Says the guy who gave us that biting social commentary and mellifluous sonic excellence of "Brown Eyed Girl." Yeah, Right.

Brown Eyed Girl *was* brown skinned girl, but that got rendered moot by it's controversial theme.

The Beatles made cool tunes. Van Morrison made cool tunes. It's not a contest.

This is the same guy who complains that Bruce Springsteen stole his act and enjoyed all the success that was meant for him.

That snippet came out of a New Yorker article-- Listening Party by Ben Greenman and makes a lot more sense when you realize that Van Morrison was talking while listening to a jukebox filled with early rock and roll.

He talked about the blind harpist Sonny Terry (the first record he ever bought was one of Terry's), the powerhouse vocalist Bobby Bland, and the skiffle pioneer Lonnie Donegan. When someone grouped Donegan with other practitioners of "pre-Beatles rock and roll," Morrison pulled up short.

"That's a cliché," he said, adjusting his sunglasses. "I don't think 'pre-Beatles' means anything, because there was stuff before them.

I know I've read that the Beatles started as a skiffle band, playing the stuff of guys like Donegan.

Can somebody explain to me why Van Morrison has 2 of the top 20 selling albums on amazon right now?

Wait... 2 of the top 25

notmtwain: That snippet came out of a New Yorker article-- Listening Party by Ben Greenman and makes a lot more sense when you realize that Van Morrison was talking while listening to a jukebox filled with early rock and roll.

He talked about the blind harpist Sonny Terry (the first record he ever bought was one of Terry's), the powerhouse vocalist Bobby Bland, and the skiffle pioneer Lonnie Donegan. When someone grouped Donegan with other practitioners of "pre-Beatles rock and roll," Morrison pulled up short.

"That's a cliché," he said, adjusting his sunglasses. "I don't think 'pre-Beatles' means anything, because there was stuff before them.

I know I've read that the Beatles started as a skiffle band, playing the stuff of guys like Donegan.

Uh, yeah, Van.... That's sort of exactly what is meant by "pre-Beatles"... the stuff before them.

I could define something as "Pre-Backstreet Boys". Doesn't mean they have any value. It's just a delineation in time.

Van who?

NightOwl2255: Van who?

you don't know who The Doors are? Jeez...

So says a drunken Irishman with two memorable hits to his name.
Talentless wanker. He employs some good musicians tho...

A mighty big statement coming from a ..... well, I can't call him a has-been... coming from a never was.

3 hits? wow.....

Van, you have an incredible voice (on album) and have recorded some great pop music albums but before you rag on JohnPaulGeorgeRingo why don't you try putting on a live show that doesn't swing from incredible heights of jamming to a mishmash of garbled lyrics and bad playing all within the span of one song.

FeedTheCollapse: NightOwl2255: Van who?

you don't know who The Doors are? Jeez...

Son of That Guy: This is the same guy who complains that Bruce Springsteen stole his act and enjoyed all the success that was meant for him.


Which is a ridiculous claim, since Springsteen actually stole all the success that was meant for Tom Waits. ;-)
___________________
As for TFA:
(1) The out of context quote distorts the meaning of what Van Morrison actually said.

(b) The Beatles did what they did, like it or not they were very influential, even though most of what they did was popularizing things that others had done before.

(profit) Anyone who gets worked into an emotional froth, one way or another, about someone else's opinion of a specific band should probably switch to de-caf. It's really not that important, and your manhood is not in any way threatened by someone else's taste in music.

Thou shalt not put musicians and recording artists on ridiculous pedestals, no matter how great they are, or were.

The Beatles were just a band.

Led Zeppelin, just a band.

The Beach Boys, just a band..

The Sex Pistols, just a band.

The Clash, just a band.

Crass, just a band.

Minor Threat, just a band.

The Cure, just a band.

The Smiths, just a band.

Nirvana, just a band.

The Pixies, just a band.

Oasis, just a band.

Radiohead, just a band.

