Word: morrisons
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Here we all were, fretting over the parlous state of rock, and help was on the way even while we were dithering. All of a sudden there's a clutch of superb albums out there: Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes' Better Days; Robbie Robertson's Storyville; Van Morrison's Hymns to the Silence. And now, to put the capper on the company, U2's dashing, demanding Achtung Baby...
Like this sainted idiot, Morrison seems to be sustained by some spiritual essence. He also shares with the idiot a contempt for catering to anyone, a disdain for superficial cool. Morrison, 46, looks like a cross between a puff adder and a pub keeper, and will never seem beguiling in a video. As he sings about his boyhood, weaving references to Sidney Bechet and Hank Williams into a tune that draws on the hymn Just a Closer Walk with Thee, it's obvious he is only trying to keep a clear through-line to living memory...
That connection is all that's important, and once achieved and maintained, it needs no gift wrapping. No major show-biz showmanship. No kissing up to MTV, no interviews in the press. Morrison is his own best reporter and interpreter, as he makes plain on the chiding Why Must I Always Explain: "Well it's out on the highway and it's on with the show/ Always telling people things they're too lazy to know/ It can make you crazy, yeah it can drive you insane...
Some listeners might be tempted to say this Belfast cowboy -- as the Band's Robbie Robertson once called him in a song -- is, in fact, a little mad. But if so, his is a fine madness. Morrison asks his own questions ("Can you feel the silence?") and provides his own answers ("((We)) carried on dreaming in God"). Those very dreams are the songs he shares. His music is a perpetual state of grace...
MUSIC The great rocker Van Morrison, still waiting for a breakthrough...