Astral Weeks

For the Charles Mingus album, see Astral Weeks (Charles Mingus album)

Untitled

Astral Weeks is the title of a folk-rock and R & B album by Northern Irish musician Van Morrison, released in November 1968 on the Warner Brothers Records label. Astral Weeks was critically acclaimed upon its first release and remains a cult favorite, in spite of never achieving significant mainstream sales success (although it finally went Gold in 2001).

Background

At the beginning of 1968, Van Morrison was involved in a contract dispute with Bang Records that kept him from any recording activity. The situation was worsened by the sudden death of the label's founder Bert Berns; born with a congenital heart condition, he experienced a massive heart attack and was found dead in a New York hotel room on December 30th, 1967. Prior to Berns's death, Morrison and Berns were having some creative difficulties, with Berns pushing Morrison towards a more pop-oriented direction and Morrison wanting to explore a new sound. As a result, Berns's widow, Ilene Berns, held Morrison responsible for her husband's death. (Years later, Ilene Berns would downplay this scenario, but several witnesses from that time, including Morrison's ex-wife Janet Planet, have gone on record describing her subsequent vindictiveness towards Morrison.)

Meanwhile, Ilene was given ownership of Bang Records, and the annual option on Morrison's recording contract was also due roughly the same time as her inheritance. Legally bound to Bang Records, Morrison was not only kept out of the studio, he couldn't even perform in New York as most clubs were afraid to book him, fearing reprisals.

Ilene Berns then discovered that her late husband had been remiss in filing all the appropriate paperwork to keep Morrison (still an Irish citizen) in New York. She contacted immigration and attempted to get him deported. However, Morrison was able to stay when his then-girlfriend Janet Planet agreed to marry him.

Once they were married, Morrison and his wife moved to the college town of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was able to find work performing in the local clubs. Morrison began performing with a small electric combo consisting of local students, but this group only lasted one summer. Two of the members left due to other commitments, but Morrison was able to retain the bassist, Tom Kielbania, who was a student at the Berklee School of Music. It was then that Morrison decided to try an acoustic sound, and he and Kielbania began performing shows as an acoustic duo.

Later, Kielbania heard flautist John Payne for the first time while sitting in on a jazz jam session. He took Payne to see Morrison, hoping Morrison would invite him to join them, and after allowing Payne to sit-in on one performance (switching off between flute and saxophone), Morrison did extend an invitation that Payne accepted.

The trio of Payne, Kielbania, and Morrison would continue to perform for four months, and it was around this time that Warner Bros. Records approached Morrison, hoping to sign him to their roster. Presumably their interest was based on the prior success of "Brown-Eyed Girl," not on Morrison's current acoustic work. Regardless, their interest allowed Morrison to return to the recording studio.

At the time, Warner Bros. had a deal with Inherit Productions, the production arm of Schwaid-Merenstein which was founded by manager Bob Schwaid (who worked for Warners Publishing) and producer Lewis Merenstein. While Merestein went to see Morrison in Boston, Schwaid went to work on Morrison's legal troubles.

Morrison was still legally bound to Bang Records, and he would have more issues with them in the future. For the time being, Schwaid was able to free him from those obligations, under several conditions. First, Morrison had to write and submit to Web IV Music (Bert Berns's publishing company) three original compositions per month over the course of one year. An unusual and outrageous demand by any standard, Morrison was able to fulfill it by recording thirty-six nonsense songs in a single session. Such action risked legal reprisals, but none was taken. Morrison then had to assign Web IV one half of the copyright to any composition written and recorded by Morrison and released as a 45 rpm single within one year from September 12, 1968. That demand would become a moot point when Warner Bros. would refrain from releasing any single during that time frame. Finally, Morrison had to include two original compositions controlled by Web IV on his next album. Morrison would fulfill that demand with two of his own compositions, "Madame George" and "Beside You."

Recording sessions

With legal matters settled, Morrison was now able to proceed with his Warner Bros. debut. Sessions were held at Century Sound Studios in New York on September 25, October 1 and 15, 1968.

Legendary musician John Cale was recording next to Van Morrison's studio, and reported "Morrison couldn't work with anybody, so finally they just shut him in the studio by himself. He did all the songs with just an acoustic guitar, and later they overdubbed the rest of it around his tapes."

This is in fact completely untrue - the live tracks for the sessions were performed by Van on vocals and acoustic guitar, along with upright bass (not bass guitar), second acoustic guitar, vibes, flute, and drums. The only instruments added afterwards were strings, horns and the occasional drum part.

