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Tyler: Peter, there is nothing to say, and there are a million things to say, about Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks.  I always think of Lester Bangs’s retrospective on the album, which is so striking that I’ve found myself stymied when considering my own reflections.  What in hell could I possibly have to say about this iconic release that Bangs, or others of his caliber, haven’t covered already?

That’s a fruitless concern, though.  Astral Weeks, like all art, speaks to each of us listeners in different ways.  We may not like what we hear—especially if we’re expecting “Brown Eyed Girl”—but we cannot deny the album its power.  Not with any good sense, anyway.

Peter: Yeah, it’s a pretty big one. I’m embarrassed to admit I was not very familiar with it before this. What’s your history with the album?

Tyler: A few hundred thousand lifetimes ago, I was a teenager with my mother’s CD copy of the compilation The Best Of Van Morrison.  I was struck by “Sweet Thing.”  It’s so romantic and sweeping—I was caught in that song’s spell.  Eventually, I got myself a copy of Astral Weeks itself.  Now, I don’t recall the first time I really got it.  I know it took a few listens before I fell head-over-heels.  When you’re used to—not just “Brown Eyed Girl”—Morrison’s many, typically very accessible hits, you’re not expecting what you get with this album.  What is this sound?  What are these words?

Morrison’s vocals hold it all together, of course.  That voice.

That voice holds you tight.  It beckons you in, and hits your heart and soul.

Peter: Over on Allmusic, Jason Ankeny talks about his “indelible singing style that bypasses the confines of language to articulate emotional truths far beyond the scope of literal meaning.”

Tyler: “And you’re about to leave. She jumps up and says, Hey love, you forgot your glove.  Aaaaand the love that love the love that loves the love that loves the love that loves to love the love that loves to love the love the glove.”

Peter: Right! Exactly.

There are other bits like that on here. He experiments with the sound of the words.

Tyler: Astonishing.  He’s always been known as a curmudgeonly old crank, even before he was actually old.  In recent years, post-Covid, he’s flirted dangerously with politics and buddied up much too much with noted horrible person Eric Clapton.  These are uncomfortable truths about someone with access to this kind of beauty.

Peter: Yeah, that stuff was not cool.

He wrote “Into the Mystic!”

Do better, Van. Do better.

The backstory on Astral Weeks is crazy.

Tyler: I heard wisps of truths about the recording sessions as I grew closer to the LP.  I didn’t want to believe them.  I didn’t want solo Morrison recording alone or in a booth while musicians who barely, or don’t, know him improvise the instrumentation.  I don’t know quite what I wanted to picture, but it wasn’t that.

Peter: Things were crazy leading up to this. In early ‘68 he was trying to get out of his recording contract with Bang Records, whose founder, Bert Berns, had connections to organized crime. Long story short, there was a meeting at an abandoned warehouse at which a bag containing $20,000 was handed over to four men who, according to Warner Bros. executive Joe Smith, “weren’t in the music business.”

Tyler: Good Lord.

Peter: Plus it was just ’68 in general. Lester Bangs talked about it in that piece you sent me. The vibes were not good.

Lester was listening to this and White Light/White Heat by The Velvet Underground in ’68. There’s little Venn overlap between those two albums.

Tyler: “Gimme some White Light/White Heat!”

Was just discussing Philip Seymour Hoffman earlier today.  His iconic Almost Famous performance as Bangs was not mentioned.

Peter: Loved that performance.

Tyler: Remarkable fact from the commentary track to that movie: in the telephone scene where a softened Lester consoles William Miller, Cameron Crowe initially had Bangs ranting and stomping around.  It was Hoffman who suggested the gentle tack.

Peter: Wow! That’s very cool. It totally works.

Tyler: Oh yeah.  What a breathtaking talent he was.

Hoffman, I mean.  I haven’t read enough Lester to know whether the guy can make me gasp.

Peter: Me neither.

And, agreed. About Hoffman.

Tyler: He could’ve played Van.

Peter: Oh, yeah. He could’ve.

Okay, let’s talk about this album!

Tyler: Let’s do.

Peter: “If I ventured in the slipstream/Between the viaducts of your dream/Where immobile steel rims crack/And the ditch in the back roads stop.”

Quite the opener.

We’re a long way from “Brown Eyed Girl.”

Tyler: This song soothes my soul.

From the opening bars and notes, I’m in.  There’s a lot of sorrow in Astral Weeks, but there is joy bursting from “Astral Weeks.”

Peter: Morrison called it, “One of those songs where you can see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

It really sets the tone for the whole album.

Tyler: It’s perfectly situated.  A beautiful way to usher us into this strange world.

Peter: Yeah, and the second track definitely takes us deeper into a dream. “Beside You” has some strong Through The Looking Glass vibes.

I’ve heard this song described as a lullaby, but if it is a lullaby, it’s one of those slightly sinister ones. A shadowy figure called Broken Arrow beckons to Little Jimmy from down a darkened alley. That’s not normal. That would keep me up at night, if I’m being honest. I don’t want to think about that before bed.

Not that it’s not beautiful. It is.

