Hop Farm Music Festival is an annual music festival at The Hop Farm Country Park in East Peckham in the English county of Kent, created by Festival Republic founder, Vince Power. After its first year it was nominated at the UK Festival Awards with "Best New Festival".

It came about after a survey was conducted among festival fans with the general feeling revealed to be that they always felt the lowest in priority and importance. The survey resulted in the first Hop Farm Festival in 2008, as a 30,000 crowd capacity festival centered around folk and independent music, with a specific aim of a return to "back to basics" organisation with a no sponsorship, no branding, no VIP attitude. Under 12's, since the festivals creation, have had free entry.^[1]

Hop Farm 2008[link]

The first ever Hop Farm Music Festival was just a one day event on the 6 July with only one stage. The day was headlined by Neil Young with Primal Scream, Guillemots, Supergrass, Laura Marling, Rufus Wainwright, My Morning Jacket and Everest also playing.^[2]

The cost of a ticket was £49.50.

Hop Farm 2009[link]

The 2009 festival was scheduled for 3–5 July, a now 2 day festival with a capacity increased to 53,000 and an extra 2 stages introduced.^[3] The main acts over the event period are shown below.

2009 marked the first year of a celebrity football tournament at the festival participated by, among many others, some former Big Brother contestants.^[4]

Ticket prices rose to £125 for the weekend with camping.

Hop Farm 2010[link]

The 2010 festival was held on the weekend of 2–3 July over 3 stages and proved to a controversial year. Before the festival had even started people complained of misleading ticket sales. Originally marketed as once again, a one day festival, tickets went on sale for a second date much later, one month to the event, to the surprise and annoyance of many who had already bought a ticket. The organisation of the festival has been subject to much criticism, this included the long queues, poor sound system and a water pressure malfunction.^[5] It was during the late afternoon of Saturday, that the only water pump supplying the camp of 20,000 with water suffered a pressure malfunction and subsequently left the camp bereft of a water supply.

The main line-up for 2010 was as follows:

Others who performed through the event included Pete Doherty, The Magic Numbers, Imelda May, Damien Dempsey, Laura Marling, Foy Vance, Johnny Flynn and many others.^[6]

The year also saw the introduction of a camp stage within the campsite, free for those who had bought weekend camping tickets, but only one day entrance ticket to the arena. Marcus Bonfanti and Robinson were among those who performed.

The years celebrity football tournament participants included the return of the former Big Brother contestants along with the cast of Waterloo Road, Mumford and Sons and Johnny Flynn among others.

Full weekend ticket prices with camping rose to £135

Hop Farm 2011[link]

Iggy Pop performing in 2011

The 2011 event has been confirmed for a return during its normal two day first weekend of July date. Confirmed acts for 2011 include The Eagles, Bryan Ferry, Morrissey, Lou Reed, Iggy and the Stooges and Newton Faulkner^[7][8] 6 weeks prior to the opening date of the festival, organisers announced an extra date to the festival to be headlined by Prince.^[9] The addition of an extra date 3 months after the initial tickets were put on sale created much anger towards the festival for misleading ticket buyers yet again, after a similar incident the previous year.

2011 saw the return of the well received camp stage. Brother and Bones, Tankus The Henge, Never the Bride and Nathan Mercado, among others, all performed during the weekend.

Hop Farm 2012[link]

On the 27th March the first set of bands was released. The line up for 2012 includes Bob Dylan, Suede, Damien Rice, Peter Gabriel and Dr.John. Controversy surrounding the festival was reignited once again as many complained that the organisers took too long in announcing the line up when most other major UK festivals had already released their preliminary acts. UK entertainment veteran Sir Bruce Forsyth was added to the line up on the 13th April.

External links[link]

• Hop Farm Festival Official Website

References[link]

Farm Festival is an annual two-day music festival held near Bruton, Somerset, England. The festival retains a very rustic feel with no corporate sponsorship and has increased in popularity since its inaugural event in 2006, with mentions in several national newspapers including The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph as well as inclusion in The Sunday Times "Top 100 Music Festivals" in 2009.^[1]

The festival organisers make a donation to Practical Action and local causes each year from the event's proceeds.

Festival history [link]

Farm Festival (née FarmFest) began in 2006 when a group of young men and women a "crack team of young locals and a handful of Londoners - all amateurs"^[2] came together to organise a festival of their own.

The first Farm Festival was held on the land of one of the team members, near Pilton, Somerset. It wasn't advertised widely and mainly relied on social networking websites (mainly MySpace) to draw potential attendees. The event was funded and operated by the team themselves and drew a crowd in the lower hundreds. During the event, a local farmer (who was attending the event, serving his own organic food), offered the use of his own land, near Bruton, Somerset as a more suitable venue for the event. The original 2006 site posed many difficulties for organisers and visitors alike with its extremely rural location and its lack of suitable access. The event has been held at Gilcombe Farm each year since.

Music, art and food at the Festival [link]

The festival does not favour one specific genre of music and tends to promote all types of signed as well as unsigned bands & artists including DJ's. Several acts that have appeared at the festival have gone on to greater fame, notably Friendly Fires & SixNationState. There are usually 2 stages (a main stage and an acoustic tent), in 2008 another tent was added playing dub music.

During the festival there are generally displays of performing or visual arts as well as features such as miniature golf courses, tea-parties and stalls selling a range of alternative arts and unusual items. The festival also adopts a "Hats Compulsory" policy. During the weekend, there is organic food (including vegetarian and vegan) from Glicombe Farm on sale as well as local cider which is at very reasonable price compared to larger, commercial festivals. The Sunday Times referred to Farm Festival as "The Bargain of the Festival Season" ^[3], referring to the low ticket and refreshment prices.

References [link]

3 monkeys

Bryan Ferry
Ferry performing in February 2011
Background information
Birth name	Bryan Ferry
Born	(1945-09-26) 26 September 1945 (age 66)
Origin	Washington, Tyne & Wear, England
Genres	Pop rock, glam rock, art rock, new wave
Occupations	Singer-songwriter, musician
Instruments	Vocals, keyboards, harmonica, guitar
Years active	1971–present
Labels	UK: Island, E.G., Polydor,, Virgin, EMI Records, Reprise, Warner Bros. Records, Atco, Atlantic, Astralwerks Records
Associated acts	Roxy Music
Website	BryanFerry.com

Bryan Ferry CBE (born 26 September 1945) is an English singer, musician, and songwriter. Ferry came to prominence in the early 1970s as lead vocalist and principal songwriter with the band Roxy Music, who enjoyed a highly successful career with three number one albums and ten singles entering the top ten charts in the United Kingdom. Ferry began his solo career in 1973, while still a member of Roxy Music, which continues to the present day.

Early life[link]

Born in Washington, Tyne & Wear, England into a working class family (his father, Fred Ferry, was a farmer who also looked after pit ponies),^[1] Ferry attended Washington Grammar-Technical School (now called Washington School) on Spout Lane from 1957 and achieved nine O levels, then studied fine art at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne under Richard Hamilton.^[2][3] His contemporaries included Tim Head^[4] and Nick de Ville.^[5] Ferry became a pottery teacher at Holland Park School in London.^[6] Ferry formed the band The Banshees, and later, together with Graham Simpson, the band the Gas Board.^[7]

Career[link]

Roxy Music and solo years (1971–1983)[link]

Ferry formed Roxy Music with a group of friends and acquaintances, beginning with Graham Simpson, in November 1970. The line-up expanded to include saxophonist/oboist Andy Mackay and his acquaintance Brian Eno, who owned tape recorders and played Mackay's synthesiser. Other early members included timpanist Dexter Lloyd and ex-Nice guitarist David O'List, who were replaced respectively by Paul Thompson and Phil Manzanera before the band recorded its first album (early Peel Sessions for the UK's BBC Radio 1 feature O'List's playing).^[8]

Roxy Music's first hit, "Virginia Plain", made the UK Top 5 in 1972, and was followed up with several hit singles and albums, with Ferry as vocalist and occasional instrumentalist (he taught himself piano in his mid-twenties) and Eno contributing synthesiser backing.

For many years, Ferry has collaborated with fashion designer Antony Price for clothing and image consultations. Price is famous for his shop on London's Kings Road. He created suits recognised worldwide for their elegance, and gained fame when celebrities and rock stars dressed in his designs.^[9] Indeed, one comment by Nicky Haslam about Ferry was that he was more likely to redecorate a hotel room than to trash it as a typical rock star might.^[10]

After their second album, Brian Eno left Roxy Music, leaving Ferry its undisputed leader. Ferry had already started a parallel solo career in 1973, initially performing cover versions of old standards on albums such as These Foolish Things (1973) and Another Time, Another Place (1974), both of which reached the UK Top 5. After the concert tour in support of their fifth studio album, Siren, Roxy Music temporarily disbanded in 1976 though bandmembers Paul Thompson, Phil Manzanera and Eddie Jobson took part in recording Ferry's subsequent solo material. In 1976 Ferry covered a song by The Beatles, “She's Leaving Home” for the transitory musical documentary All This and World War II. He went on to release three solo albums during this period, Let's Stick Together (1976), In Your Mind (1977) and The Bride Stripped Bare (1978). All three albums reached the UK Top 20, but by this time his career had begun to wane.

Roxy Music reconvened in 1979, with Ferry, Manzanera, Thompson and Mackay (Jobson was no longer a member). The band recorded the albums Manifesto (1979), Flesh + Blood (1980) and Avalon (1982), the latter two reaching number one in the UK album charts.^[11] The band also achieved their first and only UK number one single, "Jealous Guy", released in 1981 as a posthumous tribute to its author John Lennon who had been murdered some months earlier. It was the only one of their singles not to be written or co-written by Ferry.

After lengthy tours to promote the Avalon album in 1982, Ferry decided to put Roxy Music on hold and continue as a solo artist.

After Roxy Music (1984–2001)[link]

Ferry continued to record, and released his sixth solo album, Boys and Girls, in 1985. The album reached number one in the UK, his first and only solo recording to do so, and also became his biggest selling album in the US.

In July 1985 Ferry performed at the London Live Aid show, accompanied by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd.^[12] He was hit with technical difficulties on sound, the drummer's drumstick broke at the start of the first song "Sensation" and Gilmour's Fender Stratocaster went dead, so he had to switch to his candy-apple red Stratocaster for the rest of the performance.^[13] The difficulties in sound were overcome for "Slave to Love" (featured on the soundtrack to 9½ Weeks) and "Jealous Guy". As with other successful Live Aid acts, his current album, Boys and Girls, remained in the UK chart for almost a year.

After the Avalon promotional tours, Ferry was rather reluctant to return to life on the road; however, a change of management persuaded him to try touring again in 1988 to promote the previous year's Bête Noire release. Following the tour, Ferry teamed up again with Brian Eno for Mamouna (collaborating with Robin Trower on guitar and as producer). The album took more than five years to produce, and was created under the working title Horoscope. During production, Ferry simultaneously recorded and released another covers album, Taxi in 1993, which proved to be a greater commercial and critical success than Mamouna would be when it was finally released in 1994. In 1996 Ferry performed the song "Dance With Life" for the Phenomenon soundtrack, which was written by Bernie Taupin and Martin Page. In 1999 Ferry appeared with Alan Partridge (played by Steve Coogan) on BBC's Comic Relief.

After taking some time off from music, Ferry returned in 1999. He began to perform a mix of 1930s songs and songs of his own, including several from the Roxy collection, and recorded them on the album As Time Goes By, which was nominated for a Grammy award.^[14]

Roxy Music reunion 2001 and after[link]

Ferry on tour in the Netherlands, 2006

Ferry, Manzanera, Mackay and Thompson re-reformed Roxy Music in 2001 and toured extensively for a couple of years, though the band did not record any new material. In 2002 with the help of Manzanera and Thompson, Ferry returned with his next studio album, Frantic, which featured several tracks written by David A. Stewart as well as a collaboration with Brian Eno. The album was a mix of new original material and covers - something that Ferry had not attempted on a solo album since The Bride Stripped Bare in 1978.

In 2003 Ferry provided the entertainment for the Miss World election.^[15] In 2004, Ferry starred in the short film The Porter. In 2005 it was confirmed^[16] that Roxy Music (Ferry, Eno, Mackay, Manzanera and Thompson) would be performing further shows at that year's Isle Of Wight festival and that they would also be recording a further album of new and original songs, with no indication of when such a project would reach completion.^[17] Brian Eno confirmed^[18] that he has worked in the studio with Roxy Music once more and has co-written songs for the new album. However, Ferry later debunked the idea of a new Roxy Music album and stated that the material from these sessions will most likely be released as part of his next solo album,^[19] and that "I don't think we'll record as Roxy again."^[20]

In October 2006 Ferry signed a contract with the British retailer Marks and Spencer to model their "Autograph" men's clothing range. In March 2007 he released the album Dylanesque, a tribute album to Bob Dylan. The album charted in the UK Top 10, and Ferry undertook a UK tour. On 7 October 2008 Ferry was honoured as a BMI Icon at the annual BMI London Awards. He joined past Icons including Peter Gabriel, Ray Davies, Steve Winwood, and Van Morrison, amongst others.^[21]

In 2009 Ferry provided vocals on DJ Hell's record, U Can Dance. A new version of the track was recorded for Ferry's new studio album, Olympia, released in October 2010. The album contained the material he had been recorded with his former Roxy Music band members, and also featured an impressive cast of other musicians such as Nile Rodgers, David A. Stewart, Scissor Sisters, Groove Armada, Michael "Flea" Balzary, Johnny Greenwood and David Gilmour, and also featured model Kate Moss on the front cover. Despite this, and being released in multiple "deluxe" editions (one including a large format hardback book), the album was not a commercial success in comparison to Ferry's previous studio albums, barely making the UK Top 20 and dropping out of the chart altogether after only three weeks.

