Van Morrison Quotes
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Joyous Sound evolved from a gospel influence. Actually it evolved out of sitting at a piano and just picking out a riff, a gospel type riff. It just seemed to come joyously-something about the song, about living in another place of joyous sounds. I'm not quite sure-that's one I'm trying to analyze. It just came out.
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I went back to Belfast and started a club, the Maritime. No one had thought about doing a blues club, so I was the first.
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I never bought the commercial thing, at any stage of the game.
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I think when you get past your second album, it all becomes something of a routine. So you have to struggle against that, find a way of making what you do sound fresh and new each time.
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Singing is my profession - there is no plan B.
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It was really strange for me when I started to play concerts in America where the audiences were all sitting down.
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There is no black-and-white situation. It's all part of life. Highs, lows, middles.
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It's the same thing as a primitive of Africans, Indians, nomads or whatever - when they start getting up and doing their ritual and doing the dance, it's just what's coming through. It's the spirit. Rock 'n' roll is still primitive.
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When I started studying tenor saxophone as a kid in Belfast, I did so with a guy named George Cassidy, who was also a big inspiration.
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The Eternal Kansas City song came from a dream sequence. It was actually kind of weird. I had this dream about a Kansas City type of thing while I was up at Stevie Winwood's place near Cheltenham, in Britain. I went into this small town and I was walking along and this dream thing was still in my head.
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I wanted to find out why I wasn't getting off on what I was doing and try and make some sense out of the evolution of it.
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You've got to separate the singer and the songs.
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The whole trip that happened in the late 60s and 70s was kind of a throwback to a lot of folk styles. I got into it as well 'cause I started with the folk styles.
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If you're putting somebody down, you're doing it because you're just seeing a part of yourself that you don't like. That's all that is.
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These days politics, religion, media seem to get all mixed up. Television became the new religion a long time back and the media has taken over.
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Skiffle was a name that was attached to what was, in essence, American folk music with a beat.
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Well I've got to get out of the rat-race now I'm tired of the ways of mice and men And the empires all turning into rust again. Out of everything nothing remains the same That's why I'm cloud hidden Cloud hidden Whereabouts unknown.
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When I first started drinking, everybody was doing it. That was before they discovered marijuana and all that. It was the late 50s, early 60s - it was the beginnings of the rock 'n' roll era. The main drink was like wine. And even that was a romantic throwback to something.
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The future is keeping you out of the present time.
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I'm very lucky, I'm happy with life because my experiences led me to do what I had to do. I don't have any regrets whatsoever.
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I put out records to this day that are not necessarily in a sequence of anything. Some could be written a while back, some not. There is no set pattern.
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I am about the arrangements and the layers of depth in the music.
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What you see is what you get.
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I never paid attention to what was contemporary or what was commercial, it didn't mean anything to me.