Sir George Ivan Morrison OBE (born 31 August 1945) is a singer-songwriter and musician from Northern Ireland whose recording career spans seven decades.
Morrison began performing as a teenager in the late 1950s, playing a variety of instruments including guitar, harmonica, keyboards and saxophone for various Irish showbands, covering the popular hits of that time. Known as "Van the Man" to his fans, Morrison rose to prominence in the mid-1960s as the lead singer of the Belfast R&B band Them, with whom he wrote and recorded "Gloria", which became a garage band staple. His solo career started under the pop-hit oriented guidance of Bert Berns with the release of the hit single "Brown Eyed Girl" in 1967.
After Berns's death, Warner Bros. Records bought Morrison's contract and allowed him three sessions to record Astral Weeks (1968). While initially a poor seller, the album has come to be regarded as a classic. Moondance (1970) established Morrison as a major artist, and he built on his reputation throughout the 1970s with a series of acclaimed albums and live performances.
Much of Morrison's music is structured around the conventions of soul music and early rhythm and blues. An equal part of his catalogue consists of lengthy, spiritually inspired musical journeys that show the influence of Celtic tradition, jazz and stream of consciousness narrative, such as the album Astral Weeks. The two strains together are sometimes referred to as "Celtic soul", and his music has been described as attaining "a kind of violent transcendence".
Morrison's albums have performed well in the UK and Ireland, with more than 40 reaching the UK top 40. He has scored top ten albums in the UK in four consecutive decades, following the success of 2021's Latest Record Project, Volume 1. Eighteen of his albums have reached the top 40 in the United States, twelve of them between 1997 and 2017. Since turning 70 in 2015, he has released – on average – more than an album a year. He has received two Grammy Awards, the 1994 Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, the 2017 Americana Music Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting and has been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2016, he was knighted for services to the music industry and to tourism in Northern Ireland.
albums by Van Morrison
You and the rest of the Van the Man dissers below are lost in some kind of musical wasteland. VM is THE voice of a generation, the Boomer's answer not only to Sinatra, but Mel Torme' as well. He was terrific with Them, terrific by himself on Astral Weeks and Moondance, terrific with the Street Choir on a greatest hits quality album where EVERY cut was an R&R/R&B masterpiece. He has since played with everyone from the Chieftans to jazz quintets. If you want to get an idea of the enormous respect his peers have for him, watch what is possibly the best R&R movie ever made, the Band's farewell mega-concert "The Last Waltz" as turned into a documentary by no less than Martin Scorcese. You bozos have exactly zero taste and even less knowledge of pop music. Philistines of the most common, garden variety. Unfortunately, he is a whiner about his life.
Oh, dear. Rubbed a raw nerve, have I? I don't know what my personal dis/like of VM has to do with the respect he's paid by his peers - the two things are conceptually different, as different as chalk and cheese. He's the musical dog's bollox, and the musician's musician, I know. Groundbreaking, innovative etc. I just can't be doing with his voice, much as I can't be doing with the voices of Dylan and Neil Young, yet respect them enormously for their songwriting and whatnot, for all that I'm a bozo with "exactly zero taste and even less knowledge of pop music".
Subjective taste is exactly that: subjective. It isn't determined by how brilliant/respected an artist is, and long may that continue, yea unto the last trump. So sayeth Bozo Fred :o)
The Rolling Stones never recorded this, although it would have been a good addition to their reportoire.
Them must've been great to see back then.
Nice song. But not from the album 'Into the music'.
Yeah, this is the band "Them", fronted by Van. When he had a massive pile of red hair.
Probably because it is "Bright Side of the Road" and you are "Sunnyside of the Street."
Not to be confused with the Monty Python tune, "Always Look On the Bright Side of Life"
You and the rest of the Van the Man dissers below are lost in some kind of musical wasteland. VM is THE voice of a generation, the Boomer's answer not only to Sinatra, but Mel Torme' as well. He was terrific with Them, terrific by himself on Astral Weeks and Moondance, terrific with the Street Choir on a greatest hits quality album where EVERY cut was an R&R/R&B masterpiece. He has since played with everyone from the Chieftans to jazz quintets. If you want to get an idea of the enormous respect his peers have for him, watch what is possibly the best R&R movie ever made, the Band's farewell mega-concert "The Last Waltz" as turned into a documentary by no less than Martin Scorcese. You bozos have exactly zero taste and even less knowledge of pop music. Philistines of the most common, garden variety. Unfortunately, he is a whiner about his life.