IT’S TOO LATE TO STOP NOW
“I’M current,” says Van Morrison in a tone that brooks little argument. “I’m always current.” More than half a century since he recorded John Lee Hooker’s “Don’t Look Back” with Them in 1965, Morrison remains admirably true to its central thesis that “you cannot live on in the past”. At 74, he’s still pushing forward, a natural law unto himself.
Speaking to Uncut from Los Angeles, he appears remarkably upbeat. While “Days Gone By”, the final song on his frequently terrific new album, Three Chords And The Truth, laments the fact that critics simply cannot resist throwing old quotes back in his face – “They tried to stitch me up with so many words I said so long ago/But we were all so young and foolish then” – he’s a more accommodating interviewee these days than his prickly reputation might suggest. There remains a no-nonsense crackle to his replies, and you sense he still doesn’t suffer fools gladly, but Morrison proves happy enough to chat about the 50th anniversary of Moondance, dusty old bootlegs, matters of transcendence, the perils of fame, even meeting fanboy Harry Styles.
In “Tore Down A La Rimbaud”, one of the many jewels in Morrison’s often overlooked ’80s repertoire, he expressed the wish that “my writing would come”. In the old days, the muse was a capricious house guest. It’s not a problem he appears to be grappling with these days. Three Chords And The Truth is his sixth album in the past three years – and easily the best. While Roll With The Punches, Versatile and his two recent collaborations with organist Joey DeFrancesco, You’re Driving Me Crazy and The Prophet Speaks, featured a slightly off-hand mix of covers, jazz tunes, blues standards, originals and reinterpretations of songs from his back catalogue, the new album is a focused collection of 14 new compositions.
It is 50 years since the astonishing
