THE best part of this book is the discography, which fills thirty five pages. It is in the lists of music detailed here that we will find the heart and soul of Van Morrison. The music is his work, the songs are his voice, a voice shot through with the tang of Belfast and the rasp of Leadbelly.
For over thirty years Van Morrison has given the world some of its most enduring popular music, from "Mystic Eyes" to "Days Like This". John Colt is attempts to fake us on a journey with him through Morrison's life and music - a difficult task. He begins to lose this reader on page eleven, when he makes an idiotic comparison between the opening lines of Morrison's poetic "Astral Weeks" and Viv Stanshall's (the Bonzo Dog Doo Dab Band) goonish lampoon "Canyons of Your Mind". On page 121 we get the following with reference to Morrison's second album, Moondance:
"In the San Francisco Chronicle the veteran critic Ralph J. Gleason was a convert. He wails as the jazz musicians speak of wailing, Gleason explained, as the gypsies, as the Gaels and the old folks in every culture speak of it . . . Well, yes. Up to a point. If is a long time since the old folk in my culture sat around wailing like Van Morrison."
Collis gets it wrong. The above indicates that he misreads completely the culture out of which Morrison comes. He can hear Muddy Waters and Jackie Wilson but he knows nothing of Francie McPeake or sean nos, or of the songs of Ireland, and the culture out of which they came, a singing culture which undoubtedly informed Van Morrison's music.
Morrison is his own man. He doesn't play the game, courting the music press in return for column inches. He eschews the circus that rock music has become: the album, the hype, the image, the hair, the clothes and the video. For Van, the music is still the heart of the matter, writing and singing are his life force. Collis's book does give us some sense of Morrison's enduring and sometimes tormented relationship with his muse.
Morrison's contribution to modern popular music is immense. His songs span three decades. Jazz, folk, blues and soul blend in his music to make a sound that is instantly recognisable and uniquely his own.
Van Morrison shuns the press, avoids publicity and refuses to analyse his own work for others. He constantly asks to be left alone and pleads "why must I always explain?" He ploughs a lonely furrow; he is not a pop star or a rock star; he is like his mentor, Leadbelly (whose photograph he had on his bedroom wall as a young boy in 125 Hynsford Street in East Belfast); a blues man.
Morrison is one of the world's greatest artists and his request to be "let be" should he respected. John Collis in the introduction to this book states: "This hack, for one, offers only respect, and simply wants to get the amateur psychoanalysis out of the way at the outset. Van Morrison is entitled to fight for his privacy in any way that he can, just as others are entitled to preen and pose in the tabloid gossip columns if they wish, hut once the entertainer has taken the punter's shilling he or she has entered a contract, and the contract states that he who pays the piper might wish occasionally to peek beyond the rim of the compact disc."
Van Morrison's response is "I just do my music".
Collis is a London based music journalist who has obviously got an affection for Van Morrison's music, hut his writing lacks the insights of the best music writers (Peter Guralnick's Lost Highway, Greil Marcus's Mystery Train), so we get a book that is well researched, but is really just a collection of "Quotes about the Man" peppered with analysis and opinions from the author.
For me, we have the joy, the mystery and sadness of the music; we don't need it analysed or explained away.
Listen to the music.
Listen to the Lion.