CALL ME UP TO DREAMLAND VAN MORRISON AND AUTEUR THEORY

Seán Heffernan HNDJ

Rathmines college  
Contextual Studies Essay.

ABSTRACT:

This essay seeks to explain the origins and manifestations of “Auteur Theory” through the music of George Ivan Morrison.
While the theory in question came from the cinematic sphere, it my contention that there are a distinct tranche of singer-songwriters who also belong to the illustrious list of “Auteurs” alongside film directors such  Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese et al. 

These singer-songwriters have in some cases created a whole new distinctive subset of a genre, be if Opera, country or rock music, and/or produced such magnificent spellbinding lyrics, they really and truly stand out in  a music world that is increasing in sameness and blandness as night turns to day.
A beacon of musical light in an otherwise very dull world.

INTRODUCTION:

Over many centuries people have been enchanted intrigued by the musical genre.
Be it a high-end Opera detailing a famous story from history, a band playing a selection of the 3-5 minute  compositions that comprise their lifetimes work, or a fusion of animal sounds mixed in with the playing of an orchestra; music and song have played an important part in the chronicling of the changes in our world throughout history. 

Key amongst them is the individual known as the Auteur, a person who’s compositions really do stand out from the rest, and leave an indelible stamp on our consciousness and how we view and process art.
The environment a person is in, be it a building where a concert is being staged, or high up an Alpine Mountain with only ones self and the sky present, can affect how two people perceive the same song at the exact same time, one listening to the band that composed it playing it live, the other on their phone.

A man regularly cited as one of the foremost exponents of the song-writing and performing craft is Belfast born Van Morrison.
Raised by his father George on a diet of Rhythm ‘n’ blues, and to a lesser - but still important extent - Irish folk music, the Auteur from Hyndford Street recorded what is regarded by many as one of the standout albums of all time, Astral Weeks.

Many standout artists in their own right, amongst them Bruce Springsteen, Nick Cave and Joan Armatrading and Ed Sheehan have cited Van Morrison as a major influence.
I have set myself the task of explaining various elements of Auteur Theory, and how Van Morrison is a physical embodiment of it.

Francois Truffaut

ORIGINS OF AUTEUR THEORY:

The birthplace of Auteur Theory was centred around the new wave of French Cinema from 1958-1962, and its inventor, so to speak, was the acclaimed film director Francois Truffaut.
The renowned Parisian born film director worked on over 25 major films, before his untimely passing in 1984.

He set out his stall in a seminal article entitled “A certain tendency in French Cinema, published in the magazine ‘Cahiers du Cinema’.
Truffaut saw the process as so emotional and personal for a filmmaker , he should feel himself as if he were on display.
He was arguing for the total mastery of the film art, just as a painter cannot help adding to his own personality to his work through a paintbrush.
In his eyes, a filmmaker has no other choice but to display their deepest emotions on screen for the judgement of an audience.

He also said “An artist cannot dominate his work, he must sometimes be god, sometimes his creature”.  (1. A certain tendency of the French cinema)

One of the first and probably foremost carriers of Truffaut’s torch in the English speaking world was the Film Critic Andrew Sarris.
Regarding the French Director, he had this to say;

Truffaut recently has gone to great pains to emphasise that the Auteur Theory was merely a polemic for weapon for a given time and place, and I am willing to take him on his word.
The New York Film Critic also remarked “First of all Auteur Theory, at least as I now understand it and now intend to express it, claims neither the gift of prophecy nor the option of extra-cinematic perception.   

Peter Woollen on Sarris and Truffaut: “The Politique des auteurs – ‘The auteur theory’, as Andrew Sarris calls it, was developed by a loosely knit group of critics whom who write for Cahiers du Cinema, and made it the leading cinema magazine in the world.” (2. Signs and Meaning in the Cinema)

Andrew Sarris

Obviously the auteur theory cannot possibly cover every vagrant charm of the cinema.
Nevertheless, the first premise of the auteur theory is the technical competence of a director as a criterion of value.
That is the nature of the medium, you always got more for your money than mere art.
The second premise of auteur Theory is the distinguishable personality from the singer songwriter as a criterion of value.
A singer-songwriter must exhibit certain recurrent characteristics of style, which serve as his signature.

VAN MORRISON:

 “I don’t intellectualise music. For me that spoils it” (3. Rolling Stone Magazine)

George Ivan Morrison was born in Belfast and lived at 125 Hyndford Street, which was the title of a song on the “Hymn’s to the Silence” album, a stones’ throw from the Connswater River, another place song titled, which appeared on the ‘Inarticulate Speech of the Heart” album.

His father was an electrician by trade who worked down the shipyards, with a spell working in the USA.
On trips back home from the US, he would bring various vinyl albums, as Van recalled
“My dad had records and my friends did too. Plus people around me were always playing music of their own.
I grew up listening to Hank Williams, Ray Price, Farron Young and Jimmy Rogers” ( 4. A Sense of Wonder – Van Morrison’s Ireland [ASOW-VMI])

In the song “The Healing Game”, Van sings “We can let it roll on the Saxophone. Back street Jelly roll”, and in the song “Cleaning windows” where he is reminiscing about a window cleaning job he once had, he sings:
“I went home and listened to Jimmy Rogers on my lunch break”.
Van often harks back to Blues music as being the key formative influence when he was growing up, and has also spoken of having an affinity with Irish folk Music too, particularly the group “The McPeake’s”, whose original song ,”Purple Heather/Go Lassie Go”, he recorded himself.
In an UNCUT Magazine interview in 2005 spoke of first hearing Leadbelly;
“When I first heard Leadbelly it was like getting a key.
(..) He did everything in a different way.
That opened the door for me”.
(5. UNCUT Magazine)

In a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone he also remarked “Louis Armstrong, the Modern Jazz Quartet, and kind of good jazz, I always go back to that”

 He began his musical career at a rather young age; “It started off (Age 15) as playing hospital stage productions and local dances at dance halls” (5. ASOW-VMI )

In 1964 he helped setup an R&B Club in the Martime Hotel, and he soon after looked at forming a band to play his own gigs in the club.
Hid schoolfriend Billy Harrison was involved in a group called “The Gamblers”, and that group teamed up with Van and keyboard player Eric Wrixon to form “Them”.
There biggest hits were “Brown Eyed Girl”, “Here Comes the Night”, and a sublime cover of Bob Dylan’s “Baby Blue”.

Truffaut spoke an artist having “no other choice but to display their deepest emotions on screen for the judgement of an auidence”.
Belfast born record producer Roger Armstrong echoed comments spoken by many before and after him whe he opined “This is more than just enjoyment for me, its almost like a religious expeerience” (6. NME)

I have often read reviews on social media from people who have gone to concerts by the likes of Beyonce or The Pet Shop Boys.
Very little would be said as to what songs Beyonce or David Tennant sang, and indeed a lot of their commentary would be on the dancers, and pyrotechnics/big screens on stage.
In contrast over 95% of Van Morrison concert reviews from fans that I’ve read will focus solely on the songs Van sang on the night, particular nuances and differences to a certain song compared to the last time the reviewer heard him sing it live.
The other 5% would also comment on how ‘tight’ the band were, and lately on the the wonderful voice of Dana Masters. Van’s current backing singer.

But what has genuinely amazed me is how people can go to a Morrison gig in 2017, hear him sing one of his classics being sung, and the person would say without hesitation it was almost exactly like the performance of the same song at a gig  he or she was at in 1987 in the Wang Theatre in Boston or The Olympia in Paris., and give clear and detailed musical reasoning for their claim.

I sincerely that doubt in 20 years time a Beyonce fan would be able to do he same after one of her concerts.   

