I loved the idea of Astral Weeks before I loved Astral Weeks. I'm sure I'm not alone. Irishman who sang proto-punk "Gloria" and drunken dorm-formal singalong "Brown Eyed Girl" and went on to do Moondance goes into a midtown Manhattan studio with top-notch jazz sessionmen. Pours out stream-of-consciousness stuff about love, rebirth, and a pain that passes all understanding, in an impressionistic folk-jazz-blues idiom that transcends existing rock conventions. Nobody buys it. A decade later, Lester Bangs calls Astral Weeks "a mystical document." In 1995, MOJO ranks it the #2 album of all time; eight years later, Rolling Stone ranks it #19; in between, damn thing finally goes gold. To a hopeless romantic, what's not to love?
Only Astral Weeks the album could live up to Astral Weeks the legend. A 23-year-old Van Morrison howls, he hollers, he cajoles, he grabs hold of the ineffable and caresses its edges, bending and reiterating it like an instrumental virtuoso. Guitarist Jay Berliner (Charles Mingus' The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady), bassist Richard Davis (Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch), and drummer Connie Kay (of the Modern Jazz Quartet) create an improvisatory space for Morrison's haunted freeform meditations; Larry Fallon's overdubs add strings, woodwinds, and harpsichord. You breathe in you breathe out, baby baby baby, way upon way upon, dry your eye your eye your eye, too late to stop now, the love that loves the love that loves the love that loves the love that loves to love the love that loves to love the love that loves, I know you're dying. The legend is with the album, and the legend is the album.
Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl was a pair of concerts held last year at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, honoring the legendary album (scheduled to be reprised February 27 and 28 at New York's Theater at Madison Square Garden). Now Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl is also an album honoring the shows that honored that legendary album. Sadly, one thing that this record isn't: legendary.
Astral Weeks was released 40 years, almost to the day, before Van Morrison performed the whole thing live two straight nights last November. "We did the songs and took them somewhere else. Transcended the originals, if you know what I mean." That's Morrison talking to the Associated Press recently. The shows featured guitarist Berliner from the 1968 sessions, along with other previous Morrison collaborators and a full string section; they were generally well-reviewed. As recorded on Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl, the performances retain the improvisatory approach from the record, right down to changing the song order-- the all-loving, possibly transvestite-themed, vaguely pro-civil-rights hymn "Madame George" now closes, rather than atmospheric mortality rumination "Slim Slow Slider". There's much rejoicing.
I guess you had to be there. On disc, Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl is a bland, bluesy celebration you can afford to miss. Oh, it still consists mostly of great songs-- the two "bonus" tracks slightly less so-- performed with skill, and recorded at fine quality, but it's hard to imagine why anyone other than souvenir-seekers or live-music absolutists would need to listen to this more than once as long as the original LP remains in print. An album brave enough to embrace life in all its ugliness and anguish, right on through to its inevitable end, becomes just another document of the rock'n'roll generation's stubborn confidence it will outlive itself. Sort of like those Dick Clark teeth on the cover.
"I believe I've transcended," Morrison sings on an extended outro to the opening, title track. "Slim Slow Slider" is now jammy, incongruously upbeat, fixed in time and place by the live audience-- some guy loudly cheers the song's placement after a newly percussion-crowded "Beside You". An ignoble thunk disrupts the harpsichord in the left speaker near the start of "Cyprus Avenue", which now inexplicably follows swinger "The Way Young Lovers Do"-- and lacks the dramatic, showstopping interlude described by Bangs, documented on 1974's It's Too Late to Stop Now live LP. Morrison's voice here is heavier, still distinguished, but as he slurs his way through the ordinarily sublime verses of "Sweet Thing" before breaking off for a superfluous harmonica solo, this much is clear: A work of art can withstand the ages. People never do.
A high point is "Ballerina", the possibly prostitute-themed song where Morrison's voice sounds richer and fuller; his growled "get on up!" evokes both James Brown and Morrison's own Brown-esque "good God!" barks back in his youth. "Madame George" ends with Morrison's communal invocation to "get on the train"-- well, actually, it ends with some hokey guy shouting Van Morrison's name over and over into a microphone. Still, better than the drippy bonus track version of "Listen to the Lion", originally from St. Dominic's Preview, where the same dude bellows, "Vaaaan Morrison! The one! The only!" as a saxophone hits barge-like brown notes. If it sounds like I'm overstating my complaints, it's only because listening side by side with Astral Weeks can't help but magnify them. You don't need Pet Sounds Live, either.
There's a case to be made that Astral Weeks, the album, never quite captured Astral Weeks, the idea. Morrison has complained about producer Lewis Merenstein's chosen running order. Then again, he has also denigrated his accompanists and described Astral Weeks as a "rock opera". The repetitions in Morrison's songs carry over to his discography: Prior to Astral Weeks, he recorded other studio versions of "Madame George" and "Beside You". A 10-minute "Slim Slow Slider" was supposedly edited down to 3:18; nothing's set in stone. OK, so maybe what Astral Weeks represents to so many of us can't be perfectly recorded, whether on vinyl or in 1s and 0s-- definitely not in words. But I can feel it in my bones when I listen to the original album (turn it up, so you know it's got soul). When I listen to Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl, I just feel lonely, and old.