Ferry also provided vocals for the song Shameless on Groove Armada's 2010 album Black Light. The album received a nomination for the 53rd Grammy Awards in the category Best Electronic/Dance Album.

Ferry performing onstage at the London O2 Arena during the 2011 Roxy Music "For Your Pleasure" Tour

In June 2011 Ferry was made a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours for his contribution to the British music industry.^[22]

Personal life[link]

Several of the women Ferry had been involved with have appeared as cover models on the Roxy Music albums. Ferry dated the French singer and model Amanda Lear, who was photographed with a black jaguar for the cover of the For Your Pleasure album. She later went on to date David Bowie.^[23]

Ferry then began a relationship with model Jerry Hall. Ferry first met Hall when she posed for the Roxy Music album cover for Siren in Wales during the summer 1975. Hall's autobiography Tall Tales (1985) describes the photo session, and she elaborates on how the blue body paint she wore to look like a mythical siren would not wash off; Hall says that Ferry took her back to his house, claiming he would help her to remove the paint.^[24] Her stay at Ferry's Holland Park (London) home, following the album cover photo shoot, marked the start of their affair. Hall and Ferry lived together, sharing homes in London and in the ritzy Bel Air district of Los Angeles, and Hall also appeared in some of Ferry's music videos, including "Let's Stick Together" and "The Price of Love" (both 1976). Their relationship ended when she left him for Mick Jagger in late 1977. To this day, Ferry rarely speaks about Hall, but fans often speculate that his song "Kiss and Tell" from the Bête Noire album (1987) was Ferry's response to Hall's tell-all book about their relationship published a couple of years earlier.^[25] Additionally, Ferry's 1978 solo album The Bride Stripped Bare is widely believed^[26] to contain allusions to his break-up with Hall - particularly the song "When She Walks in the Room". Ferry's original songs on the album were in fact written some time before the relationship ended, although it was recorded afterwards.

On 26 June 1982 Ferry married London socialite and model Lucy Helmore (14 years his junior), who had become pregnant with their child Otis (b. 1 November 1982). Although her face is not seen, Helmore was the model on the front cover of Roxy Music's 1982 album Avalon, released a month before their wedding.^[27] The couple went on to have three more sons, Isaac, Tara and Merlin. After they married, Helmore helped Ferry to kick a prevailing cocaine habit, though herself attended Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous in the mid-1990s.^[27] In recent years Otis Ferry has become known in the British media for his pro-hunting political activities. He has been arrested and charged several times for activities relating to hunting, one of which led to a conviction.^[28] Ferry's second son, Isaac, was suspended from Eton College for sending abusive e-mails to an anti-hunting campaigner.^[27] By 2008, Tara was performing in a rock band called Rubber Kiss Goodbye and was about to start studying at Chelsea College of Art and Design.^[29] By 2008, Merlin was studying for "A" Levels at Marlborough College,^[29] and now plays guitar in his band Voltorb. Ferry's children have also contributed to his 2010 album Olympia. Tara played drums on several tracks, Merlin played guitar on one track, and Isaac was the producer of the album's artwork.^[30] Tara also toured with Ferry (and Roxy Music) on the band's 2011 For Your Pleasure tour, performing additional drums.^[31]

In 2000 the whole Ferry family were on a British Airways flight to Nairobi when a deranged passenger forced his way into the cockpit, attacked the pilot and caused the plane to lurch downward. Maintaining his composure in a frantic situation, Ferry took the time to berate one of his sons for using bad language during the incident. A crash was prevented when the assailant was eventually overcome.^[27]

Ferry and Helmore split in the early 2000s following an affair she had had, and were divorced in 2003.^[27] After their separation, British newspapers photographed Ferry with Katie Turner, 35 years his junior, naming her as his new 'girlfriend'.^[32] Ferry and Turner met while she worked as one of the dancers on Roxy Music's concert tour in 2001 (and is featured on the DVD of the 2001 Hammersmith Odeon Show). She went on to appear with Ferry on several TV shows to promote the Frantic album, and also performed on the Frantic tour in 2002. After their break-up, Ferry had a relationship with British socialite Lady Emily Compton.^[33] In 2006 he resumed his relationship with Katie Turner for some time.

Ferry began a relationship with Amanda Sheppard, one of his son's ex-girlfriends. Sheppard worked in public relations until she quit her job in 2009 after Ferry offered to support her financially.^[34] In early January 2012, Ferry married Sheppard in a private ceremony on the Turks and Caicos Islands.^[35]

Ferry was estimated to have a fortune of £30 million in the Sunday Times Rich List of 2010.^[36]

Nazi controversy[link]

In 2007 a controversy arose after Ferry praised the imagery and iconography of the Nazi régime in an interview with the German newspaper, Welt Am Sonntag. Ferry stated "the way that the Nazis staged themselves and presented themselves, my Lord!...I'm talking about the films of Leni Riefenstahl...And the buildings of Albert Speer and the mass marches and the flags—just fantastic. Really beautiful." In the same interview Ferry was also reported to have referred to his West London recording studio as "The Führerbunker" (Adolf Hitler's bunker during World War II).^[37][38][39]

Ferry's comments caused considerable controversy in the media and, the following month he made a public apology, stating "I apologise unreservedly for any offence caused by my comments on Nazi iconography, which were solely made from an art history perspective. I, like every right-minded individual, find the Nazi régime, and all it stood for, evil and abhorrent."^{[40][41][42][43][44][45]} At the time of the controversy, Ferry was contracted to the British retailer Marks and Spencer to model their "Autograph" menswear line. However, despite Ferry's public apology for his comments, Marks and Spencer opted to sever their ties with him.^[46]

Political views[link]

In 2008 Ferry alluded to support for the Conservative Party, referring to himself as "conservative by nature," but essentially apolitical. Without elaborating, he stated he was "proud" of his son Otis and declared the ban on fox hunting "futile." He also alluded to an opposition to "left-wing bitterness" and the spectre of "political correctness," but the model of free speech he cited was the anarchic 1970s and not the Thatcher era or a more distant past.^[47] In a 2009 interview, Ferry stated: “I would support a Cameron government. I have met him, and he’s a bright guy. I hope they do well. I don’t like the way the present Government has done things, most of all putting my son in prison for four and a half months, totally unlawfully ... and that’s not just my opinion: judges, all sorts, have said it was a stitch-up. It was politically motivated. The poor lad just wants to live the traditional country life.”^[48]

Ferry is a supporter of the Countryside Alliance and has played concerts to raise funds for the organisation.^[49]

In other media[link]

In 1985 Ferry contributed the song "Is Your Love Strong Enough" to the Ridley Scott-Tom Cruise film Legend. The song (featuring guitar work by David Gilmour) plays during the end credits of the U.S. theatrical release, and was released with the Tangerine Dream version of the soundtrack on CD (although this is out of print and rare). A promotional music video was created, integrating Ferry and Gilmour into scenes from the film; this is included as a bonus in the 2002 "Ultimate Edition" DVD release. The song was later covered by How To Destroy Angels for the soundtrack to the 2011 US version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

In 2005 Ferry appeared in Neil Jordan's movie, Breakfast on Pluto, starring Cillian Murphy as a young Irish transvestite who goes to London in the glam 1970s to find his mother. Ferry, appearing in a bit part as Mr. Silky String, played a suave but creepy punter who picks up the sexually ambiguous young man and, after a short conversation, attempts to strangle him in the front seat of his car.

Ferry is referenced in the comedy show The Mighty Boosh in the episode "Hitcher", as Vince Noir's adopted father and King of the Forest. At the end of the episode, it is revealed that 'Brian Ferry' actually resembles Terry Wogan.

Ferry is mentioned in Farkas Berci széjjelfagy, a paraphrase-parody of the Hungarian folk tale A kismalac és a farkasok, the plot of which is very similar to Three Little Pigs. Little pig, the hero of the tale, who is portrayed as a music fan in the parody, claims he wouldn't let the wolf enter his house, even if he were Bryan Ferry himself.

Ferry is mentioned in the musical comedy "Glee." Blaine Anderson is seen dancing to Roxy Music before making a comment about how he'd like to build a time machine, visit the 1970s, and give Ferry a high-five.

Ferry is also in a H&M Holiday 2011 campaign series with his son, Tara. The campaign also features supermodel Karen Elson with her twin sister Kate, bombshell Jerry Hall with her daughter Georgia May Jagger and models Sui He and Ming Xi. Musicians also were included as well. Singer Lykke Li with her sister Zara, and top model Abbey Lee Kershaw with her musician boyfriend Matthew Hutchinson.

Discography[link]

Studio albums[link]

• These Foolish Things (October 1973, UK #5)
• Another Time, Another Place (July 1974, UK #4)
• Let's Stick Together (September 1976, UK #19, US #160)
• In Your Mind (February 1977, UK #5, US #126, Aust.#1)
• The Bride Stripped Bare (April 1978, UK #13, US #159)
• Boys and Girls (May 1985, UK #1, US #63)
• Bête Noire (October 1987, UK #9, US #63)
• Taxi (13 April 1993, UK #2, US #79)
• Mamouna (5 September 1994, UK #11, US #94)
• As Time Goes By (15 October 1999, UK #16, US #199)
• Frantic (18 May 2002, UK #6, US #189)
• Dylanesque (5 March 2007, UK #5, US #117)
• Olympia (26 October 2010, UK #19, US #71)

Sources[link]

• Bracewell, Michael Roxy Music: Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno, Art, Ideas, and Fashion (Da Capo Press, 2005) ISBN 0-306-81400-5
• Buckley, David The Thrill of It All: The Story of Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music (Chicago Review Press, 2005) ISBN 1-55652-574-5
• Rigby, Jonathan Roxy Music: Both Ends Burning (Reynolds & Hearn, 2005; revised edition 2008) ISBN 1-903111-80-3
• Stump, Paul Unknown Pleasures: A Cultural Biography of Roxy Music (Quartet Books, 1998) ISBN 0-7043-8074-9

See also[link]

• Julian Barratt
• Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Bryan Ferry

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Bryan Ferry

• Official website

Iggy Pop
Iggy Pop performing at Parkenfestivalen 2011, Bodø, Norway
Background information
Birth name	James Newell Osterberg, Jr.
Born	(1947-04-21) April 21, 1947 (age 65) Muskegon, Michigan, U.S.
Genres	Punk rock, protopunk, garage rock, glam punk, shock rock, glam rock, hard rock
Occupations	Singer-songwriter, musician, producer, actor
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, keyboards, drums
Years active	1960–present
Labels	Virgin, RCA, Elektra
Associated acts	The Stooges, The Trolls, The Nymphs, The Iguanas, Slash, David Bowie, Deborah Harry, Blondie, Sum 41
Website	www.iggyandthestoogesmusic.com

Iggy Pop (born James Newell "Jim" Osterberg, Jr.; April 21, 1947) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor.^[1] Though considered an innovator of punk rock,^[1] Pop's music has encompassed a number of styles over the years, including pop, metal, jazz and blues.^[2] Pop became known as 'Iggy' in high school, during which time he served as drummer for local blues band The Iguanas. He is vocalist of influential protopunk band The Stooges (Pop and the other surviving members of the group reunited in 2003),^[3] having become known, since the late 1960s, for his outrageous and unpredictable stage antics.^[4][5]

Though the singer's popularity has waned and waxed throughout his career, Pop has recorded a number of well-known songs, including "Lust for Life", "Real Wild Child", "I Wanna Be Your Dog," "Candy" (a duet with Kate Pierson of The B-52's),^[6] "China Girl", "Nightclubbing", "Search and Destroy", and "The Passenger". The Stooges were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010

Early life[link]

Iggy Pop (AKA Iggy Stooge)^[7] was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the son of Louella (née Christensen) and James Newell Osterberg, Sr., a former high school English teacher and baseball coach at Fordson High School in Dearborn, Michigan.^[8] Osterberg was raised in a trailer park in Ypsilanti, Michigan.^[9] He is of Irish and English descent on his father's side, and of Norwegian and Danish ancestry on his mother's.^[10] His father was adopted by a Swedish American family and took on their surname (Österberg).^[10]

Music career[link]

Early days: 1960 to 1967[link]

The Prime Movers featuring Pop on drums

Osterberg began his music career as a drummer in different high school bands in Ann Arbor, Michigan. One band was the Iguanas, from the name of which he adopted his future moniker Iggy. After exploring local blues-style bands such as the Prime Movers (with brothers Dan and Michael Erlewine), he eventually dropped out of the University of Michigan^{[citation needed]} and moved to Chicago to learn more about blues. While in Chicago, he played drums in blues clubs, helped by Sam Lay (formerly of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band) who shared his connections with Iggy.^[11] Inspired by Chicago blues as well as bands like The Sonics and The MC5, he formed the Psychedelic Stooges and began calling himself Iggy. The band was composed of Iggy on vocals, Ron Asheton on guitar, Asheton's brother Scott on drums, and Dave Alexander on bass.

