A guy told me my gigs were like communion
Music legend Van Morrison talks to MARION McMULLEN about how the music industry has changed
Frank Sinatra was very keen on techniques and finding ways to strengthen the voice. You are now 71, do you do anything to protect your vocals?
I DO it live. You see I’m always stretching it out live, I’m always reaching for it live and I’m always, well, I think my voice is getting better in a lot of ways, you know, the more I sing. It sounds better.
Does music get you through tough times?
IT’S more like that live because there’s more communication whereas when you’re in a studio, and the way things are done now in recording, you don’t really have that kind of vibe anymore. A guy that I know said to me that he used to come to my gigs and he said it was a communion. That’s what it is ... a communion.
Do you feel at home performing in a live arena?
WELL, it’s not where I’m most comfortable, it’s where it’s real. I mean it’s never comfortable because it’s always a job and every gig is different and you have to know which audience you’re dealing with and different kinds of gigs, festivals and theatres. But it’s real, you know, playing live is real. Whereas, the whole process of making a record, getting a deal, putting it out, for somebody who has been in it as long as me, it’s not interesting. It never was that interesting, but it’s even kind of less now.
Does it sadden you, the changes that you’ve seen?
ON a kind of musical level, yeah. I think it’s much more oriented to pop music. I don’t think I could have done what I did when I started out at the R’n’B Club. I don’t think that could be done nowadays. There was a whole different time period with different values, different rules. There wasn’t as much going on, you didn’t have the future shock of a thousand albums a month or whatever it is now. Do you know what I mean? And there was space to do things and experiment. That’s obviously happening a different way now.
People don’t have time any more do they?
THAT’S right. I remember John Lee Hooker sang that in the 70s – that in 10 years’ time, nobody’s got time for anyone else – and now it’s like really, really speeded up. Like the whole recording thing is totally changed, because it’s more long-winded now recording an album, putting an album together. It’s much more complicated now.
The kind of new kids on the block, they don’t relate to how everything was done live and all that. I mean, they’re kind of scared of that because you didn’t have all these things like ‘Oh, it’s ok, we’ll overdub that’. Now if somebody is mixing and there is a mistake or someone plays a wrong chord or wrong note, it’s like ‘Yeah, we can do that again’. So the whole thing to me is very boring.
In the early days it was much more exciting. It was all fresh. It was happening now. Everything was happening in present time including the recording.
Is that one of the biggest changes?
THERE was no such thing as mixing because it all went on one tape so there was no mixing involved. Now, the mixing takes longer than the whole recording process. The mixing is about three times as long as recording it. At one point James Brown was putting out about six albums a year. That couldn’t be done now.
What about your new album Keep Me Singing?
SOME of the songs are fairly recent and some of them are older. I guess the most recent was Memory Lane, which I wrote on the way to the studio. It’s basically just a story that was running through my head that day. So I just pulled the car over and wrote it down and then I put the melody to it when I got to the studio.
Does the song have special meaning for you?
AS to what it’s about, I myself am wondering. I think it’s about asking some strangers ‘Is this the place that was once called Memory Lane?’ For instance, you go and look at a place that you remember from way back and all of a sudden it’s either not there or it’s been replaced, so I think that’s what it’s about. To me, it’s like a black and white movie kind of thing. It’s getting dark on Memory Lane.
What about the title track?
THAT’S about people who