Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968

by Ryan H. Walsh

A mind-expanding dive into a lost chapter of 1968, featuring the famous and forgotten: Van Morrison, folkie-turned-cult-leader Mel Lyman, Timothy Leary, James Brown, and many more

Van Morrison's Astral Weeks is an iconic rock album shrouded in legend, a masterpiece that has touched generations of listeners and influenced everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Martin Scorsese. In his first book, acclaimed rock musician and journalist Ryan H. Walsh unearths the album's fascinating backstory--along with the untold secrets of the time and place that birthed it: Boston 1968.

On the 50th anniversary of that tumultuous year, Walsh's book follows a criss-crossing cast of musicians and visionaries, artists and "hippie entrepreneurs," from a young Tufts English professor who walks into a job as a host for TV's wildest show (one episode required two sets, each tuned to a different channel) to the mystically inclined owner of radio station WBCN, who believed he was the reincarnation of a scientist from Atlantis. Most penetratingly powerful of all is Mel Lyman, the folk-music star who decided he was God, then controlled the lives of his many followers via acid, astrology, and an underground newspaper called Avatar.

A mesmerizing group of boldface names pops to life in Astral Weeks James Brown quells tensions the night after Martin Luther King is assassinated; the real-life crimes of the Boston Strangler come to the movie screen via Tony Curtis; Howard Zinn testifies for Avatar in the courtroom. From life-changing concerts and chilling crimes, to acid experiments and hippie entrepreneurs, Astral Weeks is the secret, wild history of a unique time and place.

Genres: Music, History, Nonfiction, 20th Century, American History, Pop Culture, Biography

368 pages, Hardcover

First published March 6, 2018

Reviews

[Faith · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know for whom this book is intended. The title is clearly designed to lure fans of Van Morrison, and the lure worked on me. However, there is actually very little about Morrison and his work in this book. Instead there is a lot of random information about people and events in Boston around the same time that Morrison was there. There are gangsters, a folk music cult, happenings, psychedelic public television, a bank robbery and LSD. I couldn't have cared less about any of it and abandoned the book after about 130 pages. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

[Jennifer Ozawa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book utterly riveting. I had no idea about the Lyman compound or any of the bands profiled here. The best nonfiction books feel like stories, and this one did.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did not expect it to be so beautifully written.

Background: I graduated HS in the summer of 1968 in a town nearby to Boston and hid in my room and lived thru my radio. I visualized a lot of this since I could not get to Boston then.

The story is really more about Boston popular culture in 1968 than about Van Morrison.

[Annie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Guys, my phone's notes that were recording my thoughts on this book (read on a long train ride several weeks ago, I've been lazy about reviews) got accidentally deleted. So this will be a real short review.

Basically, it was adequate for what it was, but ultimately the people written about are a bunch of sociopathic wankers and I'm not altogether interested in their lives (I only read this because it's set in Boston, where I live, and I've seen a lot of excited reviews about it). The musicians and cult leaders written about are basically losers who accidentally got famous because they were lucky or disturbingly charismatic, not because they had anything substantial to say (fight me. This book quotes Van Morrsion himself in saying something about how all his music was just drunk ramblings and had no meaning. Cannot cite because, well, page numbers deleted. But it happened).

The writing was fine. It was pretty clearly written but I can't say it held my attention. I'm not sure if that's purely because of the content or whether this was compounded by the writing style. I think the fact that it jumped around between various 60s celebrities made it less engaging for me.

Whatever. If this era is your thing, have at it. I didn't love it.

*Edit*
I just remembered one thing of note- they talk about Mel Lyman and his Fort Hill "community" (cult). Fort Hill- with its Disney princess-worthy, Bavarian-style castle tower randomly dropped in a park in a neighborhood in Boston near me- is actually one of my favourite places in Boston! I had no idea the history of the area, including the fact that many of the cult members still live on the properties that border the park. Definitely something I'm going to think about next time I'm there :)

[Jack Saltzberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

What do The Jim Kweskin Jug Band, The Velvet Underground, Van Morrison, the Mob, The Bosstown sound, and an LSD based cult have in common? They were all active in Boston in 1968.
I, like many others, read this because I thought it was going to be about the making of the album Astral Weeks. While it is touches on Van preparing to make that album, it is really about the underground scene in Boston. While that year in San Francisco has been extensively written about, this is kind of an untold story, and a fascinating one. It was not what I was expecting, but a great story, and a fun read.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this book from Goodreads Giveaways.