The Stooges era: 1968 to 1975[link]

The seeds of Iggy Pop's stage persona were sown when he saw The Doors perform in 1967 at the University of Michigan and was amazed by the stage antics and antagonism displayed by singer Jim Morrison.^[9] Morrison's extreme behavior, while performing in a popular band, inspired the young Pop to push the boundaries of stage performance. Pop was the first performer to do a stage-dive, which he started at a concert in Detroit.^[9] Other exploits of Pop include rolling around in broken glass, exposing himself to the crowd and vomiting on stage.^{[citation needed]}

In 1968, one year after their live debut and now dubbed The Stooges, the band signed with Elektra Records, again following in the footsteps of The Doors, who were Elektra's biggest act at the time (reportedly, Pop called Moe Howard to see if it was all right to call his band "The Stooges," to which Howard responded by merely saying "I don't care what they call themselves, as long as they're not the Three Stooges!" and hung up the phone). The Stooges' first two albums The Stooges, (on which Iggy was credited, much to his displeasure,^{[citation needed]} as "Iggy Stooge"), produced by John Cale; and Fun House, sold poorly. Shortly after the new members joined, the group disbanded because of Pop's growing heroin addiction.

In 1971, Iggy Pop and David Bowie met at Max's Kansas City, a nightclub and restaurant in New York City.^[12] Pop's career received a boost from his relationship with Bowie when Bowie decided in 1972 to produce an album with Pop in England. With James Williamson signed on as guitarist, the search began for a rhythm section. However, since neither Pop nor Bowie was satisfied with any players in England, they decided to re-unite The Stooges. It would not be a true reunion insofar as Dave Alexander, due to alcoholism, was unable to play on the record (he later died in 1975). Also, Ron Asheton grudgingly moved from guitar to bass to make way for Williamson to play guitar. The recording sessions produced the rock landmark Raw Power. After its release Scott Thurston was added to the band on keyboards/electric piano and Bowie continued his support, but Iggy's drug problem persisted. The Stooges' last show ended in a fight between the band and a group of bikers, documented on the album Metallic K.O. Drug abuse stalled his career again for several years.

Bowie and Berlin: 1976 to 1978[link]

Iggy Pop, October 25, 1977 at the State Theatre in Minneapolis

After the second breakup of The Stooges, Iggy Pop made some recordings with James Williamson, but these were not released until 1977 (as Kill City, credited jointly to Iggy Pop and Williamson). Pop was unable to control his drug use and checked himself into a mental institution, UCLA’s neuropsychiatric institute, to try to clean up. David Bowie was one of his few visitors there, and he continued to support his friend and collaborator. It was also rumored that Bowie would smuggle in cocaine to give to Pop.^[13] In 1976, Bowie took him along as his companion on the Station to Station tour. This was Iggy Pop's first exposure to large-scale professional touring and he was impressed, particularly with Bowie's work rate.

Bowie and Pop relocated to West Berlin to wean themselves off their addictions. In 1977, Pop signed with RCA and Bowie helped write and produce The Idiot and Lust for Life, Pop's two most acclaimed albums as a solo artist, the latter with another team of brothers, Hunt and Tony Sales, sons of comedian Soupy Sales. Among the songs Bowie and Pop wrote together were "China Girl", "Tonight", and "Sister Midnight", all of which Bowie performed on his own albums later on (the last being recorded with different lyrics as "Red Money" on the album Lodger). Bowie also played keyboards in Pop's live performances, some of which are featured on the album TV Eye in 1978. In return, Pop contributed backing vocals on Bowie's Low.

The Arista albums: 1979 to 1981[link]

Iggy Pop had grown dissatisfied with RCA, later admitting that he had made TV Eye as a quick way of fulfilling his three-album RCA contract. He moved to Arista Records, under whose banner he released New Values in 1979. This album was something of a Stooges reunion, with James Williamson producing and latter-day Stooge Scott Thurston playing guitar and keyboards. Not surprisingly, the album's style harked back to the guitar sound of the Stooges. Although highly regarded by many Iggy fans (some preferring it to the Bowie collaborations), New Values was not a popular success, despite some strong material including "Five Foot One" and "I'm Bored."

Iggy Pop, Cardiff, 1979

The album was moderately successful in Australia and New Zealand, however, and this led to Iggy Pop's first visit there to promote it. While in Melbourne, he made a memorable appearance on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's nationwide pop show Countdown. During his anarchic performance of I'm Bored, Pop made no attempt to conceal the fact that he was lip-synching, and he even tried to grab the teenage girls in the audience. He was also interviewed by host Ian "Molly" Meldrum, an exchange which was frequently punctuated by the singer jumping up and down on his chair and making loud exclamations of "G'day mate" in a mock Australian accent. His Countdown appearance is generally considered one of the highlights of the show's history and it cemented his popularity with Australian punk fans; since then he has often toured there. While visiting New Zealand, Iggy Pop recorded a music video for "I'm Bored", and attended a record company function where he appeared to slap a woman and throw wine over a photographer.^[14] While in Australia, Iggy Pop was also the guest on a live late-night commercial TV interview show on the Ten Network. It is not known whether a recording of this interview exists, but the famous Countdown appearance has often been re-screened in Australia.

During the recording of Soldier (1980), Iggy Pop and Williamson quarrelled over production (the latter apparently wanted a big, Phil Spector-type sound) and Williamson was fired. Bowie appeared on the song Play it Safe, performing backing vocals with the group Simple Minds. The album and its follow-up Party (1981) were both commercial failures, and Iggy Pop was dropped from Arista. His drug habit varied in intensity, but persisted.

The 1980s[link]

In 1980, Iggy Pop published his autobiography I NEED MORE, co-written with Anne Weher, an Ann Arbor arts patron. The book, which includes a selection of black and white photographs, features a foreword by Andy Warhol. Warhol says that he met Iggy when he was Jim Osterberg, at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 1966. "I don't know why he hasn't made it really big," wrote the one Pop artist about the other. "He is so good."

Pop at Pinkpop, 1987.

The 1982 album Zombie Birdhouse on Chris Stein's Animal label, with Stein himself producing, was no more commercially successful than his Arista works, but again, in 1983, Iggy Pop's fortunes changed when David Bowie recorded a cover of the song "China Girl". The song had originally appeared on The Idiot, and was a major hit on Bowie's blockbuster Let's Dance album. As co-writer of the song, Pop received substantial royalties. On Tonight in 1984, Bowie recorded two more of their co-written songs, this time from the Lust for Life album, "Tonight" and "Neighborhood Threat", assuring Iggy Pop financial security, at least for the short term. The support from Bowie enabled Pop to resolve problems and permitted him to take a three-year break during which he overcame his heroin addiction and took acting classes.

Additionally, Iggy Pop contributed the title song to the 1984 film Repo Man (with Steve Jones, previously of the Sex Pistols, on guitar) as well as an instrumental called "Repo Man Theme" that was played during the opening credits.

In 1985, Pop recorded some demos with Jones. He played these demos to Bowie, who was sufficiently impressed to offer to produce an album for Pop: 1986's New Wave-influenced Blah Blah Blah, featuring the single "Real Wild Child", a cover of "The Wild One" originally written and recorded by Australian rock 'n' roll pioneer Johnny O'Keefe in 1958. The single was a Top 10 hit in the UK and was successful around the world, especially in Australia, where for the last twenty years it has been used as the theme music for the ABC's late-night music video show Rage. It remains Pop's solitary brush with major commercial success. Blah Blah Blah was Pop's highest-charting album in the U.S. since The Idiot in 1977, peaking at No. 75 on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart.

Also in 1985, the movie Rock & Rule was released featuring performances by Iggy Pop and Lou Reed for the character Mok. Pop's song in the film was "Pain & Suffering" from the final sequence of the film.^[15]

In 1987, Pop appeared (along with Bootsy Collins) on a mostly instrumental album, Neo Geo, by Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. The music video for "Risky", written and directed by Meiert Avis, won the first ever MTV Breakthrough Video Award. The groundbreaking video explores transhumanist philosopher FM-2030's ideas of Nostalgia for the Future in the form of an imagined love affair between a robot and one of Man Ray's models in Paris in the late 1930s. Additional inspiration was drawn from Jean Baudrillard, Edvard Munch's 1894 painting Puberty, and Roland Barthes Death of the Author. The surrealist black-and-white video uses stop motion, light painting, and other retro in-camera effects techniques. Meiert Avis recorded Sakamoto while at work on the score for The Last Emperor in London. Sakamoto also appears in the video painting words and messages to an open shutter camera. Iggy Pop, who performs the vocals on "Risky", chose not to appear in the video, allowing his performance space to be occupied by the surrealist era robot.

Pop's follow-up to Blah Blah Blah, Instinct (1988), was a turnaround in musical direction. Its stripped-back, guitar-based sound leaned further towards the sound of the Stooges than any of his solo albums to date. His record label, which had most likely been expecting another Blah Blah Blah, dropped him. Nevertheless, the King Biscuit radio show recording of the Instinct tour (featuring guitarist Andy McCoy and Alvin Gibbs on bass) reaching Boston on July 19, 1988, remains one of punk-rock's most enduring live albums.^{[citation needed]} Working with rock attorney Stann Findelle, Pop scored more movie soundtrack inclusions in 1989, "Living on the Edge of the Night" in the Ridley Scott Michael Douglas thriller, Black Rain and "Love Transfusion" in Wes Craven's Shocker.

The 1990s[link]

In 1990, Pop recorded Brick by Brick, produced by Don Was, with members of Guns N' Roses and The B-52's as guests, as well as backup vocals by many local Hollywood groups, two of whom (Whitey Kirst and Craig Pike) would create his band to tour and perform on his Kiss My Blood video (1991), directed by world-famous director Tim Pope and filmed at the Olympia in Paris. The video attracted much controversy, as it featured much footage of Pop performing with his penis exposed to the audience. The album was his first Gold-certified album in the U.S. (denoting sales of over 500,000 copies) and featured his first Top 40 U.S. hit, "Candy", a duet with B-52's singer Kate Pierson.

Also in 1990, Pop starred in the controversial opera The Manson Family by composer John Moran, released on Point Music/Phillip Classics, where he sang the role of prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi. That year he was also contributed to the Red Hot Organization's AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Blue project, singing a version of "Well Did You Evah!" in a duet with Deborah Harry.

In 1991, Pop and Kirst contributed the song "Why Was I Born (Freddy's Dead)" to the soundtrack of the film Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare. The song also plays over the end credits of the film, with a compilation of clips from the A Nightmare on Elm Street series running alongside the end credits.

In 1992, he collaborated with Goran Bregović on the soundtrack for the movie Arizona Dream by Emir Kusturica. Pop sang four of the songs: In the Deathcar, TV Screen, Get the Money, and This is a Film. Also in 1992, he collaborated with the New York City band White Zombie. He recorded spoken word vocals on the intro and outro of the song "Black Sunshine" as well as playing the character of a writer in the video shot for the song. He is singled out for special thanks in the liner notes of the band's album La Sexorcisto: Devil Music, Vol. 1.

In 1993, Pop released American Caesar, including two successful singles, "Wild America" and "Beside You." The following year Pop contributed to Buckethead's album Giant Robot, including the songs "Buckethead's Toy Store" and "Post Office Buddy". He appears also on the Les Rita Mitsouko album Système D where he sings the duet "My Love is Bad" with Catherine Ringer.

In 1996, Pop again found mainstream fame when his 1977 song "Lust for Life" was featured in the film Trainspotting. A new video was recorded for the song, with clips from the film and studio footage of Iggy dancing with one of its stars, Ewen Bremner. An Iggy Pop concert also served as a plot point in the film. The song has also been used in TV commercials for Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines (with many music critics denouncing the usage of the song to promote peppy cruises) and as the theme music to The Jim Rome Show, a nationally-syndicated American sports talk show.

In 1996, Pop released Naughty Little Doggie, with Whitey Kirst returning on guitar, and the single "I Wanna Live". In 1997, he remixed Raw Power to give it a rougher, more hard-edged sound; fans had complained for years that Bowie's official "rescue effort" mix was muddy and lacking in bass. Pop testified in the reissue's liner notes that on the new mix, "everything's still in the red". He co-produced his 1999 album Avenue B with Don Was, releasing the single "Corruption." Pop produced 2001's Beat 'Em Up, which gave birth to The Trolls, releasing the single "Football" featuring Trolls alumni Whitey Kirst and brother Alex.

In 1997, Pop was credited with the soundtrack to the film The Brave.

In the early to middle 1990s, Pop would make several guest appearances on the Nickelodeon show The Adventures of Pete and Pete. He played James Mecklenberg, Nona Mecklenberg's father.

The Stooges reunion: 2003 to present[link]

Pop's 2003 album Skull Ring featured collaborators Sum 41, Green Day, Peaches, and The Trolls, as well as Ron and Scott Asheton, reuniting the three surviving founding members of The Stooges for the first time since 1974. Pop made a guest appearance on Peaches's song Kick It as well as the video. Also in 2003, his first full-length biography was published. Gimme Danger – The Story of Iggy Pop was written by Joe Ambrose; Pop did not collaborate on the biography or publicly endorse it. Having enjoyed working with the Ashetons on Skull Ring, Pop reformed The Stooges with bassist Mike Watt (formerly of the Minutemen) filling in for Dave Alexander, and Fun House saxophonist Steve Mackay rejoining the lineup. They have toured regularly since 2004. That year, Pop opened Madonna's Reinvention World Tour in Dublin.

Iggy and The Stooges played the Glastonbury Festival in June 2007. Their set included material from the 2007 album The Weirdness and classics such as "No Fun and "I Wanna Be Your Dog." Pop also caused controversy in June 2007 when he was interviewed on the BBC's coverage of the Glastonbury Festival. He used the phrase "paki shop", apparently unaware of its racist connotations, prompting three complaints and an apology from the BBC.^[16]

On March 10, 2008 Pop appeared at Madonna's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Together with The Stooges he sang raucous versions of two Madonna hits "Burning Up" and "Ray of Light." Before leaving the stage he looked directly at Madonna, quoting "You make me feel shiny and new, like a virgin, touched for the very first time.", from Madonna's hit song "Like A Virgin". According to guitarist Ron Asheton, Madonna asked The Stooges to perform in her place, as a protest to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for not inducting The Stooges despite six appearances on the nomination ballot.^[17] Pop also sang on the "No Fun" cover by Asian Dub Foundation on their 2008 album Punkara.

