Astral Weeks

Van Morrison had already made a name for himself as the lead singer of the Belfast band Them, which achieved immortality with 'Gloria' and 'Here Comes the Night'.  He then signed a solo deal in the US, reaching the Top Ten with the infectious 'Brown-Eyed Girl' but he dismissed the album that came from those sessions. He then signed for Warner Bros. Records, who had a deal with Inherit Productions, the production arm of Schwaid-Merenstein, founded by manager Bob Schwaid (who worked for Warners Publishing) and producer Lewis Merenstein.  

Producer Lewis Merenstein had a background in jazz and assembled a group of jazz-based players including veteran bassist Richard Davis. Davis was essentially the session leader, and it was through Davis that Merenstein was able to recruit guitarist Jay Berliner, percussionist Warren Smith, Jr., and drummer Connie Kay. All of these musicians had strong backgrounds in jazz; Berliner had worked closely with Charles Mingus and Kay was part of the Modern Jazz Quartet. 

Sessions were held at Century Sound Studios in New York on 25th September and the 1st and 15th, 1968. Van Morrison sat by himself in a glass-enclosed booth, scarcely communicating with the session musicians, who barely knew who he was. "Some people are real disillusioned when I tell them about making the record," says Richard Davis, who supplied what may be the most acclaimed bass lines ever to grace a pop record. "People say, ’He must have talked to you about the record and created the magic feeling that had to be there . . .’ To tell you the truth, I don’t remember any conversations with him. He pretty much kept to himself. He didn’t make any suggestions about what to play, how to play, how to stylize what we were doing." 'At the time', said Schwaid, 'I thought it was an avant-garde marriage of jazz and rock.  Really it was a combination of Van's approach to what he thought to be jazz and folk, blues, gospel and rock levels.  At the time none of us thought that if fitted into any category'. 

A collection of great songs the daydream memoir "Cypress Avenue," and the hypnotic portrait of "Madame George" with their wandering melodies connecting the earthy poetry in Celtic folk and American R&B have lost none of their initial impact.  Many years later Elvis Costello rated Astral Weeks as "still the most adventurous record made in the rock medium, and there hasn't been a record with that amount of daring made since.'