Astral Weeks is the second studio album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. It was recorded at Century Sound Studios in New York during September and October 1968 and released in November of the same year by Warner Bros. Records.
The album's music blends folk, blues, jazz, and classical styles, a radical departure from Morrison's previous pop hits, such as "Brown Eyed Girl" (1967). The lyrics and cover art portray the symbolism equating earthly love and heaven that would often feature in the singer's subsequent records. His lyrics have been described as impressionistic, hypnotic, and modernist, while the record has been categorized as a song cycle or concept album.
Astral Weeks did not originally receive promotion from Morrison's record label and was not an immediate success with consumers or critics. Its standing eventually improved greatly, with praise given to Morrison's singing, arrangements, and songwriting, and the album has been viewed as one of rock music's greatest and most important records (a reputation the singer himself has dismissed). It was placed on numerous widely circulated lists of the best albums of all time and has had an enduring effect on both listeners and musicians.
Forty years after the album's release, Morrison performed all eight of its songs live for the first time at two Hollywood Bowl concerts in November 2008; this performance was later released as Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl.
Background
At the beginning of 1968, Van Morrison became involved in a contract dispute with Bang Records that kept him away from any recording activity. This occurred after the sudden death of the label's founder Bert Berns. Born with a congenital heart defect, Berns had a fatal heart attack and was discovered dead in a New York hotel room on 30 December 1967. Prior to Berns's death, he and Morrison had experienced some creative difficulties; Berns had been pushing Morrison in a more pop-oriented direction, while Morrison wanted to explore newer musical terrain. Berns's widow, Ilene Berns, held Morrison and this conflict responsible for her husband's death. Years later she would downplay this scenario, but Morrison's then girlfriend Janet (Planet) Rigsbee has since gone on record describing Ilene Berns's subsequent vindictiveness towards Morrison.
Following Bert Berns's death, Ilene Berns inherited the contracts of Bang Records. Morrison's annual option on his recording contract was also due less than a week after Berns's funeral. Legally bound to Bang Records, Morrison was not only kept out of the studio, but also found himself unable to find performing work in New York as most clubs refrained from booking him, fearing reprisals. (Bert Berns was notorious for his connections to organized crime and those connections still affected artists like Morrison and Neil Diamond trying to leave Bang Records, even after Berns's death.) Ilene Berns then discovered that her late husband had previously been remiss in filing the appropriate paperwork to keep Morrison (still a British citizen) in New York and contacted Immigration and Naturalization Service in an attempt to have Morrison deported. However, Morrison managed to stay in the U.S. when Janet Rigsbee agreed to marry him. Once married, Morrison and Rigsbee moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he found work performing in local clubs. Morrison began performing with a small electric combo doing blues numbers and songs from Blowin' Your Mind! and from Morrison's Them band days. Two of the musicians soon left but Morrison retained the bassist, Tom Kielbania, a student at the Berklee School of Music. Morrison decided to try an acoustic sound and he and Kielbania began performing shows in coffee houses in the Boston area as an acoustic duo with Morrison playing guitar and Kielbania on upright bass. Before this, Morrison had primarily recorded and performed with electric musicians. The acoustic medium would provide him "greater vocal improvisation and a freer, folkier feel".
Later, Kielbania heard jazz-trained flautist John Payne for the first time while sitting in on a jam session. He invited Payne to the club where he played with Morrison, hoping Morrison would invite him to join them. After allowing Payne to sit in on one performance, Morrison extended an invitation, which Payne accepted. The trio of Payne, Kielbania and Morrison continued performing for four months. In the weeks they played at the Catacombs, they began to develop the template for Astral Weeks. It was around this time that Warner Bros. Records approached Morrison, hoping to sign him. Presumably, their interest focused on his prior success with "Brown-Eyed Girl", not on Morrison's current acoustic work. Regardless, their interest allowed Morrison to return to the recording studio.
At the time, Warner Bros. had a deal with Inherit Productions, the production arm of Schwaid-Merenstein, which was founded by manager Bob Schwaid (who worked for Warners Publishing) and producer Lewis Merenstein. Merenstein received a call from Warner Bros. to see Morrison in Boston and related how eight or nine producers had gone to hear Morrison, thinking they were going to hear "Brown Eyed Girl" only to find that "it was another person with the same voice". Merenstein first heard Morrison play at Ace Recording studio and recalled that when Morrison played the song "Astral Weeks" for him, "I started crying. It just vibrated in my soul and I knew that I wanted to work with that sound." with the help of Warner Bros. executive Joe Smith, who would ultimately sign Morrison to Warner Bros.
Still legally bound to Bang Records, Morrison would yet have more issues with them in the future. For the time being, Schwaid managed to free him from those obligations, under several conditions. First, Morrison had to write and submit to Web IV Music (Bert Berns's publishing company) three original compositions per month over the course of one year. Morrison fulfilled that obligation by recording thirty-six nonsense songs in a single session. Such action risked legal reprisals, but ultimately none transpired. Morrison then had to assign Web IV half of the copyright to any musical composition written and recorded by Morrison and released as a single within one year from 12 September 1968. That demand became a moot point when Warner Bros. refrained from releasing any singles during that time, as no single was released from Astral Weeks. Finally, Morrison had to include two original compositions controlled by Web IV on his next album. Morrison fulfilled that demand with two of his own compositions, "Madame George" and "Beside You", although the versions subsequently released were vastly different musically from the original versions recorded with Bang.
There were still demands that weren't given on paper, which Smith tried to deal with through Don Rickles's manager, Joe Scandore. Scandore, whom Smith described as "connected", set up an unusual arrangement where Smith had to arrive one evening at an abandoned warehouse on 9th Avenue in Manhattan at 6 p.m. with a bag containing $20,000 USD in cash. According to Smith, "I had to walk up three flights of stairs and they were four guys. Two tall and thin and two built like buildings. There was no small talk. I got the signed contract and got the hell out of there, because I was afraid somebody would whack me in the head and take back the contract and I'd be out the money." When asked if he ever saw these men again, Smith replied, "No. They weren't in the music business." with the other musicians playing together on upright bass, lead acoustic guitar, vibes, flute, and drums. The strings and horns constituted the only instruments added subsequently to the initial recording sessions. Morrison said later "They ruined it. They added strings. I didn't want the strings. And they sent it to me, it was all changed. That's not 'Astral Weeks'."
Producer Lewis Merenstein had a background in jazz, and according to Merenstein, Morrison "was not an aficionado of jazz when I met him. R&B and soul, yes; but jazz, no." For the Astral Weeks recording sessions, Merenstein first contacted veteran bassist Richard Davis. Perhaps best known for his work with Eric Dolphy, Davis essentially served as the session leader, and it was through Davis that Merenstein recruited guitarist Jay Berliner, percussionist Warren Smith Jr., and drummer Connie Kay. All of these musicians had strong backgrounds in jazz; Berliner had worked closely with Charles Mingus and Kay was part of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Morrison was still working with Kielbania and Payne but, for these sessions, they were essentially replaced. According to Kielbania, "I got to show all the bass lines to Richard Davis. He embellished a lot of them, but I gave him the feeling." Morrison's impression of the sessions was "The songs came together very well in the studio. Some of the tracks were first takes. [But] the musicians were really together. Those type of guys play what you're gonna do before you do it, that's how good they are."