Book description
'Van Morrison,' says Greil Marcus, 'remains a singer who can be
compared to no other in the history of modern popular music.' When
Astral Weeks was released in 1968, it was largely ignored. When it was
re-released as a live album in 2009 it reached the top of the
Billboard charts, a first for any Van Morrison recording. The wild
swings in the music, mirroring the swings in Morrison's success and in
people's appreciation (or lack of it) of his music, make Van Morrison
one of the most perplexing and mysterious figures in popular modern
music, and a perfect subject for the wise and insightful scrutiny of
Greil Marcus, one of America's most dedicated cultural critics. This
book is Marcus's quest to understand Van Morrison's particular genius
through the extraordinary and unclassifiable moments in his long
career, beginning in 1965 and continuing in full force to this day. In
these dislocations Marcus finds the singer on his own artistic quest
precisely to reach some extreme musical threshold, the moments that
are not enclosed by the will or the intention of the performer but
which somehow emerge at the limits of the musician and his song.
Greil Marcus is the author of The Shape of Things to Come, Like
a Rolling Stone, Mystery Train and The Old Weird America; a 20th
anniversary edition of his book Lipstick Traces was published in 2009.
Since 2000 he has taught at Princeton, Berkeley, Minnesota, and the
New School in New York; his column "Real Life Rock Top 10"
appears regularly in The Believer. He lives in Berkeley.
