But Astral Weeks is no one-trick pony – open your heart to Sweet Thing, Cypress Avenue, Madame George, Ballerina (ahh-sigh) and Astral Weeks itself and the payback will surely be huge. Madame George engages me in exactly the same way that Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row does, and I reckon I’d need them both in my Desert Island knapsack. But, down the years, I’ve taken the view that such concerns do not matter – each time I listen there is something fresh to consider (and after forty years that is saying something). Yeats, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce or Flann O’Brien, for example, you will know that the ‘Irish’ poetic or prose voice is rich, evocative and often downright difficult to comprehend. I bought the album as soon as I’d saved up enough pocket money! Them proved much too narrow a channel for Van and he split the band up once he tired of chasing chart success, promptly disappearing to the US to hone his ‘Irish / Caledonian’ vision and find the best way to express it.Īstral Weeks appeared in 1969 and I first heard tracks from it on Radio One’s more progressive programmes hosted by people like Pete Drummond and John Peel. Astral Weeks Lyrics von Van Morrison mit Video: If I ventured in the slipstream / Between the viaducts of your dream / Where immobile steel rims crack. He is a multi-instrumentalist (piano, sax, guitar and much more besides) but in truth his best instrument is his voice. Van was the vocalist with Them (an Irish version of the Stones, if you like) and they had a few big hit singles in the glory days.

Lyrics to astral weeks by van morrison