Page 32 - the NOISE April 2015

VAN MORRISON: CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS
Van Morrison was furious.
Leeches, all of them. Managers, agents, promoters, re- cord company slime: bunch of God damned leeches. People
without talent or creativity who latched on to those with it and sucked them dry. Just put your signature on the dotted line and you’ll be famous, boy. And if it doesn’t happen, we’ll take our commission anyway. God damn them all straight to hell.
Van loathed the business end of the music industry. The promotion, the schmoozing, the art of the deal ... it turned his stomach. The process cheapened what he did, turned it into another product to sell like dish soap or underwear. He be- moaned his current situation. He had finally found a record company that understood his art, run by men who loved mu- sic over money. Yet his old label would not let go until they squeezed every dime they could out of him. God damned leeches. What the hell was he going to do?
It was early 1968 and Van Morrison was 21 years old.
He paced back and forth on the hardwood floor of his shabby Boston apartment, his shoes clomping out a steady pulse that echoed through his mostly empty home away from home. He grew melancholy for a moment. Home. Won- derful, cold, miserable, sh*tty fantastic Belfast. His city, grow- ing like an angry blackhead on the nose of auld verdant Eire. Unfortunately, Ireland didn’t have any major record labels or show business institutions looking to make someone like him a star. For all that you had to come to America.
George Ivan Morrison grew up on the tough, dirty streets of Belfast, short and stocky with a head of curly red hair and a craggy face only a mother could love. Advancement in his hometown meant one of two things: a career in petty crime or a life sentence of hard labor, either in a factory or on the boat docks like his father. Van chose neither, for God had given him a gift.
The lion.
The lion was inside of him. It was the key to the infinite, the eternal joyous sound. All he had to do was open the door wide enough and the lion would wake up and roar. Once people heard that jungle cry coming out of stubby, little Van Morrison, they never forgot it. They looked at him differently.
Van’s band Them had hits in 1964-66 with Big Joe Turner’s “Baby Please Don’t Go,” and several of Van’s originals, including the three chord classic “Gloria.” But the young Them had signed
exploitative contracts that drove the group apart. Van put- tered around his hometown for a while waiting for a solo offer. He waited a long time then grabbed the first one that came.
Bert Berns was an American producer and songwriter who penned the hits “Twist and Shout,” “Hang On Sloopy,” and “Piece Of My Heart,” as well as “Here Comes The Night,” Them’s highest charting US single. Berns convinced Morrison to sign
with his label Bang Records as a solo artist.
In March 1967, Van moved to New York and cut eight sides
using Bang’s studio musicians. Van found the professionals’ playing to be sterile and bloodless. He drove them through
take after take in search of the right sound. For the last track of the session, Morrison instructed the band to play the same medium tempo two chord vamp over and over for ten min- utes. After everyone had gone home, Van had the engineer kill the studio lights and roll tape. He then shut himself in the vocal booth, closed his eyes, and let the lion out.
The result was “T.B. Sheets,” a frightening firsthand account of a former lover’s slow death from tuberculosis. Van sings it with an unearthly nervous revulsion:
The cool room
Lord, is a fool’s room
And I can almost smell
Your T.B. Sheets
On your sickbed
I gotta go, gotta go, gotta go
It wasn’t exactly Bert Berns’ (or anyone’s) idea of Top 40 material, but that was OK because Van had also graced him with something all record men can recognize on first listen: a smash hit.
The timing was perfect. “Brown Eyed Girl,” was released in June 1967, the same month as Sgt. Pepper’s and at the dawn of the Summer of Love. It was the polar opposite of “T.B. Sheets”
— sunny, outward, and carefree instead of dark, claustropho- bic, and way too real. It had an irresistible hook: a soulful sha- la-la sing-along chorus everyone loved. And Van made it all sound effortless.
The single was huge all over the world. Bang couldn’t press up copies fast enough and had to bring in an outside distrib- utor. Morrison dutifully appeared on American television in groovy love beads, gamely lip syncing his hit and mumbling uncomfortable answers to Dick Clark’s inane questions (Dick:
“What do you do when you’re not making music?” Van: “Oh, I just sorta walk around ...”). He was a star, and the bucks rolled in. To Bang Records, that is. Van would soon discover the contract he had hastily signed gave control of his songwrit- ing royalties and publishing to his label. The real money from
“Brown Eyed Girl,” was going into the pockets of Bert Berns.
The first sign of trouble was the release of Van Morrison’s debut LP. Van wasn’t aware he had an LP out until he saw it in the store. The cover said: “Van Morrison – Blowin’ Your Mind!” in garish Saturday morning cartoon letters. Crudely drawn vines and tendrils surrounded a photo of a sweaty-faced Van onstage, looking stoned out of his head. The back had a ridic- ulous nonsensical “psychedelic” essay written by a painfully unhip Bert Berns. The album looked like what it was: a quickie cash-in with a hit single attached.
Morrison was appalled and started looking for ways out of his Bang contract. Berns apologized and promised to give him more control on his next session. Van warily returned to the studio in late 1967. At least all ten minutes of “T.B. Sheets”
32 • APRIL 2015 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us