Tyler: Yeah, whoever called “Beside You” a lullaby is listening to something else.  “Beside You” is, to my ear, the most challenging listen on the album.

I think it needs to be between “Astral Weeks” and “Sweet Thing.”  It’s darker in lyric and in tone.

Peter: Interesting. Yeah, it might be the darkest thing on the album. “Sweet Thing” sounds like a single.

Tyler: It’s irresistible.

Peter: It is irresistible.

There’s a guy playing triangle on this! You can hear it. And he’s credited.

“And I will never grow so old again.”

Tyler: Gorgeous.  He really captures something with each line.

“And I will drink the clear clean water for to quench my thirst.”

Peter: Yeah. That’s nice.

Tyler: If “Sweet Thing” is a single, “Cyprus Avenue” is something else entirely.  The first of the album’s two epics.

Peter: We’re looking backward again. More scenes from childhood. This time it’s pretty obviously Morrison’s. Apparently Cyprus Avenue was the other side of the tracks (the rich side) in the Belfast of Morrison’s youth.

Tyler: The live version of this song is heart-stopping.  Bangs makes note of it, and Morrison included it on his soaring 1974 live album It’s Too Late To Stop Now.

Peter: I watched that on YouTube! Really terrific stuff.

Tyler: The range!  The reinvention!  The two renditions are in different worlds.

Peter: It’s true.

The song has a very standard Blues progression, but on the record it’s sort of dressed up in whimsy. There’s a harpsichord on here, for god’s sake.

Tyler: It’s the conclusion, too, to the first side of the album, which Morrison titles “In The Beginning.”

Peter: Yeah, what’s that all about?

Tyler: I’ve got no answer.  Unless side one is principally concerned with recollecting childhood, and side two–“Afterwards”–more adult experiences and universes.

Peter: Ah! Let’s explore side two and find out!

It’d be funny if he called side two “Sick Jamz.”

I’m glad he didn’t.

Tyler: Given modern Van song titles like “Why Are You Still On Facebook?”, you may well get that as an album title.

Peter: Is that a real song?

Tyler: Yes.  Yes it is.

Peter: Yikes.

Okay, side two opens with  “The Way Young Lovers Do.” It’s very jazzy.

There’s a lot of vibraphone on this record. I really like it on this track.

Tyler: This ones’s got some beefy horns, too.  They dressed the song up a bit.

Peter: Yeah. Some people think it’s a bit out of place on this record. I don’t mind it.

Tyler: Oh, I think it’s necessary.  It’s evocative, it inserts some momentum between two very languid tracks, it does in fact capture the immediacy of youthful infatuation.  Get outta here, “some people!”

Peter: It was Greil Marcus! I interneted it.

No, I agree with you.

It fits fine for me.

Tyler: Next up, with authority: “Madame George.”

Peter: This song is almost ten minutes long.

Tyler: It earns every second.

Peter: It doesn’t get old.

Tyler: A tender ode to a transgender woman in a Catholic country in the 1960s.

Peter: Is it? How did I not realize that?

The whole thing just washes over you.

Tyler: Yeah.  It’s transfixing.

The ten minutes linger and float, but they also fly by.

Peter: Enter “Ballerina.”

Tyler: A bit more upbeat than “Madame George,” you could say.

Peter: He wrote it about his first wife, I believe.

Tyler: Janet Planet?  Or was there a lady before her.

Peter: Her first name was Janet!

Tyler: Ah yes.  I recall reading something she said years after they divorced.  Something about how the romance in the songs didn’t translate to real life.

Peter: He doesn’t seem like he’d be much fun to be around. Even back then.

Tyler: I heard a rumbling that, when he moved the family to Woodstock in the early ‘70s, he was hoping to get into the circle of Dylan and The Band.  They did not come calling.

Peter: I hadn’t heard that! That’s fantastic.

Okay, the album closer is weird.

Tyler: “Slim Slow Slider.”  Ages ago I read an interpretation of it, observing that it could very well be about a loved one addicted to heroin.

Peter: Interesting.

“I know you’re dying/And I know you know it too/Every time I see you/I just don’t know what to do.”

Tyler: Fairly devastating.

Peter: I like the track, but what about the saxophone? Is it too much?

Tyler: Lord, no.  It’s lonely and sad and so distant.  Stamp of approval.

Peter: I think I agree. Normally I’m not a fan, but here I think it works.

Tyler: Springsteen is a big Morrison devotee.  I hear “Slim Slow Slider” in the sax on “Meeting Across The River.”  Well, that actually only just occurred to me.  But it makes sense.

Peter: Yeah, I can see that.

Tyler: The song, and the album, end with a kind of discordant percussion, as the sax squawks without melody.  Hell of a way to end such a sweeping, grandiose statement.

Peter: It is. Would “Madame George” have been a more appropriate closer?

Tyler: I don’t think so.  “Madame George” fades into the distance, “get on the train/The train/The train/The train/The train.”  “Slim Slow Slider,” meantime, establishes and nails down this hopeless inescapable inevitability.  Death is the end, and both the narrator and the subject know it’s near.  That’s finality right there.

Peter: Amen.