Keep on smiling

One of Van Morrison’s umpteen albums is called What’s Wrong with this Picture? It’s a question long-term fans are likely to echo as they contemplate the cover of his new release, Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl.

One of Van Morrison’s umpteen albums is called What’s Wrong with this Picture? It’s a question long-term fans are likely to echo as they contemplate the cover of his new release, Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl. What’s wrong is that Van Morrison is smiling. This is, to say the least, unusual.

Morrison is the most famous curmudgeon in popular music and he doesn’t do smiles. He prefers to appear on his record sleeves looking moody, depressed or downright aggressive. The brooding, pallid figure that appears on the front of one of his last truly great albums, Poetic Champions Compose (1987), looks so openly contemptuous that it must have had a terrible effect on sales. ‘You think you are good enough to listen to this?’ Van’s curled lip seems to suggest.

So improbable is the idea of a smiling Van that some are suggesting that the extraordinary cheerful image of him showing off his immaculately white and gleaming gnashers must have been Photoshopped. His record company has denied it. This really is Van Morrison, smiling benignly at his audience at a concert performance last year at the Hollywood bowl.

Almost as unlikely as that smile is the fact that Morrison has revisited his first officially released solo album. Over the years he has downplayed Astral Weeks (1968), which regularly comes near the top of those endless lists of the greatest albums of all time. And in a way one can understand why. It was recorded in just a couple of sessions with sceptical jazz musicians he had never worked with before. Morrison was 23, a young man in a hurry in New York after breaking up with that great Northern Irish rhythm and blues band Them.