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"Åge Halldorsson" <halldorsson@post.tele.dk> wrote in message
news:9eo44i$jnm$1@news.inet.tele.dk...
> Nutidens musikere er vist uddannet på et
> smedeværksted. Bibob balula baluum bambum og tutti frutti med dig.
>
Rock og smag er mange ting. Men for at få styr på de omtalte mennesker....
( Fra
http://www.allmusic.com )
Van Morrison
Born Aug 31, 1945 in Belfast, Northern Ireland
Genres Rock
Styles Celtic Rock, Album Rock, Jazz-Rock, Blue-Eyed Soul, Pop/Rock,
Folk-Rock, Soft Rock, Adult Contemporary, Singer/Songwriter
Instruments Vocals, Saxophone, Leader, Keyboards, Songwriter, Harmonica
Tones Reflective, Plaintive, Wistful, Romantic, Spiritual, Passionate,
Autumnal, Laid-Back/Mellow, Earthy, Exuberant, Intimate, Soothing, Cathartic
Labels Mercury (21), Warner Brothers (13), Import (3), EMI (3), Verve (2),
Pointblank (2), Epic/Legacy (2)
Equal parts blue-eyed soul shouter and wild-eyed poet-sorcerer, Van Morrison
was among popular music's true innovators, a restless seeker whose incantory
vocals and alchemical fusion of R&B, jazz, blues and Celtic folk produced
perhaps the most spiritually transcendent body of work in the rock and roll
canon. While a notoriously difficult and eccentric figure whose steadfast
rejection of commercial trends and industry fashions kept him absent from
the pop charts for decades at a stretch, Morrison nevertheless enjoyed a
massive cult following which grew exponentially throughout the course of his
lengthy and prolific career; subject only to the whims of his own muse, his
recordings cover extraordinary stylistic ground yet retain a consistency and
purity virtually unmatched among his contemporaries, connected by the mythic
power of his singular musical vision and his incendiary vocal delivery -
spiralling repetitions of wails and whispers which bypassed the confines of
language to articulate emotional truths far beyond the scope of literal
meaning.
George Ivan Morrison was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on August 31,
1948; his mother was a singer, while his father ardently collected classic
American jazz and blues recordings. At 15 he quit school to join the local
R&B band the Monarchs, touring military bases throughout Europe before
returning home to form his own group, Them. Boasting a fiery, gritty sound
heavily influenced by Morrison heroes like Ray Charles and Little Richard,
Them quickly earned a devout local following and in late 1964 recorded their
debut single "Don't Start Crying Now"; the follow-up, an electrifying
reading of Big Joe Williams' "Baby Please Don't Go," cracked the UK Top Ten
in early 1965. Though not a major hit upon its original release, Them's
Morrison-penned "Gloria" endures among the true classics of the rock
pantheon, covered by everyone from the Doors to Patti Smith. Lineup changes
plagued the band throughout its lifespan, however, and at the insistence of
producer Bert Berns, over time session musicians increasingly assumed the
lion's share of recording duties; a frustrated Morrison finally left Them
following a 1966 tour of the U.S., quitting the music business and returning
to Belfast.
After Berns relocated to New York City to form Bang Records, he convinced
Morrison to travel stateside and record as a solo artist; the sessions
produced arguably his most familiar hit, the jubilant "Brown-Eyed Girl"
(originally titled "Brown-Skinned Girl"), a Top Ten smash in the summer of
1967. By contrast, however, the resulting album Blowin' Your Mind was a
bleak, bluesy effort highlighted by the harrowing "T.B. Sheets"; when Berns
released the LP against Morrison's wishes he again retreated home to
Ireland, but after Berns suffered a fatal heart attack in late 1967 the
singer was freed of his contractual obligations and began working on new
material. His first album for new label Warner Bros., 1968's Astral Weeks
remains not only Morrison's masterpiece, but one of the greatest records
ever made - a haunting, deeply personal collection of impressionistic
folk-styled epics recorded by an all-star jazz backing unit including
bassist Richard Davis and drummer Connie Kay, its poetic complexity earned
critical raves but made only a minimal commercial impact. The follow-up,
1970's Moondance, was every bit as brilliant - buoyant and optimistic where
Astral Weeks was dark and anguished, it cracked the Top 40, generating the
perennials "Caravan" and "Into the Mystic."
