Spiky, sticky, silly: interviewing Van Morrison

Q: ‘How would you define transcendence?’
A: ‘Well, how would you define it?’

I interviewed Van Morrison last year. (I’m fine now, thanks.) While the exercise wasn’t quite the near-death experience of industry legend — he was polite and accommodating, if not always exactly forthcoming — it got sticky at times, as the above exchange illustrates. Let’s call it a solid 6.5 on the Lou Reed Scale.

Morrison, who turns 75 on the last day of this month, was formed in an age when a people-pleasing public persona wasn’t essential for musical success. In rare interviews, he engages with informed questions about music but refuses to indulge in the game most journalists insist on playing, which is to map the lyrical concerns to the lived life. Sniff around his personal motivations and he balls up like a hedgehog being poked with a garden rake.

In song, Morrison has interrogated Rosicrucianism, spiritual rebirth, the ache of place, the struggle to write, loss of innocence, as well as the joys of potted herring, window cleaning, Max Wall and Lester Piggott.