Nearly Drowning in the Mystic: Van Morrison Live in Providence

By Rob Turbovsky on Thu, Dec 20, 2007 2:24 pm

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When you’re going to see Van Morrison, there’s always the question of what Van Morrison is going to show up. (But not when – the tickets specify “7 pm sharp!” and it’s true.) Much like his friend Bob Dylan, Morrison spent the last forty-odd years showing us the songwriter’s version of Sherman’s March, restlessly, relentlessly plowing through genres, bands and his own songs while upending nearly everything we thought was stone-set about music along the way.

The crowd at the Providence Performing Arts Center last night was alternately dreading, expecting, hoping for…country Van, blues Van, Celtic soul Van, frustrated Van, jazz standards Van, the Van in purple tights whose breakneck performance of “Caravan” (with triumphant high kicks for punctuation) probably shamed The Band into retirement after The Last Waltz. And, they sort of got all of those – though no “Caravan.” As is also the case with Bob Dylan, you could write five or ten alternate set lists with all the great songs he didn’t play: “Into The Mystic,” “Saint Dominic’s Preview,” “All Saint’s Day,” “Here Comes The Night,” “Cyprus Avenue,” “Brown Eyed Girl” – if you consider that to be one of them. But, unlike Bobby D., whose hit-and-huge-gaping-miss shows these days consist mostly of him firing sporadically and inaudibly at his keyboard while barking lyrics into a microphone, Morrison still pulls off many of the things that inspired a young Bruce Springsteen to - let’s call it – borrow so much from him.

His voice retains most of that impossible fullness; now that he’s in his 60s, he arguably has better control of his range than ever before, swooping from scat improvisation and whispered repetition to that rare, explosive burst of power. And that was just “Moondance.” If he wanted, say, a banjo solo, a violin interlude or a piano break, he’d just emphatically point to the musician he needed, running his group like a merciless high school teacher who could pick on anyone at any time.

“This is called Brown Eyed Girl,” I heard someone who I suspect was not Lester Bangs say to his date as Van entered to the opening notes of “Domino,” his ten-piece band onstage waiting for him. Not every audience member was an idiot, but it didn’t matter – Morrison never performs for the crowd anyway. Notoriously shy, he sticks to a tiny comfort zone in the middle of the stage, surrounded by monitors and musicians, always looking like he’s just realized he had an important errand to run before the show and is now paralyzed with regret. He isn’t Mick Jagger, but then he doesn’t need to be. As always with Van, the best parts are when it looks like he doesn’t know he’s onstage, eyes closed tight, feeling his way through the moment with abbreviated arm flails and sharp, staccato head bobs.

Like Dylan, or Coltrane or any of the greats, Morrison always searches for a new entry point into his songs, a new rhythm to the vocal, something that interests him enough to stay onstage during the exactly 90 minutes for which he usually performs. (Apparently, his famous exclamation “It’s Too Late To Stop Now!” doesn’t apply after 8:45.) He switched off at random, from vocals to sax to keyboard to guitar, which led to one hilarious mishap with a roadie frantically trying to get him a six-string he was happy with. He couldn’t. But, Van was in a generous mood, throwing out some crowd-pleasers like “Bright Side of the Road,” “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You,” a Georgie Fame-inspired version of “Moondance” from the underrated How Long Has This Been Going On and the Ray Charles country version of “I Can’t Stop Loving You.” He also played some stuff that nobody in his right mind would request, like the title cut and a couple other songs from Magic Time. And, it all worked. The intimate, nearly spiritual textures of “Celtic New Year” were a dynamic contrast with the spooky urgency of “St. James Infirmary,” the blues simmer of “Help Me.”

While his band continued to play “And The Healing Has Begun,” he wandered off-stage for what passes for the finale of a Van Morrison show. Of course, he’s not interested in contrivance anymore than he is in playing “Gloria” every night (which he didn’t and doesn’t). A few minutes and one “big hand for the band” later, he reappeared for what seemed to be an unplanned second encore, shortly before deciding he was done for good. He walked off again as the band finished up, the musicians taking turns introducing the now-halfway-to-his-hotel “Mr. Vaaaaaaan Morrison.” Not that anyone needed to be reminded.

For a sample of Van Morrison at his very best: check out the above-mentioned “Caravan” from The Last Waltz and this version of “Cyprus Avenue” (recorded at the Fillmore East in 1970), which inspired the real Lester Bangs to write perhaps the definitive paragraph on the subject of Van Morrison, also below:

“With consummate dynamics that allow him to snap from indescribably eccentric throwaway phrasing to sheer passion in the very next breath he brings the music surging up through crescendo after crescendo, stopping and starting and stopping and starting the song again and again, imposing long maniacal silences like giant question marks between the stops and starts and ruling the room through sheer tension, building to a shout of “It's too late to stop now!,” and just when you think it's all going to surge over the top, he cuts it off stone cold dead, the hollow of a murdered explosion, throws the microphone down and stalks off the stage. It is truly one of the most perverse things I have ever seen a performer do in my life. And, of course, it's sensational: our guts are knotted up, we're crazed and clawing for more, but we damn well know we've seen and felt something.” Lester Bangs, Stranded, 1979.