Apparently one of Van's most successful albums — Wikipedia says it was his fastest selling album in the UK — and I think it's one of his dreariest — especially as it came after the high points of Poetic Champions Compose and Irish Heartbeat. I don't object to the presence of either Cliff Richard or a light pop song about God, but the writing is generally pretty weak, and the string arrangements make some songs way too syrupy. I'd Love to Write Another Song must be up there with Spandau Ballet's True as hymn to struggling with the writer's muse. One of the Amazon customer reviews notes the aptness of the typo that has changed Contacting My Angel to Contacting My Agent in the tracklisting there. I once proposed marriage while Have I Told You Lately? was playing on the restaurant stereo in Dunfanaghy, but, believe me, the other songs were worse. And that didn't end well.
Coney Island has something about it, all the more magical if you haven't actually been to the places mentioned in the song. Lord, are they drab! Avalon Sunset really only hits its stride in the last two songs, Daring Night and These are the Days, where Van lets his claret-and-port-soaked voice run away with itself, mumbling and rambling repetitively as only he can. As J said once, when the spirit's in him, he could fart and you'd swear the sound was the very essence of music.
There are so many Van-the-miserable-man anecdotes that one feels obliged to be sparing in their use, but as I have been so far, I'm going to permit myself this indulgence, taken from John Collis's Van Morrison: Inarticulate Speech of the Heart
Liam Fay of Dublin's Hot Press tells of an encounter with Morrison in the summer of 1989. An interview for a cover feature was arranged with the artist's management and Fay flew to London, where Morrison was then living. The meeting was to be in one of Morrison's favourite Notting Hill restaurants.
"He stormed in 35 minutes late and said he didn't want to do the interview there, he wanted to go to a cafe across the road instead," says Fay. "After he'd smothered his chicken and chips with ketchup he harangued me for 20 minutes on why he hated journalists. He believed that they all had what he called an 'angle', and he wanted to know what mine was. He also seemed preoccupied with the idea that the editor of the magazine must have been afraid to meet him for some reason, and so had sent a lackey in his place.
"After I'd asked a couple of questions he suddenly said, 'This isn't working,' and turned off the tape. He was also very annoyed that I was only 25. 'You know nothing.' I tried to ask a harmless question to calm him — why did he decide to call himself Ivan Morrison on the production credits to Avalon Sunset? He shouted at the top of his voice, 'Because it's my fucking name!'
I love that. A response so eminently straightforward and so completely unreasonable at the same time. Sadly for Fay, that wasn't the end of it.
"Then he insisted on having the tape. 'If you don't give me that tape you're a prick.' He made a couple of phone calls, one a long one to Belfast, and then demanded the tape again. I just gave up and walked away. I was really shaken up. About five minutes later I was waiting for a cab, because there was a tube strike that day, and I saw him appear over the hill. He saw me too, and what I didn't know was that I was standing right outside his house. Total coincidence — I didn't know where he lived. He came charging down the road at me and was flicking at me with his coat [?!]. He was shouting, 'Get away from my house.' Eventually he scuttled off.
"When I went through the tape later I realised that what answers he had given me were either monosyllabic or abusive…
I look at the side of your face, and all the time I'm thinking, Wouldn't it be great if it was like this all the time?
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