There were so many interesting stories and back stories in this book, that it either needed to be longer or to shorten its scope. The Fort Hill Community alone could have taken up the entire book, as could Van Morrison and his time in Boston. Trying to mash them together, though in time period they really were in sync, does them both a disservice. Then you throw in everything else that was happening at around the same time--Dylan goes electric, Timothy Leary's LSD experiments, Richard Alpert's spiritual quests, MLK's assassination, the creation of the Black Panthers, the manufacture of "the Bosstown Sound" and that's just some of it!--and everything gets kind of jumbled and glossed over. The interviews are fantastic and what does emerge from this portrait of a year is very good, but it needed either more (pages) or less (subject matter).

[Whitney Borup · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book talked about a LOT of things I love. I did want to hear a little more about the general population and their experience of Boston in 1968 in contrast to the hippies and cult members and musicians he talks about here. The chapter on movies and the Boston strangler was my favorite because of that bigger picture stuff.

[Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book but the title is a misnomer. It is a collection of chapters on the various counterculture happenings in Boston in 1968. It spends a lot more time on the Mel Lyman cult than it does on Astral Weeks but it is never less than interesting.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book because I am an epic fan of the album Astral Weeks, and Van Morrison. I didn't know that it was almost entirely a history of Boston, a city I know and love in 1968. If I knew Morrison lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts at some point, I'd forgotten. So what is there not to love about this book - plenty.

As other reviewers have noted, this is not a book about Astral Weeks, and Morrison. The first chapter and the final chapter do focus on the man and the album, and throughout the book, there are episodes featuring Morrison. A lot of the book is about Mel Lyman, and the Fort Hill Community - a bizarre urban commune revolving around Lyman who considered himself "God". There is a history of the "Bosstown Sound", psychodelic rock, and the various bands.

I knew almost none of this history, as I didn't move to Boston til the mid-70's. For that reason, I found a lot of this history interesting. As a fan of Morrison, many of the details were interesting, and unfamiliar. But at the end, it was not a book that lived up to the promise of the title.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

My friend just wrote this one up: http://artsfuse.org/168480/book-music...

And so did I, for The Baffler (!!!): https://thebaffler.com/latest/lost-in...

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I give this a 4 only because the writing, at times, was a bit "uneven". What a fascinating book! Right here in my back yard such WILD things were happening 51 years ago! From great "hippie" music (Bosstown Sound, WBCN), to a burgeoning study of the supernatural, to an "upscale" cult in Roxbury that STILL exists and warranted a cover story in Rolling Stone in the day, to, of course, Van Morrison's "oeuvre" as referenced in the title and conceived and recorded right in Cambridge. Let's see, what am I leaving out...oh yes, Timothy Leary's LSD experiments (right in Newton), the Boston Strangler, Titicut Follies--a film about Bridgewater State Hospital for the Insane that was banned, for its unflinching reality and truth, and the power of James Brown to entertain and keep Boston peaceful after the assassination of MLK--when most major American cities rioted.

Boston, in 1968, earned the moniker of the host city for the Second American Revolution. There was such hope that America would finally realize the "city on a hill" status that was first flirted with in Puritan times. Some things have been realized, while others have fallen off the radar. This book is a great romp through a tumultuous yet incredibly creative and idealistic time that I never knew had such strong roots in Boston. I love living here!!!!!

[Marti · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I ever heard Van Morrison's Astral Weeks album, I am not aware of it; being more of a fan of the Them period. However, I was motivated to buy this book because I lived in Boston in 1968. Even though I was six, the weirdness of the place came through loud and clear.

Turns out Van Morrison's brief sojourn in Boston dovetailed with a lot of strange happenings at the time, most notably that many of the musicians who played with him were part of this Manson-esque "family" living in Roxboro called "The Fort Hill Community." I am not sure how, as a kid, I knew all about Manson, but nothing about the cult in my own back yard. [Though granted, the members FHC seemed to be much better educated and worldy….and they have grown wealthy and live in the same compound today].

I also learned more about the Velvet Underground's residency at the Boston Tea Party (they were more beloved in Boston than in New York at the time), and about bands like The Ultimate Spinach and others by whom I have a smattering of songs. I am now curious to hear Astral Weeks as it sounds like something I might not have liked back in the '80s, but might appreciate now.

This almost belongs with Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine. It covers much of the same occultist ground, except it does not come off as so completely biased and sensationalized. And the author actually interviews people instead of drawing conclusions from circumstantial evidence.

[Bob Schnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A cursory glance at the jacket of "Astral Weeks" by Ryan H. Walsh might lead you to believe that it is centered around Van Morrison's time in Boston. While that is partly true, you don't have to be a fan of Van Morrison to enjoy the book. The author did extensive research to pull together all of the disparate elements of Boston underground society that combined to make 1968 memorable. From the Velvet Underground's residency at the Boston Tea Party to the Harvard LSD experiments and the commune at Fort Hill led by Mel Lyman; the strange TV shows broadcast by WGBH and the crumbling folk music scene, it all fits though it shouldn't. Strange times indeed.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has some extremely cool info about the Boston music and counterculture scene in the 60s. Amazing little bits about the velvet underground, Jonathan richman and of course Van Morrison. Thrown in are some cool bits and pieces about the boston strangler and Bridgewater state Hospital. Probably a third of it is aboit a cult in roxbury

This book isn't very organized (and isn't really about what it says it's about) but if u can look past it you will learn some really fantastic stuff.

