Customer Reviews

Van Morrison

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

On the face of it, Van Morrison appears to present a paradox: he's written and performed some of the most sublime and genuinely great music of the past 40 years. If you've never seen a Van Morrison concert when the man himself is on form - well, you've really missed something very special. On the other hand (and I can only quote others on this since I've obviously never met or spoken to the man) - he's supposedly an extremely difficult and downright unfriendly individual.

As has been the case with Johnny Rogan's other biographies, an incredible amount of research has gone into this book. The problem is that the research is largely aimed at providing the reader with great swathes of evidence of VM's fractious nature as well as using the opportunity to lay out sections of his past as if they should viewed as skeletons from his closet (e.g. Scientology).

So, are all the sordid facts interesting? Well, no, not really. After a while you just accept that the Author had a agenda of his own and though the pearls of poison continue to appear nothing really surprises. The book is useful as it does provide a reasonable timeline of Van Morrison's career (hence an additional star) but even then it moves far too quickly through key phases of his career.

The opportunity was missed. The book should have answered the question "how can someone so obtuse and difficult create something so magical?"

Sadly, it's muck-raking. No more, no less. Well written, though.

This is by no means a profound biography, and its focus is clearly the man, not the music. I found it very entertaining, though, taken with a grain of salt, and can't imagine that the detail about the pop music business and Ireland in the 60s and 70s wouldn't be of interest to a fan. The book goes into great detail about Van's boorish, antisocial behaviour and his hilarious tendency to think he's the next W.B. Yeats. If you
see Van as a hero, this is going to hurt your feelings. If you can take this is stride I don't see why it should spoil your admiration for his music. Lots of interesting detail about a flawed, but fascinating musician.

This is an amazingly ambitious book, arguably more so than any other of Rogan's epic biogs. It not only tackles Morrison's career in fine detail, with lots of insights, but goes much further by placing his life and work in a cultural context. Much of the book deals with Belfast, which is seen as the font of his inspiration, and Rogan explains its pervasive influence on his music, lyrics, religious quest and character. It's never dry though. Many of the memories and revealing interview comments from his contemporaries are priceless and morbidly funny! The author takes us through Van's odyssey from Belfast, through New York, California, London and Dublin - and what a ride it is, full of incident with some incredible tales and characters. Rogan tracks down even the most evasive interviewees, although took years to do it. I like the way the portraits of even minor characters are finely drawn so that they come to life on the page. There's some insightful and provocative commentaries of the artist's best work (especially Astral Weeks, Veedon Fleece, Common One and Magic Time) and the penultimate chapter 'Poetic Champions Decompose' has the best overview I've ever read on Morrison as a songwriter. Even the Endnotes (over 100 pages long in small print) are a tour de force, full of esoteric info about politics and the minutiae of Morrison's early life - well worth a read. Pity the book came out just before the recent Astral Weeks concerts as I'd have loved to read Rogan's comments on that surprise event.

A lot of research but the ultimate goal seems to be character assassination, and a totally spurious association with Ian Paisley ( I suppose that helps book sales to the prurient public). Van has been exemplary in avoiding getting embroiled in the Troubles and this seems to be a belated effort to drag him into the mire.

The author's judgement of Van's output seems equally flawed - Warm Love is dismissed whereas some of the more turgid later stuff is praised. There is also far too much repetition.

Who is Johnny Rogan?

Ok, this is definitely a bias opinion from a Van fan. I love Van's music and tried to find a good biography. Since this was a recently new book that came out and it had 400+ pages of details I just assumed that I would be equally interested as any fan would. Rogan's vocabulary is quite nicely written for anyone who can appreciate literature however I found it to be a difficult read. And I do read a good amount of books. Unfortunately the book has way more detail about what was going on at the time than Van himself. It seems like Rogan likes to set the scene but ends up going on tangents that feel like you wasted your time and hard earned money. Unfortunately I didn't get past the first few chapters as the details got too unbearably dull for me.

