Chords for The Mystery behind the Creation of Van Morrison's Astral Weeks Album

[D] _ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [C] _ _ _ _ [D] _ _ _
_ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [C] I first heard Van Morrison's [G] Astral Weeks when hitchhiking with a friend across Ireland
in the 90s.
I got an [C] ill-advised lift from this strange, slightly [Dm] unstable character
[G] who drove like a maniac speeding through the Irish countryside with Van Morrison's album
[C] pumping out, the speakers turned up to 10.
[D] _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [C] _ _ _
_ [D] _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ _
_ _ _ This is quite [C] feeling slightly in danger for our lives at this point.
[D] The music stayed
with [G] me and I've been hooked on the album ever since.
But for an album that after its
initial poor reception has gone on to define his reputation, featuring in countless album
charts, Van Morrison has been strangely circumspect about his role in the album and for 40 years
afterwards he rarely performed songs from it.
In an interview in 1970 to Rolling Stone
he said of the recording process,
I didn't really feel comfortable.
The producer must have pulled himself up to scratch to
do it, but I had something else in [Cm] mind.
I would change the [G] arrangement because the arrangements
are too samey.
I didn't have the same mood in mind for the whole album.
It's amazing to learn that for an album that conveys so convincingly a sense [Bb] of [G] freewheeling
anything-goes 60s dreaminess, it seems that the recording process itself was anything
but idyllic.
Van Morrison himself was uncomfortable and aloof and spent the sessions [Dm] in a separate
recording booth, barely speaking to the other musicians, [Bm] who seemed to have been pretty
much improvising on the spot.
Drummer Connie Kay recalled that when he asked Van Morrison
what [G] he wanted him to play he was told,
Well, whatever you feel like.
For most involved it seems like those few uncomfortable days
in 1968 when they [C] accidentally made a masterpiece [G] are something they'd all rather put behind them.
_ _ So are there any [F] clues as to how the alchemy that created Astral Weeks came into being?
Well let's start by looking [A] at what makes it so special.
For me the very feature Morrison
complained about in that interview, its [D] sameness, is one of the key [A] aspects of its [Gbm] success.
The whole album is [G] like stepping into [A] another world.
It's a world that usually has just
two [B] or three chords going round and [A] round, with a strange, slightly [Gbm] obsessive, but incredibly
poignant [A] vocal performance.
It's [Gb] silence _ easy [A] to be born again, _ _ [D] _ _ _ _ [A]
to be born again.
_ [D] [N] Van Morrison's intensity might have become oppressive.
Instead though, on the recording,
the air between the voice and the guitar is filled with this amazing aura of golden shimmering
light, a sort of [Ebm] warm cosmic [Bb] glow, full of plucked guitars, [Eb] jazzy flute, [Bb] pokey violin
solos, swinkeling harpsichords, above all, the acoustic [Eb] bass.
_ And I'll be the girl trying _ _ something, on the way back [Bb] home from school.
[Eb] _ _ _ _ [Bb] _ _ _ _
_ _ One of the things that [F] still strikes me most in the album is how I always keep getting
drawn back to the [Eb] bassline.
Without doubt [Ebm] one of the key players on the recording was
[Ab] Richard Davis, a seasoned jazz musician, but like all the best [A] musicians, one with
an [Ab] insistence that music is music, and that being open to all kinds of [G] music makes for
a richer [C] and more meaningful life as a musician.
[E] _ [Fm] Good [E] players will say, don't specialize and [Bb] focus on [C] one music, do [A] it all.
Davis had toured for [Gm] many years with legendary jazz [Ab] singer Sarah Vaughan, along with other
jazz [F] greats such as Eric [Eb] Dolphy.
[A] _ [Ab] _ [G] Though spring is [Cm] here to me, [Fm] it's still [Db] _ September.
[Eb] _
[Dbm] _ But he'd also spent a year in the New York Philharmonic playing under Bernstein and [F] Boulez,
as well as on pop albums by the likes of Barbra Streisand and Paul Simon.
As such, Davis, who still teaches in Wisconsin today, _ epitomizes one of the things that defines
Astral Weeks for me, its pigeonhole-free _ uncategorizableness.
Sure, there are elements of folk, jazz and pop here, but the album really is a genre
all to itself.
Davis' bass line throughout [Bb] Astral Weeks has this special quality, a quirky presence,
a real personality.
[Eb] His lines sing and speak to you, often quite literally [Gm] sounding like a human voice in the
way they bend and gliss up [Eb] and down the fingerboard.
_ _ [Bb] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [A] _ _
In [Dm] _ _ another _ [A] _ _
_ _ _ [G] time, _ _ _ _ _ _ [C] flimster [Em] slider _
_ _ _ As a bass player, Davis has an [D] extraordinary range, spending much of the time right at
the top of the instrument, or hopping up and down like a yo-yo.
_ [Cm] _ [D] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Other times, he forms a cross-rhythm to the main beat, [Gb] a technique which forms one of
the mainstays of the album, especially when combined with other [N] pulsing instruments like
the harp recorded on Cypress [F] Avenue. _
_ [Bb] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[Eb] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[Bb] _ _ Credit [Eb] _ _ _ _
[Bb] for the success of this shimmering [F] accompaniment, I think, has to go to producer
_ Lewis Merenstein, [G] who was a good friend of Davis'
The two had worked together many times before, and Merenstein said that Davis was always
his go-to player when dealing with tricky customers like Van Morrison.
As soon as he sat down with Van Morrison and heard the new songs for the first [Am] time,
Merenstein fell in love with them.
Thirty seconds into it, my whole being was vibrating, he said.
And he straight away had a vision [D] for how the album should proceed.
He pieced together the core players, and later overdubbed strings and brass, which themselves
form [A] some of the most powerful moments on the album. _ _ _
[D] _ _ _ _ _ [A] _ _ _
_ _ [D] _ _ _ _ _ [A] _
_ _ _ _ [D] _ _ _ _
_ [A] _ _ _ _ _ [Dm] And although neither Merenstein nor Van [D] Morrison thought of [A] themselves really as a [D] team,
indeed they parted company [G] shortly afterwards, I think the success of Astral Weeks is down
to this Lennon and McCartney-like tug of their [E] two different artistic visions.
_ [D] Most of the credit must rightfully go to Van [C] Morrison for the album.
He wrote the [G] songs, it's his voice which dominates, his sense of melancholy, yearning
and mysticism that powers through the whole record.
But [F] without Merenstein, I doubt it would be the [G] masterpiece that we know today.
It just goes to show, I think, that ideal circumstances don't always have [C] to be present
to make an ideal album.
_ Sometimes the stars, or the astral planes, [G] simply align. _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [C] _ _ _ [G] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [D] _ _ [C] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _