Where Did Van Morrison Go Wrong?

Northern Irish musical genius, curmudgeon and conspiracy theorist Van Morrison comes by his distrust of The Man honestly. He was only 18 when the band he fronted, Them, was signed to Decca Records in 1964; he was so young that his dad actually had to sign the contract on his behalf. In a 2015 interview with the Irish Times, Morrison described this moment as when he “lost total control” of his destiny. “So it was three or four years of being manipulated by the puppet masters, basically,” he concluded. 

Even when his breakthrough solo album Moondance was released in 1970—55 years ago this week—Morrison was struggling due to exploitative contracts. “I was still hustling then, still hustling because I wasn’t getting paid and I said a Warner Brothers contract through a circuitous route,” he explained in an interview on the Irish radio station RTÉ. He said that he was earning “$100 a week or something, just enough to kinda survive, but not survive very well.” According to the U.S. Bureau of Statistics, that’s about $834.93 in purchasing power today. Not peanuts, but certainly not what you’d expect Morrison to earn considering that the album ended up going triple platinum in the United States. 

In fact, Moondance ends with a warning against fame and big business in the form of the snappy, tightly-woven R&B number “Glad Tidings.” The “la la la las” on the chorus may have the sunny sway of his 1967 hit “Brown Eyed Girl,” but the real meat is found on the second verse: “And the business will shake hands and talk in numbers / And the princess will wake up from her slumber / Then all the knights will step forth with their arm bands / And every stranger you meet in the street will make demands.” 

Considering his healthy suspicion of capitalist forces, where did it all go wrong? Why did he become an anti-lockdown nut? (In case you need a quick refresher: Morrison called social distancing measures “pseudo-science” in a now-deleted 2020 blog post on his website—thank you, Internet Archive—and has been parroting anti-lockdown rhetoric ever since.) Many of us have asked the same questions about acquaintances or loved ones in our own lives ever since we first heard of coronavirus. Why did they, along with Morrison, choose to discard science and side with the corporations hell-bent on getting people back to work, at the expense of countless lives? The answer again comes down to the big bad dollar. Morrison claimed to have been “independent of the music business since the late 1970s” in a 2021 GQ interview alongside John Cooper Clarke, and because he’s self-funded, touring is a vital revenue stream. Lockdown put him—as well as numerous other artists, many less famous than him—in a terrifying financial limbo. 

I know, it feels strange—and maybe even puts a little bit of fear in our hearts—to think all the way back to when concerts were cancelled left, right and center, and we had no clue when we’d again be able to sing-scream lyrics next to strangers without feeling like walking pathogens (and, for the record, vaccination and masking are still important to protecting the most vulnerable in our society). I’m not going to relitigate lockdown restrictions; they were necessary for our collective safety. But it’s worth noting that there were two main institutional forces at work when it came to establishing these restrictions: the economic forces that wanted us consuming and producing, regardless of our welfare, and the state-sanctioned healthcare apparatus ostensibly created to put citizens’ well-being first. Considering Morrison’s past, there’s a cognitive dissonance in his decision to side with the former. 

Morrison’s 2021 album Latest Record Project, Volume 1 is one of his most overtly anti-lockdown projects, with other themes that appear to be right-wing dog whistles (I was tempted to type “alt-right,” but let’s face it, they’re the mainstream now). “Where Have All the Rebels Gone?” specifically calls out those who followed COVID restrictions, but considering he’s repeating the same line as many a close-minded Republican, he would do well to turn the question back on himself. “They Own the Media” immediately brings to mind anti-Semitic conspiracies, though Morrison himself clarified on Twitter that “they” referred to “Boris Johnson’s (UK) government.” The conservative publication The Spectator—where Johnson served as editor for some years—defended the album, making the oft-used right-wing argument that listeners shouldn’t take things so literally or seriously. And he’s not avoiding the old-man-yells-at-cloud accusations with “Stop Bitching, Do Something.”

Ever since I was a kid, I remember hearing the oft-repeated line that I would become more conservative as I grew older, whether from the media or just adults I encountered. I’m only 29 now, but I definitely feel that the opposite has happened, and it’s a trajectory I’m happy to stay on. Funnily enough, just last night, I attended a talk hosted by a different Irish artist—the writer Carlo Gébler, who just published a memoir-cum-history of Northern Ireland from 1989 to now—who said he’d always suspected he’d veer further right with age, only to find himself more of a leftist than ever. Like Morrison, he lives in Northern Ireland, is a self-professed contrarian and is a prolific artist, albeit in a much different medium. And yet, there is a striking difference here in attitude that, from my vantage point, boils down to one major difference: a feeling of solidarity with—or in Morrison’s case, lack thereof—with their fellow human beings. Whether he’s complaining about people using Facebook, ungrateful dates or fellow whiners, Morrison’s recent releases are poisoned by a pervading misanthropy. 

On the other hand, the dappled notes of Moondance continue to be a magical, moving listen these 55 years later. Morrison blends jazz, soul and rock with painterly aplomb. And even though he’s become someone who’s more enraged than enlightened these days, there’s always the “Glad Tidings” era of Morrison to look back on fondly—when he knew who The Man really was.

Clare Martin is a cemetery enthusiast and Paste’s associate music editor.