To my mind Roy Carr of the New Musical Express (NME) hit the nail on the head with his review of a 1973 concert in Amsterdam:

 Now I've seen Elvis Presely in Vegas, James Brown at the Apollo, and I guess what's generally considered to be the best of the rest.
And last Thursday evening I bore witness to what I can only describe as a most incredible non-performance from Van Morrison at the Carré Theatre in Amsterdam, and he won hands down.
It was no contest.
But damn it, the man hardly moved on stage.
He stood in the shadow of a battery of dark blue spotlights and, except for some finger poppin'  with his right hand, remained immobile.
Yet the sheer magnetism of his presence came hurtling out of the gloom, and was sufficient to transfix the assembled multitude.
I have to own up, I've never seen anything quite like it before or, for that matter, have I been so enthralled  by such a premeditated lack of visual entertainment.

After the show Carr met Van and interviewed him.
Asked about his stage show the Belfast bard replied:

The thing is, I'm not an entertainer.
I'm an artist, a musician.
And there's a great difference.
As far as I'm concerned, entertainers have a canned show.
They do exactly the same things each and every night... like they're into the whole showbusiness trip
(7. Roy Carr NME 1973)

Ralph J Gleeson also commented on  Van displaying his deepest emotions on stage;
"He wails as the jazz musician speaks of wailing, as the gypsies as the Gaels and the old folk in every culture speak of it.
He gets a quality and intensity in that wail which really hooks your mind, carries you along with his voice as it rises and falls in long soaring lines.
He sounds like a young Irishman haunted in his dreams, a poet, one of the children of the rainbow, living in the rainbow of the world". (8. ASOW-VMI)

Truffaut has also said; “An artist cannot dominate his work, he must sometimes be god, sometimes his creature” (9. A certain tendency of the French cinema)

This to my mind is clearly seen in the making of the seminal album ‘Astral Weeks’.
It is an album that has been pored over and over by music critics, and many other artists, such as Bruce Springsteen who as a guest on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, remarked:

Astral Weeks was an extremely important record for me. It made me trust in
beauty, it gave me a sense of the divine.
The divine just seems to run through the veins of that entire album.
Of course there was incredible singing and the playing of Richard Davis on the bass. It was trance music. It was repetitive. It was the same chord progression over and over again.
But it showed how expansive something with very basic underpinning could be. There’d be no New York City Serenade if there hadn’t been Astral Weeks.
(10. Belfastlive.co.uk)

It is amazing to think such a seminal piece of work apparently took less than two weeks to record and mix., before it hit the shops.
I am reminded of the fact that U2’s latest album took almost six months longer than planned to produce, and Roland Olazabal, one of the famous duo in Tears for Fears took over a year to mix and add additional sounds to the “The Seeds of Love” album, before it  went on sale. 

Bassist on Astral Weeks Richard Davis (who impressed Springsteen so much when the New Jersey rocker listened to it , he asked him to do bass on the “Born to Run” album.  (11. Discogs.com)
Davis said in 2016:
“As far as I can recall, I don't think I exchanged one word with the guy {Van. We just listened to his songs one time, and then we started playing.” (12. Guardian Newspaper)

As has happened with later albums he recorded too, Van merely laid down the vocal, and let the musicians do their thing.
Prior to heading into Century City Studios to record the album, Van gave Warner Brothers a list of musicians he heard previously, that he wanted to record with.
He has repeated this process many times after, when recording other albums.

A rather telling anecdote from the acclaimed composer and musician Micháel o’ Súilleabháin, who played piano on the track “So quiet in here” in 1990:
He out of the blue received a phone call asking him if he could head to Bath in England ASAP, as Van had specifically requested he be added to his backing band for the ‘Enlightenment’ recording sessions:

I arrived late at night in a taxi to the studio, which was in a disused slightly renovated small church.
There I found Van with a three piece band.
I sat at the piano wondering what was to happen now, when Van turned and announced a song called “So quiet in here”
On two three four and we were off.
I knew neither what key it was, or what tempo was involved.
(..) I picked up the slow steady 4/4 time from the drummer, and the general chord structure from the bass and we were off!
Which was just about fine until Van finished a verse, turned to me and said “take it away”.
Nice one! I was a cool cat adrift up the creek without a paddle

O’ Súillabháin stayed up for hours after, as the recording process continued in a ramshackle pace and described the atmosphere as “somewhat demonic”.
The following morning he decided he had seen enough and left.
 (13. ASOW-VMI)
A long time after he once more listened back to “So quiet in here” , and mused to himself “If you join a circus you better be ready for the hire wire act” (14. ASOW-VMI )

In 2015 Morrison articulated in an interview with Fintan o’ Toole about at times getting into ‘the zone’ during the recording process, and live on stage;

 It’s a musing and a meditation, you know? It’s like when you meditate you try to stop all this [he gestures around the room] for a minute, or a second or whatever, momentarily switch it all off. And that’s the space, you know? So in music that would be the space.
(15. Fo’T IT)

Another premise of Auteur Theory is that “A singer-songwriter must exhibit certain recurrent characteristics of style, which serve as his signature” (16. Signs and Meaning in the cinema)

“All I can be is me, whoever that is".  (17. ASOW-VMI)

To me Bob Geldof, in a Hot Press interview at Electric Picnic in 2015, distilled perfectly the essence of the Belfast bard:

I put it to you that Van is the singular Irish genius, THE singular Irish genius, and their isn’t a singular Irish musician who would dispute that.
A whole strain of rock music comes from his intuitive synthesis of the blues, jazz and a sort of Celtic mysticism.
All of this is wrapped up in this gorgeous Yeatsian language.
 it’s just instinctive to him.
(18. Bob Geldof in conversation with Stuart Clark 2015)

 

Another very good synopsis was penned by the poet Paul Durcan (who co-collaborated with him on the song “In the days before rock ‘n roll”):

No other Irish poets- writing either in verse or in music - have come within a Honda's roar of {Paddy} Kavanagh and Morrison.
Both Northerners, solid ground boys.
Both primarily, jazzmen, bluesmen, Sean Nós.
Both concerned with the mystic - how to live with it, by it, in it; how to transform it; how to reveal it.
Both troubadours,
Both very ordinary blokes. (..)
Both loners.
Both comedians.
Both love poets.
Both Kerouac freaks.
Both storyteller. (..)
Both obsessed with the audience, and the primacy of audience in any act or occasion of song or art.
(19 .Magill Magazine 1988/page 180 ASOW-VMI)

To me a great ‘song’ is a wonderful piece of poetry matched up with equally exhilarating music.
In that 2015 Fintan o’ Toole interview Morrison revealed:
“I was writing poems when I was in school. But I wasn’t connecting them to songs yet.
I was probably in school when I started writing my first songs”
(20. F’OT Irish Times.)

People have tried to put various labels on Morrison, some call him an R ‘n’  B artist, some say he is a Rock ‘n’ Roll performer, but Van himself has in various interviews said the “source” of all his songwriting and music flows back to Belfast and Jazz music.

On the surface this is apparent in the lyrics in songs such as “Madame George” , “And it Stoned Me” “A Sense of Wonder”  and “On Hyndford Street”, where he references people and place names from his  youth.
Violet Morrison, Van’s mother was for a time a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the song “Kingdom Hall”, is regarded as a homage to Mother, and the occasions she took her son to services in the Kingdom Hall on Magdala Street, a ten minute drive from Hyndford Street, when he was a child.

And perhaps the greatest doffing of the hat to his birthplace and it’s tradition’s was the recording of the “Irish Heartbeat” album in 1988 with The Chieftains.
Many speak about his version of “Raglan Road”, as being the stand out track, while others place a particular note on traditional Irish instruments and Lambeg Drums (a key feature of the Orange Order) playing side by side on “I’ll tell me Ma”.

