyed reading this book, and would recommend it to anyone interested in Morrison's music. Just don't expect to be nodding all the way through, though.
Originally reviewed 10 August 2015
February 15, 2021
I hoped this would give an insight into Van Morrison’s music but I was disappointed.
Greil Marcus has a fixed view of who Van is and anything that doesn’t match that view is summarily dismissed. For Marcus, Van is a romantic Celtic troubadour with something he calls the “Yarragh”. He expects Van to have the answers. So, Marcus dismisses the run of 16 albums Van recorded between 1980 and 1996: “The romantic would be replaced by the seeker”. It isn’t just that I disagree with Marcus, which I do, but because he doesn’t see that Morrison, the romantic was always a ‘seeker’ in the earlier albums that he admires so much. For, Marcus, “And the Healing Has Begun” is simply about trying to pick up a woman in a red dress, he has no concept that “Healing” might point beyond.
Marcus is also inconsistent. He castigates, as Morrison does, those who seek to find a literal or autobiographical meaning in Van’s songs. He writes, “any talk of the real, the lived, the experienced as a legitimation or validation of aesthetic response .. is a red herring”, when people try to identify Madame George. He/she is from Van’s imagination. Fine, but in the next chapter, Marcus insists that the beautiful “St Dominic’s Preview” is about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, not Van’s imagination at all.
And for some reason, we get pages of plot synopses of films that Marcus once saw that have nothing to do with Van. Finally, just to show that he is a proper music critic with access beyond us ordinary mortals, quite a number of his choices are from bootlegs that we won’t have heard.
Not recommended.
Greil Marcus has a fixed view of who Van is and anything that doesn’t match that view is summarily dismissed. For Marcus, Van is a romantic Celtic troubadour with something he calls the “Yarragh”. He expects Van to have the answers. So, Marcus dismisses the run of 16 albums Van recorded between 1980 and 1996: “The romantic would be replaced by the seeker”. It isn’t just that I disagree with Marcus, which I do, but because he doesn’t see that Morrison, the romantic was always a ‘seeker’ in the earlier albums that he admires so much. For, Marcus, “And the Healing Has Begun” is simply about trying to pick up a woman in a red dress, he has no concept that “Healing” might point beyond.
Marcus is also inconsistent. He castigates, as Morrison does, those who seek to find a literal or autobiographical meaning in Van’s songs. He writes, “any talk of the real, the lived, the experienced as a legitimation or validation of aesthetic response .. is a red herring”, when people try to identify Madame George. He/she is from Van’s imagination. Fine, but in the next chapter, Marcus insists that the beautiful “St Dominic’s Preview” is about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, not Van’s imagination at all.
And for some reason, we get pages of plot synopses of films that Marcus once saw that have nothing to do with Van. Finally, just to show that he is a proper music critic with access beyond us ordinary mortals, quite a number of his choices are from bootlegs that we won’t have heard.
Not recommended.
July 21, 2022
In which I maybe come to terms with the fact that I just don’t like Greil Marcus’ style… maybe? If you’ve read him, you know what I mean, and it either does it for you or it doesn’t: he writes ecstatically of musical and historical crescendos, of coincidences and parallel occurrences, of small moments writ large, all with a post-hippie, academic awe at the machinations of the world. It sounds like a perfect writing style for appraising Van Morrison’s music, but it somehow falls flat. Maybe Marcus’ writing is too influenced by Morrison, and by confronting like with like he comes away with something more ephemeral than he realizes; many of the revelatory moments he describes fall short of conveying the majesty I know is there from having listened to the music myself. I didn’t come away from this book feeling like I knew more about Morrison’s music or like I *feel* more about his music than I already did. Maybe we each have our unique connection to Astral Weeks, to “Almost Independence Day,” to Veedon Fleece, and that eludes definition. You either get it or you don’t, even more so than with much music. Greil isn’t going to advance your own thoughts on Morrison; in this book he barely manages to articulate his own.
That said, it is a fast read and I do appreciate that he digs into some more obscure moments in Van the Man’s extensive discography.
That said, it is a fast read and I do appreciate that he digs into some more obscure moments in Van the Man’s extensive discography.
