When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison

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More About This Book

Overview

This book is a quest to understand Van Morrison's particular genius through a close look at the most extraordinary and unclassifiable moments in his long career, beginning in 1965 and continuing in full force to this day: sometimes entire songs, sometimes single words or even the guttural spaces between words that become musical events in themselves.

Editorial Reviews

Peter Gerstenzang
Writing about the songs of Van Morrison is rightly seen as something of a paradox. Perhaps that's because, for all his scholarly use of multiple musical styles and his references to Yeats and Joyce, the Belfast Cowboy's work is more sensual than it is intellectual. Which makes the renowned rock critic Greil Marcus…the right man to plumb that work. Combining an incantatory prose style with careful reporting and inventive, sometimes infuriating judgments, Marcus manages to illuminate Morrison's cerebral soul music—even if, as the singer once claimed, "the process is beyond words."
—The New York Times
More Reviews (1) Fewer Reviews
The Barnes & Noble Review

Culture critic Marcus celebrates in this somewhat eccentric book, titled When that Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison, the enigmatic Irish rocker, Van Morrison, whose voice he considers the "richest and most expressive" in pop music since Elvis. And if you're familiar with Marcus's work on The King, you know that's saying a lot. But Marcus doesn't offer us an argument on Morrison's behalf; instead, he assembles a collage of fragments, each meant to enhance our understanding of the Celtic genius behind such top 40 hits as "Brown-Eyed Girl," "Domino," and "Moondance." As catchy and memorable as these songs are, Marcus prefers Morrison's expressive masterpiece, Astral Weeks, an album that transcends the limits of rock as it defies simple description. Let it be known that it's the album Marcus plays more than any other.

Such fanboy gush sneaks into this odd appreciation -- a book so unusual that Marcus dismisses out of hand more than fifteen years, and as many albums, from Morrison's long career. Most of that time "Van the Man" spent navel-gazing, in Marcus's opinion, and in pretentious poeticizing that doesn't deserve a second listen. While Marcus dismisses Morrison's sense of serenity, he revels in the singer's search for "mystical deliverance" and "religious yearning." He's not deaf to the tension and struggle in Morrison's music -- the Irish "yarragh" in his voice that makes the song a thing in itself, with its "own desires, fears, will, and even ideas." The best bits in Marcus's meandering book recount a number of Morrison's live performances, but he's especially sharp on Morrison's slam-bang turnout at the concert filmed for The Band's Last Waltz and the more recent onstage recreation of Astral Weeks in its entirety. A learned music critic, Marcus hears all the amazing sounds and traditions that come together in Morrison's unique wailing. But Marcus ventures too wide in his peculiar cultural analogies and indulges his own hipness with a silly two-sentence chapter. If you want biographical gossip, or even straight history turn elsewhere -- this is Morrison interpreted for your ear and soul, where the real genius plays.

--Thomas De Pietro

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781586489526
  • Publisher: PublicAffairs
  • Publication date: 4/5/2011
  • Pages: 208
  • Sales rank: 571,917
  • Product dimensions: 5.00 (w) x 8.00 (h) x 0.80 (d)

Meet the Author

Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus

Greil Marcus is the author of Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus, Writings 1968-2010 (PublicAffairs, 2010), The Shape of Things to Come, Like a Rolling Stone (PublicAffairs, 2005), The Old Weird America, and other books; a twentieth century anniversary edition of his book Lipstick Traces was published in 2009. With Werner Sollors he is the editor of A New Literary History of America, published in 2009 by Harvard University Press. Since 2000 he has taught at Princeton, Berkeley, Minnesota, and the New School in New York; his column "Real Life Rock Top 10" appears regularly in The Believer. He lives in Berkeley.

Table of Contents

Northern Muse. Greek Theatre, Berkeley. 3 May 2009 ix

Introduction 1

Part 1 A Grimy Cinderella in a Purple Stage Suit

Mystic Eyes. 1965 15

Tupelo Honey. 1971 18

Baby Please Don't Go. 1965 23

John Brown's Body. 1975 27

Caravan. The Last Waltz. 1976 29

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. 1966 36

Part 2 I'm Going to My Grave With This Record

Astral Weeks. 1968 43

Almost Independence Day. 1972. Listen to the Lion. 1972. Caledonia Soul Music. 1970 63

Moonshine Whiskey. 1971 73

Just Like a Woman. 1971 74

The Last Laugh, on Mark Knopfler, Sailing to Philadelphia. 2000 80

Part 3 A Belief in the Blues as a Kind of Curse One Puts on Oneself

Common One. 1980 …Tell Me Something. 1996 85

Linden Arden Stole the Highlights. 1974 96

Breakfast on Pluto. 2005 100

The Healing Game. 1997 110

Part 4 There Was No False Face the Song Could Not Erase

Into the Music. 1979 125

Friday's Child. 1971 134

Madame George. 1968 140

Saint Dominic's Preview. 1996 157

Sweet Thing. 1968 163

Take Me Back. 1991. Jennifer Jason Leigh, 1995 166

Mystic Eyes. Greek Theatre, Berkeley. 2009 175

Behind the Ritual. 2008 178

Acknowledgments 185

Index 187

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