Van Morrison 1970 Caricature

Van Morrison 1970 Caricature, shown here in New York City, during the recording of his third album “Moondance” in 1970, age 25.

Morrison is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter, instrumentalist and record producer. His professional career began as a teenager in the late 1950s playing a variety of instruments including guitar, harmonica, keyboards and saxophone for various Irish show bands, covering the popular hits of that time. Van Morrison rose to prominence in the mid-1960s as the lead singer of the Northern Irish R&B band Them, with whom he recorded the garage band classic “Gloria”. His solo career began under the pop-hit oriented guidance of Bert Berns with the release of the hit single “Brown Eyed Girl” in 1967. After Berns’s death, Warner Bros. Records bought out his contract and allowed him three sessions to record Astral Weeks (1968). Though this album gradually garnered high praise, it was initially a poor seller.

Moondance (1970) established Morrison as a major artist, and he built on his reputation throughout the 1970s with a series of acclaimed albums and live performances. He continues to record and tour, producing albums and live performances that sell well and are generally warmly received, sometimes collaborating with other artists, such as Georgie Fame and The Chieftains.

His greatest hits: “Gloria”, “Brown Eyed Girl”, “Moondance”, “Into The Mystic”, “Jackie Wilson Said”, “Domino”, “Wild Night”, “Here Comes The Night”, “Crazy Love”, “Days Like This”, “Baby Please Don’t Go” and “Caravan”.

He has received two Grammy Awards, and has been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2016, he was knighted for services to the music industry and to tourism in Northern Ireland.

Literally thousands of bands and musicians have covered Morrison’s classic ‘Gloria,’ which he wrote at the age of 18 and recorded with his first professional band, Them, in 1964.

He is known by the nickname Van the Man to his fans.