Producer Lewis Merenstein had a background in jazz, and according to Merenstein, Morrison "was not an aficionado of jazz when I met him. R&B and soul, yes; but jazz, no." For these sessions, Merenstein first contacted veteran bassist Richard Davis. Perhaps best known for his work with Eric Dolphy, Davis was essentially the session leader, and it was through Davis that Merenstein was able to recruit guitarist Jay Berliner, percussionist Warren Smith, Jr., and drummer Connie Kay. All of these musicians had strong backgrounds in jazz; Berliner had worked closely with Charles Mingus and Kay was part of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Morrison was still working with Kielbania and Payne, but for these sessions, they were essentially replaced. According to Kielbania, "I got to show all the bass lines to Richard Davis. He embellished a lot of them, but I gave him the feeling."

Davis was perhaps the most pivotal instrumentalist during these sessions. "If you listen to the album, every tune is led by Richard and everybody followed Richard and Van's voice," says Merenstein. "I knew if I brought Richard in, he would put the bottom on to support what Van wanted to do vocally, or acoustically. Then you get Jay playing those beautiful counter-lines to Van."

Davis was not impressed by Morrison, but not out of disdain or any preconceived notion. "No prep, no meeting," recalls Davis. "He was remote from us, 'cause he came in and went into a booth...And that's where he stayed, isolated in a booth. I don't think he ever introduced himself to us, nor we to him...he seemed very shy...It wasn't like all of us getting together into a huddle, see what the next play was gonna be...Some people can envelop you in their performance, and it makes you feel like you're doing what they're doing - I've worked with many artists who had that rapport - [Morrison] didn't do a goddamn thing...he didn't make any suggestions about what to play, how to play, how to stylize what we were doing." Drummer Connie Kay later told Rolling Stone that he approached Morrison and asked "what he wanted me to play, and he said to play whatever I felt like playing. We more or less sat there and jammed."

It's important to note that 'jamming' isn't merely random improvisation. You have "what you call a lead sheet," explains Davis, which is "a skeletal frame of what is to be done, and you fill in the flesh. What you fill in [comes] through your own imagination - nobody can tell you what to do. You just play it."

But for the Astral Weeks sessions, lead sheets apparently were not used or at least handed out. "What stood out in my mind was the fact that he allowed us to stretch out," recalls Berliner. "We were used to playing to charts, but Van just played us the songs on his guitar and then told us to go ahead and play exactly what he felt." Berliner actually had great appreciation for the freedom given to him and the band; something few, if any, of them were used to. "I played a lot of classical guitar on those sessions and it was very unusual to play classical guitar in that context," says Berliner.

The first session held on September 25th produced four recordings that were used on the album. Only three were initially scheduled: "Cyprus Avenue," "Madame George," and "Beside You." Though Payne was not supposed to play, he still attended the first session and listened as another flautist played his parts. (To this day, nobody recalls the name of the flautist as he has not been identified on any documentation; he does play flute on the released takes of "Beside You" and "Cyprus Avenue" but is not credited on the album.) When Morrison tried to squeeze in one last tune during the end of that first session, Payne spoke up and pleaded to Merenstein to let him play. Payne was then allowed to play on what became the title track of the album, and for the remainder of the sessions he played on every song.

The third and final session on October 15th produced three more recordings that finished off the album. Both "Sweet Thing" and "Ballerina" were originally scheduled for the session, but much time was spent searching for a 'closer.' A number of songs were attempted and rejected before Morrison suggest "Slim Slow Slider." "I don't think we'd ever done [it] live," recalls Payne. "[Morrison] had a book full of songs...I don't know why he decided to do it...And we were first doing it with the drums, with Richard Davis and Connie Kay and the guitar player and the vibe player and me and Van - all of us were playing. Then I started playing soprano [sax] on the thing, and Lew said, 'OK, I wanna try it again. Start again. And I want just the bass, the soprano sax and Van.'" It was a successful take, but it also came with a very long coda, prompting Merenstein to make a large edit. Many of the tracks on Astral Weeks would be subjected to edits (mainly to tighten the performances), but the one on "Slim Slow Slider" was easily the most substantial. "I would estimate three, five minutes of instrumental stuff," says Payne. "We went through stages [until] we got to be avant-garde kind of weird, which is what you hear after the splice - all that weird stuff we're playing - but there was a whole progression to that." According to Merenstein, before he cut it, the coda "was a long, long ending that went nowhere, that just carried on from minute to minute...If it had [some] relativity to the tune itself, I would have left it there."

Songs

With varied rhythms and frenzied vocals, mixed with bizarre lyrics that evoke images instead of coherent ideas and narratives, Astral Weeks has been compared to the school of Impressionism in painting, which similarly seeks to evoke emotions associated with an image. Although usually described as a "song cycle" rather than a concept album, the songs do seem to link together and form a loose narrative.

