VAN MORRISON
Many singers would have been content to rest on those laurels. Some, like Burdon, did. But Morrison soon proved he was a star of a wholly different order. Decisively ending his R & B apprenticeship with a pair of astonishingly mature recordings–the hypnotic pop-jazz of Astral Weeks and the perky bed-sheet soul of Moondance–he went on to become one of the most influential figures of the pop era, as important in his own way as Dylan or Miles Davis. Staking out two types of ground–eight-minute spiritual odysseys and three-minute hit singles–Morrison never betrayed the jazz and R & B tradition that undergirded his earliest successes. Throughout the 70s he worked this territory to brilliant effect; albums like St. Dominic’s Preview and Into the Music consolidated the gains of his early solo work, and even his lesser efforts (the gnomic Hard Nose the Highway or the diffuse A Period of Transition) were worthy projects, failures only by his high standards. After a brief slump in the early 80s–dalliances with lit-rock and fusion resulted in music of stupefying dullness–Morrison renewed his lease with his muse. And while his annual albums now contain a certain percentage of filler, he’s still capable of focusing his talent for marvelous soul excursions (“Orangefield,” “Professional Jealousy”) and even the occasional pop hit (“Real Real Gone,” the 1991 soul burst that proved he wasn’t).
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For the encore, of course, the band locks into “Gloria,” and John Lee Hooker even punches in for a grumble or two. But the peak of the show comes almost an hour earlier, when Morrison repaves Doc Pomus’s “Lonely Avenue” with nearly a dozen other classics, from “Be-Bop-a-Lula” to “Family Affair.” And Morrison’s grand tour through James Brown’s epochal “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World”–the backup vocalists walk frozen ropes, the band keeps the action taut for what seems like hours–proves once and for all that it’s Van’s Van’s Van’s world.
