Van. The man.
After Them's disbanded, Morrison signed with Warner Records and released "Astral Weeks", one of the best albums in the history of pop music. It was in 1967. In these sixty-five years until today, the singer and multi-instrumentalist from Belfast has released forty-five albums, and perhaps with some exceptions, which must also be admitted debatable, all of them of a verifiable creative level. With only a short period of absence - a period of transition - during all these decades he has been on stage, touring all corners of the world, increasing song by song his status as a myth. Probably only at the level of songsters like Bob Dylan, Morrison has achieved an unattainable status as a legend of music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As a composer, few artists have in their songbook so many masterpieces that are indispensable for the collective memory of so many diverse people, successive and heterogeneous generations. His indisputable and inviolable vocal strength has been accompanied by his ability as an instrumentalist on the guitar, harmonica, piano and his excellence as a saxophonist, have been sufficient arguments to have incorporated into his repertoire the genres that have determined his DNA as a musician, from traditional Irish music, celtic music, country, rockabilly, rock, gospel, R&B, jazz, blues, soul, all configuring his own and indivisible universe. Van Morrison has been described as a sullen person with little empathy for the rest of humanity. Perhaps these adjectives can be defended regarding the public version of the singer, but I think that is not the case with the musician. His albums contain the most diverse and heterogeneous moods, the themes of his songs have resorted to the most eclectic relationships of man with the world around him, but they have always been performed from the deepest dedication and desire for complicity and interaction with everyone who has wanted to listen to them. In this latest recording, "Accentuate The Positive", Morrison demonstrates his desire to get along with his audience in a collection of covers - selected with great skill - where R&B and rock'n'roll star in the great mood and complicity of this man, who at seventy-eight continues to appear happy and complacent with his work as an unmatched musician. I wish long live Van the man.