The first half of the 1970s was the most fertile creative period of
Morrison's career - from Moondance onward, his records reflected an
increasingly celebratory and profoundly mystical outlook spurred on in large
part by his marriage to wife Janet Planet and the couple's relocation to
California. After His Band and the Street Choir yielded his biggest chart
hit, "Domino," Morrison released 1971's Tupelo Honey, a lovely, pastoral
meditation on wedded bliss highlighted by the single "Wild Night." In the
wake of the following year's stirring St. Dominic's Preview he formed the
Caledonia Soul Orchestra, featured both on the studio effort Hard Nose the
Highway and on the excellent live set It's Too Late to Stop Now; however, in
1973 he not only dissolved the group but also divorced Planet and moved back
to Belfast. 1974's stunning Veedon Fleece chronicled Morrison's recent
emotional turmoil; he then remained silent for three years, reportedly
working on a number of aborted projects but releasing nothing until 1977's
aptly-titled A Period of Transition.
Plagued for some time by chronic stage fright, Morrison mounted his first
tour in close to five years in support of 1978's Wavelength; his
performances became more and more erratic, however, and during a 1979 date
at New York's Palladium he even stalked offstage in mid-set and did not
return. Into the Music, released later that year, evoked a more
conventionally spiritual perspective than before, a pattern continued on
successive outings for years to come - albums like 1983's Inarticulate
Speech of the Heart, 1985's A Sense of Wonder and 1986's No Guru, No Method,
No Teacher are all largely cut from the same cloth, employing serenely
beautiful musical backdrops to explore themes of faith and healing. For
1988's Irish Heartbeat, however, Morrison teamed with another of his
homeland's musical institutions, the famed Chieftains, for a collection of
traditional folk songs. 1989's Avalon Sunset, meanwhile, heralded a
commercial rebirth of sorts - while "Whenever God Shines His Light," a duet
with Cliff Richard, became Morrison's first UK Top 20 hit in over two
decades, the gorgeous "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You" emerged as
something of a contemporary standard, with a Rod Stewart cover cracking the
US Top Five in 1993.
Further proof of Morrison's renewed popularity arrived with the 1990 release
of Mercury's best-of package - far and away the best-selling album of his
career, it introduced the singer to a new generation of fans. A new studio
record, Enlightenment, appeared that same year, followed in 1991 by the
ambitious double set Hymns to the Silence, widely hailed as his most
impressive outing in years. Following the uniformity of his 1980s work, the
remainder of the decade proved impressively eclectic: 1993's Too Long in
Exile returned Morrison to his musical roots with covers of blues and R&B
classics, while on 1995's Days Like This he teamed with daughter Shana for a
duet on "You Don't Know Me." For the Verve label he cut 1996's How Long Has
This Been Going On, a traditional jazz record co-credited to longtime
pianist Georgie Fame, while for the follow-up Tell Me Something: The Songs
of Mose Allison, he worked with guest of honor Allison himself. Morrison
continued balancing the past and the future in the years to follow,
alternating between new studio albums (1997's The Healing Game, 1999's Back
on Top) and collections of rare and live material (1998's The Philosopher's
Stone, 2000's The Skiffle Sessions and You Win Again. - Jason Ankeny
Jim Morrison
Born Dec 8, 1943 in Melbourne, FL
Died Jul 3, 1971 in Paris, France
Genres Rock
Styles Spoken Word
Instruments Vocals
Labels Ozit (2)
As the lead singer and lyricist for the Doors, Jim Morrison is one of the
most legendary and influential figures in rock & roll history. The
disturbing, image-rich poeticism of Morrison's lyrics, perfectly supported
by the Doors' swirling, eclectic psychedelic rock, have assured him
continuing icon status, while his fondness for theatrical shock tactics and
nihilistic angst have influenced countless imitators. Unlike other
psychedelic artists, who tended to favor whimsy or mysticism, Morrison saw
expansion of consciousness as a way of gaining access to the subconscious
mind's dark, unacknowledged desires; his rampaging id dominated his songs
with a lust for violence, sex, alcohol, drugs, self-destruction, anything
forbidden for any reason by the authority of conservative middle America,
and he tried to live out that lifestyle as best he could. Some of Morrison's
work has been criticized - both during his lifetime and afterwards - as too
melodramatic and calculatedly outrageous, but even at his most frustrating,
Morrison's ideas have achieved a lasting resonance with newer generations as
well as his initial fans, and his best material remains some of the most
original and visionary rock music ever recorded.