[Darcia Helle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is weird, interesting, disjointed, and probably not what you expect.

First, if you're a Van Morrison fan and you're expecting this book to center around him and the 'Astral Weeks' album, you'll be disappointed. What we have is a hodgepodge of stuff going on in the Boston area during the year Van Morrison lived in Cambridge. The author attempts to tie Van Morrison's presence and the album into everything else, or maybe the other way around, but it doesn't work. Van Morrison and the making of the album is actually a small part of this book, in part because his time in Cambridge was mostly irrelevant to the songs. You'll find almost all this content in the opening and closing sections, with tidbits and conjecture sprinkled now and then throughout the rest of the book.

What this book really amounts to is an overview of everything that was happening in and around Boston in 1968. It feels like Walsh took a series of articles he'd written, grasped for a common thread that would get attention, and then crammed it all together.

The major focus is actually on Mel Lyman, a musician who claimed to be God, and the small Fort Hill cult he organized. Even that aspect, however, is told in a haphazard way, in bits and pieces throughout, with no coherence to the storytelling method.

Other topics touched on include music groups that either came from or wound up in Boston in 1968, including quite a bit about The Velvet Underground; true crime stories such as The Boston Strangler; movies and producers, including The Thomas Crown Affair; the Harvard Psilocybin Project, MK-Ultra experiments, Leary, Richard Alpert, and Andrew Weil; and a section about the Bridgewater State Prison for the Criminally Insane and a documentary made there (which was actually filmed in 1966.) The book is only 304 pages without the end notes, so that's a whole lot of content jammed into a short space.

I found much of the content interesting because I grew up south of Boston, in the town of Bridgewater, not far from the prison. I was only 6 in 1968, so I don't remember any of this from personal experience, but the shadow of it all remained throughout my childhood. If you have no interest in the area, then I'm not sure this book will hold much appeal at all.

*The publisher provided me with a review copy, via Amazon Vine, in exchange for my honest review.*

[John Spiller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before purchasing "Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968" by Ryan Walsh, you need to know a few things. (Don't worry, there's no spoilers.) First, it is not one of those book length explorations of the making of a classic rock album in the style of the 33 1/3 Series. Yes, Walsh explores how Van Morrison came to record "Astral Weeks," but it more of a point of departure than the crux. Second, this is not a book length exploration of a given year, a la Jon Savage's "1966". I didn't keep count, but it seemed that Walsh spent more time before or after 1968 than he did in the titular year in question. Third, "Astral Weeks" jump cuts and free associates in a way that will likely annoy folks looking for a fairly linear chronicle.

Putting aside the doubly misleading book title and the somewhat discursive narrative, is "Astral Weeks" worth reading? I enjoyed it, but I tend to be indulgent of these hippy-dippy Aquarian-age cultural histories. Perhaps a more accurate book title would have been "Mondo Boston," as Walsh spends most of the book documenting the various weirdos and weird scenes in Boston in the late 1960's. The malign center of the book is musician and cult leader Mel Lyman. Lyman was a banjo and harmonica player in the Jim Kweskin Jug Band whose weird charisma and messianic tendencies led to the formation of the Fort Hill Community, a more upscale and successful variant on the Manson Family. For me at least, Walsh's extended treatment of Lyman and the Fort Hill Community were the highlights of the book and easily eclipsed the sections discussing surly ol' Van Morrison. One hopes that Walsh would take a stab at the definitive account of the secretive -- and surprisingly still extant -- Fort Hill Community.

Walsh covers a lot of territory, which leads to cursory and perfunctory treatment of stories that probably warranted more space. I frequently had the sense that Walsh was giving us the outtakes from bigger stories (Boston Strangler, Leary/Alpert, the Velvet Underground, Jonathan Richman) that had been covered more extensively by others.

[Jason Rabin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not just a deep dive into the Boston origins of Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, but a mosaic of the music and cultural scene surrounding them--centered in 1968, with flashbacks, flash forwards and on-theme digressions. As a participant in the local music scene who wasn't yet born in 1968 but very much lives in its aftermath, I can say that my understanding has been greatly expanded by this colorful, insightful and well-researched piece of rock journalism. The word "Astral" itself has new rippling spiderwebs of meaning having read this. Wicked fun and infahmative.