On June 1, 2008, The Stooges were voted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends online Hall of Fame.^[18]

On January 6, 2009, original Stooges guitarist, and Iggy's self-described best friend Ron Asheton, was found dead from an apparent heart attack. He was 60 years old.

In 2009 James Williamson rejoined the band after 29 years.^[19]

On December 15, 2009 it was announced that The Stooges would be inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 15, 2010. Pop had "about two hours of a strong emotional reaction" to the news.^[20]

In March 2010 the Stooges and Iggy Pop were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.^[21]

In 2011, "I Wanna Be Your Dog" by The Stooges was voted a Legendary Michigan Song.^[22]

Recent career[link]

Pop supplied vocals for the 1999 Death in Vegas UK Top-10 single Aisha. The same year he appeared on Hashisheen, The End Of Law, a collaborative effort by Bill Laswell, reading on the tracks The Western Lands and A Quick Trip to Alamut. He also sang on the tracks Rolodex Propaganda and Enfilade by At the Drive-In in 2000.

For New Year's Eve 1997, Iggy was the headliner for the annual Australian three-day concert the Falls Festival. He gave one of the most memorable performances in the history of the festival. A member of the audience got to do the countdown for the new year with Pop as part of a competition to guess Pop's new year's resolution. (It was "To do nothing and make a lot of money!")

Pop at Beale Street Music Festival, Memphis in May 2007.

In 2005 Pop appeared, along with Madonna, Little Richard, Bootsy Collins, and The Roots' Questlove, in an American TV commercial for the Motorola ROKR phone. In early 2006, Iggy and the Stooges played in Australia and New Zealand for the Big Day Out. They also began work on a new album, The Weirdness, which was recorded by Steve Albini and released in March 2007. In August 2006 Iggy and the Stooges performed at the Lowlands pop festival in the Netherlands, Hodokvas in Slovakia and in the Sziget Festival in Budapest.

Author Paul Trynka completed a biography of Iggy Pop (with his blessing) called Open Up and Bleed, published in early 2007. More recently^[when?], Iggy and the Stooges played at Bam Margera's wedding and Pop appeared on the single "Punkrocker" with the Teddybears in a Cadillac television commercial. Pop was also the voice of Lil' Rummy on the Comedy Central cartoon Lil' Bush and confirmed that he has done voices for American Dad and Grand Theft Auto IV,^[23] which also included The Stooges song "I Wanna Be Your Dog" (though the game's manual credited Iggy Pop as the artist).

Pop guested on Profanation (Preparation for a Coming Darkness), the new album by the Bill Laswell-helmed group Praxis, which was released on January 1, 2008.^[24]

He fronts (from January 2009) a £25 million TV ad campaign for Swiftcover, using the strapline "Get a Life".^[25]

Pop collaborated with Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse on the album "Dark Night of the Soul", singing the track "Pain."

Pop's new solo album, Préliminaires, was released on June 2, 2009. Inspired by a novel by French author Michel Houellebecq (born Michel Thomas) called La Possibilité d'une île (2005; Trans. as The Possibility of an Island by Gavin Bowd, 2006), Iggy was approached to provide the soundtrack for a documentary film on Michel and his attempts to make a film from his novel. Iggy's favourite character from Michel's novel is a little white dog named Fox. Iggy describes this new release as a "quieter album with some jazz overtones", the first single off the album, "King of the Dogs", bearing a sound strongly influenced by New Orleans jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton. Iggy also admits that it's his response to being "sick of listening to idiot thugs with guitars banging out crappy music". The album is available on legal download sites, CD, and a Deluxe Boxset is available at only 6000 units worldwide. This boxset contains the Préliminaires album, a collector "Les Feuilles Mortes" b/w "King Of The Dogs" 7 inch, the cover of which is Iggy's portrait by Marjane Satrapi, and a 38 page booklet of drawings also by Marjane Satrapi.

Iggy sings on "We're All Gonna Die" on Slash's first solo album Slash which was released in April 2010.^[26]

Iggy appeared as a character in the video game Lego Rock Band to sing his song The Passenger and also lent his voice for the in game tutorial.^[27]

With reference to the song The Passenger, Iggy Pop has appeared on NZ television advertising phone networks to show how he can get a band to play together by conference call.

After a March 2010 stage diving accident, Pop claimed he would no longer stage dive. However, he did so on three occasions at a concert in Madrid, Spain on April 30, 2010.^[28] And it was much the same in London at the Hammersmith Apollo on May 2, 2010.^[29] On July 9, 2010 he again stage dived in Zottegem, Belgium, causing Iggy to bleed from the face.^[30]

In June 2010, Iggy Pop appeared at Yonge and Dundas Square in Toronto with the reformed Stooges on the NXNE main stage. The sheer size of the audience closed a central artery of Yonge Street.

In 2011 he teamed up with The Lilies, a collaboration between Sergio Dias of Os Mutantes and French group Tahiti Boy & The Palmtree Family to record the single 'Why?'.

Pop at the UK Hop Farm Festival, July 2011

On April 7, 2011, at age 63, Pop performed "Real Wild Child" on the tenth season of American Idol; the Los Angeles Times music blog "Pop & Hiss" described Pop as being "still magnetic, still disturbing."^[31]

Film career[link]

Iggy Pop, Harvard Square March 1977

Pop has had a limited career as an actor. He has appeared in sixteen movies, including Sid and Nancy (a non-speaking cameo role), The Color of Money, Hardware (voice only), The Crow: City of Angels, The Rugrats Movie, Snow Day, Coffee and Cigarettes (opposite Tom Waits, in the third segment of the film, "Somewhere in California"), Cry-Baby, Dead Man, Tank Girl and Atolladero, a Spanish science fiction Western. Pop also sings the main theme for Atolladero, he is the voice of The Beast From Another Dimension in the cult animated film Rock & Rule and also sings its song, "Pain and Suffering".

He has been featured in five television series, including Tales from the Crypt, The Adventures of Pete & Pete, where he played Nona's dad in the second and third season, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, in which he played Yelgrun in "The Magnificent Ferengi" episode. With The Stooges, he was also featured in an episode of MTV's Bam's Unholy Union as the main band performing at Bam's wedding. Additionally, a portion of the music video for Iggy's Butt Town was featured on an episode of Beavis and Butthead.

Pop has been profiled in four rockumentaries and has had songs on eighteen soundtracks, including Crocodile Dundee 2, Trainspotting, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Haggard, Arizona Dream, Repo Man, Black Rain, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, Shocker, and Kurt Cobain: About a Son.

In the movie Velvet Goldmine, Ewan McGregor portrays Curt Wilde, a character loosely based on Iggy Pop. McGregor performs Pop's songs "TV Eye" and "Gimme Danger" in the film.

Pop voiced Lil' Rummy on the Comedy Central show Lil' Bush.

Iggy Pop played himself as the DJ of the fictional rock station Liberty Rock Radio 97.8 in the video game Grand Theft Auto IV.

Pop provided the voice for a character in the English language version of the 2007 animated film Persepolis.

Iggy Pop also voiced a cameo in the American Dad! episode American Dream Factory as Jerry, the drummer, in Steve's band.

Iggy makes an appearance in the 2008 feature documentary by Nik Sheehan about Brion Gysin and the Dreamachine entitled 'FLicKeR'.

In 2008, Iggy's music was featured in a movie adaption of Irvine Welsh's best-selling novel Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance.

In January 2009, Iggy was signed up as the face of Swiftcover, the UK-based online insurance company.^[32] The advert was then banned by the Advertising Standards Authority on April 28, 2009 for being misleading – it implied that Iggy Pop himself had an insurance policy with Swiftcover when at the time the company did not insure musicians.^[33]

Iggy Pop featured alongside indie starlet Greta Gerwig (Noah Baumbach's Greenberg, Baghead, Nights and Weekends) in the film "Art House" which will world premiere at the Nashville Film Festival in April 2010.

Iggy Pop also featured as a voice talent in the 2004 ATARI video game DRIV3R, which was produced by Reflections Interactive.

In 2010, the Stooges song "Search and Destroy" was featured in the Lost: Final Chapter episode 04, The Substitute.^[34]

Iggy's cover of the Richard Berry song Louie Louie is used during the opening credits of Michael Moore's 2009 film Capitalism: A Love Story

In February 2009, Iggy Pop played the character Victor in the movie Suck.

Iggy was also referenced in The Venture Brothers Episode Showdown at Cremation Creek (Part I) and Showdown at Cremation Creek (Part II) alongside Klaus Nomi as the bodyguards to The Sovereign who is in fact David Bowie, Iggy along with Klaus who defect to Phantom Limb who then tries to kill David Bowie with a large glowing ball that he can summon at will to kill people on the command "POP!" He was quoted as saying to him before he kills him, "Too long have I been made to play the idiot, now you're going to be MY DOG!"

Iggy worked with Johnny Depp on several films: they appeared together in Cry-Baby and Dead Man, and Iggy provided the soundtrack for The Brave, which was directed by and starred Depp.

In the Super Mario Bros. video game series, the character Iggy Koopa was named after him.^[35]

Future biopic[link]

The Passenger was the putative name for a biographical film about Pop's early career with the Stooges. The film was to be directed by Nick Gomez, and Elijah Wood was to play Iggy Pop.^[36][37][38] As of 2010^[update], the project appears to be shelved.^[39]

Pop liked the script but refused to take part in the film. He said:

The script ain't chopped liver... It was a work of art. But subjectively, I don't want to be involved in any way. A producer and the writer sent me a very decent letter, and asked me to write back if I didn't want them to do it... I don't feel negative about it at all.

He also called Wood "a very poised and talented actor".^[40]

Classical scholarship[link]

In 1995, an established journal of classical scholarship, Classics Ireland, published Pop's reflections on the applicability of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to the modern world in a short article, Caesar Lives, (Vol. 2, 1995).^[41] Pop also relates how reading Gibbon while on tour in the Southern United States inspired him to a spontaneous soliloquy he called "Caesar".

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

With The Stooges[link]

• 1969 – The Stooges
• 1970 – Fun House
• 1973 – Raw Power
• 2007 – The Weirdness

With James Williamson[link]

• 1977 – Kill City

Solo[link]

• 1977 – The Idiot
• 1977 – Lust for Life
• 1979 – New Values
• 1980 – Soldier
• 1981 – Party
• 1982 – Zombie Birdhouse
• 1986 – Blah Blah Blah
• 1988 – Instinct
• 1990 – Brick by Brick
• 1993 – American Caesar
• 1996 – Naughty Little Doggie
• 1999 – Avenue B
• 2001 – Beat 'Em Up
• 2003 – Skull Ring
• 2009 – Préliminaires
• 2012 - Après

Personal life[link]

Pop lives in the Miami area.^[42] He has been married three times: to Wendy Weissberg (for several weeks in 1968, the marriage was annulled shortly thereafter)^[43] to Suchi Asano (1984–1999),^[44] and most recently, he wed longtime sweetheart Nina Alu. He has a son, Eric Benson, born in 1970.^[45]

In the 1990s, Iggy Pop developed a friendship with Johnny Depp, Jim Jarmusch and tattoo artist Jonathan Shaw. According to Shaw, the four wore matching rings depicting a skull, and all but Iggy also had a similar skull-and-crossbones tattoo.^[46]

References[link]

Further reading/info[link]

• Trynka, Paul (2007). Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed. London: Little, Brown Book Group. ISBN 1-84744-019-3. 
• Logan, Nick; Woffinden, Bob (1977). The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock (First Edition). New York: Harmony Books. ISBN 0-517-52852-5. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Iggy Pop

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Iggy Pop

• Iggy & The Stooges Official Website
• Iggy Pop at the Internet Movie Database
• Iggy Pop at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)
• http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/music/clips/2806/ (Iggy Pop's infamous 1977 interview with Peter Gzowski, from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's archive)
• Video of Iggy Pop collaboration with Sergio Dias (Os Mutantes) + Tahiti Boy & the Palmtree Family

Van Morrison
Van Morrison at Marin Civic Center, 2007
Background information
Birth name	George Ivan Morrison
Also known as	Van the Man The Belfast Cowboy
Born	(1945-08-31) 31 August 1945 (age 66)
Origin	Belfast, Northern Ireland
Genres	Rock, blues, rhythm and blues, folk, blue-eyed soul, celtic, rock and roll, jazz fusion, country, soft rock
Occupations	Singer-songwriter, musician
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, harmonica, saxophones, keyboards, drums, tambourine, ukulele
Years active	1958–present
Labels	Decca Bang Warner Bros. London Mercury Exile/Polydor Verve Point Black Virgin Universal Blue Note Lost Highway Listen to the Lion/EMI Manhattan
Associated acts	Them
Website	www.vanmorrison.com

Van Morrison, OBE (born George Ivan Morrison; 31 August 1945) is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician. His live performances at their best are regarded as transcendental^[1][2][3] and inspired;^[4][5][6] while some of his recordings, such as the studio albums Astral Weeks and Moondance, and the live album It's Too Late to Stop Now, are widely viewed as among the greatest ever made.^[7][8][9]

Known as "Van the Man" to his fans,^[10] Morrison started his professional career when, as a teenager in the late 1950s, he played a variety of instruments including guitar, harmonica, keyboards and saxophone for various Irish showbands covering the popular hits of the day. He rose to prominence in the mid-1960s as the lead singer of the Northern Irish R&B band Them, with whom he recorded the garage band classic "Gloria". His solo career began under the pop-hit oriented guidance of Bert Berns with the release of the hit single "Brown Eyed Girl" in 1967. After Berns' death, Warner Bros. Records bought out his contract and allowed him three sessions to record Astral Weeks in 1968.^[11] Even though this album would gradually garner high praise, it was initially poorly received; however, the next one, Moondance, established Morrison as a major artist,^[12] and throughout the 1970s he built on his reputation with a series of critically acclaimed albums and live performances. Morrison continues to record and tour, producing albums and live performances that sell well and are generally warmly received, sometimes collaborating with other artists, such as Georgie Fame and The Chieftains. In 2008 he performed Astral Weeks live for the first time since 1968.

