Best Van Morrison Songs - Balm For The Wounded Soul

It's clear from both Van Morrison's live shows and his records that healing is one of his primary ends, why he goes to all the trouble of making music and dealing with the record-making machine. If Van Morrison has a religion, it's music and music alone, in spite of whatever you may hear about God on some select Van Morrison songs. Music is what he has come back to over and over again, from his childhood, through his philosophical searches, through to present day. It's what provides solace, wonder, and purpose. And at times it's as if he's trying to convert the rest of us.

"And the Healing Has Begun"- Into the Music (1979)

Van returns to a familiar groove - the exact chord progression and meter of "Madame George" in fact. But this time he trades pity for transcendence. He and his lover will walk and talk and sing, and have some port, and make love, and shut out the rest of the world until the healing has begun. And music is redemption: "We're gonna make music underneath the stars / we're gonna play to the violin and the two guitars / and we'll sit there playing for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours... when the healing has begun."

"Virgo Clowns" - His Band and the Street Choir (1970)

This album was originally demoed in a church in Woodstock, and there's a lighthearted feeling of community throughout, as though Van had bought into the hippie aquarian dream. "Virgo Clowns" is when it sounds most sincere, as Van lulls us to rest with his syncopated guitar strum and sparse instrumentation. The performance is loose but compassionate and Van makes a communal pronouncement: "Let us lift you up on high, see the twinkle in your eye... Light up your golden smile, take away all your misery and gloom."

"The Mystery" - Poetic Champions Compose (1987)

"Let go into the mystery, let yourself go / You've got to open up your heart, that's all I know." So often a theme of Van Morrison's work, resignation to (or belief in?) the unknown is again his counsel here. To many it may seem naïve at best, escapist at worst. But with Van you can be confident he has searched and searched. It's why his music is still so vital to me, 20 years since my first encounter with it. The idea - of mystical surrender - is a frightening one, and a liberating one. And in such a mystifying world, perhaps the only truly sensible one.

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You can read the other articles in my Best Van Morrison Songs: 30 Essentials series, available at my profile.