Van Morrison - Astral Weeks: The Album Review

For those who are but strangers in this world.

Van Morrison: vocals, guitar, principle lyricist

Jay Berliner, Barry Kornfeld: guitar

Richard Davis: double bass

Connie Kay: drums

Warren Smith Jr.: vibraphone

John Payne: flute, saxophone

Larry Fallon: harpsichord, string arrangements

Produced by Lewis Marinstein, engineered by Bruce Arthur

Author’s Note: This post corresponds to the Astral Weeks episode of Vinyl Monday, originally posted 10/21/2024. Save for audio/editing jokes that cannot be included in a text format, this is a faithful adaptation of the review chapter. To watch the full episode, scroll to the bottom of this post or visit my YouTube channel here.

This review wasn’t supposed to happen.

Eagle-eyed viewers of last week’s episode (Santana’s Abraxas) may have noticed that I spliced B-roll in where I usually tease the jacket of the next album. This week's episode was supposed to be Fifth Dimension by the Byrds. You know, David Crosby, “Eight Miles High,” the birth of psych rock and all that junk. Very Vinyl Monday.

There were two other albums in the running for this very slot you’re reading now: Joni Mitchell’s Song To A Seagull or a redux of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. Two seasonal favorites of mine, one of which I remember being much better than it actually is. (Up to you, dear reader, to decide which is which.) But seeing as I covered both Joni and the CrosbyStillsandNashiverse fairly recently, I axed both those albums. I was even unsure even about Fifth Dimension.

As I was exporting the raw footage of the Abraxas episode to my computer, just minutes after holding up the jacket with full intent to write an episode about it, it came to me.

It called to me from the spare room where two boxes of unhoused recent acquisitions lie waiting to be shelved.

It said: Astral Weeks.

It seems Astral came out of the blue to everyone involved; a golden thread that just happened to choose Van Morrison to pluck it from the ether. Buckle up, readers: this might be one of the most insane chronicles in rock-and-roll history.

Van was having a bad time as a pop musician at the close of 1967. His greatest hit “Brown-Eyed Girl” had become the bane of his existence, and his recently-deceased boss's widow was out to make his life miserable. First she banned him from the studio, making sure he couldn’t complete his contractual obligations to Bang Records. She effectively blacklisted him from venues in New York, then hatched a truly insane plot to have him deported. The Brown-Eyed Girl herself thwarted the plot by marrying him. Together, the new Mr. and Mrs. Van Visa Marriage Morrison fled to the greater Boston area...to escape the mob? How has this story not gotten the biopic treatment yet??

Broke, desperate, and fearing for his life, Van made a new home of the Catacombs nightclub. There, in the haze of paranoia, Astral Weeks took shape; inspired by characters he met in this new city. While playing the Catacombs, Van met Warner Records exec Joe Smith. Joe, plus Bob Schwaid of Inherit Productions, bought out the rest of Van’s shit contract. But the circumstances were - for lack of a better term - sketch as hell. Joe was to leave a duffel bag with 20 grand in cash at an abandoned building. Though Warner and Inherit freed Van of Bang Records, he wasn’t out of the woods just yet. Bang’s publishing company – remember kids: this is the 60s, music, production, and distribution are all handled by separate entities – entered the chat. They wanted 3 original compositions every month for a year. So what did Van do? He recorded all 36 throwaway songs in one session and handed them all in on a steaming-hot platter of fuck you.

Warner had trouble finding a producer for Van at first. Everyone just wanted another “Brown-Eyed Girl.” They finally landed on Lewis Merenstein. He assembled the Astral Weeks group; including Jay Berliner, who played on Charlie Mingus’s The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, Richard Davis, who played bass for Sarah Vaughan, and drummer Connie Kay of the Modern Jazz Quartet. The product was Astral Weeks; hastily recorded across just 3 sessions in the autumn of 1968.

I went into this week thinking I was covering a quaint singer-songwriter album. It’s been a musically complex and challenging 3-week run on the show: Red, Hot Rats, and Abraxas. Folk would be a nice break!