Much of Morrison's music is structured around the conventions of soul music and R&B, such as the popular singles "Brown Eyed Girl", "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)", "Domino" and "Wild Night". An equal part of his catalogue consists of lengthy, loosely connected, spiritually inspired musical journeys that show the influence of Celtic tradition, jazz, and stream-of-consciousness narrative, such as Astral Weeks and lesser-known works such as Veedon Fleece and Common One.^[13][14] The two strains together are sometimes referred to as "Celtic Soul".^[15]

Morrison has received considerable acclaim, including six Grammy Awards, being inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and appearing on several "Greatest Artists" lists.

Life and career[link]

Early life and musical roots: 1945–64[link]

George Ivan (Van) Morrison was born on 31 August 1945, at 125 Hynford Street, Bloomfield, East Belfast, Northern Ireland as the only child of George Morrison, a shipyard electrician, and Violet Stitt Morrison, a singer and tap dancer in her youth.^[16] Van Morrison's family roots descend from the Ulster Scots population that settled in Belfast.^[17][18][19] From 1950 to 1956, Morrison, who began to be known as "Van" during this time, attended Elmgrove Primary School.^[20] Morrison's father had what was at the time one of the largest record collections in Ulster (acquired during his sojourn in Detroit, Michigan in the early 1950s),^[21] and the young Morrison grew up listening to artists such as Jelly Roll Morton, Ray Charles, Lead Belly, and Solomon Burke;^[20][22] of whom Morrison later said, "If it weren't for guys like Ray and Solomon, I wouldn't be where I am today. Those guys were the inspiration that got me going. If it wasn't for that kind of music, I couldn't do what I'm doing now."^[23] His father's record collection exposed him to various musical genres, such as the blues of Muddy Waters; the gospel of Mahalia Jackson; the jazz of Charlie Parker; the folk music of Woody Guthrie; and country music from Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers,^[20] while the first record he ever bought was by blues musician Sonny Terry.^[24] When Lonnie Donegan had a hit with "Rock Island Line", written by Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly), Morrison felt he was familiar with and able to connect with skiffle music as he had been hearing Lead Belly before that.^[25][26]

Morrison's father bought him his first acoustic guitar when he was eleven, and he learned to play rudimentary chords from the song book, The Carter Family Style, edited by Alan Lomax.^[27] A year later, when he was twelve years old, Morrison formed his first band,^[28] a skiffle group, "The Sputniks", named after the recently launched Soviet satellite, Sputnik 1.^[29] In 1958, the band played at some of the local cinemas, and Morrison took the lead, contributing most of the singing and arranging. Other short-lived groups followed – at fourteen, he formed Midnight Special, another modified skiffle band and played at a school concert.^[27] Then, when he heard Jimmy Giuffre playing saxophone on "The Train and The River", he talked his father into buying him a saxophone,^[30] and took lessons in tenor sax and music reading.^[31] Now playing the saxophone, Morrison joined with various local bands, including one called Deanie Sands and the Javelins, with whom he played guitar and shared singing. The line-up of the band was lead vocalist Deanie Sands, guitarist George Jones and drummer, vocalist Roy Kane.^[32] Later the four main musicians of the Javelins, with the addition of Wesley Black as pianist, became known as the Monarchs.^[33]

Morrison attended Orangefield High School, leaving in July 1960 with no qualifications.^[34] As a member of a working-class community, it was expected that he would get a regular full-time job,^[33] so after several short apprenticeship positions, he settled into a job as a window cleaner— later alluded to in his songs, "Cleaning Windows" and "Saint Dominic's Preview".^[35] However, he had been developing his musical interests from an early age and continued playing with the Monarchs part-time. Young Morrison also played with the Harry Mack Showband, the Great Eight, with his older workplace friend, Geordie (G. D.) Sproule, whom he later named as one of his biggest influences.^[36]

At age 17, he toured Europe for the first time with the Monarchs, now calling themselves the International Monarchs. This Irish showband,^[37] with Morrison playing saxophone, guitar and harp, in addition to back-up duty on bass and drums, toured steamy clubs and US Army bases in Scotland, England, and Germany, often playing five sets a night.^[32] While in Germany, the band recorded a single, "Boozoo Hully Gully"/"Twingy Baby", under the name Georgie and The Monarchs. This was Morrison's first recording, taking place in November 1963 at Ariola Studios in Cologne with Morrison on saxophone; it made the lower reaches of the German charts.^[38][39]

Upon returning to Belfast in November 1963, the group disbanded,^[40] so Morrison connected with Geordie Sproule again and played with him in the Manhattan Showband along with guitarist Herbie Armstrong. When Armstrong auditioned to play with Brian Rossi and the Golden Eagles, Morrison went along and was hired as a blues singer.^[41]

Them: 1964–66[link]

The roots of Them, the band that first broke Morrison on the international scene, came in April 1964 when Morrison responded to an advert for musicians to play at a new R&B club at the Maritime Hotel – an old dance hall frequented by sailors.^[42] The new R&B club needed a band for its opening night; however, Morrison had left the Golden Eagles (the group with which he had been performing at the time), so he created a new band out of The Gamblers, an East Belfast group formed by Ronnie Millings, Billy Harrison, and Alan Henderson in 1962.^[43][44] Eric Wrixon, still a schoolboy, was the piano player and keyboardist.^[45] Morrison played saxophone and harmonica and shared vocals with Billy Harrison. They followed Eric Wrixon's suggestion for a new name, and The Gamblers morphed into Them, their name taken from the Fifties horror movie Them!.^[46]

The band's strong R&B performances at the Maritime attracted attention. Them performed without a routine and Morrison ad libbed, creating his songs live as he performed.^[47] While the band did covers, they also played some of Morrison's early songs, such as "Could You Would You", which he had written in Camden Town while touring with The Manhattan Showband.^[48] The debut of Morrison's "Gloria" took place on stage here. Sometimes, depending on his mood, the song could last up to twenty minutes. Morrison has stated that "Them lived and died on the stage at the Maritime Hotel," believing that the band did not manage to capture the spontaneity and energy of their live performances on their records.^[49] The statement also reflected the instability of the Them lineup, with numerous members passing through the ranks after the definitive Maritime period. Morrison and Henderson would remain the only constants, and a highly unsuccessful version of Them even soldiered on after Morrison's departure.^[50]

Dick Rowe of Decca Records became aware of the band's performances, and signed Them to a standard two-year contract. In that period, they released two albums and ten singles, with two more singles released after Morrison departed the band. They had three chart hits, "Baby, Please Don't Go" (1964), "Here Comes the Night" (1965), and "Mystic Eyes" (1965),^[51] though it was the b-side of "Baby, Please Don't Go", the garage band classic, "Gloria",^[52] that went on to become a rock standard covered by Patti Smith, The Doors, Shadows of Knight, Jimi Hendrix and many others.^[53]

	"Gloria" noicon Morrison's garage rock classic was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. As described by Paul Williams: "Van Morrison's voice a fierce beacon in the darkness, the lighthouse at the end of the world. Resulting in one of the most perfect rock anthems known to humankind."[54]
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Building on the success of their singles in the United States, and riding on the back of the British Invasion, Them undertook a two month tour of America in May and June 1966 that included a residency from 30 May to 18 June at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles.^[55] The Doors were the supporting act on the last week,^[56] and Morrison's influence on The Doors singer, Jim Morrison, was noted by John Densmore in his book Riders On The Storm. Brian Hinton relates how "Jim Morrison learned quickly from his near namesake's stagecraft, his apparent recklessness, his air of subdued menace, the way he would improvise poetry to a rock beat, even his habit of crouching down by the bass drum during instrumental breaks."^[57] On the final night, the two Morrisons and the two bands jammed together on "Gloria".^[58][59][60]

Toward the end of the tour the band members became involved in a dispute with their manager, Decca Records' Phil Solomon, over the revenues paid to the band; that, coupled with the expiry of their work visas, meant the band returned from America dejected. After two more concerts in Ireland, Them split up. Morrison concentrated on writing some of the songs that would appear on Astral Weeks, while the remnants of the band reformed in 1967 and relocated in America.^[61]

Start of solo career with Bang Records and "Brown Eyed Girl" – 1967[link]

	"Brown Eyed Girl" noicon Morrison's classic 1967 hit single which appeared on the album Blowin' Your Mind!. In 2007, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.[62]
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Bert Berns, Them’s producer and composer of their 1965 hit, "Here Comes the Night", persuaded Morrison to return to New York to record solo for his new label, Bang Records.^[63] Morrison flew over and signed a contract he had not fully studied.^[64] Then, during a two-day recording session at A & R Studios starting 28 March 1967, eight songs were recorded, originally intended to be used as four singles.^[65] Instead, these songs were released as the album Blowin' Your Mind! without Morrison being consulted. He said he only became aware of the album's release when a friend mentioned on a phone call that he had just bought a copy of it. He later commented to Donal Corvin in a 1973 interview: "I wasn't really happy with it. He picked the bands and tunes. I had a different concept of it."^[66]

However, from these early sessions emerged "Brown Eyed Girl". Captured on the 22nd take on the first day,^[67] this song was released as a single in mid-June 1967,^[68] reaching number ten in the US charts in 1967. "Brown Eyed Girl" became Morrison's most played song and over the years it has remained a classic; forty years later in 2007, it was the fourth most requested song of DJs in the US.^[69]

Following the death of Berns in 1967, Morrison became involved in a contract dispute with Berns' widow that prevented him from performing on stage or recording in the New York area.^[70] The song "Big Time Operators", released in 1993, is thought to allude to his dealings with the New York music business during this time period.^[71] He then moved to Boston, Massachusetts, and was soon confronted with personal and financial problems; he had "slipped into a malaise" and had trouble finding concert bookings.^[72] However, through the few gigs he could find, he regained his professional footing and started recording with the Warner Bros. Records label.^[73][74] The record company managed to buy out his contract with Bang Records. Morrison fulfilled a clause that bound him to submit thirty-six original songs within a year to Web IV Music, Berns' music publishing company, by recording thirty-one songs in one session; however, Ilene Berns thought the songs "nonsense music ... about ringworms" and didn't use them.^[75][76] The throwaway compositions would come to be known as the "revenge" songs.^[77]

[edit] Astral Weeks – 1968

"Astral Weeks is about the power of the human voice – ecstatic agony, agonising ecstacy. Here is an Irish tenor reborn as a White Negro – a Caucasian Soul Man – pleading and beseeching over a bed of dreamy folk-jazz instrumentation: acoustic bass, brushed drums, vibes and acoustic guitar, the odd string quartet – and of course flute."