Bloc Party, just a band.

The Arctic Monkeys, just a band.

"The next big thing", just a band.

But a Fig Newton is fruit and cake!

I understand his theory. Too bad he couldn't have said it a little more eloquently.

/big Beatles fan
//extra slashie to stop the flaming

I like the Beatles, but I don't think they're the be-all and end-all of music. I don't like Van Morrison; he used to come into a record store I worked at in Boston and he was an angry, fat little hobbit who treated his fans like shiat. fark Van Morrison.

Doesn't Van Morrison refuse to play a second over 90 minutes in concert, promptly walking off the stage at that point?

Springsteen clearly didn't steal that schtick from him.

I love the Beatles, but I understand Van's point here, and agree. The Beatles were big fans of Little Richard and Buddy Holly, among others, and built upon what they learned from those pioneers of pop music.

benlonghair
Can somebody explain to me why Van Morrison has 2 of the top 20 selling albums on amazon right now?

well i'm guessing because

1) he just released a live version of "Astral Weeks" along with a few other songs. i bet that was first of the two albums you mention.
2) i'm betting the 2nd album was the original "astral weeks".

True.

The Beatles were only 'revolutionary' to the ignorant whose musical experience hadn't ever expanded beyond The Mickey Mouse Club and Howdy Doody.

In fact they made honest discussions of music impossible by reducing everything to OMG!! JOHN PAUL GEORGE RINGO!!!

LewDux: Thou shalt not put musicians and recording artists on ridiculous pedestals, no matter how great they are, or were...

Thou shalt not wish your girlfriend was a freak like me.

Van is an asshole, but everybody here saying he's talentless or "has two hits to his name" and shiat don't know the first thing about music.

Now STFU and go listen to Astral Weeks. That alone makes Van a musical God.

//beatles are overrated. Great, but not the greatest thing ever.

PascalsGhost: Van is an asshole, but everybody here saying he's talentless or "has two hits to his name" and shiat don't know the first thing about music.

Now STFU and go listen to Astral Weeks. That alone makes Van a musical God.

//beatles are overrated. Great, but not the greatest thing ever.

Hear, hear. Over-exposure to "Brown Eyed Girl" no doubt leaves a bad taste in peoples' mouths, but Van's music is actually quite spectacular. "Moondance," "Tupelo Honey," "Gloria..." the list goes on.

The Beatles were also very good, had the perfect producer, and broke up before becoming flaccid. Their early stuff was incredibly ordinary, progressed to reasonable, and then eventually reached "Genius." Not a career of genius, but a large helping nonetheless.

/Fan o'both

John Lennon said about the Beatles:

"It's just a rock and roll band. It's nothing important. You can still listen to the records."

That being said, Van Morrison's music is mostly crap. If I never hear that Goddammed "Moondance" again in my life I may die with a smile on my face.

AdolfOliverPanties: Van Morrison's music is mostly crap.


What albums do you dislike?

It's true. The Beatles are revolutionary pop artists. Nothing they did can compare to what, say, a Charles Mingus accomplished.

That being said, pot calling kettle black.

Freddy Knuckles: I like the Beatles, but I don't think they're the be-all and end-all of music. I don't like Van Morrison; he used to come into a record store I worked at in Boston and he was an angry, fat little hobbit who treated his fans like shiat. fark Van Morrison.

Everyone I have ever met who has had anything to do with Van Morrison says he's a total prick. Even his own family thinks he's a douche.

Apparently Van is in the minority in his opinion:

LONDON - The city already has a Beatles museum and a Beatles-themed hotel. Its airport is even named after John Lennon. Now a Liverpool university says it rolling out a graduate program entirely devoted to the Fab Four.

Liverpool Hope University said Tuesday that its new master's program, "The Beatles, Popular Music and Society," would give students the opportunity to analyze popular music and culture through the band's work.

Link (new window)

PascalsGhost asks What albums do you dislike?