Seriously. If you are a fan of Van Morrison's music, if it transports you and takes you away, I recommend that you skip this book. Not that the book is lacking in any way. It is a very thorough exploration of the artist and even his art. The author has gone to the trouble of abundant research about all areas of Van's career and, contrary to what others here have said, I don't think he has an agenda or any hatred for Morrison. I believe that this is an actual portrayal of the man.

And that is the problem. Van the man (pun intended) is seriously lacking in the attributes that most of us cultivate to fit in with other humans. The book documents decades of antisocial and often abusive behaviour. It sometimes gets tedious to read about episode after episode of boorishness and selfishness.

But the biggest reason why I regret reading the book is that it has made me a bit skeptical of Morrison's work, specifically his lyrics. One area that the author has excelled in is documenting Van's spiritual quest and hunger for spiritual knowledge. Unfortunately it only shows how Van's philosophy (and lyrics) are simply a cobbled together mishmosh of various religions and spiritual viewpoints. What seemed profound to me before seems somewhat foolish now that I know Van is basically full of it. Of course I expect this feeling to lessen somewhat over time; I have been listening to Van's music for decades and he has been one of my favorite artists. But that doesn't change the fact that I have peaked behind the curtain and now wish that I didn't.

One wonders why Rogan bothered to write this book. He does not disguise his personal animosity against Van, and he has little appreciation of Van's music. Rogan spends an inordinate amount of time delineating alleged bad behaviour and excessive drinking by Van. Perhaps Rogan, like Clinton Heylin, another biographer of Van, decided to do a hatchet job because Van did not grant interviews. There is much padding in this book, such as the ongoing political situation in Northern Ireland, meanderings on the music scene, gossip, and a court case involving Michelle Rocca when Van's girlfriend. This book is unnecessary. Van's life is reasonably well known, and not particularly interesting. It is the music which matters. As Van has always claimed, his life is the music. After reading Rogan's bile brimmed rant, it was a relief to re-read Celtic Crossroads: the Art of Van Morrison by Brian Hinton and listen to my favorite Van albums. Hinton understands the transcendental qualities in Van's music. Like few others Van can take you to the timeless zone. Some of his music can give you `heaven in a wild flower...Eternity in an hour.'

I'm in the US, and have not kept up with the various Van scandals that seem to have made the news in the last 15 years. Johnny Rogan certainly has, and seems to like to repeat media gossip. He also has much to say about Northern Ireland during the period when Van was far away and ignoring the politics as far as I can tell. Rogan really wants to connect Van and Ian Paisly, mostly because they lived in more or less the same area in the 60s. I don't really see the point in this, and can't follow Rogan's reasoning.
Rogan has made effort to reveal more of the 60s and 70s music business scene that is typically seen in music bios, and I appreciate that. However, he does not discuss the music, its influences and techniques as I would like, and Rogan and I seem to have very different musical tastes. I bought this book because I read a lot of Van biographies, but I recommend this only for the fanatic, or someone willing to spend money on a book you will throw down in annoyance many times.

The book is very well researched as the author seems to have interviewed everyone who ever even nodded at Van Morrison as they walked down a Belfast street. What's nice is that all those he interviewed have something in common--they all hate Van! Everybody in the book hates Van in fact. I'm pretty sure even Van hates Van. And there is a very good reason for all this hatred--Van the Man is a despicable human being. I read the book, and it's not a short one, and the man hasn't got a redeeming quality. He hates everybody and everything, but he especially hates the thing that has made him millions and millions of dollars, and that is of course, the record business.

I was confused by the title when I ordered the book and I have to say it gets a little annoying because the author keeps trying to bring the whole protestant connection in. It appears 'No Surrender', is a protestant rally cry and the author keeps banging his head against a wall painting Van as an angry protestant when it's quite clear that Morrison has absolutely no allegiance to religion, or anything else that isn't Van Morrison.

Normally this would be a two star affair, but I'll chuck the author an extra star just for the pain-staking research and for having to listen to so many people trash the subject of his book.

Van, have I told you lately that I hate you, and so does everybody else.