You May Just Have to Break Out...

I GREW UP in the house with singers. In fact, you can call me a prodigy, the point needs little stretching. When I was five, I could operate the bulky, clumsy Magnavox console that occupied a corner of our living room. By seven, I knew what I wanted to hear: Ella at Birdland, Sinatra's 45 of "Chicago," with "Witchcraft" as the flip, Sammy Davis when he was still Junior, Sinatra's Christmas Album (only recently replaced in stereo), the two double albums of Ella Fitzgerald with Duke Ellington, with emphasis on "Satin Doll," and "A Train." Van Morrison sings in the same tradition. Like those predecessors, he simply possesses his songs. A song written for Sinatra was Sinatra's; there could be no adequate convers. To my knowledge, only two of Morrison's songs have been covered: two mediocre versions of "Crazy Love," and, of course, The Shadows of Knight's "Gloria." No mean feat in these days of instant imitations.

Unlike Janis Joplin, who lived a tribute to Bessie Smith, Van Morrison's life is inextricably tied into his music. The listener would do well to know of the personal problems Morrison has endured over the last year or so. Never the easiest man to work for, Morrison's domestic life collapsed around him just after the release of St. Dominic's Preview, and his artistic life reflected those changes. He fired, in short order, his band, his manager and his wife. He would, it seemed, sing no more songs of easy domestic bliss. Preview echoed the troubled times masked by "Brown Eyed Girl," and more accurately described by "He Ain't Give You None" and "TB Sheets." Morrison's wife, Janet, was quite a stabilizing influence; his aquisition of fame (artistic) and comfort (financial) came during his marriage. Their divorce was finalized this year.

HERE IS an album that continues Preview's rediscovery of solitude. Its songs are by and large a maze of descending progressions. On first listening, each seems a discrete unit, with a distinctively distanced point of view. Immersion in the album indicates that Morrison has abandoned domesticity, in favor of detachment. He seems to be passing along visions.

Odd, then, that the most direct attempt at some sort of viable context should fail so miserably. "The Great Deception" is simply a bad song, possibly Morrison's first ever. It's lyrics are banal, its arrangement ordinary, pleading in even its title to recall just the slightest hint of The Platters. No one should be forced to cope with lyrics like:

Have you ever heard about the great Rembrandt

Have you ever heard about how he could paint

And he didn't have enough money for his brushes

And they thought it was rather quaint.

copywright: 1973 Caledonia Soul Music/Warner-Tamerlane Pub. Corp. (BMI)

The simplistic arrangement is plodding; guitarist John Platania's work is indecisive, given to noodling. (His work throughout the album is inconsistent, remarkable from a man responsible for the opening lick to "Domino," something that is in my Guitarists Hall of Fame next to the beginning of "Smoke on the Water.") The song's bitterness stands out, and it is a measure of the artist's bitterness that he is unable to articulate it.

DECEPTION" aside, the album falls into two loose suites. Side one attempts an historical statement, but it's a vague vision. "Snow in San Anselmo" is cemented in a real experience, but almost unreal in its rarity. It is a picture, a series of strung together images, missions, and massage parlors, pancake houses, and waitresses, barren and dull. The rhythm section plods its way through a descending progression, only to break into an uptempo jazz styled passage: walking bass, spiralling saxophone solo blended into the overall mix, piano chords cementing the whole, the Oakland Symphony Orchestra Chorus offering incongruous styles throughout. The vocal is subdued, though not without subtleties of phrasing, and intention.

An orientation chord followed by one bar of a cappella opens "Warm Love." You'd expect a children's song, each syllable enunciated in falsetto with proper childish awe. The band only enters between lines, to keep the time, with nuanced emphasis from the bass drum and guitar; two flutes linger through each line as backing vocals. Jackie DeShannon appears for the first chorus, and the song becomes a duet. More idealism, but a far cry from the bliss of "Starting a New Life"--because there's a distance involved, a musing quality absent from Morrison's music for years. Flutes are prominent all the way through the song, and the acoustic guitar holds both the time and feeling. Jef Labes' piano here is used for coloring.

THE TITLE song and "Wild Children" must be taken together. "Hard Nose the Highway" is contemporary, full of lyrical references to Morrison's stormy past, and present. The moral is simple: you win some, you lose some. Labes' piano solo owes a great deal to Floyd Cramer and the cheap upright piano style. For the first time, Morrison cuts loose, holding the band on an ascending-descending riff, overdubbing his backing vocals, wailing the song into a peak, dropping back for its end.

"Wild Children" abrubtly undercuts that mood. A remarkably plaintive song, it tries to give context to a generation. It draws upon On the Waterfront, mourns the death of James Dean, prays to Tennessee Williams to "let your inspiration go," hopes to witness a better era. Platania's guitar is mournfully Hawaiian, Labes' piano even tinkles a bit over a slight change in tempo as it alternates chords and notes. This song bespeaks the fifties, implies the sixties and seventies, and chalks it all up to the War, soldiers coming home, "Love looks in their eyes." If enough people hear this song, it will end the ugly myth created by "American Pie."

Side two is pretty ethereal. "Green" may be a song sung by a leaf, who's sure? but it's definitely about nature. Morrison's first non-original since the old Bert Berns days over at Bang Records, the song's basically whimsical nature is belied by a funky, uptempo arrangement right out of Sinatra doing "That's Life." It's the good old uptempo blues: sax solos, blues guitar phrases abound. Morrison torch sings it, bending notes, phrases, whole lines, and finishing with a properly respectful ad lib.

AUTUMN SONG is visionary. It has all the impact of Morrison's classics, "TB Sheets," and the more recent "Listen to the Lion," but enjoys the virtue of accessibility. Anybody can get close to the cool jazz tempo with its prominent flutes and deliberate lack of structure, thanks to Rich Schlosser's wonderfully slipshod drumming. Gary Mallaber's vibes add to that unreal quality. Labes' piano struggles to cement the song and fails, yet remains as coloring. Platania's noodling and inconsistency work perfectly here. This is a song of instants, like the vibes and wah-wah fusion for a haunting vibrato under the single word "dream," or Schlosser's cymbal crash in the middle of what passes for a chorus.

Morrison's non-sequential images contribute to a lack of direction that is here the song's strongest quality. His phrasing masterfully switches emphasis on repeated lines, or works with an occasional interior rhyme, or manipulates certain lines. I've said before that Morrison uses his voice as an instrument better than anyone singing rock music today. And that is never truer than on "Autumn Song." I bet Sinatra would be proud.

In "Listen to the Lion." Morrison communicated in low guttural sounds here he communicates imagery as though by ellipsis repeating "Way out in the distance/Cable cars/And I hear the church bells chime." I suspect this passage is ad libbed, yet it is the vision's essence. The band stretches out over a basic bass riff, everybody taking off at once, three instruments for every phrase, bare unity. Platania and Labes weave phrases, while the vibes hold a mood. The album's finest moment is Morrison's coaxing of the bassman into a riff he verbalizes, once, twice, three times before the bass picks it up and holds it. It reminds me of a walk in the country. It's supposed to.

THERE'S NOTHING new here musically; there was a time, when you could expect Van Morrison to synthesize his diverse influences into music unique both instrumentally and lyrically. There was also a time when he would open an album with a song that was AM dynamite, your "Moondances," "Dominos," "Wild Nights," and "Jackie Wilson Saids." No more. Goodbye as well to Tuppelo Honey's mindless bliss, and, pretty as it was, that may not be so bad. These are troubled times, y'know.

Morrison has fallen back on his voice, and it's his best instrument. In the end, this one makes me want to go back and get those Ella Fitzgerald records away from Mom.