Instead I was gifted quite possibly the most impenetrable set of lyrics I’ve ever had to dissect on this series. It doesn’t help that the writer has been historically effusive about what the fuck he’s talking about. Not to mention critics are generally unwilling to really crack these songs open. Both Griel Marcus and Lester Bangs (in the anthology Griel assembled, ironically enough) both creatively sidestepped the task. Not I! This episode was truly a challenge on all levels: research, writing, analysis, and production. I usually use a combination of what I call “active” and “passive” listening. Active listening is when I sit down with the record, lyrics, and my notes, nothing else. No distractions. Passive listening is everything else: playing the album while getting ready in the morning, taking a walk, cooking, etc. I use both methods equally because different things jump out at me at different times.

It was very difficult to conduct passive listening this week, because the word Greil Marcus was actually looking for in his Rolling Stone review was “arresting.” A lot comes from Van’s harsh, brassy voice againstthe sweet arrangements by Larry Fallon. I admit, Van’s voice can be a bit much for me outside the context of G-L-O-R-I-A garage rock. But in the context of Astral, Van functions like another horn in the ensemble. The vagueness of the music – meandering around itself – makes his impassioned delivery all the more jarring.

Aside from some choice moments, Astral Weeks is so un-1968. Intentional or not, it was constructed to be timeless. Like what Joe Boyd and John Wood respectively tried to do for Nick Drake. Astral shares a lot with Bryter Layter in particular; I’m sure I’ll dig into this come my review this November.

Then you get into Van’s lyrics. He rambles about all sorts of people and feelings, from young lovers to society’s outcasts.

It’s abstracted yet deeply confessional, like encountering a drunk stranger at a party.

You’re not walloped with...that...outright though. Astral Weeks begins with one of its most palatable songs, the title track. (Yes I am staying faithful to my track-by-track breakdown. If nobody else will do it, someone has to!)

I’ve always adored this song. I was drawn to the airy, swirling feeling. It’s one of the lightest spots on the album; accented by soft shakers, whimsical flute, and vibraphone. Considering how wide open the scape is, it’s still cozy.

“If I ventured in the slip-stream, between the viaducts of your dreams, where immobile steel rims crack and the ditch in the black roads stop…”

As far as writing goes, Van Morrison on Astral is like a combination between John Lennon, Bob Dylan, and Nick Drake. He’s got Nick’s adoration of nature and poetry, plus John’s wistful anxiety and penchant for the surreal. John also had a habit of slamming nonsense words together that he thought sounded nice. “Slip-stream between the viaducts of your dreams,” that’ll do it! And everything is just so open to interpretation. We’re still bickering over who/what Bob’s songs are about 60+ years later. Same with Astral Weeks: we’ll get into the most famous argument later on in this review. “Standing with the look of avarice, talking to Huddie Ledbetter, showing pictures on the wall, whispering in the hall, pointing the finger at me,” is very Highway 61/Blonde On Blonde-era Dylan. (Coincidentally, my two favorite LPs of his.)

Van himself has said “Astral Weeks” is all about rebirth. It’s in the lyrics; the oft-repeated “to be born again.” It expresses cautious optimism. You might not be ready to turn the last page of this chapter, but you know you have to do it to move on. Fearing letting go of the past is understandable. But oh, the excitement for what the future will bring! I get this in the lyrics and hesitant instrumentation: plucked guitar, vibrato strings, high-plucked bass. The fervor comes in Van’s delivery; throwing his voice into the rafters with those “euAAAAaaeAAh”’s.

You can either look at them as annoying showboating or as uncontrollable bursts of joy. It depends on if you’re a pessimist or optimist at heart.

I know Astral isn’t autobiographical, Van said so himself quite curtly to NPR: “It’s not about me. It’s totally fictional. It’s put together of composites, of conversations I heard – you know, things I saw in movies, newspapers, books, whatever. It comes out as stories. That’s it. There’s no more.” (Josh Gleason, “Van Morrison: Astral Weeks Revisited” Weekend Edition Saturday via NPR, 2/28/2009) But all this is exactly what Van and his new wife Janet would’ve felt as they got their fresh start in Boston. You can feel it in your chest, right down to the supine, sighing strings in the coda.

