Customer Reviews

Van Morrison : Inarticulate Speech of the Heart

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I do not advise purchasing this book. The author seems focused on Morrison's anti-journalism to the extent that he seems to lose sight of his subject. Since Morrison is difficult (if not impossible) to interview, the author has been left with little more than the music to review. His reviews are passable but his insistence on noting numerous incidents where Morrison is arrogant and/or unappreciative of others turns the book into one long, cynical complaint regarding Van's character. The ending alone, wherein the author quotes Morrison's obscene rant to an audience member who requests a song from him, is depressing enough for me to recommend anyone to pass on this one. Sometimes ignorance IS bliss. Go buy Saint Dominic's Preview and listen for the real story!

After reading John Collis' VAN MORRISON: INARTICULATE SPEECH OF THE HEART, I'm not sure of the author's intention. In the introduction, Collis claims that he "offers only respect, and simply wants to get amateur psychoanalysis out of the way at the outset." During the course of the next 200 or so pages, however, Collis revels in shameless psycho-babble of the lowest sort while repeatedly criticizing Morrison's notoriously reticent personality.

Another criticism is that Collis seemed to focus a disproportionate amount of his ten chapter biography on Van's years with Them and Van's early solo career. The first seven chapters roughly cover Van's childhood in Belfast up to the release of the WAVELENGTH album in 1978. It is thus left to the remaining three chapters to cover a twenty some odd year era which many fans consider to be Morrison's most consistently rewarding years.

Considering that Van has, on average, released an album every year, Collis' focus on this early era comes at the expense of adequately covering the middle and later periods of Van's career. Indeed, the overall feel of Collis' book is that it was rushed into to print to capitalize on the fact that no Van biographies were available when it was published in 1996.

Fortunately, with the publication of Brian Hinton's CELTIC CROSSROADS, this is no longer the case. Collis does offer some insightful comments on Van's albums, but I would recommend Patrick Humphries' THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO THE MUSIC OF VAN MORRISON to fulfill this task. Overall assessment: inconsistent and incomplete. Not recommended.

This bio is best on the early years, including Them, and is also insightful on the Bang period, giving these interesting early works a worthy analysis. Then, the book begins a march through Van's big catalogue and there are fewer insights. Of course, Morrison wasn't interviewed, so we get quotes from magazine articles over the years. Like most authors, this one professes not to understand why Morrison is so 'difficult.' But obviously, the man probably suffers from a mild form of bipolar disorder, which affects his moods. No matter. The music is still the most important thing about Morrison, not his nasty personality.

I didn't even buy this book, but I thought it was so bad that I wanted to warn others. A complete waste of time. Somehow I feel like I know LESS about the man than I did before. The only good parts are the interview quotes from magazine articles that the author had nothing to do with. His lengthy reviews, which make up most of the book, are awful. I don't know how you can make such a boring book out of such a complicated and talented guy.

This is not really an in-depth look at Morrison's career or life. The book itself is about 198 pages - and you don't even get to Astral Weeks until page 95. This is more the Cliffs Notes version of Morrison's career and it ends at roughly 1997's The Healing Game album. Some of the other reviewers said they thought the book was critical of Van and his personality, but this book is nothing compared to Can You Feel the Silence, which has interview after interview detailing Van's rudeness and cruelty to those he came in contact with. Overall, if you're interested in Van's music, this is a good quick read that pretty much only covers the albums and tours he did and doesn't really delve deep into the man's psyche. It also mentions pretty much every album track he ever recorded, which is also something that more biographers should do. Hey, I bought my copy for about 3 bucks and it was worth the read. Give it a try.