Van Morrison

Van Morrison was born in Belfast in 1945 and was already a working musician as a teenager in the late '50s, playing guitar, harmonica, keyboards and saxophone in Irish showbands that cranked out the hits of the day. In the mid-'60s he took over the microphone in Them, the Belfast R&B band, and wrote and recorded "Gloria", which became a staple for every garage band around.

He went solo under producer Bert Berns, who had an ear for hits, and in 1967 he delivered one: "Brown Eyed Girl", from Blowin' Your Mind!, a bright, bouncing, sun-dappled pop song. But Morrison was after something deeper. After Berns died, Warner Bros. Records bought his contract and gave him three sessions to cut Astral Weeks in 1968, and what came out was nothing like pop radio: long, searching, stream-of-consciousness songs like "Madame George" and "Sweet Thing" that drift and circle on jazz-tinged, Celtic-flavored currents while his voice aches and incants. It sold poorly at first; it is now counted among the classics.

Moondance in 1970 made him a star. "Into the Mystic", "Caravan", "And It Stoned Me" and the swinging title track bring his two sides together: the tight grooves of soul and early R&B on one hand, and on the other the spiritual, Celtic-tinged reveries that critics took to calling "Celtic soul". His Band and the Street Choir followed that same year, then Tupelo Honey in 1971, Veedon Fleece in 1974, Wavelength in 1978 and Into the Music in 1979, with the cheery "Bright Side of the Road". "Have I Told You Lately", from Avalon Sunset in 1989, showed the romantic side was alive and well.

The man fans call "Van the Man" has put more than 40 albums in the UK top 40, won two Grammys and a Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music in 1994, and entered both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He was knighted in 2016. On rock radio's countdowns, "Into the Mystic" and "Brown Eyed Girl" are the songs listeners never seem to tire of.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.