[Paul Wilner · Rating 2 out of 5]

He’s done a lot of research but this doesn’t work. The only great (or good) Boston musicians are the J Geils band. Van crashed there for awhile and wrote a great album, but he’s an Irishman. The Velvets played the Tea Party a lot but they’re a New York band, always and forever. Mel Lyman was a dangerous asshole and his followers were foolish dupes. Hard pass, unfortunately.

[Glenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a (too?) detailed account of events that occurred in Boston/Cambridge in 1968. A chapter is devoted to each of: the end of the folk scene, Van Morrison's band, the groundbreaking TV show "What's Happening Mr. Silver?", the opening of the Boston Tea Party, the start of WBCN, the James Brown concert the night after MLK was killed, the "Spiritualist" movement in Boston, and more. Many many chapters concern Mel Lyman's Fort Hill Community and the "Avatar" newspaper. Finally, there's a chapter at the end about Van Morrison and "Astral Weeks", which grew out of his stay in the area at the time.

As I was a high-school senior hip to all this stuff at the time, I was really excited when I heard about this book and read it asap. Sadly, it just wasn't very interesting. It was really really dry, with little enthusiasm for the subjects and what they meant at the time, with the exception of the Van Morrison material. (The book grew out of a Boston Magazine article about Morrison.) The author was born years after 1968; maybe that's the problem -- it reads as a research paper. The biggest problem was the extensive coverage of messianic Mel Lyman and his commune, who wore out his welcome early, wasn't that interesting, and just wouldn't go away.

[Tad Richards · Rating 4 out of 5]

You might expect a book that takes Van Morrison’s legendary album title for its own, and suggests that it will be about Morrison’s time in Boston creating this breakthrough music, to actually be about that.
The bad news is that if that’s what the book is supposed to be about, it does get a little lost in digressions.
The very good news is that the digressions—Boston’s counterculture in the year of Counterculture ascendant—are far more interesting than a linear book about Van Morrison and the making of Astral Weeks could ever have been.
Closer than Van the Man to the center of the book is Mel Lyman, the guru of a commune/cult who started as a banjo player, claimed to be God, and built a little empire that outlasted him (he died at some point, no one is exactly sure when) and still exists today.
For a book about the counterculture, politics and lifestyles, Astral Weeks is surprisingly good about music. For a book about music, it’s surprisingly good about the counterculture, politics and lifestyles. Walsh is a terrific researcher, diligent in tracking down and interviewing more primary sources than one would imagine possible, and he has a clear-eyed understanding of the importance of all of his sources and all of his subjects.

And Mr. Walsh, if you read your Goodreads reviews, I’d love to get a contact for David Silver, an old and dear friend I’ve lost touch with.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

as other reviewers have mentioned, the actual creation of Astral Weeks is a slim portion of this book, and used as a mcguffin to talk about Boston in the late 60s/early 70s. That’s not unusual for non-fiction of course, but they seem so disconnected that it has to be pointed out. I was drawn to this story after reading Walsh’s excellent Boston Magazine feature. Turns out, beyond the fact that Van Morrison is an unrepentant dick, and likely alcoholic, there’s not much more context provided. The rest of the tales of the city from that time seem otherwise disjointed or separated from each other. But there are some really cool bits and interesting tales in here, so it’s a true 3-stars. Solid material, good prose, feels disconnected. Or maybe just don’t make Astral Weeks the sun around which these things supposedly orbit when it’s more obviously Mel Lyman.

[Paige Morse Heinen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so interesting to me as a college student. It takes a specific album, then zooms out to contextualize the time and place surrounding it. Interwoven into the story of Astral Weeks are fascinating stories that happened in Boston in 1968. As a Massachusetts native, I found these stories incredibly interesting. I’d recommend the book to classic rock fans, history fans, Boston natives, and college students interested in cultural history. As an American Studies major at college, I would love to one day write a book as informative and interesting as this one that can be consumed by a broad audience.

[Jerome · Rating 3 out of 5]

Primarily enjoyable for its evocation of a time and place, dominated by the cult-like Fort Hill Community in Boston, the hallucinogenic 60's of Timothy Leary, and to a lesser extent, the recording of Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. The writing style is well-paced and the interviews with Peter Wolf and Lewis Merenstein are illuminating regarding the year Van Morrison spent playing in Boston and recording this album. There are interesting coincidences and appearances by other celebrities or artists who were a part of this period.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good 60s weirdness anecdotes that don't involve the west coast. Unfortunately I was not moved to check out any of the Boston Sound bands mentioned but Jonathan Richman makes some quality appearances here.

[Andi · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5. Good writing, intriguing topic.

