Looking for the Veedon Fleece

If anyone has earned the right to belt out the Sinatra anthem “My Way,” it’s Van Morrison, though to my knowledge Van has never publicly uttered a stanza of those Paul Anka-penned lyrics. Whether howling the blues, evocatively crooning a soulful ballad, immersing himself in a jazz workout, cranking out a cynical, seemingly obligatory music biz diatribe, or plumbing the depths of his Celtic soul to meld all of those disciplines into some kind of empyrean sound of his own creation, he seems to have done exactly what he has wanted to do, while ignoring or outflanking the conjecture of critic and fan alike at every turn. As one expositor, who has as much of a handle on Van as anyone, Greil Marcus, has said, “Morrison remains a singer who can be compared to no other in the history of rock & roll, a singer who cannot be pinned down, dismissed, or fitted into anyone's expectations.”

Taken as a whole, there’s practically nothing to which the music of George Ivan Morrison can be likened. Alternately defined by critics as rock, pop, blues, folk, jazz, jazz fusion, soul, blue-eyed soul, Irish soul, or Caledonia soul, it has always, throughout Morrison’s nearly fifty years of recording, defied any specific genre classification. He came by this ability to evade pigeonholing naturally, as his musical influences (thanks to a father who could boast of the most expansive record collection in Ulster, Northern Ireland in the 1950s) ranged from itinerant bluesmen Lead Belly, John Lee Hooker, and Muddy Waters to Scottish skiffler Lonnie Donegan to country and western troubadour Hank Williams to original soul men Ray Charles and Solomon Burke to divine gospel wailer Mahalia Jackson—all of whom, incidentally, Van would eventually either refer to in song or perform with in person. Consequently, his music has influenced the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, U2, Sinéad O'Connor, and several others.

And there’s that voice: both guttural and celestial, piercing the air and stirring the soul while soothing it at the same time . . . a matchless force of nature. Again, Greil Marcus put it best: “As a physical fact, Morrison may have the richest and most expressive voice pop music has produced since Elvis Presley, and with a sense of himself as an artist that Elvis was always denied. ”

For my taste, Van as spiritual, soul-searching Irish mystic—an incarnation he doesn’t seem to be able to assume at will—has produced his most resonant works: Astral Weeks, Saint Dominic’s Preview, Veedon Fleece, Common One, No Guru No Method No Teacher. Of these scattered, transcendent few, Veedon Fleece stands out. Recorded in 1973 and ’74 after his divorce from his first wife and a visit to Ireland, it is one of the most richly ethereal, metaphysical creations of any artist in any musical genre you’d care to name.

Van performs “Bulbs” live at the Montreux Jazz Festival, June 30, 1974.

When broaching the prospect of discussing Veedon Fleece, one comes up against the same difficulties as with attempting to discuss Pet Sounds, or the works of Terrence Malick: one finds oneself pondering the imponderable, and words simply don’t cut it. Nevertheless, it is worth the effort, even if skirting the fringes is the best that can be hoped for. A wistful, stream of consciousness song cycle, there is a haunting, impenetrable mystery to all of the pieces, which are all of a piece.

The album itself seems to ponder the imponderables of human existence. What exactly is the Veedon Fleece of the title, referred to in the contemplative “You Don’t Pull No Punches But You Don’t Push the River”? Is it a tangible thing, like the Golden Fleece of Jason’s quest? Or is it the object of a quest for spiritual enlightenment? The latter is a subject explored often in Morrison’s later work, and it’s part of a continuum of pastoral images and essences, characters and places, that flow throughout this album and the rest of his oeuvre. “You Don’t Pull No Punches” gives the impression, musically, of floating inexorably down a river, an elliptical piano prologue eliciting images of swirling eddies before the tempo changes and we are set on our bass-driven, violin and flute-augmented course. Never one to shy away from literary, cultural, or religious references, Van evokes William Blake and the Sisters of Mercy, who are indeed “looking for the Veedon Fleece.”  

It is “Poe, Oscar Wilde, and Thoreau” who are ruminated on (with a passing nod to the Lone Ranger) in “Fair Play,” the album’s laid-back, brushed snare opening track, a Pre-Raphaelite idyll in which, as opposed to a river with a strong current, we float peacefully across “Killarney’s lakes,” gently urged to “Let your midnight and your daytime turn into love of life.”

Van’s voice soars more passionately in the poignant, achingly beautiful “Linden Arden Stole the Highlights,” a reflective, haunting tale of a violent man, compassionately told to the accompaniment of a softly meandering piano, before a swathe of strings embraces the final bars. Where “Linden Arden” leaves off—with a lonely man living with a gun, who “put his fingers through the glass”—“Who Was That Masked Man” picks up: while still lonely and toting a gun, he is now “all encased in glass.” Similarly, the stately “Streets of Arklow,” spearheaded by Jim Rothermel’s melancholy, medieval-sounding recorder, walks “In God’s green land,” to prepare the way for the album’s cornerstone, the enigmatic, rolling “You Don’t Pull No Punches But You Don’t Push the River.”

“Bulbs” comes up like a sunrise—or at least it did on the original LP, as it kicked off side two—strumming its way into an up-tempo, catchy, country-flavored ditty with Van in Belfast Cowboy mode, providing the A-side of the album’s only single. The majestic, world-weary, supremely bluesy “Cul de Sac” features some wicked, primal Van-screams, while the somnambulant, mantra-like “Comfort You” ruefully turns us homeward. 

With fiancee Carol Guida in Ireland during the cover shoot for Veedon Fleece.

Photo by Tom Collins.

The penultimate “Come Here My Love” may be the album’s most spellbinding track. As intimate as a whisper in an Edwardian boudoir, a lover is invited to “become enraptured by the sights and sounds, in intrigue of nature’s beauty,” over Ralph Walsh’s elliptically picked guitar. Its companion piece, “Country Fair,” closes the album, a pensive recorder conjuring up ancient pipes being played on a faraway hillside, evoking, for me anyway, the sylvan antiquity of John Constable’s English countrysides. It lingers in the air in some distant, mourned, barely remembered past, disappearing just as we float into the mystic.

What does it all mean? Well, as with most great art, we don’t really know, probably don’t really want to know. The knowledge, assumed or assured, of something the artist himself can’t quite grasp, and which he continues to search for, would impede our journey—or worse, render it not worth taking ever again. If anything, Veedon Fleece continues to reward with repeated listening, continues to pull us along with its current, meeting us on the river of time. 

Though much of Van Morrison’s music points back toward childhood and home—“Celtic Ray,” “Cry for Home,” “Got to Go Back,” “Song of Being a Child,” “Take me Back,” “Redwood Tree,” “On Hyndford Street,” et al.—Veedon Fleece dwells relatively sparingly on those core Van themes, at least on the surface. Yet whenever I listen to this album, when I get lost in the music (as I invariably do), fleeting, impressionistic images of my earliest memories float up into my consciousness like ancient trinkets from a lost treasure on the ocean floor, glimpses of a past reality, from a time when I was perhaps closer to a pure understanding of the “imponderables” than at any time since. Veedon Fleece takes me nearer to that time and place. Nearer to home, wherever or whatever that may be or may have been.

© Jon Oye, 2012