There's something about the first edge of winter, when the chill is in the air, but the first snow has yet to fall. When you walk home at night, and smell the autumn leaves burning. The maple trees all turn a heavy, sombre red, like the colour of blood.
There's something about the grey skies, dim light even at midday, as you walk down an abandoned rail-road track that slices through the middle of town. Something about that grey sky, meeting the rusted iron rails. Something in the air, that makes me think of Van Morrison.
Veedon Fleece apparently remains “by far the most underplayed album in [Morrison's] canon”, according to Clinton Heylin, in Can You Feel The Silence? It received Luke-warm to poor reviews on it's release. Only six of the songs have ever been played live, and those only rarely (especially for such a prolific and eclectic live performer as Morrison). Unlike previous albums, it did not produce even one radio friendly single. In the four years previous to Veedon Fleece, Morrison had produced five albums, every last one of them considered a resounding classic in his canon; Moondance, His Band And The Street Choir, Tupelo Honey, Saint Dominic's Preview, and Hard Nose The Highway. After Veedon Fleece, Morrison would not release another album for three years.
It is not the most important album Morrison ever recorded, and certainly not the most popular, but it numbers amongst it's most ardent fans Irish musicians Sinead O'Conner and Elvis Costello, and it's resonance can be seen in their work. It is the album where Morrison returns to, and comes close to completing, the work that he had started in Astral Weeks, an album that still feels almost completely alien to the rest of his sixties works. Like Astral Weeks, it's the kind of album that you need to listen to, in order to really understand Van Morrison.
And you do want to understand Van Morrison. Trust me on this one. And Veedon Fleece, strange as it may seem, is a pretty good place to start. This, really, is what makes Veedon Fleece so powerful; it's not just delicate, intricate, and complex; it's accessible. It's an album that doesn't immediately turn away the casual listener. It has a simplicity to it, that draws you in, and only after breaching the surface do you begin to realise it's depths. It's not his most accessible album, not by a longshot, but brings together every part of Van Morrison, every disparate influence, every shift in style. From Veedon Fleece, you can go anwhere.
If it were me, I'd go backwards, spiral in towards the centre. From Veedon Fleece, we'd come to Hard Nose The Highway, an album that is every inch the the core of Van Morrison's popular early work, opening with the enchanting choral sound of 'Snow In San Anselmo', where Van's voice is at it's purest, and richest, where we can clearly hear the sound that would become Veedon Fleece, with the benefit of hindsight to pick it out. Rolling on, the album hits it's high at 'The Great Deception', a classic Van Morrison rant, where he rages in his beautifully strange style. It often amazes me that Bob Dylan was pegged as the political one. Close on 'Purple Heather', sweet Celtic power and sounds of the earth welling up. And just for fun, we have a cover of Kermit The Frog's 'Bein Green', though it can never hope to match the original. Don't mess with the master.
Saint Dominic's Preview, remains my favourite Van Morrison album, from the punchy scat vocal opening of 'Jackie Wilson Said', a song that rocks out like there really will be no tomorrow, to the sprawling, incandescent, explosive awe of the title track, quite simply one of the most epic songs Van ever recorded (edged out by his live performance of Caravan, with The Band, which I doubt he will ever top). Close on the ethereal and transcendent 'Almost Independence Day', a song for long slow drives at night.
Tupelo Honey, and the sweet soulful crooner, the rhythm & blues sensation, the master of soul, is here in full force. The title track rolls down every bit as sweetly and easily as it's name would suggest, all nonsensical lyrics and heartfelt beauty. 'Wild Night', 'Like A Cannonball', 'Moonshine Whiskey', every one a home run. His Band & The Street Choir, an album that just rolls out hit after hit, from the punchy rhythm of 'Domino' to the sheer majesty of 'Street Choir'.
Moondance, and I really shouldn't have to talk about Moondance. Just take it for what it is, Van Morrison's most enduring album, and say no more. With songs like 'Caravan', 'And It Stoned Me', 'Into The Mystic', 'Everyone', and the all too well known title track, what more can be said?
And this brings us, at last, to Astral Weeks. This was always to be our final destination. Astral Weeks, the most astonishing album Van ever recorded. At the time he'd already built a reputation for throwing out pop hits like 'Gloria' and 'Here Comes The Night', working with them. His debut album, Blowin' Your Mind, had included 'Brown Eyed Girl', still his most well known song. He was there, he was established. He'd had a top ten single, and was well placed to throw out an album that would do seriously well in the charts.
And then he did Astral Weeks. It's still, to this day, the most complex, intricate, delicate, and hauntingly beautiful album he has ever recorded. It's sound is so pure, so light, so fine, that it's almost impossible to grasp ahold of for more than a moment. It lifts you away, carries you up into strange places, pierces deep into your heart, and peels away every safeguard. It is the closest Van has every come to that space he always seems to be searching for, a communication that goes beyond language. Commercially, it was the most ridiculous thing he could have chosen to do, and it forever marked him out as a kindred spirit to Bob Dylan, and a few select others, men and women for whom labels and identity only existed to be destroyed. And that alone should be reason enough to take this journey. I sincerely hope that you will.
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