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn’t care for the book that much. Save yourself the time and just read Lester Bangs’ transcendental review of Astral Weeks:

Van Morrison's Astral Weeks was released ten years, almost to the day, before this was written. It was particularly important to me because the fall of 1968 was such a terrible time: I was a physical and mental wreck, nerves shredded and ghosts and spiders looming and squatting across the mind. My social contacts had dwindled to almost none; the presence of other people made me nervous and paranoid. I spent endless days and nights sunk in an armchair in my bedroom, reading magazines, watching TV, listening to records, staring into space. I had no idea how to improve the situation and probably wouldn't have done anything about it if I had.

Astral Weeks would be the subject of this piece - i.e., the rock record with the most significance in my life so far - no matter how I'd been feeling when it came out. But in the condition I was in, it assumed at the time the quality of a beacon, a light on the far shores of the murk; what's more, it was proof that there was something left to express artistically besides nihilism and destruction. (My other big record of the day was White Light/White Heat.) It sounded like the man who made Astral Weeks was in terrible pain, pain most of Van Morrison's previous works had only suggested; but like the later albums by the Velvet Underground, there was a redemptive element in the blackness, ultimate compassion for the suffering of others, and a swath of pure beauty and mystical awe that cut right through the heart of the work

I don't really know how significant it might be that many others have reported variants on my initial encounter with Astral Weeks. I don't think there's anything guiding it to people enduring dark periods. It did come out at a time when a lot of things that a lot of people cared about passionately were beginning to disintegrate, and when the self-destructive undertow that always accompanied the great sixties party had an awful lot of ankles firmly in it's maw and was pulling straight down. so, as timeless as it finally is, perhaps Astral Weeks was also the product of an era. Better think that than ask just what sort of Irish churchwebbed haints Van Morrison might be product of.

Three television shows: A 1970 NET broadcast of a big all-star multiple bill at the Fillmore East. The Byrds, Sha Na Na, and Elvin Bishop have all done their respective things. Now we get to see three of four songs from a set by Van Morrison. He climaxes, as he always did in those days, with "Cyprus Avenue" from Astral Weeks. After going through all the verses, he drives the song, the band, and himself to a finish which has since become one of his trademarks and one of the all-time classic rock 'n' roll set-closers. With consumate dynamics that allow him to snap from indescribably eccentric throwaway phrasing to sheer passion in the very next breath he brings the music surging up through crescendo after crescendo, stopping and starting and stopping and starting the song again and again, imposing long maniacal silences like giant question marks between the stops and starts and ruling the room through sheer tension, building to a shout of "It's too late to stop now!," and just when you think it's all going to surge over the top, he cuts it off stone cold dead, the hollow of a murdered explosion, throws the microphone down and stalks off the stage. It is truly one of the most perverse things I have ever seen a performer do in my life. And, of course, it's sensational: our guts are knotted up, we're crazed and clawing for more, but we damn well know we've seen and felt something.

1974, a late night network TV rock concert: Van and his band come out, strike a few shimmering chords, and for about ten minutes he lingers over the words "Way over yonder in the clear blue sky / Where flamingos fly." No other lyrics. I don't think any instrumental solos. Just those words, repeated slowly again and again, distended, permutated, turned into scat, suspended in space and then scattered to the winds, muttered like a mantra till they turn into nonsense syllables, then back into the same soaring image as time seems to stop entirely. He stands there with eyes closed, singing, transported, while the band poises quivering over great open-tuned deep blue gulfs of their own.

1977, spring-summer, same kind of show: he sings "Cold Wind in August", a song off his recently released album A Period of Transition, which also contains a considerably altered version of the flamingos song. "Cold Wind in August" is a ballad and Van gives it a fine, standard reading. The only trouble is that the whole time he's singing it he paces back and forth in a line on the stage, his eyes tightly shut, his little fireplug body kicking its way upstream against what must be a purgatorial nervousness that perhaps is being transferred to the cameraman.

What this is about is a whole set of verbal tics - although many are bodily as well - which are there for reason enough to go a long way toward defining his style. They're all over Astral Weeks: four rushed repeats of the phrases "you breathe in, you breath out" and "you turn around" in "Beside You"; in "Cyprus Avenue," twelve "way up on"s, "baby" sung out thirteen times in a row sounding like someone running ecstatically downhill toward one's love, and the heartbreaking way he stretches "one by one" in the third verse; most of all in "Madame George" where he sings the word "dry" and then "your eye" twenty times in a twirling melodic arc so beautiful it steals your own breath, and then this occurs: "And the love that loves the love that loves the love that loves the love that loves to love the love that loves to love the love that loves."

Van Morrison is interested, obsessed with how much musical or verbal information he can compress into a small space, and, almost, conversely, how far he can spread one note, word, sound, or picture. To capture one moment, be it a caress or a twitch. He repeats certain phrases to extremes that from anybody else would seem ridiculous, because he's waiting for a vision to unfold, trying as unobtrusively as possible to nudge it along. Sometimes he gives it to you through silence, by choking off the song in midflight: "It's too late to stop now!"

