Astral Weeks

Van Morrison, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.

And here he is singing Van Morrison's classic song, Astral Weeks.

If I'll venture to the slipstream Between the viaduct of your dream Will the immobile steel rails crack And the ditch on the back of the road stop Would you find

me Would you kiss my eyes Lay me down The silence easy to be born again.

Above a very simple and appropriately everyday acoustic riff, Plant sings a touching picture of two youngsters who can no longer be playmates because one's parents and peers disapprove of the other because of long hair and being generally from the dark side of town.

Why does Lester Banks feel this way? He spelled out why music meant so much to him in a retrospective review for Van Morrison's Astral Weeks in the book Stranded, Rock and Roll for a Desert Island in 1979.

The

album, it assumed at the time quality of a beacon, a light on the far shores of the murk.

He was a huge jazz double bassist.

He was famous for playing on Eric Dolphy's avant-garde classic, Out to Lunch, and also directed the improvisational session behind Van Morrison's Astral Weeks.

Little Brother Montgomery passed away in 1985 at the age of 79 from natural causes.

He was an influential blues and jazz pianist.

We did, we did a nice rendition.

You've chosen Astral Weeks-

Mm-hmm

... um, by Van.

Yeah.

Well, listen, it is a great song choice.

It is, uh, Van Morrison's Astral Weeks.

It's Brona Gallagher's fourth song choice today.

I think this has to be my favorite Van Morrison song.

As much as I like, you know, what is it, Astral Weeks, the album.

This one was just like, you know, early Van, got a little bit of drawl in his voice.

He just got very weird later on in his career.

So that was really great.

Well, just talking about that point, I saw Van Morrison in Los Angeles some years ago where he was playing the Astral Weeks

Oh, you saw that?

Fantastic.

Which was a fantastic show.

And he had some of the members who'd been in his band for like 50 years, including John Plotonia.

He did Astral Weeks, but he did a whole lot of other songs as well.

And he would introduce each song.

And I was never, never, never gonna grow so old again.

There it is, that is Sweet Thing from, uh, 1968, the incredible album known as Astral Weeks.

So again- In talking about Van Morrison, we needed to talk about this album.

He was given three weeks, um, to record this album.

And as a result, and this album commercially performed very modestly, at least initially, it will now regularly feature in top 10 lists of one of the greatest albums of all time.

You, you look this up.

Astral Weeks is a journey of kind of a, a deep spiritual journey.

It has this lovely dreamlike quality to the whole album.

Favorite album.

You've gone for Astral Weeks by Van Morrison, and you're far from the first person-

[laughs]

... on The Culture Club to have done that, but why have you picked it?

I don't know if, or the manager.

I don't know if that's true.

But A- Astral Weeks, even though it's, a lot of it is about him growing up, Morrison growing up in East Belfast, and I was living in the Bogside, but there was a kind of familiarity about it.

You know, working class, very tightly packed housing, um, close together.