We’re confronted with the weight of Astral Weeks on the next track, Beside You.

Some of the most haunting moments on the album are when Van repeats certain phrases. It happens for the first time here: “You breathe in, you breathe out, you breathe in,youbreathe out, youbreatheinyoubreatheout – ” It feels like getting stuck on one thought, the kick in the chest when you get news you were dreading.

I have no idea what the fuck this song is about, but there are many images of childhood and innocence slipping through your fingers. “Little Jimmy’s gone, way out of the backstreet, out the window through the falling rain.” Whatever this song is about, it’s tragic. Is the tragedy the passage of time? Losing touch with your younger self? Getting the news that your childhood best friend has passed away? I feel any and all of the above would be appropriate interpretations.

Then the release: Van spits out “beSIDE you!” It’s harsh and spontaneous, somewhere between ecstasy and keening. I feel like I shouldn’t be in the room for this! Songs like this showcase the quiet power of this group – notably not the one he rehearsed with in Boston. Less-experienced musicians would surely flounder when presented with this open-ended of a composition. Everything about Astral Weeks reads as stream-of-consciousness, right down to the music. The stars of the show are Jay on guitar, Richard on bass, and John on flute. Their work is impressionistic, nonlinear, more dots and dashes than complete phrases. But it’s no less evocative.

I didn't hear the alternate version of "Beside You" - which Van forked over to get out of his bad record deal - until very late in the process. Others have called it "bizarre" but I honestly find it superior to the meandering album version!

Spoiler alert: this album will be an emotional roller coaster. We go from the depths of loneliness to the title track’s twin sister, Sweet Thing. If “Beside You” mourns youth in some capacity, “Sweet Thing” revels in reclaiming it. “I will never grow so old again, and I will walk and talk in gardens all wet with rain” Even reveling in youthful ignorance: “Just to dig it all and not to wonder, that’s just fine. And I’ll be satisfied not to read in between the lines.” This is the greatest string arrangement on the album; urgent descending accents followed by romantic swells are all the highs and lows of young love. I also want to point out a technique Richard used: he insertedhis notes in between the beats. It creates many effects: from a child’s small shuffling footsteps to a heartbeat. Here, it creates a loose shimmy within a waltz.

And I have to say it: “With your champagne eyes and your saint-like smile” is SUCH a Dylan line.

Full stop, “Cyprus Avenue” is about a creep.

The narrator is a stalker at best and pedophile at worst. “But AD, we don’t know the narrator’s age!!” May I present you with: “And if I’m caught one more time up on Cyprus Avenue…” One can imagine what he’s doing while watching this poor unsuspecting girl walk home from school.

Creepy as “Cyprus Avenue” is, I see why Van wanted to explore this as a writer. “Cyprus Avenue” is about unrequited “love” twisted into obsession. It’s tragic on the outside, but unimaginably dark at its core. Taboo.There’s nothing more consuming than obsession, and nothing more gutting than when reality breaks up the delusion. The universe mocks the narrator; confining him to to the position of voyeur. Frankly it’s an interesting point of view to write from. The cry of “rAAAAAINbow ribbons in her hair” is one of the rawest and realest moments on the whole album. You don’t rehearse in front of a mirror for something like that. I’ll be honest, I’m not fond of the harpsichord. I’m usually one for a baroque pop moment, it fits with the narrator imagining his object of obsession as a lady in a horse-drawn carriage. But here, it dates an otherwise-timeless album. Richard makes quizzical, abstracted shapes among rolling harpsichord and charming fiddle. The song trots away at the end like a white pony, or maybe unravels into some delirious post-coital ecstasy as Van babbles about his “baby.”

