“Veedon Fleece” Van Morrison: Albums I Love, Part VIII

Posted: September 6th, 2010 | Filed under: Music, Ruminations | No Comments »

“Who Was That Masked Man” is a dark, dark song.

Oh ain’t it lonely/ When you’re livin’ with a gun/ Well you can’t slow down and you can’t turn ’round?/  And you can’t trust anyone

And that’s just for openers.

You just sit there like a butterfly/ And you’re all encased in glass/ You’re so fragile you just may break/ And you don’t know who to ask

What I still can’t figure out is why Morrison sings it in such a strained falsetto that’s, frankly, offputting? Why three songs in this haunting masterpiece of an album, the ever confusing and intransigent artist chooses a voice not his?

Is he standing aloof from the pain conveyed by the lyrics? This album was recorded in ’74. Morrison, exhausted, had recently completed one of his most heralded concert tours. He was divorced from Janet Planet, the object of his adoration on “Tupelo Honey.” He had a new love in tow as he headed from the States back to Ireland for a holiday.

The pain of transition is palpable in many of these songs. But nothing like this one. It stands alone. He is keeping his distance it seems, but must share to shed the grief.

And that voice on that song is the reason it took me so long to trust this album. I bought it years, nay decades, after its release when I knew I needed to fill up my Morrison section of my music collection. I’d put it on the box, trying to listen. But, soon enough, each time I’d grab the newspaper or eat a bowl of cereal and lose my attention.

It always happened with this song, this wrenching falsetto. So I put the album on the shelf, left it there and moved on.

At some point, my pal Moop moved back from Rochester and one day when we were riffing on “Astral Weeks,” my favorite album, he told me he liked “Veedon Fleece” better. I didn’t understand. Left it on the shelf.

Then a few weeks ago, Joe Henry mentioned the album in a FB post. Hmmmm, I said to myself, this piece of music needs to be reconsidered. So I put it on the box in my car. That’s where I can concentrate on the song with only the distraction of driving in the way.

Now I know.

“Bulbs” is the album’s rocker. The above truncated version from a German TV show gives a sense.

It is as inscrutable as most of the tunes on the album.

“You Don’t Pull No Punches But You Don’t Push The River” is the album’s cresting point. Morrison starts with childhood, a constant thread in Morrison’s songbook.

When you were a child, you were a tomboy/ Gimme soul satisfaction/ Way back in shady lane/ Do you remember darlin’?

And hikes to his search for serenity, for his holy grail — the Veedon Fleece.

This is a deeply personal album, full of fear and despair, searching, and in the end, finding some hope and succor. Of his great works of artistry, it’s probably Van Morrison’s least understood, least accepted and least listened to. I now understand it’s worth the work to find its veins and feel the flow.

And thus the human saxophone scats and pushes and fights his way to a transcendent place where few are willing to venture. Where, if they do, they’ll find William Blake and the Eternals/  Oh standin’ with the Sisters of Mercy/ Looking for the Veedon Fleece, yeah.

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