Music Arcades: Van Morrison: Common One

I'd forgotten how much Van indulges his mystic schtick on this album. I know it's there on everything between about 1968 and, well, the nineties, when grumbling about his shoddy treatment by industry, media and other artists took over to the exclusion of everything else — at least I think it did, but I stopped buying his records, so I don't really know. However, he really lets his stream of consciousness loose on Common One, as much, if not more than on Astral Weeks. Albeit with less inspired arrangements and playing.

Stream of consciousness and lots of literary name-dropping.

The arc of his obsessions over the years goes from boy meets girl, with Them and in the early solo days, then went off to the mystic church, reaching its steeple here in 1980, and then back again to the rich mystery of everyday hang-ups.

From when I first saw Van in 1988 through to the early nineties, his show-stopper — and it was often exactly that — was Summertime in England. He would toss the lines to and fro with one of his sidemen (Pee Wee Ellis at one point, I think). "Take a walk with me." "Take a walk with me." "Mister Lawrence!" "Mister LAWrence!" Up to a climax when Van would hunch off stage, to the sideman's cry of "VAN Morrison! He's the man! Mister VAN Morrison!" Listen, I know it reads like shit on the page, but I was caught up in it every time. Perhaps not that last bit, but the build up was breathtaking.

That was after the song had been honed, revised, reframed and expanded through hundreds if not thousands of live performances. I bought this CD — in a record shop on the Champs Elysées in August 1989 — to hear what the original studio version sounded like. Unsurprisingly it's not nearly as good. Nevertheless I still find the album as a whole kind of interesting because it captures Van at one of his extremes; and sometimes it comes very close to being successful.

Last year Universal put out remastered and expanded versions of this and many other Van albums. You can hear it on We7 and Spotify. If you think you know what Van sounds like when he's at his most miserable and lugubrious, listen to the alternative version of Haunts of Ancient Peace, and I think you may be surprised.