Dylan super-fan, RightWingBob, hears that Van Morrison is getting grumpy about the Internet:
Welcome to Van Morrison’s tortured inner world. Methinks he must have been musing out loud in some poetic way about some mysterious fact that he figured was unknowable, when some smart aleck said, “Hey, I just Googled it, and the answer is blah blah blah.”
...Anyhow, grumpy or not, Van’s a genius, and one can only look forward to the album that his disillusionment with the internet inspires. Who knows: maybe it will drive him to muse about the "days before rock n roll," when he knelt beside the old "wireless knobs" and the music came mysteriously from Luxembourg and other unseen places across the ether.
I once tried to interview VM after being driven down to his West Country retreat. It was the most unnerving experience of my career. You see, getting a complete sentence out of him was almost impossible. He wasn't unpleasant, just totally introverted.
On a completely different subject, RWB has some interesting thoughts on that latest Bush-Katrina story. You don't have to be a Republican hack to think there's something odd about the media overkill.
Ha! I was going to ask if your interview came off sufficiently to go to print, but then I remembered "Google" and found a copy of it hosted on a Van fan site: ( http://www.harbour.sfu.ca/~hayward/van/reviews/1996downbeat.html ) Great stuff though obviously thin on Van verbiage for the reason you explained.
I remember, years ago, that someone (Q magazine?) enlisted Spike Milligan to interview Van. Perhaps it was the only way at the time to get Van to agree, or they just thought it would get him to be uninhibited - Van being a big Milligan and Goon Show fan. As I recall, aside from Van being noted as laughing a lot at the late Spike's jokes, anything resembling a real question from Milligan still produced nothing far beyond taciturnity.
I also remembered that there was a remarkably expansive interview with Van I read last year, and I found it again, here at his official site: http://scripts.digicc.com/van/news_item.php?id=1249109359
Don't know if it means Van is more relaxed in general, or they just hit the right note somehow for this one, but I imagine the latter.
Posted by: RWB | Saturday, March 04, 2006 at 10:40 PM
check out some blues tunes
Posted by: inner city blues band | Sunday, March 05, 2006 at 05:49 AM
"driven down to his West Country retreat"
A few miles out of Bath wasn’t it? 1996? He owned a pub in town at the time as well. Just opposite the DSS I think.
Still, taciturn is one word for it. Decades ago he used to come into the Old Green Tree occasionally. Absolutely fine until anyone spoke to him (whether or not they knew who he was) when he would storm out. Odd chap really.
Posted by: Tim Worstall | Sunday, March 05, 2006 at 11:43 AM