Van Morrison Quotes

Common one, my illuminated one, oh my high in the art of suffering. Take a walk with me.

Somebody's going to hear a song that will key in a nerve or something in their experience that represents their own vision. And the next person is going to see it completely different. So even what it means to me is probably irrelevant. It's totally irrelevant. What matters is what it means to each person listening to it.

Let go into the mystery. Let yourself go. And when you open up your heart, you get everything you need. Baby there's a way and a mystic road. You've got to have some faith to carry on, you've got to open up your heart to the Son.

[Rock 'n' roll] is still a primitive form and there's no way you can get away from that. It's one of the primitive art forms and that's why it's good and that's why it's lasted...you know, it hasn't become sophisticated and it's not in the opera house.

You can put out an album and it could be totally out of the window as far as what you want to do performance-wise.

The fact I wasn't getting off made me realize that I really had to take a hard look at it and at the type of music that I played, which ranges from ballads to country type stuff to rock and rhythm 'n' blues. It takes in a wider spectrum.

We're [with Robbie Robertson ] jazz musicians. The context may be rock 'n' roll but it's still jazz. It's jazz and that means improvization...you play a tune the way it feels and you play it differently every time. It can never be the same.

Love of the simple is all that I need, I've no time for schism or lovers of greed.

Did you ever hear about the rock and roll singer who got 3 or 4 Cadillacs, saying power to the people, dance to the music, wants you to pat him on the back.

I just can't stand jazz/rock. I think it's the worst thing that's come down the river yet.

Heavy Connection is just basically about psychic stuff...it's kind of about connections that you're not normally making. It's like a fate number where you're making psychic connections that you're not really aware of but they're there.

Smell the sea and feel the sky.

A fantabulous night to make romance.

I didn't know what some of the stuff on Astral Weeks was about until years later.

Every performance is different. That's the beauty of it.

That's the jazz that I like - the stuff that has a soothing effect.

Enlightenment, don't know what it is. It's up to you, the way you think.

The media is going to stick a label on records. And the public is going to pick it up from that. And that's what I was getting sick of-the whole analyzation thing.

As a developing musician, skiffle became a platform for me to start playing music.

When I started studying tenor saxophone as a kid in Belfast, I did so with a guy named George Cassidy, who was also a big inspiration.

I felt kind of bored at the prospect of writing some more of my own songs because I really wasn't saying what I wanted to say.

There was a conflict - the actual putting together of the reality of the situation didn't seem to gel. I'd been doing kind of a slow ballad type of thing on records, but when it came to performing, I felt I was limiting myself.

I've got love in my life, as well as trouble and strife.

I don't like to wonder about it-I just like to do it. That's what I mean about the image stuff and all that. There's far too much emphasis being placed on that kind of stuff... the whole emphasis on what does it mean? Everybody has their own particular vision.

In the media, a reviewer has his personal vision but it's passed along to a million readers or whatever. He might think that this particular song sounds like Jo Blow. Or like a Bo Diddley record that he heard six years ago. But the artist who made the record may never have even heard the Bo Diddley song. We all respond differently.

Then it evolved into more of a ballad style singer/songwriter thing. And there was a conflict in trying to merge the two styles with the same band behind me. 'Cause the musicians that I would need to do ballad-oriented tunes would require musicians who were more into jazz.

My ambition when I started out was to play two or three gigs a week. And that's what I'm doing.

Rock is gut level and it just gets to people. I think there's far too much emphasis on intellectualization, especially in rock 'n' roll which is a primitive form.

These days politics, religion, media seem to get all mixed up. Television became the new religion a long time back and the media has taken over.

Skiffle was a name that was attached to what was, in essence, American folk music with a beat.

Some thoughts went through my head about recording some stuff that had influenced me earlier in my career like blues and early rock. But it didn't seem to really make sense at that point - it might have been taken the wrong way. A lot of people already had been into that trip.

In the gentle evening freeze, by the whispering shady trees I will find sanctuary in the Lord.

If you never hear from me that just means I would rather not.

I don't have any regrets about the album [Veedon Fleece]. But it's the same old story - an album is basically 35 or 40 minutes of what you do. It's 'part' of what you do.

I am about the arrangements and the layers of depth in the music.

And I shall watch the ferry boats, and they'll get high, on a bluer ocean against tomorrow's sky. and i will never grow so old again, and i will walk and talk, in gardens all wet with rain.

[Being alcoholic] you're either too high or you're too low. I mean, I was always looking for the bell to ring. I was always waiting for that bell.

Definitely Muddy Waters has been a prime influence for anybody who's ever done anything rock 'n' roll.

I don't feel comfortable doing interviews. My profession is music, and writing songs. That's what I do. I like to do it, but I hate to talk about it.

I'll tell you what does impress me: the fact that a lot of the cats who were our idols are still out there doing it. That impresses me very much.

You've got to separate the singer and the songs.

I just wanted to stop and try to get some perspective. [ A Period of Transition] it was just a matter of wanting to review the whole thing...to try and get some relationship to what I was doing.

I was just getting tired of the image bullshit...that man of mystery trip and what have you. What's that all about?

What excited me when I first came into it was the performing aspect and doing blues-oriented material, rock/blues oriented stuff, basic stuff, basic what they call rock 'n' roll.

I think intellectualization is what's killing most people.

I went back to Belfast and started a club, the Maritime. No one had thought about doing a blues club, so I was the first.

Jazz comes from a tradition where it swings. Swing was the main ingredient of jazz. And once it loses the swing...well, that's it.

See the man on the TV with a phony smile. Bring you up, bring you down, he can turn your head around.