Astral Weeks
Van Morrison; "Sweet Thing"; from the collection of JK
Y was 22, from Canada, studying to be an accountant. We met on the internet trading Mars Volta live recordings. I had some rarities he was curious about, and he was just starting his collection. I wrote to him with the kind of confidence you have when you’re young and sure of your taste, authoritatively recommending the best performances to check out. I sent him a few songs, and we moved on to other things.
He told me what it was like to grow up Pakistani in the Great White North (white in more senses than one), about not fitting in, about dreaming of being an artist while his parents insisted he do something practical. He sublimated his desire to paint and play guitar into an encyclopedic knowledge of bootlegs, trading tapes and files on peer-to-peer platforms.
Van Morrison, like Y, left home chasing a dream of something bigger—fleeing Belfast instead of Karachi. One day, Y sent me a recording of Astral Weeks performed live at the Hollywood Bowl and told me to just listen. So I did.
Take the opening question from the opening song on Van’s first record—the “hey, where did we go” from Brown Eyed Girl that made his career—and explode it into a song cycle that’s equal parts folk song forms and free jazz, with lyrics calling forth the mystical manifestation of a life across time, across space—the evanescent imaginary of childhood memories; or youthful recklessness wandering about the open city unsupervised; or the sad-tinged reminiscence of the way that young lovers come together, knowing that you don’t forget your first, but you don’t hold to them either—and punctuate it with Van’s drunken barbaric yawp, like Tom’s but a bit more sweet and less gravel, then do it just three times to tape (because Van didn’t have lead sheets and didn’t like the overdubs, wanted the band to get the core idea with him playing the song and then get out of the way and let the music commence)—then you’ll have this album.
When I would visit Boston years later, I would find myself walking through the streets, walking up the tenement stairs to my friend’s flat with my love, with the snow coming down, where the street light was a sweet light; or was it through gardens misty-wet with rain by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, coming off of a fantastically youthful bender, thinking I will never, never, never grow so old again.
This record came from the magic year—1968—when everything seemed possible: The White Album, White Light/White Heat, Electric Ladyland, Saucerful of Secrets, Switched-On Bach, Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival. It’s been just over half a century since then. I’ve spent a few moments in the world of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, and—thankfully, like the best jazz records—they were outside of time altogether.
Verdict: Keep
What music keeps you young? Or, alternatively, what music prevents you from growing old?