Van Morrison- His Band & Street Choir

Not even a quarter way into his six decade career, Irish singer/songwriter Van Morrison was already stringing together a series of soon-to-be-classic albums including November 1970’s His Band and Street Choir. This album followed closely on the heels of the revered Astral Weeks and Moondance, with their obvious folk and jazz influences, with a decidedly rhythm’n’blues feel on songs such as the horn-driven “Domino” and “Blue Money”.

This rare 2012 classic rock interview was conducted in Belfast by the BBC’s intrepid John Bennett. If you are tired of all of the “eyes wide shut” Access Hollywood-type glitz and glam representations of the pop music business, then you really owe it to yourself to listen to this knowing blunt trauma confessional from Van Morrison, who  had a front row seat with Garage Rock grandfathers Them, then an all-access pass to rock’n’roll fame with Bert Berns’ Bang Records and “Brown Eyed Girl”, before reeling off a string of legendary solo albums including Astral Weeks, Moondance, Tupelo Honey, His Band and the Street Choir.
With Belfast-born Van Morrison’s July 1972 sixth album Saint Dominic’s Preview, the mainstream rock audience finally caught up to the quality jazzy, folksyrhythm’n’blues Morrison had been belting out consistently since critics began lauding his  Astral Weeks four years earlier. When radio listeners heard “Jackie Wilson Said”, “Gypsy”, “Listen to the Lion”, and the title song “Saint Dominic’s Preview”, produced by Ted Templeman with some of San Francisco’s finest studio side musicians including Ronnie Montrose, they rewarded Van Morrison with Top 15 sales, his best seller for almost forty years.-Redbeard