You know what? That's a fair question. I will admit my statement was over the top. I should have said that The Van Morrison music that I have heard is mostly crap, IMO. I honestly only have heard about one album's worth of tracks over the years and it would be those with the most airplay, so that is a little unfair to Morrison.

But nothing in what I've heard makes me want to investigate his work further.

AdolfOliverPanties: Apparently Van is in the minority in his opinion:

LONDON - The city already has a Beatles museum and a Beatles-themed hotel. Its airport is even named after John Lennon. Now a Liverpool university says it rolling out a graduate program entirely devoted to the Fab Four.

Liverpool Hope University said Tuesday that its new master's program, "The Beatles, Popular Music and Society," would give students the opportunity to analyze popular music and culture through the band's work.

Link (new window)

PascalsGhost asks What albums do you dislike?

You know what? That's a fair question. I will admit my statement was over the top. I should have said that The Van Morrison music that I have heard is mostly crap, IMO. I honestly only have heard about one album's worth of tracks over the years and it would be those with the most airplay, so that is a little unfair to Morrison.

But nothing in what I've heard makes me want to investigate his work further.

He is definitely one of those artists who actual worst stuff is on the radio.

Some of his albums are absolutely fantastic and he always plays with amazing musicians. His Gaelic/Irish folksie dervied stuff is a matter of taste though. I happen to love it.

Tupalo Honey is awesome. Astral Weeks is amazing. Moondance is good.

Hey, all taste though. That's why they make different colored cars.

So Van Morrison's both a douche and a prick! He covers all the bases.

Good thing Morrison didn't sing this in a song, or nobody would know what the f**k he was saying.

Please, Van is just a typical Irishman: Depending on the mood and amount of booze involved he can be either the most charming, funny, likable person you've ever met or the most rude, belligerent, psychopath you ever met.

Either way, the dude has made some great, great music and that's all that matters to me.

/Quote was taken out of context
//Contact Music is a douche site
///Yes, I'm Irish

What a pretentious prick.

A buddy of mine was a roadie for Pinkpop Productions in the Netherlands. He met tons of musicians and he said that Van was/is the most stuck-up a*hole he has ever met.

It's well known that Van Morrison is a HUGE douche-nozzle.

However, it's also indisputable that this guy has made some of the most beautiful music to come out in the late 60's and early 70's.

Check out:
Moondance
Astral Weeks
Tupelo Honey
Into the Mystic
Caravan


Belfast Cowboy indeed

Van being a Wentz aside, he is a great songwriter and musician.

I love the 70s stuff, but it is all pretty good except for some of the 80s stuff. In fact many of the stuff from the mid 90s to the early 00s was quite good.

I'd suggest The Healing Game, Back on Top, and Down the Road just off the top of my head.

And I have seen Van in concert twice. Once in Boston in 2000 which was amazing and once in Philly in 2005 or so which was not so amazing, so I think it depends on the show if you think he is good live or not.

And I don't ever need to hear Brown Eyed Girl or Moondance ever again. But I don't need to hear lots of classic rock songs again. Comfortably Numb for example, which is on topic because Van sang on that awful Roger Waters live The Wall CD back in the 90s.

As a big Van Morrison fan, I have heard him rant against the industry plenty of times.

I believe that the context of his statement was that music writers are always talking about the Beatles as if music wasn't any good before they arrived.

He grew up on American blues and country and is a huge admirer of Muddy Waters, Leadbelly, John Lee Hooker, etc., all of whom were making great music long before the Beatles arrived. He never said the Beatles were crap, just not the definition of music.

I agree with an earlier post: He could have said this a lot more eloquently but ... that's Van. His intolerance for the press and interviews is legendary.

Just went to two of the concerts in New York City. Great shows!

Have a listen to the new Astral Weeks Live. The original 1968 recording is unique and he didn't try to recreate it. He has given a new interpretation with a deeper voice and 40 years of experience.

marcpen 2009-03-04 12:15:12 PM
So says a drunken Irishman with two memorable hits to his name.
Talentless wanker. He employs some good musicians tho...