Barney Hoskyns – Mojo^[78]

	Astral Weeks noicon The 1968 title song featuring the opening lines of the album: "If I ventured in the slipstream between the viaducts of your dream". His early voice was described as "flinty and tender, beseeching and plaintive".[79]
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His first album for Warner Bros. Records was Astral Weeks (which he had already performed in several clubs around Boston), a mystical song cycle, often considered to be his best work and one of the best albums of all time.^[80][81] Morrison has said, "When Astral Weeks came out, I was starving, literally."^[82] Released in 1968, the album eventually achieved critical acclaim, but it originally received an indifferent response from the public. To this day, it remains in an unclassifiable music genre and has been described variously as hypnotic, meditative, and as possessing a unique musical power.^[80] It has been compared to French Impressionism and mystical Celtic poetry.^[83][84][85] A 2004 Rolling Stone magazine review begins with the words: "This is music of such enigmatic beauty that thirty-five years after its release, Astral Weeks still defies easy, admiring description."^[86] Alan Light would later describe Astral Weeks as "like nothing he had done previously—and really, nothing anyone had done previously. Morrison sings of lost love, death, and nostalgia for childhood in the Celtic soul that would become his signature."^[15] It has been placed on many lists of best albums of all time.^[7] In the 1995 Mojo list of 100 Best Albums, it was listed as number two and was number nineteen on the Rolling Stone magazine's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003.^[87][88] In December 2009, it was voted the top Irish album of all time by a poll of leading Irish musicians conducted by Hot Press magazine.^[89][90]

[edit] From Moondance to Into the Music: 1970–79

Morrison's third solo album, Moondance, which was released in 1970, became his first million selling album and reached number twenty-nine on the Billboard charts.^[91][92][93] The style of Moondance stood in contrast to that of Astral Weeks. Whereas Astral Weeks had a sorrowful and vulnerable tone, Moondance restored a more optimistic and cheerful message to his music.^[94] The title track, although not released in the US as a single until 1977, received heavy play in FM radio formats.^[95] "Into the Mystic" has also gained a wide following over the years.^[96][97] The single released was "Come Running", which reached the American Top 40.^[98] Moondance was both well received and favourably reviewed. Lester Bangs and Greil Marcus had a combined full page review in Rolling Stone, stating that Morrison now had "the striking imagination of a consciousness that is visionary in the strongest sense of the word."^[99] "That was the type of band I dig," Morrison said of the Moondance sessions. "Two horns and a rhythm section – they're the type of bands that I like best." He produced the album himself as he felt like nobody else knew what he wanted.^[100] Moondance was listed at number sixty-five on the Rolling Stone magazine's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.^[88] In March 2007, Moondance was listed as number seventy-two on the NARM Rock and Roll Hall of Fame list of the "Definitive 200".^[101]

Over the next few years, he released a succession of albums, starting with a second one in 1970. His Band and the Street Choir had a free, more relaxed sound than Moondance, but not the perfection, in the opinion of critic Jon Landau who felt like "a few more numbers with a gravity of 'Street Choir' would have made this album as perfect as anyone could have stood."^[102] It contained the hit single "Domino", which charted at number nine in the Billboard Hot 100.^[103]

In 1971, he released another well-received album, Tupelo Honey.^[104] This album produced the hit single "Wild Night" that was later covered by John Mellencamp. The title song has a notably country-soul feel about it^[105] and the album ended with another country tune, "Moonshine Whiskey". Morrison said he originally intended to make an all country album.^[106] The recordings were as live as possible – after rehearsing the songs the musicians would go into the studio and play a whole set in one take.^[107] His co-producer, Ted Templeman, described this recording process as the "scariest thing I've ever seen. When he's got something together, he wants to put it down right away with no overdubbing."^[108]

Released in 1972, Saint Dominic's Preview, revealed Morrison's break from the more accessible style of his previous three albums and moving back towards the more daring, adventurous, and meditative aspects of Astral Weeks. The combination of two styles of music demonstrated a versatility not previously found in his earlier albums.^[109] Two songs, "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)" and "Redwood Tree", reached the Hot 100 singles chart.^[98] The songs "Listen to the Lion" and "Almost Independence Day" are each over ten minutes long and employ the type of poetic imagery not heard since Astral Weeks.^[109][110] It was his highest charting album in the US until his Top Ten debut on Billboard 200 in 2008.^[111]

He released his next album Hard Nose the Highway in 1973 receiving mixed, but mostly negative, reviews. The album contained the popular song "Warm Love" but otherwise has been largely dismissed critically.^[112] In a 1973 Rolling Stone review, it was described as: "psychologically complex, musically somewhat uneven and lyrically excellent."^[113]

During a three-week vacation visit to Ireland in October 1973, Morrison wrote seven of the songs that would make up his next album, Veedon Fleece.^[114] Though it attracted scant initial attention, its critical stature grew markedly over the years—with Veedon Fleece now often considered to be one of Morrison's most impressive and poetic works.^[115][116] In a 2008 Rolling Stone review, Andy Greene writes that when released in late 1974: "it was greeted by a collective shrug by the rock critical establishment" and concludes: "He's released many wonderful albums since, but he's never again hit the majestic heights of this one."^[117] "You Don't Pull No Punches, But You Don't Push the River", one of the album's side closers, exemplifies the long, hypnotic, cryptic Morrison with its references to visionary poet William Blake and to the seemingly Grail-like Veedon Fleece object.^[118]

Morrison would not release a follow-up album for another three years. After a decade without taking time off, he said in an interview, he needed to get away from music completely and ceased listening to it for several months.^[119] Also suffering from writer's block, he seriously considered leaving the music business for good.^[120] Speculation that an extended jam session would be released either under the title Mechanical Bliss, or Naked in the Jungle, or Stiff Upper Lip, came to nothing,^[121] and Morrison's next album was A Period of Transition in 1977, a collaboration with Dr. John, who had appeared at The Last Waltz concert with Morrison in 1976. The album received a mild critical reception and marked the beginning of a very prolific period of song making.

	"Wavelength" noicon Morrison sings the opening lines in falsetto and synthesizers mimic the sounds of the short wave radio stations that he listened to as a boy.
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Into the Music: "The album's last four songs, "Angelou", "And the Healing Has Begun", and "It's All in the Game/You Know What They're Writing About" are a veritable tour-de-force with Morrison summoning every vocal trick at his disposal from "Angelou's climactic shouts to the sexually-charged, half-mumbled monologue in "And the Healing Has Begun" to the barely audible whisper that is the album's final sound." (Scott Thomas Review')

The following year, Morrison released Wavelength; it became at that time the fastest-selling album of his career and soon went gold.^[122] The title track became a modest hit, peaking at number forty-two. Making use of 1970s synthesizers, it mimics the sounds of the shortwave radio stations that he listened to in his youth.^[123] The opening track, "Kingdom Hall" evoked Morrison's own childhood experiences attending church with his mother^[122] and foretold a religious theme that would be more evident in his next album, Into the Music.^[124]

Considered by Allmusic as "the definitive post-classic-era Morrison",^[125] Into the Music, was released in the last year of the 1970s. Songs on this album for the first time alluded to the healing power of music, which would become an abiding interest of Morrison's.^[126] "Bright Side of the Road" was a joyful, uplifting song that would appear on the soundtrack of the movie, Michael.^[127]

[edit] Common One to Avalon Sunset: 1980–89

With his next album, the new decade found Morrison following his muse into uncharted territory and merciless reviews.^[128][129] In February 1980, Morrison and a group of musicians traveled to Super Bear, a studio in the French Alps, to record (on the site of a former abbey) what is considered to be the most controversial album in his discography; later "Morrison admitted that his original concept was even more esoteric than the final product."^[130][131] The album, Common One, consisted of six songs, each of varying length. The longest, "Summertime in England", lasted fifteen and one-half minutes and ended with the words,"Can you feel the silence?". NME magazine's Paul Du Noyer called the album "colossally smug and cosmically dull; an interminable, vacuous and drearily egotistical stab at spirituality: Into the muzak."^[130] Even Greil Marcus, whose previous writings had been favourably inclined towards Morrison, said: "It's Van acting the part of the 'mystic poet' he thinks he's supposed to be."^[128] Morrison insisted that the album was never "meant to be a commercial album."^[128] Biographer Clinton Heylin concludes: "He would not attempt anything so ambitious again. Henceforth every radical idea would be tempered by some notion of commerciality."^[131] Later the critics would reassess the album more favourably with the success of "Summertime in England".^[131] Lester Bangs wrote in 1982, "Van was making holy music even though he thought he was, and us [sic] rock critics had made our usual mistake of paying too much attention to the lyrics."^[128]

Morrison's next album, Beautiful Vision, released in 1982, had him returning once again to the music of his Northern Irish roots.^[132] Well received by the critics and public, it produced a minor UK hit single, "Cleaning Windows", that referenced one of Morrison's first jobs after leaving school.^[133] Several other songs on the album, "Vanlose Stairway", "She Gives Me Religion", and the instrumental, "Scandinavia" show the presence of a new personal muse in his life: a Danish public relations agent, who would share Morrison's spiritual interests and serve as a steadying influence on him throughout most of the 1980s.^[134] "Scandinavia", with Morrison on piano,^[135] was nominated in the Best Rock Instrumental Performance category for the 25th Annual Grammy Awards.^[136]

Much of the music Morrison released throughout the 1980s continued to focus on the themes of spirituality and faith. His 1983 album, Inarticulate Speech of the Heart was "a move towards creating music for meditation" with synthesisers, uilleann pipes and flute sounds and four of the tracks were instrumentals.^[137] The titling of the album and the presence of the instrumentals were noted to be indicative of Morrison's long-held belief that "it's not the words one uses but the force of conviction behind those words that matters."^[135] During this period of time, Morrison had studied Scientology and gave "Special Thanks" to L. Ron Hubbard on the album's credits.^[138]

A Sense of Wonder, Morrison's 1985 album, pulled together the spiritual themes contained in his last four albums, which were defined in a Rolling Stone review as: "rebirth (Into the Music), deep contemplation and meditation, (Common One); ecstasy and humility (Beautiful Vision); and blissful, mantra like languor (Inarticulate Speech of the Heart)."^[139] The single, "Tore Down a la Rimbaud" was a reference to Rimbaud and an earlier bout of writer's block that Morrison had encountered in 1974.^[140] In 1985, Morrison also wrote the musical score for the movie, Lamb starring Liam Neeson.^[141]

Morrison's 1986 release, No Guru, No Method, No Teacher, was said to contain a "genuine holiness...and musical freshness that needs to be set in context to understand."^[142] Critical response was favourable with a Sounds reviewer calling the album "his most intriguingly involved since Astral Weeks" and "Morrison at his most mystical, magical best."^[143][144] It contains the song, "In the Garden" that, according to Morrison, had a "definite meditation process which is a 'form' of transcendental meditation as its basis. It's not TM".^[142] He entitled the album as a rebuttal to media attempts to place him in various creeds.^[145] In an interview in the Observer he told Anthony Denselow:

There have been many lies put out about me and this finally states my position. I have never joined any organisation, nor plan to. I am not affiliated to any guru, don't subscribe to any method and for those people who don't know what a guru is, I don't have a teacher either.^[146]

After releasing the "No Guru" album, Morrison's music appeared less gritty and more adult contemporary with the well-received 1987 album, Poetic Champions Compose, considered to be one of his recording highlights of the 1980s.^[147] The romantic ballad from this album, "Someone Like You", has been featured subsequently in the soundtracks of several movies, including 1995's French Kiss, and in 2001, both Someone Like You and Bridget Jones's Diary.^[127][148]

In 1988, he released Irish Heartbeat, a collection of traditional Irish folk songs recorded with the Irish group, The Chieftains, which reached number 18 in the UK album charts. The title song, "Irish Heartbeat", was originally recorded on his 1983 album Inarticulate Speech of the Heart.^[149]

The 1989 album, Avalon Sunset, which featured the hit duet with Cliff Richard "Whenever God Shines His Light" and the ballad "Have I Told You Lately" (on which "earthly love transmutes into that for God."(Hinton),^[150] reached 13 on the UK album chart. Although considered to be a deeply spiritual album,^[151] it also contained "Daring Night" which "deals with full, blazing sex, whatever it's churchy organ and gentle lilt suggest."(Hinton)^[152] Morrison's familiar themes of "God, woman, his childhood in Belfast and those enchanted moments when time stands still" were prominent in the songs.^[153] He can be heard calling out the change of tempo at the end of this song, repeating the numbers "1 – 4" to cue the chord changes (the first and fourth chord in the key of the music). He often completed albums in two days, frequently releasing first takes.^[154][155]

[edit] The Best of Van Morrison to Back on Top: 1990–99

The early to middle 1990s were commercially successful for Morrison with three albums reaching the top five of the UK charts, sold-out concerts, and a more visible public profile; but this period also marked a decline in the critical reception to his work.^[156] The decade began with the release of The Best of Van Morrison; compiled by Morrison himself, the album was focused on his hit singles, and became a multi-platinum success remaining a year and a half on the UK charts. Allmusic determined it to be "far and away the best selling album of his career."^[96][157] After Enlightenment which included the hit singles "Real Real Gone" and the title cut in 1990, an ambitious double album "Hymns to the Silence" was released the following year, his only double studio album. Another compilation album, The Best of Van Morrison Volume Two was released in January 1993, followed by Too Long in Exile in June, another top five chart success.^[158] The 1994 live double album A Night in San Francisco received favourable reviews as well as commercial success by reaching number eight on the UK charts.^{[159][160][161][162]} 1995's Days Like This also had large sales – though the critical reviews were not always favourable.^[163] This period also saw a number of side projects, including the live jazz performances of 1996's How Long Has This Been Going On, from the same year Tell Me Something: The Songs of Mose Allison, and 2000's The Skiffle Sessions - Live In Belfast 1998, all of which found Morrison paying tribute to his early musical influences.

In 1997, Morrison released The Healing Game. The album received mixed reviews, with the lyrics being described as "tired" and "dull",^[164] though critic Greil Marcus praised the musical complexity of the album by saying: "It carries the listener into a musical home so perfect and complete he or she might have forgotten that music could call up such a place, and then populate it with people, acts, wishes, fears."^[165] The following year, Morrison finally released some of his previously unissued studio recordings in a two-disc set, The Philosopher's Stone. His next release, 1999's Back on Top, achieved a modest success, being his highest charting album in the US since 1978's Wavelength.^[166]

Recent years: 2000 - present[link]

Van Morrison continued to record and tour in the 2000s, often performing two or three times a week.^[167] He formed his own independent label, Exile Productions Ltd, which enables him to maintain full production control of each album he records, which he then delivers as a finished product to the recording label that he chooses, for marketing and distribution.^[168]

The album, Down the Road released in May 2002, received a good critical reception and proved to be his highest charting album in the US since 1972's Saint Dominic's Preview.^[111] It had a nostalgic tone, with its fifteen tracks representing the various musical genres that Morrison had previously covered—including R&B, blues, country and folk;^[169] one of the tracks was written as a tribute to his late father George, who had played a pivotal role in nurturing his early musical tastes.^[20]

Morrison's 2005 album, Magic Time, debuted at number twenty-five on the US Billboard 200 charts upon its May release, some forty years after Morrison first entered the public's eye as the frontman of Them. Rolling Stone listed it as number seventeen on The Top 50 Records of 2005.^[170] Also in July 2005, Morrison was named by Amazon as one of their top twenty-five all-time best-selling artists and inducted into the Amazon.com Hall of Fame.^[171] Later in the year, Morrison also donated a previously unreleased studio track to a charity album, Hurricane Relief: Come Together Now, which raised money for relief efforts intended for Gulf Coast victims devastated by hurricanes, Katrina and Rita.^[172] Morrison composed the song, "Blue and Green", featuring Foggy Lyttle on guitar. This song was released in 2007 on the album, The Best of Van Morrison Volume 3 and also as a single in the UK. Van Morrison was a headline act at the international celtic music festival, The Hebridean Celtic Festival in Stornoway Outer Hebrides in the summer of 2005.^[173]

He released an album with a country music theme, entitled Pay the Devil, on 7 March 2006 and appeared at the Ryman Auditorium where the tickets sold out immediately after they went on sale.^[174] Pay the Devil debuted at number twenty-six on The Billboard 200 and peaked at number seven on Top Country Albums.^[175][176] Amazon Best of 2006 Editor's Picks in Country listed the country album at number ten in December 2006. Still promoting the country album, Morrison's performance as the headline act on the first night of the Austin City Limits Music Festival on 15 September 2006 was reviewed by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the top ten shows of the 2006 festival.^[177] In November 2006, a limited edition album, Live at Austin City Limits Festival was issued by Exile Productions, Ltd. A later deluxe CD/DVD release of Pay the Devil, in the summer of 2006 contained tracks from the Ryman performance.^[178] In October 2006, Morrison had released his first commercial DVD, Live at Montreux 1980/1974 with concerts taken from two separate appearances at the Montreux Jazz Festival.

