presspax.blogg.se - Van morrison astral weeks album

Bill from UsIf there ever was a song born about, created from, and that creates transcendence from this world, this is it.

That magic that happened doesn't sound mundane to me, it obviously set the mood for the whole package, that we all now know. Yes, session musicians, but some of the jams, uncharted, lasted several minutes of artists playing off each other, solos, and several minutes of beautiful music cut out for song length time.

Bill from UsAccording to those present at recording, however, the sessions were pretty mundane and workmanlike.įrom my reading, not entirely true.

Without it, he was a true outsider, even among peers. "All of a sudden he grabbed a guitar and started singing songs about reincarnation, being in 'another time and place.'" The song Densmore is referring to is "Astral Weeks."ĭensmore further comments on how music was Van's only way to communicate.

"He sat on the couch, moody and glowering, and didn't say a word," Densmore writes in Riders on the Storm. At the party, Densmore was struck by Van's isolation. On the final night of the residency, the two bands ripped into a 20-minute performance of " Gloria." Densmore went to the show's afterparty with Van, but Jim didn't go. (Them guitarist Jim Armstrong has also suggested Them started marijuana-aficionado Jim Morrison down his path of heavy drinking.) It was an impactful experience for Jim, as he picked up a lot of Van's stagecraft and gritty disposition. Each night, The Doors and Them jammed together. In June 1966, Van and his band Them started a three-week residency at the Whiskey. The Doors were unsigned but were a regular act at the Whiskey A Go Go, one of the hottest clubs in Los Angeles. (The album’s percussionist, Warren Smith, recently talked to Rolling Stone as well.In his book Riders On The Storm, Doors drummer John Densmore recounts hearing Van Morrison work through "Astral Weeks" in 1966, two years before the song was released.

Musician John Payne, who played flute and some saxophone on the album, also calls in to the show explain what making it was actually like. Geils Band’s Peter Wolf to Morrison’s childhood out-of-body experiences to the editing of his then-girlfriend Janet Planet to the general madness of Boston in 1968. On our Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, Walsh broke down the unlikely backstory of one of the greatest albums ever made – with influences ranging from the J. Walsh’s excellent recent book Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 reveals, Morrison actually conceived the album in - of all places - Boston, Massachusetts, where he was essentially hiding out after leaving behind the record deal that yielded “Brown Eyed Girl” the previous year. If the mystic wanderings of Van Morrison’s 1968 masterpiece Astral Weeks have any geographic setting at all, it’s their creator’s native Belfast, and, of course, the viaducts of his dreams.