Flipping over the record, we’re presented with The Way Young Lovers Do. This song attracted the most ire from Griel in his Rolling Stone review. It’s the most Song song on the record for sure. I’m not sure Astral Weeks would’ve had any viable singles (Warner didn't release any - this was to get Van out of some contractual trouble.) But this song would’ve been the closest they had. Sonically, it’s a hint to the swinging Frank Sinatra approximation Van would adopt for the wildly popular follow-up, Moondance. “Young Lovers” has an old-school feel. I’d describe it as lounge-music meets 1930s big band. just with a louder approach. It’s a rock vocal with a jazz scatting solo! And an appropriately boisterous arrangement for the brassiness of young love. Greil said in his review that this song was out of place, I disagree. It breaks up the “sameiness” Van complained of in the years following Astral’s release.

I appreciate this song because it’s the first time that Van’s voice hasn’t totally dominated the song. And that’s saying a lot because we needed almost a whole goddamn orchestra to do it! There’s strings, horns, a trumpet solo, and a frankly bizarre showing by Richard. This is the most unintentionally funny moment on Astral. With the syncopation and volume with which he plays, and how high it is in the mix…

...it sounds like he accidentally glued his fingers to the neck of the instrument and is trying to free himself.

And then there’s Madame George.

Perhaps the most controversial cut on the record. There’s been fierce debate over who Madame George is. Not so much her real-life identity, that kind of “who is Madame George.” But rather: is Madame George a woman or a man? Was she a man at some point in her life? The lyric in question: “In the corner, playing dominos in drag, the one and only Madame George”

Furthermore, what is her occupation? It seems like she’s a lady of the night. A drunken sailor follows her home: “That smell of sweet perfume comes drifting through the cool night air like Shalimar” (I had to Google what that was; apparently Shalimar is a perfume created in 1921.) Why else would the cops come around to bust her, and the subject of the song have to flee in the night? I feel like there’s something illegal going on there, whether it’s prostitution or simply being gay in a place where being gay is illegal.

Van himself claims Madame George is a woman. He complicates things further by calling her both Madame Joy and Madame George in the song, but that could just be his famously…loose...diction. He really opened Pandora’s box with the IN drag line. Much to contemplate.

I don’t know what Van Morrison’s views on the LGBT+ community are. Frankly, I don’t want to know. His reputation as a fickle, vindictive asshole – which revealed itself to me while researching this episode – and bizarre obsession with making anti-lockdown songs with Eric Clapton don’t have me feeling optimistic. Whoever Madame George is, the narrator is fascinated by her. Characters like Ms. George don’t often get this empathetic a treatment in 1968, that’s for sure. I can name just two other songs from the era that do: The Velvet Underground’s “Candy Says” and The Kinks’ “Lola.”

The narrator ponders the cruelty of the world for forcing her and her lover apart: “Dry your eye for Madame George, wonder why for Madame George” We have another one of those enchanting chanting moments: “The love that loves, the love that loves, the love that loves to love…To love the love.” That’s the crux of Astral Weeks, really. This obsession with love. The love of love, want for love, need for love, the desperation for love. Van gets stuck on this word, somersaulting over all its possible meanings between physical and emotional.

I love how the arrangement is peeled back to reveal just the bass, vibraphone, and Van for a brief, intimate moment; before the strings come back in to play Ms. George out.

Along with rain, trees, and love, another recurring theme is observation. The stalker in “Cyprus Avenue,” the man who spots Madame George, and now the spectator in the crowd who’s fallen hopelessly in love with the titular Ballerina. The lonely man laments fumbling the bag when he sought her out in her dressing room:“I’m standing in your doorway and I’m mumbling, and I can’t remember the last thing that ran through my head, Here come the man and he say the show must go on.” (It’s her director, telling her it’s time to start the show.) Our narrator has this fantasy of whisking his object of affection away from showbusiness to live a “better” life: “But if it gets to you and you feel like you just can’t go on, all you gotta do is ring a bell” His bell. He beckons her to “take off (her) shoes” and run away with him. I find it interesting that, of the 8 songs on Astral, “Ballerina” was chosen to reference on the back cover: “Let us go there together, darlin, way from the river to here and now/And carry it with a smile, bumper to bumper/Stepping lightly, just like a ballerina.” Maybe this was an intended single? Who knows. And, of all songs, Van chooses this one for his most impassioned delivery. He walks the tightrope of voice cracks with those freewheeling runs in “Step rihiiiiight up!”

