Can You Feel the Silence?

Can You Feel the Silence?
Author: Clinton Heylin
Publisher: Lawrence Hill Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2004-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781556525421

"A terrific, detailed look at Van Morrison's life. . . A must for anyone who enjoys tales of tortured stars behaving badly."--"Entertainment Weekly." 13 photos.


Astral Weeks

Astral Weeks
Author: Ryan H. Walsh
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2019-03-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0735221367

A mind-expanding dive into a lost chapter of 1968, featuring the famous and forgotten: Van Morrison, folkie-turned-cult-leader Mel Lyman, Timothy Leary, James Brown, and many more Van Morrison's Astral Weeks is an iconic rock album shrouded in legend, a masterpiece that has touched generations of listeners and influenced everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Martin Scorsese. In his first book, acclaimed musician and journalist Ryan H. Walsh unearths the album's fascinating backstory--along with the untold secrets of the time and place that birthed it: Boston 1968. On the 50th anniversary of that tumultuous year, Walsh's book follows a criss-crossing cast of musicians and visionaries, artists and hippie entrepreneurs, from a young Tufts English professor who walks into a job as a host for TV's wildest show (one episode required two sets, each tuned to a different channel) to the mystically inclined owner of radio station WBCN, who believed he was the reincarnation of a scientist from Atlantis. Most penetratingly powerful of all is Mel Lyman, the folk-music star who decided he was God, then controlled the lives of his many followers via acid, astrology, and an underground newspaper called Avatar. A mesmerizing group of boldface names pops to life in Astral Weeks: James Brown quells tensions the night after Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated; the real-life crimes of the Boston Strangler come to the movie screen via Tony Curtis; Howard Zinn testifies for Avatar in the courtroom. From life-changing concerts and chilling crimes, to acid experiments and film shoots, Astral Weeks is the secret, wild history of a unique time and place. One of LitHub's 15 Books You Should Read This March


Lit Up Inside

Lit Up Inside
Author: Van Morrison
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2014-09-30
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0571316212

Lit Up Inside contains the lyrics of about one third of the songs that Van Morrison has written over his 50 year career. In this representative selection from the work of one of the most innovative and enduring songwriters of the last century, the reader will find examples of all the features of the world that Van has created through his work: the back streets and mystic avenues; memories of childhood wonder and of adult work; the chime of church bells and the playing of the radio; the generous naming of other artists and the joy of solitude; love and sharp dealing; consolation and grace.


When That Rough God Goes Riding

When That Rough God Goes Riding
Author: Greil Marcus
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2010
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1458758125

Readhowyouwant 16 point large print. Van Morrison, says Greil Marcus, remains a singer who can be compared to no other in the history of modern popular music. When Astral Weeks was released in 1968, it was largely ignored. When it was re-released as a live album in 2009 it reached the top of the Billboard charts, a first for any Van Morrison recording. The wild swings in the music, mirroring the swings in Morrison's success and in people's appreciation (or lack of it) of his music, make Van Morrison one of the most perplexing and mysterious figures in popular modern music, and a perfect subject for the wise and insightful scrutiny of Greil Marcus, one of America's most dedicated cultural critics. This book is Marcus's quest to understand Van Morrison's particular genius through the extraordinary and unclassifiable moments in his long career, beginning in 1965 and continuing in full force to this day. In these dislocations Marcus finds the singer on his own artistic quest precisely to reach some extreme musical threshold, the moments that are not enclosed by the will or the intention of the performer but which somehow emerge at the limits of the musician and his song.


Van Morrison

Van Morrison
Author: Johnny Rogan
Publisher: Arrow
Total Pages: 678
Release: 2006
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Johnny Rogan presents a comprehensive portrait of an endlessly complicated man, his music, and the place he comes from. Over the last five decades, Van Morrison's music has embraced rock, folk, blues, country and jazz, and he remains a hugely influential artist as well as a conundrum of a man.


Hymns to the Silence

Hymns to the Silence
Author: Peter Mills
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2010-04-08
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0826429769

A groundbreaking study of every aspect of Van Morrison's artistic career - his influences, lyrical themes, vocal performances, his relationship with America, and more.


Celtic Crossroads

Celtic Crossroads
Author: Brian Hinton
Publisher: Sanctuary Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2003-03-31
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9781860745058

For more than 30 years Van Morrison has weathered the eccentricities of the music world, single-mindedly pursuing his art while barely paying lip service to notions such as image, chart profile, and record company hype. Morrison's varied career has seen him explore rock, jazz, soul, folk, and even classical elements, while never forgetting his Celtic roots. Profiling the artist, poet, and man, "Celtic Crossroads: The Art of Van Morrison offers the definitive account of a most singular and talented musician.


The Places of Van Morrison’s Songwriting

The Places of Van Morrison’s Songwriting
Author: Geoff Munns
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2022-12-21
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1000810232

What can we learn about Van Morrison’s life and work as a songwriter through his songs? This book looks closely at the lyrics and music from a selection of his songs. Some are very well-known - ‘Brown Eyed Girl’, ‘Cleaning Windows’ and ‘The Healing Game’. Others are less familiar. Through these songs the book offers insights into some of the most important ideas that the songwriter has explored across his five-decade plus career, starting from the Them period and extending through his solo albums. These readings show how thinking about Morrison’s use of place provides a specific lens that contributes to a greater understanding of his art. The songs are organized into chapters that reflect many of the important places in Morrison’s work as he ventured professionally and imaginatively away from the places of his upbringing towards a wider musical world. These places are in city streetscapes and country landscapes – in home places of streets and ditches, in the enclosed spaces of rooms, in the expansive reaches of the natural world, in indeterminate and specific foreign lands. A picture emerges of the journey that Van Morrison details through his songs, one that sees him first wandering as a boy through his East Belfast haunts, and then venturing out to a wider world away from this local place.


A Sense Of Wonder

A Sense Of Wonder
Author: David Burke
Publisher: Jawbone Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013-10-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9781908279484

Long before there was a peace process in Ireland, Van Morrison unwittingly did his bit to unite a nation divided. Born in the heart of East Belfast in the North, he is revered as a Celtic soul hero in the South. His music, while rooted in jazz and blues and soul, has an Irish accent--a distinctly Protestant Irish accent. Morrison's songs form a map of this small island--a map of places, people, and cultures, too. They evoke a long-ago Belfast at a time before it became violently divided by sectarian conflict during the Troubles. They laud literary giants James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, and Oscar Wilde. They tell of the immigrant experience, the going away from the land that has long been Ireland's heartache. And they form a map of Morrison himself, revealing more than this notoriously difficult character ever would in interviews or conversations. A Sense Of Wonder is not a biography of Van Morrison. Rather, it is a journey through the Ireland depicted in his songs--a journey that begins in Hyndford Street, where we encounter the likes of John McCormack and The McPeake Family, and culminates in a unique picture of an idyllic, almost mythical Ireland where spirituality trumps organized religion, and art yields a stronger legacy than politics. Drawing on original research and interviews with a wide range of characters--from collaborators and associates of Morrison to Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson and actor Liam Neeson.