Less an LP than a spiritual attempt to storm Heaven, Astral Weeks showed Van Morrison to be a seeker in search of some unreachable mystical plane-like John Coltrane, only playing a kind of jazz-folk hybrid instead of free jazz. I always have to remind myself that Morrison-with his “little fireplug body” to quote Lester Bangs-is one of the Immortals, and that his 1968 album Astral Weeks is one of the best rock LPs ever recorded and certainly in my Top Ten, and this despite the fact that I don’t even like half of its eight songs.
It is unfortunate that my only clear image of the great Van Morrison is at The Band’s Last Waltz, where the pudgy Morrison, resplendent in an awful brown pants suit speckled with sequins, ends a sublime version of “Caravan” with a series of ludicrous leg kicks, all of which are unintentionally hilarious.