James Douglas Morrison was born on December 8, 1943, in Melbourne, Florida.
His father was a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, and the family thus moved
around a great deal. A strict authoritarian, Morrison's father was probably
a major source of the outlandish rebellion that his son later acted out on
stage; when Morrison began his climb to stardom, he would falsely claim that
both of his parents were dead. After attending St. Petersburg Junior College
and Florida State University for a year apiece, Morrison moved to the West
Coast to study film and theater at UCLA in 1964. He became infatuated with
the poetry of William Blake and the writings of philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche, and he gradually drifted away from school to work on his poetry
and experiment with drugs, particularly LSD. In 1965, Morrison so greatly
impressed film-school classmate Ray Manzarek (a classically trained
keyboardist and member of a local blues band) with his early attempts at
lyric writing that the two decided to form a band. Robbie Krieger and John
Densmore were soon recruited from the Psychedelic Rangers, and the Doors
were born; the name was Morrison's idea, taken from The Doors of Perception,
Aldous Huxley's book on mescaline, and its introductory William Blake quote.
Morrison was a tentative frontman at first, avoiding eye contact with the
audience and sometimes even singing with his back to them, but he soon came
out of his shell, flinging his mike stand around and using it as a phallic
symbol. As the Doors rose to stardom with their 1967 debut and struggled to
maintain that status, Morrison's ever-increasing withdrawal and simultaneous
indulgence in hedonistic excess threatened the band's stability. He
destroyed some of the band's studio equipment in a drunken outburst of
temper, and he designed his ever more erratic concert behavior - miming sex,
barrages of profanity, and similar antics - to provoke intense, frenzied
audience reactions. This did not go unnoticed by law enforcement officials
in the locales where Morrison performed; he was maced by police in New
Haven, Connecticut who caught him backstage with a female fan, and after
taking the stage and baiting the officers, he was arrested on obscenity
charges, of which he was later acquitted. Venues in Phoenix and Long Island
subsequently banned the Doors after Morrison allegedly incited audience
riots; the whole mess finally boiled over in March 1969, when Morrison
exposed himself to an audience in Miami and was arrested for displaying
"lewd and lascivious behavior." After a two-month trial, he was found
guilty, depleting the band financially and mentally and nearly causing their
breakup. The Doors retreated to the studio, where they sounded musically
rejuvenated on the hard-rocking Morrison Hotel (1970) and L.A. Woman (1971).
Supporting tours were marked by continued police harassment, and
afterwards, a depressed Morrison left the country with his wife Pamela,
eventually settling in Paris to unwind and write poetry (he had had his
first collection of poems, The Lord and the Creatures, published in 1970).
But without the support of his bandmates, Morrison spiraled irrevocably out
of control, and he was found dead in his bathtub on July 3, 1971, the victim
of an apparent heart attack. He was only 27 years old. Morrison was buried
in the Poets' Corner of Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, an area shared by
Balzac, Moliere, and Oscar Wilde. Live recordings, greatest-hits
collections, and recordings and books of Morrison's poetry have appeared
frequently in the years since, and his legend has only grown with the
passing of time. - Steve Huey
...Man kan jo ikke kende dem alle..
--
M.v.h. / Kind regards, Peter
"When The Bad Moon In Your Heart Sings,
And Your Wind-Up Gears Start Grinding"