Patti Smith<\/a> and even Al Pacino, who compared him with Oscar Wilde, both being \u201cvisionaries who push boundaries\u201d. Morrison has sold more than 16 million records, was No 24 in Rolling Stone magazine\u2019s 100 Greatest Singers of All Time and had three tracks, Brown Eyed Girl, Madame George and Moondance, in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame\u2019s list of Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll.\u00a0<\/p>\nWhen he is on form, which of late has been often, Morrison and his band achieve a kind of transcendence \u2014 voice, melody and groove hitting a level few artists can reach. \u201cIf everything\u2019s coming together I can take off and they can follow me,\u201d he says. That must be a great feeling. \u201cYeah, it is. It\u2019s probably why I keep doing it,\u201d he says with a laugh. Sitting in a swanky hotel in Belfast, down the road from his beachside home, he is wearing a cap, cardigan and chinos with desert boots. It\u2019s strange to see him out of his stage uniform of trilby, suit and shades.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On his album of 2025, Remembering Now, his voice, saxophone and guitar playing were as strong as ever on the kind of spiritual odysseys that filled classic albums such as Astral Weeks and Veedon Fleece. It was his best in years and we may have the pandemic to thank for that. Morrison was vehemently anti-lockdown, calling for \u201cNo more government overreach\/ No more fascist police\u201d on his 2020 song No More Lockdown. That didn\u2019t go down well with many \u2014 a councillor even called for him to be stripped of his freedom of Belfast. <\/p>\n
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On TV in 1961Fremantle Media\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
Yet that turbulent time brought about one of his most positive eras. \u201cI was getting quite a lot of negative feedback during this period so myself and the musicians just wanted to do something that was going to be fun,\u201d he said last year of Remembering Now, which he followed this year with Somebody Tried to Sell Me a Bridge, an album of rollicking blues covers and originals. More proof of his resurgence comes this week, when he receives a lifetime achievement award at the Jazz FM awards in London. <\/p>\n
Recognition of his connection to jazz \u201cis quite significant, because a lot of [awards ceremonies] seem a bit nebulous\u201d, he says, remembering being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. \u201cThat was actually more to do with rock than rock\u2019n\u2019roll, which was a bit confusing. Rock got no roll,\u201d he says, referring to the swing that runs through his tunes but is often missing from guitar music. The Hall of Fame \u201cwas basically run by Rolling Stone, which I wasn\u2019t a big fan of\u201d, despite both organisations often worshipping him. <\/p>\n
It couldn\u2019t have helped when Jann Wenner, a co-founder of the Hall of Fame and Rolling Stone magazine, said in 2023 that some black artists were not \u201carticulate enough\u201d \u2014 black music has always been Morrison\u2019s lodestar. Remembering Now features a tribute to Ray Charles called If It Wasn\u2019t for Ray in which Morrison sings about the man who \u201creinvented soul, rhythm and blues and rock\u2019n\u2019roll\/ Country and western too.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The music of Charles, who years later became a friend, showed the young Morrison that he need not be imprisoned by genre and inspired one of his first bands, the International Monarchs, when they toured Germany in the early Sixties. \u201cThat was the real apprenticeship \u2014 seven sets a night and no days off,\u201d he says. So is that where he got his 10,000 hours, the amount of experience that Malcolm Gladwell wrote in Outliers was required to make it, whether you\u2019re the Beatles or Bill Gates? \u201cI read that book and I think it\u2019s absolutely right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like a surprising number of performers, he is not naturally outgoing. \u201cLook up the word introvert and you\u2019ll get me,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m an introvert working in an extrovert world.\u201d His public image is \u201cabsolutely nowhere\u201d near who he really is. \u201cThe person on stage, that\u2019s a role I\u2019m playing.\u201d He sounds like an actor who hides his real self so he can play his stage role more convincingly. He nods. \u201cI\u2019m splitting myself up into two. I couldn\u2019t do the job as myself \u2014 I have to pretend to be somebody else.\u201d I had always assumed that he was at his happiest on stage. \u201cNo, no, no. Whatever emotion is happening up there \u2014 sadness, anger, joy \u2014 I\u2019m acting it out.\u201d <\/p>\n
Don Black, the celebrated British lyricist who has worked with Morrison for decades, told me about a recent lunch they had. \u201cHe\u2019s got a reputation as being the grumpiest guy,\u201d Black said. \u201cBut he made me laugh so much. \u2018You\u2019re always so optimistic,\u2019\u00a0Van said. \u2018It wouldn\u2019t surprise me if you\u2019d never thrown one television set out of a window.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Morrison laughs heartily at this. Has he ever defenestrated a TV? \u201cNo, but someone in my band did.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Born in Belfast to that music-loving father and a mother who had been a singer and dancer, he has written songs about the city throughout his career. As recently as Stomping Ground (2025) he namechecked Strandtown, Orangefield, Bloomfield village and\u00a0\u201cthe mystic avenue\u201d, his beloved Cypress Avenue, where he played a joyous 70th birthday concert in 2015. At his 80th birthday shows in Belfast last year he was joined by Ronnie Wood: \u201cHe\u2019s fun to work with, always very upbeat.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
