Each song is its own story, a tale of wretched, despairing individuals looking for their place in the world and, more importantly, someone with whom to share that space.
The eight tracks that make up Astral Weeks are love songs, but that's far too general an assessment. What The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady was to jazz, so too was this to pop: a poetic, rich expression of desperate romanticism and hope from a notoriously mercurial, yet wildly ingenious, performer. But few rock albums - if you could call the jazz-folk-classical music contained within "rock" by any stretch - are as paradoxically inviting as this ultra-complex recording. Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, his first "proper" solo album after departing popular garage rockers Them*, has become one of those artistic touchstones that practically wards off anyone actually enjoying it, as to touch a LP (or DVD, or copied painting) would rub the oily grease of the filthy and mortal onto timelessness and thus muck it up. The song "Astral Weeks" has been covered by Glen Hansard of The Frames, Brian Houston, and The Secret Machines on their EP The Road Leads Where It's Led.Review Summary: Morrison places us all in his own slipstream, carried along by the force of his genius. Warren Smith, Jr. – percussion, vibraphone."Astral Weeks" was featured on Morrison's album Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl, released in 2009 to celebrate forty years since Astral Weeks was first released. 875 on the list of 885 Essential Songs voted on by listeners of WXPN in 2008. The song "Astral Weeks" was rated #475 on the WXPN All Time Greatest Songs in 2004 and No. īrian Hinton's review of the song states: "All is uncertain, this spiritual rebirth a question still, not a statement, and Van equates his move to a new world - both America and that of love- with a sense of being lost, "ain't nothing but a stranger in this world". It's one of those songs where you can see the light at the end of the tunnel and that's basically what the song says." Morrison told Steve Turner that he was working on the song back in Belfast in 1966 when he visited painter Cecil McCartney who had drawings on astral projection "and that's why I called it "Astral Weeks". I remember reading about you having to die to be born.
Morrison described the song "Astral Weeks" as being: "like transforming energy, or going from one source to another with it being born again like a rebirth. John Payne, the flautist who had been working with Morrison, said it was the first time he had ever heard it, and that although the song may sound rehearsed it was actually captured from the only take. On the first recording session for the album on 25 September 1968, this song was the last of four recorded for that date. " Astral Weeks" is the title song and opening track on the 1968 album Astral Weeks by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison.
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