June 30, 2025
Author Marcus used to be a music reviewer for Rolling Stone magazine which is all one needs to know about what to expect of his writing: ridiculous pairings of inappropriate adjectives (nihilistic reservism? really?); esoteric information more designed to convey some supposed superior musical knowledge on the part of the author rather than describe what was actually going on with a particular artist or a song; and the all-pervasive “I’m so much smarter and better than you, reader” tone. This book is, unfortunately, no exception.
It contains several chapters, each about a specific song or performance in Morrison’s career, but little else. Worse, the author seems to have no appreciation for Morrison, calling “Brown-eyed Girl” his “least convincing recording”, whatever that means. He then proceeds to call every album the artist released in the 80s and 90s (which includes the incredible “Poetic Champions Compose”) as “dull and tired”. One has to wonder why he even bothered to write this book, except maybe to try to prove how much better and smarter he is than we, the lowly audience members, are.
It was my absolute joy to have been in the audience to see Van Morrison perform at the Hollywood Bowl in 2008 during his “Astral Weeks” tour. I don’t need an overblown critic to explain to me why his music, all of it, is special and important
It contains several chapters, each about a specific song or performance in Morrison’s career, but little else. Worse, the author seems to have no appreciation for Morrison, calling “Brown-eyed Girl” his “least convincing recording”, whatever that means. He then proceeds to call every album the artist released in the 80s and 90s (which includes the incredible “Poetic Champions Compose”) as “dull and tired”. One has to wonder why he even bothered to write this book, except maybe to try to prove how much better and smarter he is than we, the lowly audience members, are.
It was my absolute joy to have been in the audience to see Van Morrison perform at the Hollywood Bowl in 2008 during his “Astral Weeks” tour. I don’t need an overblown critic to explain to me why his music, all of it, is special and important
July 3, 2017
Greil Marcus writes about a song like it's a thing. Of course you listen to it, but you also seem to enter into it; you roll it around your fingers and consider its angles; you prick your finger on one of its sharper edges and discover whose life flashes before your eyes as the blood rises. In this book, he takes on the career of Van Morrison by examining slices of recorded music throughout his considerable career. I don't always know what he's talking about. However, I mostly enjoyed the journey.
March 4, 2026
"A moment this closely observed has already gone beyond the limits of observation; it is already imagined."
This is but a sample of the quality of writing and insight that you will get within these pages - a celebration not only of Van Morrison but of culture and memory.
Small, short and immensely (re-) readable. The essays on Astral Weeks, Madame George, St Dominics Preview and Behind the Ritual are worth the price alone.
This is but a sample of the quality of writing and insight that you will get within these pages - a celebration not only of Van Morrison but of culture and memory.
Small, short and immensely (re-) readable. The essays on Astral Weeks, Madame George, St Dominics Preview and Behind the Ritual are worth the price alone.
May 5, 2024
You got to like Greil to like his take on Van, and I do.
I love the one word in these un-chronological essays that he takes for the certain something in the voice of Van: the "yaaragh." Yet, though the book features a useful index at end, no entry appears therein for this reappearing word of exquisite use.
Recommended, y'all: yaaragh.
I love the one word in these un-chronological essays that he takes for the certain something in the voice of Van: the "yaaragh." Yet, though the book features a useful index at end, no entry appears therein for this reappearing word of exquisite use.
Recommended, y'all: yaaragh.
October 3, 2019
Some interesting thoughts, but not the book that Van Morrison's music deserves. A random, disorganized collection of essays. The author dismisses two decades' worth of Morrison's music, including some out-and-out classics (Common One, Beautiful Vision, No Guru).
September 24, 2023
He’s a harsh critic on some music I love (basically everything Morrison did in the ‘80s), but a wonderful book about wonderful music. The chapter on Astral Weeks is now one of my favorite pieces of writing.
February 20, 2018
Didn't finish this one. More interested in chapter/excerpts on "Astral Weeks".
September 23, 2018
interesting, has written and collaborated on some wonderful songs.. is a grumpy shit tho
December 28, 2018
A profound take on an enigmatic singer.
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