A biography for Van Morrisonhasn’t been written yet.
“I do see value in music criticism. Most of the criticism I have received over the years has been very good.”
“A famous person to themselves, they don't get up in the morning and think, I'm famous. I'm not famous to me. Famous is a perception.”
“I just need somewhere to dump all my negativity.”
“The future is keeping you out of the present time.”
“Even today, skiffle is a defining part of my music. If I get the opportunity to just have a jam, skiffle is what I love to play.”
“My thinking musically has always been more advanced - it is difficult to get it down onto paper sometimes, even now.”
“I never bought the commercial thing, at any stage of the game.”
“hark, now hear the sailors cry, smell the sea, and feel the sky let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic...”
“You can't stay the same. If you're a musician and a singer, you have to change, that's the way it works.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Being famous was extremely disappointing for me. When I became famous it was a complete drag and it is still a complete drag.”
“Every performance is different. That's the beauty of it.”
“I don't think nostalgia has to be negative.”
“Singing is my profession - there is no plan B.”
“When I started you were more in touch with the people you were playing to. There wasn't the distance or the separation that there is now.”
“I understood jazz, I understood how it worked. That's what I apply to everything.”
“It was really strange for me when I started to play concerts in America where the audiences were all sitting down.”
“Skiffle was a name that was attached to what was, in essence, American folk music with a beat.”
“There is no black-and-white situation. It's all part of life. Highs, lows, middles.”