With nostalgia often comes spirituality, where the results can be mixed, exhibit A being Whenever God Shines His Light, Morrison\u2019s 1989 duet with Cliff Richard. Better was a recent song called Love, Lover and Beloved, written with Michael Beckwith, the founder of the Agape International Spiritual Centre, a transdenominational community in Los Angeles to which Morrison belongs. \u201cFor me, he\u2019s the real deal,\u201d he says of Beckwith.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Morrison is in Los Angeles about once a year, spending the rest of the time at his homes in Belfast, London, Somerset and Cardiff. He is single, having been married to the American Janet \u201cPlanet\u201d Rigsbee (1968-73), with whom he has a daughter, Shana, 56, a singer; and the Irish socialite Michelle Rocca (1992-2018), with whom he has a daughter, Aibhe, 20, and a son, Fionn, 18.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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With his first wife, Janet \u2018Planet\u2019 RigsbeeElliott Landy\/Redferns<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you have enough yet?\u201d he asks, shifting in his seat. I\u2019ve caught him on a good day but he still hates interviews. Not quite, I say, sweating slightly. I\u2019m keen to know what he makes of the streaming revolution. \u201cI don\u2019t understand why it was so easy for the guy [Daniel Ek, the boss of Spotify] to decide he was going to do this and then all the record companies went along with it. I know you need millions of streams to get anything.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Morrison makes most of his money from touring these days, especially in America, where tickets sell out in a flash and fans pay more than they do here. This self-described workaholic has slowed down, though. Last year, he says, \u201cI got burnout. Sometimes you don\u2019t know you have it until it\u2019s extreme.\u201d How did it manifest itself? \u201cJust fatigue. You can\u2019t do anything. You just go, \u2018I\u2019ve had enough.\u2019 A lot of people my age can\u2019t do what they used to do. When you\u2019re 50 you think everything\u2019s possible but then that changes. I don\u2019t want to sit on long car journeys, long plane rides. I\u2019ve been there, I\u2019ve done that.\u201d It\u2019s the boredom factor again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What does he do when he\u2019s not making music? \u201cI do music all the time,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m writing songs all the time and I have at least a hundred songs I\u2019m compiling and cutting up into various album projects. But you can burn out at that too.\u201d So what does he do to unwind? \u201cI do a lot of reading.\u201d What was the last great book he read? \u201cI can\u2019t really remember\u2026 I don\u2019t want to get caught out.\u201d I\u2019m not trying to catch you out, I\u2019m just curious. \u201cI know but if I name a title and I forget what it\u2019s about\u2026\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He eventually thinks of a book and, guess what, it\u2019s about music: Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues by Joel Selvin. It\u2019s also partly about Morrison. Berns was an American songwriter and producer who worked with Them, the Belfast band with whom Morrison made his name in the Sixties. After they split, Berns invited him to New York and produced songs including Brown Eyed Girl, his first solo hit from 1967. The songs were released as an album, Blowin\u2019 Your Mind, without Morrison\u2019s input. He wasn\u2019t happy; it was the start of his fractious relationship with record labels. \u201cWhen I arrived [in New York] it was like, \u2018We\u2019ll take care of everything.\u2019 You need to beware those words. They didn\u2019t take care of anything.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
These days he produces everything himself and only uses labels to distribute his music. He has an album of original material due out next year, which, of course, is an excellent way to avoid getting bored. \u201cExactly,\u201d Morrison says with the hint of a smile. \u201cThat\u2019s what it\u2019s all about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Van Morrison is receiving the lifetime achievement award at the Jazz FM awards, which are broadcast on Jazz FM on Apr 19 at 9pm. He is playing the Cheltenham Jazz Festival on Apr 30<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Van Morrison and I are talking about jazz, about how Louis Armstrong \u201cnever sang a song the same…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-383709","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Van](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/088887de-0766-4ac1-8926-25c0c5f70d26.jpg\")
Morrison on stage for his 80th birthday concert at Belfast\u2019s Waterfront last yearBRADLEY QUINN<\/p>\n