A new double CD compilation album The Best of Van Morrison Volume 3 was released in June 2007 containing thirty-one tracks, some of which were previously unreleased. Morrison selected the tracks, which ranged from the 1993 album Too Long in Exile to the song "Stranded" from the 2005 album Magic Time.^[179] On 3 September 2007, Morrison's complete catalogue of albums from 1971 through 2002 were made available exclusively at the ITunes Store in Europe and Australia and during the first week of October 2007, the albums became available at the US ITunes Store.^[180]

Still on Top - The Greatest Hits, a thirty-seven track double CD compilation album was released on 22 October 2007 in the UK on the Polydor label. On 29 October 2007, the album charted at number two on the Official UK Top 75 Albums—his highest UK charting.^[181] The November release in the US and Canada contains twenty-one selected tracks.^[182] The hits that were released on albums with the copyrights owned by Morrison as Exile Productions Ltd.—1971 and later—had been remastered in 2007.

Keep It Simple, Morrison's 33rd studio album of completely new material was released by Exile/Polydor Records on 17 March 2008 in the UK and released by Exile/Lost Highway Records in the US and Canada on 1 April 2008.^[183] It comprised eleven self-penned tracks. Morrison promoted the album with a short US tour including an appearance at the SXSW music conference,^[184][185] and a UK concert broadcast on BBC Radio 2. In the first week of release Keep It Simple debuted on the Billboard 200 chart at number ten, Morrison's first Top Ten charting in the US.^[186]

Live performances[link]

A smiling Van Morrison performing at the Marin Civic Center, 2007.

By 1972, after being a performer for nearly ten years, Morrison began experiencing stage fright when performing for audiences of thousands, as opposed to the hundreds as he had experienced in his early career. He became anxious on stage and would have difficulty establishing eye contact with the audience. He once said in an interview about performing on stage, "I dig singing the songs but there are times when it's pretty agonizing for me to be out there." After a brief break from music, he started appearing in clubs, regaining his ability to perform live, albeit with smaller audiences.^[32]

The 1974 live double album, It's Too Late to Stop Now, has been on lists of greatest live albums of all time.^{[9][187][188][189][190]} Biographer Johnny Rogan states that "Morrison was in the midst of what was arguably his greatest phase as a performer."^[191] Performances on the album were from tapes made during a three month tour of the US and Europe in 1973 with the backing group The Caledonia Soul Orchestra. Soon after recording the album, Morrison restructured the Caledonia Soul Orchestra into a smaller unit, the Caledonia Soul Express.^[192]

Morrison performs in 1976 at The Band's final concert filmed for The Last Waltz.

On Thanksgiving Day 1976, Morrison performed at the farewell concert for The Band. Morrison's first live performance in several years, he considered skipping his appearance until the last minute, even refusing to go on stage when they announced his name. His manager, Harvey Goldsmith, said he "literally kicked him out there."^[193] Morrison was on good terms with The Band as near-neighbours in Woodstock, and they had the shared experience of stage-fright. At the concert, he performed two songs. His first was a rendition of the classic Irish song Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral.^[194] His second song was "Caravan", from his 1970 album Moondance. Greil Marcus, in attendance at the concert, wrote: "Van Morrison turned the show around...singing to the rafters and ...burning holes in the floor. It was a triumph, and as the song ended Van began to kick his leg into the air out of sheer exuberance and he kicked his way right offstage like a Rockette. The crowd had given him a fine welcome and they cheered wildly when he left."^[195] The filmed concert served as the basis for Martin Scorsese's 1978 film, The Last Waltz.^[196]

During his association with The Band, Morrison acquired the nicknames: "Belfast Cowboy" and "Van the Man". When Morrison sang the duet "4% Pantomime" (that he co-wrote with Robbie Robertson), Richard Manuel calls him, "Oh, Belfast Cowboy". It would be included in The Band's album Cahoots. When he left the stage, after performing "Caravan" on The Last Waltz, Robertson calls out "Van the Man!"^[124]

On 21 July 1990, Morrison joined many other guests for Roger Waters' massive performance of The Wall - Live in Berlin with an estimated crowd of between three hundred thousand to half a million people and broadcast live on television.^[197] He sang "Comfortably Numb" with Roger Waters, and several members from The Band: Levon Helm, Garth Hudson and Rick Danko. At concert's end, he and the other performers sang "The Tide Is Turning".

Morrison performed before an estimated audience of sixty to eighty thousand people when US President Bill Clinton visited Belfast, Northern Ireland on 30 November 1995. His song "Days Like This" had become the official anthem for the Northern Irish peace movement.^[198]

Van Morrison continued performing concerts in the 2000s throughout the year rather than touring.^[167] Playing few of his best-known songs in concert, he has firmly resisted relegation to a nostalgia act.^[199][200] During a 2006 interview, he told Paul Sexton:

I don't really tour. This is another misconception. I stopped touring in the true sense of the word in the late 1970s, early 1980s, possibly. I just do gigs now. I average two gigs a week. Only in America do I do more, because you can't really do a couple of gigs there, so I do more, 10 gigs or something there.^[201]

	Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl noicon The 2008 titled song, "Astral Weeks (I Believe I've Transcended)" with the opening lines: "If I ventured in the slipstream between the viaducts of your dream" shows "a deeper, louder roar than the blue-eyed soul voice of his youth – softer on the diction – but none the less impressively powerful."[202]
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On 7 and 8 November 2008, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California, Morrison performed the entire Astral Weeks album live for the first time. The Astral Weeks band featured guitarist Jay Berliner, who played on the album that was released forty years previously in November 1968. Also featured on piano was Roger Kellaway. A live album entitled Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl resulted from these two performances.^[203] The new live album on CD was released on 24 February 2009,^[204] followed by a DVD from the performances.^[205] The DVD, Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl: The Concert Film was released via Amazon Exclusive on 19 May 2009. In February and March 2009, Morrison returned to the US for Astral Week Live concerts, interviews and TV appearances with concerts at Madison Square Garden and at the Beacon Theatre in in New York City.^[206][207] He was interviewed by Don Imus on his Imus in the Morning radio show and put in guest appearances on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and Live with Regis and Kelly.^{[208][209][210]} Morrison continued with the Astral Weeks performances with two concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London in April^[211][212] and then returned to California in May 2009 performing the Astral Weeks songs at the Hearst Greek Theatre in Berkeley, the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles, California and appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.^[213] Morrison filmed the concerts at the Orpheum Theatre so that they could be viewed by Farrah Fawcett, confined to bed with cancer and who therefore could not attend the concerts.^[214][215]

In addition to It's Too Late to Stop Now and Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl, Morrison has released three other live albums: Live at the Grand Opera House Belfast in 1984; A Night in San Francisco in 1994 that Rolling Stone magazine felt stood out as: "the culmination of a career's worth of soul searching that finds Morrison's eyes turned toward heaven and his feet planted firmly on the ground";^[159] and The Skiffle Sessions - Live in Belfast 1998 recorded with Lonnie Donegan and Chris Barber and released in 2000.

Morrison performs at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival in 2010.

Morrison was scheduled to perform at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 25th anniversary concert on 30 October 2009, but cancelled.^[216] In an interview on 26 October, Morrison told his host Don Imus that he had planned to play "a couple of songs" with Eric Clapton (who had cancelled on 22 October due to gallstone surgery),^[217] but that they would do something else together at "some other stage of the game".^[218]

Morrison performed for the Edmonton Folk Music Festival in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada on 4 August 2010 as the headline act for the fundraiser and scheduled as second day headliner at the Feis 2011 Festival in London's Finsbury Park on 19 June 2011.^{[219][220][221]}

Morrison appeared in concert at Odyssey Arena in Belfast on 3 February and at The O2 in Dublin on 4 February 2012. These were his first performances in Belfast and Dublin for over a decade.^[222] He will appear at the 46th Montreux Jazz Festival as a headliner on 7 July 2012.^[223]

Collaborations[link]

During the 1990s, Morrison developed a close association with two vocal talents at opposite ends of their careers: Georgie Fame (with whom Morrison had already worked occasionally) lent his voice and Hammond organ skills to Morrison's band; and Brian Kennedy's vocals complemented the grizzled voice of Morrison, both in studio and live performances.

The 1990s also saw an upsurge in collaborations by Morrison with other artists, a trend continuing into the new millennium. He recorded with Irish folk band The Chieftains on their 1995 album, The Long Black Veil. Morrison's song, "Have I Told You Lately" would win a Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals in 1996.^[224]

He also produced and was featured on several tracks with blues legend John Lee Hooker on Hooker's 1997 album, Don't Look Back. This album would win a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album in 1998 and the title track "Don't Look Back", a duet featuring Morrison and Hooker, would also win a Grammy Award for "Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals" in 1998.^[225] The project capped a series of Morrison and Hooker collaborations that began in 1971 when they performed a duet on the title track of Hooker's 1972 album Never Get Out of These Blues Alive. On this album, Hooker also recorded a cover of Morrison's "T.B. Sheets".^[226]

Morrison additionally collaborated with Tom Jones on his 1999 album Reload, performing a duet on "Sometimes We Cry", and he also sang vocals on a track entitled "The Last Laugh" on Mark Knopfler's 2000 album, Sailing to Philadelphia.^[227] In 2004, Morrison was one of the guests on Ray Charles' album, Genius Loves Company, featuring the two artists performing Morrison's "Crazy Love".

Music[link]

Vocals[link]

It is at the heart of Morrison’s presence as a singer that when he lights on certain sounds, certain small moments inside a song—hesitations, silences, shifts in pressure, sudden entrances, slamming doors—can then suggest whole territories, completed stories, indistinct ceremonies, far outside anything that can be literally traced in the compositions that carry them.

Greil Marcus^[228]

Featuring his characteristic growl—a mix of folk, blues, soul, jazz, gospel, and Ulster Scots Celtic influences—Morrison is widely considered by many rock historians to be one of the most unusual and influential vocalists in the history of rock and roll.^{[229][230][231]} Critic Greil Marcus has gone so far as to say that "no white man sings like Van Morrison."^[232] In his 2010 book, Marcus wrote, "As a physical fact, Morrison may have the richest and most expressive voice pop music has produced since Elvis Presley, and with a sense of himself as an artist that Elvis was always denied."^[233]

As Morrison began live performances of the 40 year old album Astral Weeks in 2008, there were comparisons to his youthful voice of 1968.—His early voice was described as "flinty and tender, beseeching and plaintive".^[79] Forty years later, the difference in his vocal range and power were noticeable but reviewers and critic's comments were favourable: "Morrison's voice has expanded to fill his frame; a deeper, louder roar than the blue-eyed soul voice of his youth – softer on the diction – but none the less impressively powerful."^[202] Morrison also commented on the changes in his approach to singing: "The approach now is to sing from lower down [the diaphragm] so I do not ruin my voice. Before, I sang in the upper area of my throat, which tends to wreck the vocal cords over time. Singing from lower in the belly allows my resonance to carry far. I can stand four feet from a mic and be heard quite resonantly."^[234]

Songwriting and lyrics[link]

Morrison has written hundreds of songs^[235][236] during his career with a recurring theme reflecting a nostalgic yearning for the carefree days of his childhood in Belfast.^[237] Some of his song titles derive from familiar locations in his childhood such as: "Cyprus Avenue" (a nearby street), "Orangefield" (the boys school he attended), "On Hyndford Street" (where he was born). Also frequently present in Morrison's best love songs is a blending of the sacred-profane as evidenced in "Into the Mystic" and "So Quiet in Here".^[238][239]

Beginning with his 1979 album, Into the Music and the song "And the Healing Has Begun", a frequent theme of his music and lyrics has been based on his belief in the healing power of music combined with a form of mystic Christianity. This theme has become one of the predominant qualities of his work.^[240]

His lyrics show an influence of the visionary poets William Blake and W. B. Yeats^[241] and others such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.^[242] Biographer Brian Hinton believes "like any great poet from Blake to Seamus Heaney he takes words back to their origins in magic...Indeed, Morrison is returning poetry to its earliest roots – as in Homer or Old English epics like Beowulf or the Psalms or folk song – in all of which words and music combine to form a new reality."^[238] Another biographer John Collis believes that Morrison's style of jazz singing and repeating phrases preclude his lyrics from being regarded as poetry or as Collis asserts: "he is more likely to repeat a phrase like a mantra, or burst into scat singing. The words may often be prosaic, and so can hardly be poetry."^[243]

Morrison has described his songwriting method by remarking that: "I write from a different place. I do not even know what it is called or if it has a name. It just comes and I sculpt it, but it is also a lot of hard work doing the sculpting."^[234]

Performance style[link]

"Van Morrison is interested, obsessed with how much musical or verbal information he can compress into a small space, and, almost, conversely, how far he can spread one note, word, sound, or picture. To capture one moment, be it a caress or a twitch. He repeats certain phrases to extremes that from anybody else would seem ridiculous, because he's waiting for a vision to unfold, trying as unobtrusively as possible to nudge it along...It's the great search, fueled by the belief that through these musical and mental processes illumination is attainable. Or may at least be glimpsed."