The album uses a form of symbolism that would eventually become a staple of his songs, equating earthly love and heaven, or the closest a living being can get to it. Morrison and Berliner's guitars and Davis's upright bass can be seen as the earth opposing the tuneful horns and Kay's percussion.

The oldest composition on Astral Weeks is "Ballerina", which was composed sometime in 1966, while Morrison was still a member of Them and about the same time he first met his future wife, Janet (Planet) Rigsbee. Inspired by "a flash about an actress in an opera house appearing in a ballet" (according to Morrison), former Them guitarist Jim Armstrong recalls the band working on the song between engagements. "[Morrison] had all these words," Armstrong says, "we sort of formalized it, 'cause there was no structure to it." Them would perform the song one night in Hawaii, but it would not be recorded until Astral Weeks.

Morrison has denied that "Madame George" is about a transvestite, as many have believed. An earlier recording with slightly altered lyrics and a much swifter tempo changes the tone considerably from the Astral Weeks recording, which is downbeat and nostalgic; the earlier recording is joyous, and seems to be from the point-of-view of a partygoer who sees the titular character.

The song "Cyprus Avenue" is a live favorite of Van Morrison's fans and was the closing song for most of his live shows for many years. According to Roy Kane, who grew up with Morrison in Belfast, Cyprus Avenue "... was the street that we would all aspire to - the other side of the tracks ... the Beersbridge Road had the railway line cut across it; and our side of it was one side of the tracks and Cyprus Avenue was the other ... there was an Italian shop up in Ballyhackamore, that's where all the young ones used to go of a Sunday ... we used to walk up to the Sky Beam for an ice cream or a cup of mushy peas and vinegar... We used to take a short cut up Cyprus Avenue, 'cause that's where all the expensive houses and all the good-looking totty came from ... mostly upper-crusty totty... There's a couple of big girls' grammar schools up 'round that direction... That would have sunk in my head as [much] as his."

Critical acclaim and influence

In 1997 Astral Weeks was named the 9th greatest album of all time in a 'Music of the Millennium' poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM. In a critics' poll published in the August 1995 issue of Mojo, Astral Weeks placed at number 2 while a separate readers' poll published in January 1996 placed Astral Weeks at number 5 behind three Beatles albums and the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds.

In 1998 Q magazine readers placed it at number 52, and in 2000 the same magazine placed it at number 6 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever. In 2003 the TV network VH1 named it the 40th greatest album ever, while in the same year Rolling Stone magazine placed it at number 19 (link).

The influential rock journalist Lester Bangs wrote in 1979: "It sounded like the man who made Astral Weeks was in terrible pain, pain most of Van Morrison's previous works had only suggested; but like the later albums by The Velvet Underground, there was a redemptive element in the blackness, ultimate compassion for the suffering of others, and a swath of pure beauty and mystical awe that cut right through the heart of the work."

Greil Marcus, in a 2006 interview in The Believer, said that Martin Scorsese told him that the first half of his movie Taxi Driver was based on Astral Weeks.

Origin of the title of the album

It appears that Morrison has never spoken about why he called the album Astral Weeks. An album of music by Charles Mingus with the same title was released (possibly without authorization) at about the same time that Morrison's seminal work appeared. The relationship between Mingus' relatively obscure Astral Weeks and Van Morrison's famous Astral Weeks is poorly documented. It is uncertain as to who used the title first. Some of the musicians and others that Morrison employed had worked with Mingus.

Track listing

all songs by Van Morrison

Side one

1. "Astral Weeks" – 7:00
2. "Beside You" – 5:10
3. "Sweet Thing" – 4:10
4. "Cyprus Avenue" – 6:50

Side two

1. "The Way Young Lovers Do" – 3:10
2. "Madame George" – 9:25
3. "Ballerina" – 7:00
4. "Slim Slow Slider" – 3:20

Personnel

• Van Morrison - rhythm guitar, keyboard, saxophone, vocals
• Jay Berliner - guitar
• Barry Kornfeld - guitar on "The Way Young Lovers Do"
• Richard Davis - bass
• Connie Kay - drums
• John Payne - flute, soprano saxophone
• Warren Smith - percussion, vibraphone

Production

• Producer: Lewis Merenstein
• Engineer: Brooks Arthur
• Arranger: Larry Fallon

External links

• Lyrics
• Commentary on Astral Weeks by Lester Bangs, from the 1979 anthology Stranded
• Sean O'Hagan's retrospective on Astral Weeks, 2004 for The Observer
• Astral Weeks on Popmatters