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Authors: Greil Marcus
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“I’ll Never Get Out of These Blues Alive” for Hooker’s album of the same name (Crescendo, 1972), but the affinity was always personal, not musical. The laconic, reflective ethos Hooker brought to his music in his later years never really meshed with Morrison’s instincts for the blues; no matter how he might have tried to keep it caged, urgency would almost always win out.
Van Morrison, Astral Weeks (Warner Bros.–Seven Arts, 1968).
— Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl (Listen to the Lion, 2009).
ALMOST INDEPENDENCE DAY. 1972. LISTEN TO THE LION. 1972. CALEDONIA SOUL MUSIC. 1970
In 1972 , Van Morrison closed each side of what might be his richest album, St. Dominic’s Preview , with a song over ten minutes long.
One was “Almost Independence Day.” Notes from Morrison’s acoustic guitar twisted into a harsh minor key, then seemed to raise a flag as a skiff pushed off; a synthesizer made the sound of a tugboat pushing through fog, and kept it constant. As it went on, it seemed as if the song itself more than the singer was gazing out over San Francisco Bay to watch the fireworks; as that happened, the Fourth of July receded, and what was left was an unsettled, unclaimed, unfounded land where the event that settled it, named it, found it, had yet to take place.
The other long song was if anything stronger. “Listen to the Lion” was made as a field for the yarragh, an expanse over which, as a thing in itself, it could go wherever it might want to go, disappearing and reappearing at any time—but more than that “Listen to the Lion” was a song about the yarragh.
Writing about Morrison in 1978, Jonathan Cott quoted Yeats on the ancient Celts, living “in a world where anything might flow and change, and become any other thing ... The hare that ran by among the dew might have sat up on his haunches when the first man was made, and the poor bunch of rushes under their feet might have been a goddess laughing among the stars; and with but a little magic, a little waving of the hands, a little murmuring of the lips, they too could become a hare or a bunch of rushes, and know immortal love and immortal hatred.” With that little murmuring of the lips becoming a torrent of wind off a lake, after what appears to be a conventional song, though a particularly pious one (“I shall search my very soul ... for the lion”), for one minute after another Morrison cries, moans, pleads, shouts, hollers, whispers, until finally he breaks with language and speaks in tongues, growling and rumbling. The feeling is that whoever it is that is singing has not simply abandoned language, but has returned himself to a time before language, and is now groping toward it. The organs of speech have not yet been fixed in the mouth and the throat, because there is no speech. Speech might come from the chest, the stomach, the bowels—and there, in a transporting minute, is where the singer seems to find it, guttural sounds
now swirling and spinning around the singer in bodies of their own. “They too could become a hare”—now Morrison has loosed the lion inside himself.
As he sings, a chorus behind him urges him on, resolutely, as if they understand the mission that the singer, caught in his trance, only senses. “Listen to the lion,” they chant, drawing out the last word—but what is strange is that in the chorus, among three male voices, you hear Morrison himself, singing at himself.
As this happens they truly are two different, separate persons. It’s more than, say, the conscious mind calling out to the subconscious; as the listener, you hear, you recognize, in a way that is tactile before it is anything else, two different bodies. “Listen to the lion,” commands the chorus, but the singer already is the lion. Awwrgh , arrgh , ooo , ah , ooo , mmm , ungh , ooo , ungh , arrgh , ah , ah , off his feet in the dance—and then, not in exhaustion but with the clarity of a sudden change in the light, the singer
Van Morrison, Astral Weeks (Warner Bros.–Seven Arts, 1968).
— Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl (Listen to the Lion, 2009).
ALMOST INDEPENDENCE DAY. 1972. LISTEN TO THE LION. 1972. CALEDONIA SOUL MUSIC. 1970
In 1972 , Van Morrison closed each side of what might be his richest album, St. Dominic’s Preview , with a song over ten minutes long.
One was “Almost Independence Day.” Notes from Morrison’s acoustic guitar twisted into a harsh minor key, then seemed to raise a flag as a skiff pushed off; a synthesizer made the sound of a tugboat pushing through fog, and kept it constant. As it went on, it seemed as if the song itself more than the singer was gazing out over San Francisco Bay to watch the fireworks; as that happened, the Fourth of July receded, and what was left was an unsettled, unclaimed, unfounded land where the event that settled it, named it, found it, had yet to take place.
The other long song was if anything stronger. “Listen to the Lion” was made as a field for the yarragh, an expanse over which, as a thing in itself, it could go wherever it might want to go, disappearing and reappearing at any time—but more than that “Listen to the Lion” was a song about the yarragh.
Writing about Morrison in 1978, Jonathan Cott quoted Yeats on the ancient Celts, living “in a world where anything might flow and change, and become any other thing ... The hare that ran by among the dew might have sat up on his haunches when the first man was made, and the poor bunch of rushes under their feet might have been a goddess laughing among the stars; and with but a little magic, a little waving of the hands, a little murmuring of the lips, they too could become a hare or a bunch of rushes, and know immortal love and immortal hatred.” With that little murmuring of the lips becoming a torrent of wind off a lake, after what appears to be a conventional song, though a particularly pious one (“I shall search my very soul ... for the lion”), for one minute after another Morrison cries, moans, pleads, shouts, hollers, whispers, until finally he breaks with language and speaks in tongues, growling and rumbling. The feeling is that whoever it is that is singing has not simply abandoned language, but has returned himself to a time before language, and is now groping toward it. The organs of speech have not yet been fixed in the mouth and the throat, because there is no speech. Speech might come from the chest, the stomach, the bowels—and there, in a transporting minute, is where the singer seems to find it, guttural sounds
now swirling and spinning around the singer in bodies of their own. “They too could become a hare”—now Morrison has loosed the lion inside himself.
As he sings, a chorus behind him urges him on, resolutely, as if they understand the mission that the singer, caught in his trance, only senses. “Listen to the lion,” they chant, drawing out the last word—but what is strange is that in the chorus, among three male voices, you hear Morrison himself, singing at himself.
As this happens they truly are two different, separate persons. It’s more than, say, the conscious mind calling out to the subconscious; as the listener, you hear, you recognize, in a way that is tactile before it is anything else, two different bodies. “Listen to the lion,” commands the chorus, but the singer already is the lion. Awwrgh , arrgh , ooo , ah , ooo , mmm , ungh , ooo , ungh , arrgh , ah , ah , off his feet in the dance—and then, not in exhaustion but with the clarity of a sudden change in the light, the singer
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