Lester Bangs^[244]

Critic Greil Marcus argues that given the truly distinctive breadth and complexity of Morrison's work, it is almost impossible to cast his work among that of others: "Morrison remains a singer who can be compared to no other in the history of rock & roll, a singer who cannot be pinned down, dismissed, or fitted into anyone's expectations."^[245] Or in the words of Jay Cocks: "He extends himself only to express himself. Alone among rock's great figures—and even in that company he is one of the greatest—Morrison is adamantly inward. And unique. Although he freely crosses musical boundaries—R. and B., Celtic melodies, jazz, rave-up rock, hymns, down-and-dirty blues—he can unfailingly be found in the same strange place: on his own wavelength."^[246]

His transcendental signature style came into full expression with his 1968 classic, Astral Weeks.^[247] This musical art form was based on stream of consciousness songwriting and emotional vocalizing of lyrics that have no basis in normal structure or symmetry. His live performances are dependent on building dynamics with spontaniety between himself and his band, whom he controls with hand gestures throughout, sometimes signaling impromptu solos from a selected band member. The music and vocals build towards a hypnotic and trance-like state that depends on in-the-moment creativity. Scott Foundas with LA Weekly wrote "he seeks to transcend the apparent boundaries of any given song; to achieve a total freedom of form; to take himself, his band and the audience on a journey whose destination is anything but known."^[248] A reviewer described it as "This transcendent moment of music when the song and the singer are one thing not two, neither dependent on the other or separate from the other but melded to the other like one, like breath and life..."^[249][237]

Morrison has said he believes in the jazz improvisational technique of never performing a song the same way twice and except for the unique rendition of the Astral Weeks songs live, doesn't perform a concert from a preconceived set list.^[199] Morrison has said he prefers to perform at smaller venues or symphony halls noted for their good acoustics.^[250] His ban against alcoholic beverages, which made entertainment news during 2008, was an attempt to prevent the disruptive and distracting movement of audience members leaving their seats during the performances.^[251] In a 2009 interview, Morrison stated: "I do not consciously aim to take the listener anywhere. If anything, I aim to take myself there in my music. If the listener catches the wavelength of what I am saying or singing, or gets whatever point whatever line means to them, then I guess as a writer I may have done a day's work."^[252]

Genre[link]

The music of Van Morrison has encompassed many genres since his early days as a blues and R&B singer in Belfast. Over the years he has recorded songs from a varying list of genres drawn from many influences and interests. As well as blues and R&B, his compositions and covers have moved between pop music, jazz, rock, folk, country, gospel, Irish folk and traditional, big band, skiffle, rock and roll, new age, classical and sometimes spoken word ("Coney Island") and instrumentals.^[253] Morrison defines himself as a soul singer.^[254]

Some of Morrison's music has been classified in a genre of its own and referred to as "Celtic soul"^[15] or what biographer Brian Hinton referred to as a new alchemy called "Caledonian soul."^[238] Another biographer, Ritchie Yorke quoted Morrison as believing that he has "the spirit of Caledonia in his soul and his music reflects it."^[255] According to Yorke, Morrison claimed to have discovered "a certain quality of soul" when he first visited Scotland (his Belfast ancestors were of Ulster Scots descent) and Morrison has said he believes there is some connection between soul music and Caledonia. Yorke relates that Morrison "discovered several years after he first began composing music that some of his songs lent themselves to a unique major modal scale (without sevenths) which of course is the same scale as that used by bagpipe players and old Irish and Scottish folk music."^[255]

Caledonia[link]

The name "Caledonia" has played a prominent role in Morrison's life and career. Biographer Ritchie Yorke had pointed out already by 1975 that Morrison has referred to Caledonia so many times in his career that he "seems to be obsessed with the word."^[255] In his 2009 biography, Erik Hage found that "Morrison seemed deeply interested in his paternal Scottish roots during his early career, and later in the ancient countryside of England, hence his repeated use of the term Caledonia (an ancient Roman name for Scotland/northern Britain)."^[256] As well as being his daughter's middle name, it's the name of his first production company, his studio, his publishing company, two of his backing groups, and he also recorded a cover of the song, "Caldonia" (with the name spelled "Caledonia") in 1974.^[255] Morrison used "Caledonia" in what has been called a quintessential Van Morrison moment in the song, "Listen to the Lion" with the lyrics, "And we sail, and we sail, way up to Caledonia".^[257] As late as 2008, Morrison used "Caledonia" as a mantra in the live performance of the song, "Astral Weeks" recorded at the two Hollywood Bowl concerts.^[252]

Influence[link]

Morrison's influence can readily be heard in the music of a diverse array of major artists and according to The Rolling Stone's Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll (Simon & Shuster, 2001), "his influence among rock singers/song writers is unrivaled by any living artist outside of that other prickly legend, Bob Dylan. Echoes of Morrison's rugged literateness and his gruff, feverish emotive vocals can be heard in latter day icons ranging from Bruce Springsteen to Elvis Costello".^[229] His influence includes U2 (Bono was quoted saying "I am in awe of a musician like Van Morrison. I had to stop listening to Van Morrison records about six months before we made The Unforgettable Fire because I didn't want his very original soul voice to overpower my own.");^[258] John Mellencamp ("Wild Night");^[259] Jim Morrison;^[260] Joan Armatrading (the only musical influence she will acknowledge);^[261] Rod Stewart;^[262] Tom Petty;^[263] Rickie Lee Jones (recognises both Laura Nyro and Van Morrison as the main influences on her career);^[264][265] Elton John;^[266] Graham Parker;^[267] Sinéad O'Connor;^[268] Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy;^[269] Bob Seger ("I know Bruce Springsteen was very much affected by Van Morrison, and so was I." from Creem interview)^[267] ("I've Been Working");^[270] Kevin Rowland of Dexys Midnight Runners ("Jackie Wilson Said");^[271][272] Jimi Hendrix ("Gloria");^[273] Jeff Buckley ("The Way Young Lovers Do", "Sweet Thing");^[274] Nick Drake;^[275] and numerous others, including the Counting Crows (their "sha-la-la" sequence in Mr Jones, is a tribute to Morrison).^[276] Morrison's influence reaches into the country music genre, with Hal Ketchum acknowledging, "He (Van Morrison) was a major influence in my life."^[277]

Morrison's influence on the younger generation of singer-songwriters is pervasive: including Irish singer Damien Rice, who has been described as on his way to becoming the "natural heir to Van Morrison";^[278] Ray Lamontagne;^[279] James Morrison;^[280][281] Paolo Nutini;^[282] Eric Lindell^[283] David Gray;^[284] and Ed Sheeran^[285] are also several of the younger artists influenced by Morrison. Glen Hansard of the Irish rock band The Frames (who lists Van Morrison as being part of his holy trinity with Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen) commonly covers his songs in concert.^[286] American rock band, The Wallflowers have covered "Into the Mystic".^[287] Canadian blues-rock singer Colin James also covers the song frequently at his concerts.^[288] Actor and musician Robert Pattinson has said that Van Morrison was his "influence for doing music in the first place".^[289] Morrison has shared the stage with Northern Irish singer-songwriter Duke Special, who admits Morrison has been a big influence.^[290]

Overall, Morrison has typically been supportive of other artists, often willingly sharing the stage with them during his concerts. On the live album, A Night in San Francisco, he had as his special guests, among others, his childhood idols: Jimmy Witherspoon, John Lee Hooker and Junior Wells.^[159] Although he often expresses his displeasure (in interviews and songs) with the music industry and the media in general, he has been instrumental in promoting the careers of many other musicians and singers, such as James Hunter,^[291] and fellow Belfast-born brothers, Brian and Bap Kennedy.^[292][293]

Van Morrison also had great influence on the other arts: The German painter Johannes Heisig created a series of Lithographs illustrating the book "In the Garden - for Van Morrison", published by Städtische Galerie Sonneberg, Germany, in 1997.^[294]

Personal life[link]

Morrison and daughter Shana Morrison in Berkeley California; 9th December 2006

Morrison lived in Belfast from birth until 1967, when he moved to New York after signing with Bang Records. Facing deportation due to visa problems, he managed to stay in the US when his American girlfriend Janet (Planet) Rigsbee agreed to marry him.^[295] Once married, Morrison and his wife moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he found work performing in local clubs. The couple had one daughter Shana Morrison, who has become a singer-songwriter. Morrison and his family moved around America, living in Boston; Woodstock, New York; and a hilltop home in Fairfax, California. His wife appeared on the cover of the album Tupelo Honey. They divorced in 1973.^[296][297]

Morrison moved back to Europe in the late 1970s, first settling in London's Notting Hill Gate area.^[298] Later, he moved to Bath, where he purchased Wool Hall Studios.^[299] He also has a home in the Irish seaside village of Dalkey near Dublin, where legal actions against two different neighbours concerning safety and privacy issues have been taken to court in 2001 and in 2010.^{[300][301][302][303]} In the former case, Morrison pursued his action all the way to the Irish Supreme Court.^[304]

Morrison met Irish socialite Michelle Rocca in the summer of 1992, and they often featured in the Dublin gossip columns, an unusual event for the reclusive Morrison. Rocca also appeared on one of his album covers, Days Like This.^[305] The couple are married and have two children;^[306] A daughter was born in January 2006 and a son was born in August 2007.^[307][308]

In December 2009, Texas native and Morrison employee Gigi Lee gave birth to a son who she asserted was Morrison's and who she named after him. Lee announced the birth of the child on Morrison's official website although Morrison subsequently has denied paternity of the child. It was revealed in December 2011 that Lee died from throat cancer in October 2011 and her son had died previously in January 2011, from complications of diabetes.^[309]

Discography[link]

Legacy[link]

Morrison has received several major music awards in his career, including six Grammy Awards (1996–2007); inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (January 1993), the Songwriters Hall of Fame (June 2003), and the Irish Music Hall of Fame (September 1999); and a Brit Award (February 1994). In addition he has received civil awards of an OBE (June 1996) and an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1996), and he has honorary doctorates from the University of Ulster (1992) and Queen's University Belfast (July 2001).

The Hall of Fame inductions began in 1993 with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; Morrison notable for being the first inductee not to attend his own ceremony,^[310][311] so that Robbie Robertson from The Band accepted the award on his behalf.^[312] When Morrison became the initial musician inducted into the Irish Music Hall of Fame, Bob Geldof presented Morrison with the award.^[313] Morrison's third induction was into the Songwriters Hall of Fame for "recognition of his unique position as one of the most important songwriters of the past century." Ray Charles presented the award, following a performance during which the pair performed Morrison's "Crazy Love", from the album, Moondance.^[314] Morrison's BRIT Award was for his Outstanding Contribution to British Music.^[315] He was presented with the award by former Beirut hostage, John McCarthy, who while testifying to the importance of Morrison's song, "Wonderful Remark" called it "a song ... which was very important to us."^[316]

Morrison received two civil awards in 1996, first was the Order of the British Empire for his service to music,^[317] the second was an award by the French government when he was made an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.^[318] Along with these state awards he has two honorary degrees in music; an honorary doctorate in literature from the University of Ulster,^[319] and an honorary doctorate in music from Queen's University in his hometown of Belfast.^[320]

Among other awards are an Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1995,^[321] the BMI ICON award in October 2004 for Morrison's "enduring influence on generations of music makers",^[322] and an Oscar Wilde: Honouring Irish Writing in Film award in 2007 for his contribution to over fifty films, presented by Al Pacino who compared Morrison to Oscar Wilde as they were both "visionaries who push boundaries".^[323] He was voted the Best International Male Singer of 2007 at the inaugural International Awards in Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, London.^[324]

Morrison has also appeared in a number of Greatest lists, including the TIME magazine list of The All-Time 100 Albums,^[325] which contained Astral Weeks and Moondance, and he appeared at number thirteen on the list of WXPN's 885 All Time Greatest Artists.^[326] In 2000, Morrison ranked twenty-fifth on American cable music channel VH1's list of its "100 Greatest Artists of Rock and Roll".^[327] In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Van Morrison forty-second on their list of "Greatest Artists of All Time".^[328] Paste ranked him twentieth in their list of "100 Greatest Living Songwriters" in 2006.^[329] Q ranked him twenty-second on their list of "100 Greatest Singers" in April 2007^[330] and he was voted twenty-fourth on the November 2008 list of Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.^[331]

Three of Morrison's songs were included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll: "Brown Eyed Girl", "Madame George" and "Moondance".^[332]

Morrison has been announced to be one of the 2010 honorees listed in the Hollywood Walk of Fame.^[333]

See also[link]

Poetry portal

• List of people on stamps of Ireland^[334]

References[link]

Footnotes