It's the great search, fueled by the belief that through these musical and mental processes illumination is attainable. Or may at least be glimpsed.

When he tries for this he usually gets it more in the feeling than in the Revealed Word - perhaps much of the feeling comes from the reaching - but there is also, always, the sense of WHAT if he DID apprehend that Word; there are times when the Word seems to hover very near. And then there are times when we realize the Word was right next to us, when the most mundane overused phrases are transformed: I give you "love," from "Madame George." Out of relative silence, the Word: "Snow in San Anselmo." "That's where it's at," Van will say, and he means it (aren't his interviews fascinating?). What he doesn't say is that he is inside the snowflake, isolated by the song: "And it's almost Independence Day."

you're probably wondering when I'm going to get around to telling you about Astral Weeks. As a matter of fact, there's a whole lot of Astral Weeks I don't even want to tell you about. Both because whether you've heard it or not it wouldn't be fair for me to impose my interpretation of such lapidarily subjective imagery on you, and because in many cases I don't really know what he's talking about. he doesn't either: "I'm not surprised that people get different meanings out of my songs," he told a Rolling Stone interviewer. "But I don't wanna give the impression that I know what everything means 'cause I don't. . . . There are times when I'm mystified. I look at some of the stuff that comes out, y'know. And like, there it is and it feels right, but I can't say for sure what it means."



There you go
Starin' with a look of avarice
Talking to Huddie Leadbetter
Showin' pictures on the walls
And whisperin' in the halls
And pointin' a finger at me
I haven't got the slightest idea what that "means," though on one level I'd like to approach it in a manner as indirect and evocative as the lyrics themselves. Because you're in trouble anyway when you sit yourself down to explicate just exactly what a mystical document, which is exactly what Astral Weeks is, means. For one thing, what it means is Richard Davis's bass playing, which complements the songs and singing all the way with a lyricism that's something more than just great musicianship: there is something about it that more than inspired, something that has been touched, that's in the realm of the miraculous. The whole ensemble - Larry Fallon's string section, Jay Berliner's guitar (he played on Mingus's Black Saint and the Sinner Lady), Connie Kay's drumming - is like that: they and Van sound like they're not just reading but dwelling inside of each other's minds. The facts may be far different. John Cale was making an album of his own in the adjacent studio at the time, and he has said that "Morrison couldn't work with anybody, so finally they just shut him in the studio by himself. He did all the songs with just an acoustic guitar, and later they overdubbed the rest of it around his tapes."
Cale's story might or might not be true - but facts are not going to be of much use here in any case. Fact: Van Morrison was twenty-two - or twenty-three - years old when he made this record; there are lifetimes behind it. What Astral Weeks deals in are not facts but truths. Astral Weeks, insofar as it can be pinned down, is a record about people stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralyzed by the enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend. It is a precious and terrible gift, born of a terrible truth, because what they see is both infinitely beautiful and terminally horrifying: the unlimited human ability to create or destroy, according to whim. It's no Eastern mystic or psychedelic vision of the emerald beyond, nor is it some Baudelairean perception of the beauty of sleaze and grotesquerie. Maybe what it boiled down to is one moment's knowledge of the miracle of life, with its inevitable concomitant, a vertiginous glimpse of the capacity to be hurt, and the capacity to inflict that hurt.

Transfixed between pure rapture and anguish. Wondering if they may not be the same thing, or at least possessed of an intimate relationship. In "T.B. Sheets", his last extended narrative before making this record, Van Morrison watched a girl he loved die of tuberculosis. the song was claustrophobic, suffocating, mostrously powerful: "innuendos, inadequacies, foreign bodies." A lot of people couldn't take it; the editor of this book has said that it's garbage, but I think it made him squeamish. Anyway, the point is that certain parts of Astral Weeks - "Madame George," "Cyprus Avenue" - take the pain in "T.B. Sheets" and root the world in it. Because the pain of watching a loved one die of however dread a disease may be awful, but it is at least something known, in a way understood, in a way measureable and even leading somewhere, because there is a process: sickness, decay, death, mourning, some emotional recovery. But the beautiful horror of "Madame George" and "Cyprus Avenue" is precisely that the people in these songs are not dying: we are looking at life, in its fullest, and what these people are suffering from is not disease but nature, unless nature is a disease.