Dude, you're clueless.

And in a larger context, Van is right. Rock didnt start with The Beatles and the truth is they started out in a Backstreet Boys/Nsync
pop way.


Van is a cranky guy, big deal; his point still stands.

mfaby: marcpen 2009-03-04 12:15:12 PM
So says a drunken Irishman with two memorable hits to his name.
Talentless wanker. He employs some good musicians tho...

Dude, you're clueless.

And in a larger context, Van is right. Rock didnt start with The Beatles and the truth is they started out in a Backstreet Boys/Nsync
pop way.


Van is a cranky guy, big deal; his point still stands.

Uh, as has already been stated in this thread, the Beatles started as The Quarrymen, a skiffle group. Not exactly "Backstreet Boys/NSync." And Van is neither right nor wrong, what he actually said was irrelevant. He biatched about the phrase "pre-Beatles" by saying that there was stuff before the Beatles. Right. That's exactly what the phrase "pre-Beatles" implies. So he made a moot point. Big whoop.

Also, his best work - by far - was the drunken rambling record he made to fulfill a contract.

Rock didn't start with The Beatles and the truth is they started out in a Backstreet Boys/Nsync pop way.

And you're calling someone else clueless?

The Beatles performed hundreds if not thousands of live rock and roll shows, playing their instruments and singing, without dancing. You know, actually paying their dues. They were not a boy band, as there were no such things at the time really. They only seem like a boy band in retrospect, when in reality they were very edgy and trend-setting for the time. They weren't the creation of some pedophile music mogul appealing to young girls and gay guys as a business model.

They remained trendsetters for the rest of their careers, growing exponentially in skill and influence.

The Beatles were peripheral. If you had more knowledge of music, it didn't really mean anything. To me, it was meaningless."

He's correct: He's one of the very few artists of his generation upon whom the Beatles had no influence.

While everyone else was tripping out to Sgt Pepper's and starting bands with names like The Marshmallow Subway and the Chocolate Overcoat, Van was cutting Astral Weeks.

And that's really all you need to know: the man has ALWAYS marched to the beat of his own drummer.

So, Van Morrison is blaming The Beatles for gaining their initial popularity on the newly minted proto-sexual longings of 13 year old girls? He should just be content that every slimy college boy since the advent of file sharing has used "Moondance" to trick the panties off some inexperienced co-ed.

History, unfortunately, streamlines everything, and the best way to do this is to just talk about one band, blow them up into gods, and let all the others fall into the memory hole.

Let us not forget: It's the media that creates this idiotic hyperbole. Making an enormous stink out of the Beatles, while utterly forgetting the contributions of contemporaries like Donovan, Dave Clark, Zappa and the Mothers (among countless others) is just like Nancy Grace going on and on about a single missing toddler. Media tunnel vision: don't get sucked into it.

fark him and his overpriced tickets

Freddy Knuckles: I don't like Van Morrison; he used to come into a record store I worked at in Boston and he was an angry, fat little hobbit who treated his fans like shiat. fark Van Morrison.

HAHAHAHAHA

Fair enough really, the Beatles were the first boy band.

"The influence of the Beatles cannot be considered musical. Music, especially in those days, was something else: experimental, instrumental, improvised, political. The Beatles played pop ditties. Rock musicians of the time played everything but pop ditties, because rock was conceived as an alternative to ditties. FM radio was created to play rock music, not pop ditties. Music magazines were born to review rock music, not pop songs. Evidently, to the kids (mostly girls) who listened to the Beatles, rock music had nothing to say that they were willing to listen to.

The Beatles had the historical function to serve as champions of the reaction. Their smiles and their choruses hid the revolution: they concealed the restlessness of an underground movement ready to explode, for a bourgeoisie who wanted to hear nothing about it.

They had nothing to say and that's why they didn't say it."

-Piero Scaruffi