We shall walk and talk in gardens all misty wet, misty wet with rain. That openness, the sense of exploration, is evident on the Hollywood Bowl recordings as well, even though Morrison added more musicians and busier arrangements.īLOCK: (Singing) (Unintelligible). Over just a few days, they created music of uncommon openness that occupies a middle ground between rock and jazz. Broke and desperate to escape an onerous contract, he wound up in a New York recording studio with a small group of jazz musicians. He'd had a hit the year before, 'Brown Eyed Girl,' but made little money off it. MOON: Van Morrison recorded 'Astral Weeks' at a low point in his life. You turn around, turn around, and I'm beside you. And you're high on your high-flying cloud, wrapped up in your magic shroud as ecstasy surrounds you. Their job was to simply follow Morrison as he ambled through verse after expansive verse.īLOCK: (Singing) Past the brazen footsteps of the silence easy. The musicians involved in the original sessions recalled that they got very little direction. MOON: Here we have Van Morrison, the grand master of the off-the-cuff ad-lib, re-imagining songs that weren't terribly scripted in the first place. Incredibly, that's not what happened when Van Morrison returned to 'Astral Weeks.' TOM MOON: When a rock icon dusts off a bit of his ancient history, a reasonable first reaction is to brace oneself because chances are, beloved memories are about to be messed with and possibly trampled.

U: Ladies and gentlemen, we present to you, 'Astral Weeks.' A CD of those performances is out today, and critic Tom Moon has our review. Last November, for the first time in his career, Van Morrison revisited the whole album in two concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. A little more than 40 years ago, Van Morrison released his second album, 'Astral Weeks.' It never broke the Billboard charts, but music critics consider it one of the best pop albums ever made.

Astral weeks van morrison full album