There are also references to famous singers and writers who have influenced him in his songwriting, among them Jelly-Roll Morton, (in the song The Healing Game) poet Arthur Rimbaud (in the song “Torn down ala Rimbaud), Jimmy Rogers (in the song Cleaning Windows) and poets John Donne and William Butler Yeats (in the song Rave on John Donne Parts 1&2) amongst others.

Once again referencing that excellent Irish Times interview, Fintan o’ Toole asked about the importance of Belfast to him:

Yeah, for me it’s like, yeah like that’s the source. You see that when you go away, you know, I remember going other places. I always remember being in Greece. I felt really homesick and thought, ‘I need to go back’. I went back and I went up to Orangefield and thought, ‘yeah, this is my source’. My source is not, you know, somewhere else. This is it. This is where my source is here.
(21. Fo’T Irish Times)

There were also a number of songs in the 70’s referencing his time then spent living in the United States of America, in particular “Old Old Woodstock” , a town in upstate New York he lived in at the same time as Bob Dylan and “The Band”, “Snow from San Anselmo, a town in Southern California and a reflective look back to another place in California he once inhabited in the song “In Tiburon” recorded in 2016.

These songs show that Morrison loves to write about the sights and sounds of the environs he lives in, which is further evidenced from lyrics in the song “Golden Autumn Day”:

In the wee midnight hour I was parking my car
In this dimly lit town,
I was attacked by two thugs, who took me for a mug
And shoved me down on the ground
And they pulled out a knife, and I fought my way up
As they scarpered from the scene
Well this is no New York street, and there's no Bobby on the beat
And things ain't just what they seem
(22. AZlyrics.com)

which many have claimed references his experiences of the part of Kent he lived in at that time.
In the BBC Radio 2 interview “Long Walk Home” (22.) Bruce Springsteen talked about himself and his friends listening to Van Morrison as teenagers, especially with regard to how the Belfast bard sang about Belfast.

The “Born to Run” singer said that this gave him a new understanding and perspective about his own home place New Jersey.
“I realised nobody was singing about New Jersey, like Van was singing about Belfast, and it set me off writing about the things around here that influenced me”.
Springsteen has oft played the Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” and “Gloria” live in concert. (23. BBC)

The above proves, without a doubt, to my mind, that the traditions of R ‘n’ B and Jazz music, mixed in with  geographical and societal elements from various areas he has lived in over his life have a formed the cornerstone characteristics of Van Morrison’s “style” that “serves as his signature”.

CONCLUSION:

Many people would be definitive in their view that “Auteur Theory” can and does only relate to the world of film-making, and cannot be applied to music.
I have shown with Van Morrison, that this simply is not the case.
Whilst the theory originated within the confines of the cinematic world, its applications have just as much relevance in the art of songwriting.
Often when one turns on the radio they will hear a person being interviewed or a song, and within a matter of seconds they will correctly recognise who the person or track is.

The likes of Peter Ustinov and Billy Connolly are actors one would immediately recognise when turning on the radio, likewise Van Morrison and Sandy Denny would be two singers who fall into that category.
Over the years I have heard music commentators comment in a derisory manner that a new singer sounds exactly like Adele or  Kenny Rogers, and that they lacked originality and there was nothing ‘new’ in reality about them.
Nobody has ever said that Van Morrison.

He has a stage presence that has a uniqueness of all its own, and while people like Rickie Ross of Deacon Blue, and Jimmy Nail have written memorable songs about where they grew up,  none has quite matched the lyrical and spiritual gravitas that Van has brought to people houses, cars and so forth through his records.
Another notable characteristic is that the Belfast man organically grew into what he is now.

He as much as possible has shielded himself from being pigeon holed and labelled all over like so many artists of today are by the PR peoples in their record companies.
So just like Bing Crosby or Sam Cooke, I have no doubt that many years from now, Van Morrison’s unique voice will resonate forth from people radio’s/music players, the stamp he left on the world of music even more indelible than it is today.