Van Morrison

George Ivan Morrison was born on 31 August 1945, at 125 Hyndford Street, Bloomfield, Belfast, Northern Ireland, as the only child of George Morrison, a shipyard electrician, and Violet Morrison (née Stitt), who had been a singer and tap dancer in her youth. Morrison’s family were working class Protestants descended from the Ulster Scots population that settled in Belfast.

His father had what was at the time one of the largest record collections in Northern Ireland (acquired during his time in Detroit, Michigan, in the early 1950s) and the young Morrison grew up listening to artists such as Jelly Roll Morton, Ray Charles, Lead Belly, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and Solomon Burke. This exposed him to various musical genres, such as the blues of Muddy Waters; the gospel of Mahalia Jackson; the jazz of Charlie Parker; the folk music of Woody Guthrie; and country music from Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers.

The first record Van ever bought was by blues musician Sonny Terry.

Morrison’s father bought him his first acoustic guitar when he was 11, and he learned to play basic chords from the song book The Carter Family Style, edited by Alan Lomax. In 1957, at the age of twelve, Morrison formed his first band, a skiffle group, “The Sputniks”, named after the satellite, Sputnik 1.

When he heard Jimmy Giuffre playing saxophone on “The Train and The River”, he talked his father into buying him a tenor saxophone, and from age 14 took saxophone and music reading lessons from jazz musician George Cassidy, who Morrison saw as a “big inspiration”, and they became friends, he also grew up with him on Hyndford Street.

Morrison attended Orangefield Boys Secondary School, leaving in July 1960 with no qualifications. After several short apprenticeship positions, he settled into a job as a window cleaner—later alluded to in his songs “Cleaning Windows” and “Saint Dominic’s Preview”.

At age 17, Morrison toured Europe for the first time with the Monarchs, now calling themselves the International Monarchs. This Irish showband, with Morrison playing saxophone, guitar and harmonica, they played clubs and US Army bases in Scotland, England and Germany, often playing five sets a night. While in Germany, the band recorded a single, “Boozoo Hully Gully”/”Twingy Baby”, under the name Georgie and the Monarchs. This was Morrison’s first recording, taking place in November 1963 at Ariola Studios in Cologne.

In April 1964 he responded to an advert for musicians to play at a new R&B club at the Maritime Hotel in College Square North. The new club needed a band for its opening night. Morrison had left the Golden Eagles, so he created a new band out of the Gamblers, an East Belfast group. Morrison played saxophone and harmonica and shared vocals with Billy Harrison. The Gamblers morphed into Them, their name taken from the 1954 black-and-white science fiction giant monster horror movie “Them”.

Dick Rowe of Decca Records became aware of the band’s performances and signed Them to a two-year contract. In that period, they released two albums and ten singles. They had three chart hits, “Baby, Please Don’t Go” (1964), “Here Comes the Night” (1965), and “Mystic Eyes” (1965), but it was the B-side of “Baby, Please Don’t Go”, the garage band classic “Gloria”, that went on to become a rock standard.

Them undertook a two-month tour of America in May and June 1966 that included a residency from 30 May to 18 June at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles. The Doors were the supporting act on the last week. On the final night, the two Morrisons and the two bands jammed together on “Gloria”.

Bert Berns, Them’s producer and composer of their 1965 hit “Here Comes the Night”, persuaded Morrison to return to New York to record solo for his new label, Bang Records. Morrison flew over and signed a contract he had not fully studied. During a two-day recording session he recorded eight songs. These songs were released as the album Blowin’ Your Mind! without Morrison’s consultation.

“Brown Eyed Girl”, one of the songs from Blowin’ Your Mind!, was released as a single in mid-June 1967, reaching number ten in the US charts.

Morrison’s first album for Warner Bros Records was Astral Weeks released in 1968 a mystical song cycle, often considered to be his best work.

His third solo album, Moondance, which was released in 1970, became his first million-selling album and reached number twenty-nine on the Billboard charts.

Released in 1972, Saint Dominic’s Preview revealed Morrison’s break from the more accessible style of his previous three albums and moving back towards the more daring, adventurous, and meditative aspects of Astral Weeks. Two songs, “Jackie Wilson Said (I’m in Heaven When You Smile)” and “Redwood Tree”, reached the Hot 100 singles chart.

Morrison met Irish socialite Michelle Rocca in the summer of 1992, and they often featured in the Dublin gossip columns, an unusual event for the reclusive Morrison. Rocca also appeared on one of his album covers, Days Like This. The couple divorced in March 2018.

In 1993, Van failed to turn up at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction dinner, making him the first living inductee not to attend.

Morrison has collaborated extensively with a variety of artists throughout his career. He has worked with many legends in soul and blues, including John Lee Hooker, Ray Charles, George Benson, Eric Clapton, Bobby Womack, and BB King, along with The Chieftains, Gregory Porter, Michael Bublé, Joss Stone, Natalie Cole and Mark Knopfler.

Morrison has received several major music awards in his career, including two Grammy Awards, with five additional nominations (1982–2004); inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (January 1993), the Songwriters Hall of Fame (June 2003), and the Irish Music Hall of Fame (September 1999); and a Brit Award (February 1994). In addition, he has received civil awards: an OBE (June 1996) and an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1996). He has honorary doctorates from the University of Ulster (1992) and from Queen’s University Belfast (July 2001).