There’s a very obvious cut about halfway through the song – I don’t love that. But this is the song with that gorgeous heartbeat bass by Richard Davis. I also have to note creative vibraphone from Warren Smith: he mimics a doorbell when Van sings “ring a bell” for the first time.

It’s worth noting this is not the full Slim Slow Slider. As we hear on expanded versions of this album, a whole chunk after “Every time I see you, I just don’t know what to do...” was cut.

“Slim” is the only song on Astral Weeks without strings. After everything that came before, it feels...off...not to have them. It’s lonely and pronounced. The flute, saxophone, buzzing bass; even the reverb on Van’s voice sticks out, exposed. It’s the most desolate song on the album by far. Not even she knows why she’s gone: “You’re gone for something, and I know you won’t be back. I know you’re dying baby, and I know you know it too.” Every other song had at least a hint of joy; “Cyprus Avenue” as it reveled in delusion, and fondly remembering Madame George. “Slim” has none. The narrator laments his lost love and curses her brand-new boy and his Cadillac. He cruelly spits out the word boy, all venom.

“Slim” falls apart at the end, as if unable to bear seeing itself through. Van batters away at his guitar, takinghis anguish out on it. The bass hobbles off, as if shot in the leg. Astral Weeks has sustained a fatal arrow to the heart. The album limps out of the harsh spotlight; offstage, where it will collapse into itself. Injuries incompatible with life. Though understated, open-ended, and confusing, that last gasp of pent-up energy just has to burst out somehow.

In the words of Lester Bangs:

What Astral Weeks deals in are not facts but truths. Astral Weeks, insofar as it can be pinned down, is a record about people stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralyzed by the enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend. It is a precious and terrible gift, born of a terrible truth, because what they see is both infinitely beautiful and terminally horrifying: the unlimited human ability to create or destroy, according to whim. It’s no Eastern mystic or psychedelic vision of the emerald beyond, nor is it some Baudelairean perception of the beauty of sleaze and grotesquerie. Maybe what it boiled down to is one moment’s knowledge of the miracle of life...the capacity to be hurt, and the capacity to inflict that hurt.”

quoted from: Griel Marcus, Stranded: Rock and Roll For A Desert Island (2007)

Astral Weeks is hard to pin down. It takes a few goes at it for it to even begin to reveal itself to you. It still hasn’t 100% revealed itself to me. Maybe this unfolds over years, or decades. Time will tell. Or maybe I don’t want it to fully reveal itself to me. It’d be like killing a butterfly, taking it apart, putting pins in its wings. Sure, it preserves the specimen. But at what cost? Isn’t that the issue you run into with all art criticism though? Ruining the magic? I don’t think so, no. If anything, the murky backstory of this album and its creator’s constantly shifting feelings about it make it all the more remarkable. This could’ve very easily been lost to the sands of time, but it wasn’t. Its patrons persevered, even when the artist and his label for whatever reasons didn’t. Van was never this raw and vulnerable again. He soon retreated to comfy-cozy jazzy Moondance, then Tupelo Honey and others.

And now we’re left with the self-obfuscating, impenetrable, misty, beautiful Astral Weeks. It’s an ode to how brutal and crushing life can be, and celebrates it in spite of whatever batshit circumstances befall you. Sure, we haven’t all been to Belfast or fallen in love with a hooker, or run out of a city by the mob. But we’ve all loved someone, or something, before. We’ve experienced the pain of having and not having it. We’ve all ran to, or out of, the rain. We’ve all longed to be born again. For 47 minutes, Astral Weeks takes the weight off our shoulders, allowing us to escape to another time, another place. But thankfully, we don’t escape our humanity. After all, we’re all just strangers in this world.

Personal favorites: “Astral Weeks,” “Beside You,” “Sweet Thing,” “Madame George,” “The Way Young Lovers Do”

– AD ☆

Watch the full episode above!