A man sits in a car on a tree-lined street, watching a fourteen-year-old girl walking home from school, hopelessly in love with her. I've almost come to blows with friends because of my insistence that much of Van Morrison's early work had an obsessively reiterated theme of pedophilia, but here is something that at once may be taken as that and something far beyond it. He loves her. Because of that, he is helpless. Shaking. Paralyzed. Maddened. Hopeless. Nature mocks him. As only nature can mock nature. Or is love natural in the first place? No Matter. By the end of the song he has entered a kind of hallucinatory ecstasy; the music aches and yearns as it rolls on out. This is one supreme pain, that of being imprisoned a spectator. And perhaps no so very far from "T.B. Sheets," except that it must be far more romantically easy to sit and watch someone you love die than to watch them in the bloom of youth and health and know that you can never, ever have them, can never speak to them.

"Madame George" is the album's whirlpool. Possibly one of the most compassionate pieces of music ever made, it asks us, no, arranges that we see the plight of what I'll be brutal and call a lovelorn drag queen with such intense empathy that when the singer hurts him, we do too. (Morrison has said in at least one interview that the song has nothing to do with any kind of transvestite - at least as far as he knows, he is quick to add - but that's bullshit.) The beauty, sensitivity, holiness of the song is that there's nothing at all sensationalistic, exploitative, or tawdry about it; in a way Van is right when he insists it's not about a drag queen, as my friends were right and I was wrong about the "pedophelia" - it's about a person, like all the best songs, all the greatest literature.

The setting is that same as that of the previous song - "Cyprus Avenue", apparently a place where people drift, impelled by desire, into moments of flesh-wracking, sight-curdling confrontation with their destinies. It's an elemental place of pitiless judgement - wind and rain figure in both songs - and, interestingly enough, it's a place of the even crueler judgement of adults by children, in both cases love objects absolutely indifferent to their would-be adult lovers. Madame George's little boys are downright contemptuous - like the street urchins who end up cannibalizing the homosexual cousin in Tennessee Williams's Suddenly Last Summer, they're only too happy to come around as long as there's music, party times, free drinks and smokes, and only too gleefully spit on George's affections when all the other stuff runs out, the entombing winter settling in with not only wind and rain but hail, sleet, and snow.

What might seem strangest of all but really isn't is that it's exactly those characteristics which supposedly should make George most pathetic - age, drunkenness, the way the boys take his money and trash his love - that awakens something for George in the heart of the kid whose song this is. Obviously the kid hasn't simply "fallen in love with love," or something like that, but rather - what? Why just exactly that only sunk in the foulest perversions could one human being love another for anything other than their humanness: love him for his weakness, his flaws, finally perhaps his decay. Decay is human - that's one of the ultimate messages here, and I don't by any stretch of the lexicon mean decadence. I mean that in this song or whatever inspired it Van Morrison saw the absolute possibility of loving human beings at the farthest extreme of wretchedness, and that the implications of that are terrible indeed, far more terrible than the mere sight of bodies made ugly by age or the seeming absurdity of a man devoting his life to the wobbly artifice of trying to look like a woman.

You can say to love the questions you have to love the answers which quicken the end of love that's loved to love the awful inequality of human experience that loves to say we tower over these the lost that love to love the love that freedom could have been, the train to freedom, but we never get on, we'd rather wave generously walking away from those who are victims of themselves. But who is to say that someone who victimizes himself or herself is not as worthy of total compassion as the most down and out Third World orphan in a New Yorker magazine ad? Nah, better to step over the bodies, at least that gives them the respect they might have once deserved. where I love, in New York (not to make it more than it is, which is hard), everyone I know often steps over bodies which might well be dead or dying as a matter of course, without pain. and I wonder in what scheme it was originally conceived that such an action is showing human refuse the ultimate respect it deserves.

There is of course a rationale - what else are you going to do - but it holds no more than our fear of our own helplessness in the face of the plain of life as it truly is: a plain which extends into an infinity beyond the horizons we have only invented. Come on, die it. As I write this, I can read in the Village Voice the blurbs of people opening heterosexual S&M clubs in Manhattan, saying things like, "S&M is just another equally valid form of love. Why people can't accept that we'll never know." Makes you want to jump out a fifth floor window rather than even read about it, but it's hardly the end of the world; it's not nearly as bad as the hurts that go on everywhere everyday that are taken to casually by all of us as facts of life. Maybe it boiled down to how much you actually want to subject yourself to. If you accept for even a moment the idea that each human life is as precious and delicate as a snowflake and then you look at a wino in a doorway, you've got to hurt until you feel like a sponge for all those other assholes' problems, until you feel like an asshole yourself, so you draw all the appropriate lines. You stop feeling. But you know that then you begin to die. So you tussle with yourself. how much of this horror can I actually allow myself to think about? Perhaps the numbest mannekin is wiser than somebody who only allows their sensitivity to drive them to destroy everything they touch - but then again, to tilt Madame George's hat a hair, just to recognize that that person exists, just to touch his cheek and then probably expire because the realization that you must share the world with him is ultimately unbearable is to only go the first mile. The realization of living is just about that low and that exalted and that unbearable and that sought-after. Please come back and leave me alone. But when we're along together we can talk all we want about the universality of this abyss: it doesn't make any difference, the highest only meets the lowest for some lying succor, UNICEF to relatives, so you scratch and spit and curse in violent resignation at the strict fact that there is absolutely nothing you can do but finally reject anyone in greater pain than you. At such a moment, another breath is treason. that's why you leave your liberal causes, leave suffering humanity to die in worse squalor than they knew before you happened along. You got their hopes up. Which makes you viler than the most scrofulous carrion. viler than the ignorant boys who would take Madame George for a couple of cigarettes. because you have committed the crime of knowledge, and thereby not only walked past or over someone you knew to be suffering, but also violated their privacy, the last possession of the dispossessed.

