Van Morrison Quotes
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Skiffle was blues featuring a washboard and acoustic instruments. It encompassed blues, with elements of folk, jazz, and, at times, American country-and-western music.
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Somebody's going to hear a song that will key in a nerve or something in their experience that represents their own vision. And the next person is going to see it completely different. So even what it means to me is probably irrelevant. It's totally irrelevant. What matters is what it means to each person listening to it.
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I'm talking about noise rock. I don't think that noise rock element belongs in jazz. It's not for me anyway; it just doesn't fit.
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[You Got To Make It Through The World] it's kind of a survival song. Survival is what's happening and it's basically a song about that.
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Do you remember the time darlin' when everything made more sense in the world? Oh I remember, I remember... when life made more sense... Take me back, take me back, take me way back... to when life made more sense.
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The music I really like to get off on is the old rhythm 'n' blues and rock 'n' roll stuff... that's what I really dig. And I also dig to sing ballads as well. And I also dig writing my own songs. I was just trying to find a way of integrating the whole thing, taking a look at the total picture.
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I realized that what I was looking for was doing collaborations with other people - people who can play a ballad, rock, jazz. I was looking for more co-op type things than what I had been doing, which had been completely my own trip.
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I like [George] Benson because I just like it. I like that kind of style. I don't like the broken up kind of style. I don't like where you play for 16 bars and then break it up into what somebody's version of what birds twittering sounds like, or what the sound of the city is, or what New York sounds like.
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When you perform live, it's a different trip - it's different energy. I just felt a conflict between both of the trips. I was trying to evaluate what it meant for me to be a singer/songwriter and what that whole thing all meant.
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It was like I had evolved to a certain stage where I was stuck in this songwriter bag as an image. But basically at heart, I'm a rocker. And I still am. But I was caught up in the singer/songwriter bag and I wasn't really enjoying it.
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When it's not always raining there'll be days like this. When there's no one complaining there'll be days like this. When everything falls into place like the flick of a switch. Well my mama told me there'll be days like this.
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What excited me when I first came into it was the performing aspect and doing blues-oriented material, rock/blues oriented stuff, basic stuff, basic what they call rock 'n' roll.
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See the man on the TV with a phony smile. Bring you up, bring you down, he can turn your head around.
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Jazz goes into folk music, into rock music. Jazz is in practically everything except classical music where they're reading the same music all the time, the same way, the same tempo every night.
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I don't like to condemn people because what that means is that you're only condemning yourself about a part of you that you can't stand.
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I felt kind of bored at the prospect of writing some more of my own songs because I really wasn't saying what I wanted to say.
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I don't like to wonder about it-I just like to do it. That's what I mean about the image stuff and all that. There's far too much emphasis being placed on that kind of stuff... the whole emphasis on what does it mean? Everybody has their own particular vision.
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My experiences with dope were not good for me. I had to go another route. Because in my experience, dope didn't give me those insights.
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I was like one of those newspapers, those periodicals. There's all different kinds of alcoholics. There's the everyday kind: that's the consistent one. That's what people think an alcoholic is-but an alcoholic is basically just someone who's allergic to alcohol. That's all it means. It's just an allergy.
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I forgot that love existed, troubled in my mind. Heartache after heartache, worried all the time. I forgot that love existed Then I saw the light Everyone around me make everything alright.
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These are the days of the endless summer, these are the days, the time is now. There is no past, there's only future, there's only here, there's only now.
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You are who you are. It doesn't make any point to go out and buy the Top 40 albums to see what those acts are doing. There's no point in hearing what's going on. The only thing that's going on is what's been going forever. It's just that some people dig that bag and some people dig the other bag.
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Then it evolved into more of a ballad style singer/songwriter thing. And there was a conflict in trying to merge the two styles with the same band behind me. 'Cause the musicians that I would need to do ballad-oriented tunes would require musicians who were more into jazz.
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There was a conflict - the actual putting together of the reality of the situation didn't seem to gel. I'd been doing kind of a slow ballad type of thing on records, but when it came to performing, I felt I was limiting myself.