Into the mystic: the aural poetry of Van Morrison

Extract

In 1974 Time magazine placed Van Morrison fifth in a curious little league table of ‘Greatest Living Songwriters’ behind Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Leonard Cohen. This in itself has little value and probably less meaning but serves to illustrate a point; one could in all probability fill this room with books and critical articles which have been written about Bob Dylan, and while the scholars have not spent so much energy upon Lennon and McCartney, popular approval of their work is perhaps greater than that for Dylan – we all ‘know the story’ of The Beatles. Leonard Cohen, the most ‘cultish’ among Time magazine's Gang of Four is perhaps closest to Morrison in terms of reputation, but is known also as a literary figure with some record albums and volumes of poetry issued under the same title. Some might argue that this is just a glorification of a lyric sheet; this observation may be made flippantly but does actually lead to a problematical but fascinating relation between what is written and what is sung – to which we shall turn later. My point is that in comparison to this quartet and on these terms, Van Morrison is almost invisible. There have been only two published studies of Morrison, both long out of print. The first was a piece of well-intentioned but now rather dated hagiography, Into the Music by Ritchie Yorke (1975). However, this book has the great advantage of being written with the co-operation of its subject. The second was produced by Johnny Rogan, a professional biographer of rock musicians.