Such knowledge is possibly the worst thing that can happen to a person (a lucky person), so it's no wonder that Morrison's protagonist turned away from Madame George, fled to the train station, trying to run as far away from what he'd seen as a lifetime could get him. And no wonder, too, that Van Morrison never came this close to looking life square in the face again, no wonder he turned to Tupelo Honey and even Hard Nose the Highway with it's entire side of songs about falling leaves. In Astral Weeks and "T.B. Sheets" he confronted enough for any man's lifetime. Of course, having been offered this immeasurably stirring and equally frightening gift from Morrison, one can hardly be blamed for not caring terribly much about Old, Old Woodstock and...

[Doug Birkitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

i thoroughly enjoyed this book. so many cool interweaving stories in boston circa 68. highly recommend. also, an excellent companion read is Love Goes To Buildings on Fire.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally a smaller piece on Van Morrison & his time in Boston during the summer of 1968 leading to his recording in the fall, in New York City, the landmark record album of the title. Those stories are fantastic & thrilling to read, evoking a Boston & Cambridge from another world. Many stretches make for riveting reading, including Walsh's odd encounter with local legend Peter Wolf, Van's old chum from the time, and the tales of other area band members. Unfortunately, to expand the article into a book much was added, & tho some of it is also interesting, some seems an afterthought. There are many lives & stories that intersect thru these pages, & some that exist independently, but all involve Boston in 1968 and form a truly fascinating secret history of the city and the time: the thriving folk scene at Club 47 in Harvard Square (now Passim), the psychedelic rock scene at The Boston Tea Party formerly on Berkeley St. in the South End, Timothy Leary's acid experiments, James Brown's famous concert the day after Martin Luther King's assassination, a short-lived surreal experiment in television programming at WGBH, the origins of WBCN & the rise of FM radio, the filming of The Thomas Crown Affair & The Boston Strangler, & the subversive underground newspaper Avatar, produced by the strange & mysterious Fort Hill community led by charismatic musician & possible madman Mel Lyman. Lyman's tentacles find their way into many of the stories told, usually with disturbing results, & the mystery that surrounds his disappearance/demise seems to intrigue the author, who keeps returning to it until its unpleasant energy hangs over the entire enterprise, ultimately souring it for me.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Other reviewers have already said much of what I agree with. I was lured in by the title, expecting more about Van Morrison than what I got. Reading the Epilogue I realized that the author original wrote a shorter piece and then expanded it to a full book. Also the writer had a whole team of college student workers helping with the research. The bibliography and the list of interviews is long. The book is more about Mel Lyman I think than it is about Van Morrison.

That being said I was born just a few years after the events took place. My mother was 18 when this all went down and she was living in Western Mass and went to some music festival that wasn't Woodstock when Woodstock was happening.

Growing up in Western Massachusetts these events took place just a few hours away from . John Sheldon, who played guitar for Van Morrison, is local to me. So although this book went WAY off topic I was very interested in learning about the musical history of the Boston area. I was less interested in the Lyman Family stuff but again the book tied it in for me with a brief mention of Michael Metalica's commune which is/was local to me as well. I've listened to WBCN. I've watched WGBH tv. I've visited the Boston Common. Etc. Etc. Etc. These places are all real to me. I found myself making notes of things to look up as further research. A brief mention here, a name drop there, and I was down the rabbit hole trying to learn more. Was the FM car radio really invented in Massachusetts (it was)? I had to find out. So from that perspective I give this book 5 stars. However from the perspective of being ABOUT "Astral Weeks" and Van Morrison... nope. Only 3.

Don't get me wrong. I was thoroughly sucked in but mostly because the book went way off topic. For most people that's not a good thing so that's why it's getting the 3 stars.

[Jay Gabler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not for the casual fan of Van the Man, but people who love Astral Weeks (the album) or follow the Boston music scene will appreciate this detailed history. I reviewed Astral Weeks (the book) for The Current.