Word: morrisons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Good question. And there are some easy answers. Morrison is too demanding -- an eccentric performer who is likely to sing his best songs with his back turned. Too personal. Too unpredictable. Not quite presentable. And way too spiritual...
...Tell me something," Bruce Springsteen asked a while ago. "How come every year or so there's a new Van Morrison record, and every time it's great, and every time no one pays attention? Why is that...
...Morrison does not make easy music, and he deserves more than easy answers. Especially now, when he has just released a new album, a 21-song, two-CD, 96-min. masterpiece, Hymns to the Silence (Polydor), that has actually crept onto the Billboard charts. It's no threat to Guns N' Roses, mind you, but at least it has made a showing. There's even a rumor that it's getting played on the radio...
Springsteen's question still pertains, however, even in the midst of these glad tidings. Morrison has been making music for more than a quarter-century, since he left his native Belfast in 1961 to sing R. and B. to G.I.s stationed in Germany. He fronted a fine Beatles-era band called Them, then went solo and traveled to America. There he flirted with the mainstream before recording Astral Weeks in 1969, an album that set what was to be, for him, a more or less unvarying pattern: wild record, wild-eyed reviews, loyal but limited audience. Since then...
...Toni Morrison is one of those writers whose first person singular contains multitudes," Heaney said...