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Van Morrison 
Wikipedia: Van Morrison |
Van Morrison's Biography
Part Celtic bard, part soulster, and part ecstatically scatting mystical visionary, Van Morrison is a painfully introverted figure who rarely gives interviews and is often at a loss to explain his own lyrics. In the studio, Van Morrison can sing like a soul man getting the spirit; onstage, however, his brilliance can be undercut by whim or temper, and he has upon occasion alienated audiences by ru...
Equal parts blue-eyed soul shouter and wild-eyed poet-sorcerer, Van Morrison is among popular music's true innovators, a restless seeker whose incantatory vocals and alchemical fusion of R&B, jazz, blues, and Celtic folk produced perhaps the most spiritually transcendent body of work in the rock & roll canon. While a notoriously difficult and eccentric figure whose steadfast rejection of commercial trends and industry fashions kept him absent from the pop charts for decades at a stretch, Morrison nevertheless enjoyed a massive cult following that grew exponentially throughout the course of his lengthy and prolific career. Subject only to the whims of his own muse, his recordings cover extraordinary stylistic ground yet retain a consistency and purity virtually unmatched among his contemporaries, connected by the mythic power of his singular musical vision and his incendiary vocal delivery: spiralling repetitions of wails and whispers that bypassed the confines of language to articulate emotional truths far beyond the scope of literal meaning.
George Ivan Morrison OBE (generally known as Van Morrison) (born August 31, 1945) is a singer-songwriter from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He plays a variety of instruments, including the guitar, harmonica, keyboards, drums, and saxophone. Featuring his characteristic growl - a unique mix of throaty folk, blues, Irish, scat, and Celtic influences - Morrison is widely considered one of the most unusual and influential vocalists in the history of rock and roll. Famed critic Greil Marcus has gone so far as to say that "no white man sings like Van Morrison." Known as "Van the Man" by his fans, Morrison first rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Northern Irish band, Them, penning their seminal 1964 hit "Gloria". A few years later, Morrison left the band for a successful solo career. Morrison has pursued an idiosyncratic musical path. Much of his music is tightly structured around the conventions of American soul and R&B, such as the popular singles "Brown Eyed Girl", "Moondance", "Domino" and "Wild Night". An equal part of his catalogue consists of lengthy, loosely connected, spiritually inspired musical journeys that show the influence of Celtic tradition, jazz, and stream-of-consciousness narrative, such as his classic album Astral Weeks and lesser known works such as Veedon Fleece and Common One. The two strains together are sometimes referred to as "Celtic Soul". Morrison's career, spanning some four decades, has influenced many popular musical artists. In 1993 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2000, Morrison ranked number 25 on American cable music channel VH1's list of its 100 greatest artists of rock and roll, and in 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked #42 on their list of .. He currently lives in Killiney in South Dublin, Ireland. |