Astral Weeks - Background

Background

At the beginning of 1968, Van Morrison became involved in a contract dispute with Bang Records that kept him away from any recording activity. This occurred after the sudden death of the label's founder Bert Berns; born with a congenital heart defect, Berns experienced a massive heart attack and was discovered dead in a New York hotel room on 30 December 1967. Prior to Berns' death, he and Morrison had experienced some creative difficulties. Berns had been pushing Morrison towards a more pop-oriented direction, while Morrison wanted to explore newer musical terrain. As a result, Berns' widow, Ilene Berns, held Morrison and this conflict as responsible for her husband's death. Years later she would downplay this scenario but Morrison's ex-wife Janet (Planet) Minto has gone on record describing her initial subsequent vindictiveness towards Morrison.

Upon Bert Berns death, Ilene Berns inherited the contracts of Bang Records. Morrison's annual option on his recording contract was also due less than a week after Berns' funeral. Legally bound to Bang Records, Morrison was not only kept out of the studio, but he also found himself unable to find performing work in New York as most clubs refrained from booking him, fearing reprisals. Ilene Berns then discovered that her late husband previously had been remiss in filing all the appropriate paperwork to keep Morrison (still a British citizen) in New York. She contacted Immigration and Naturalization Service and attempted to have Morrison deported. However, Morrison managed to stay in the U.S. when his then-girlfriend Janet (Planet) Rigsbee agreed to marry him. Once married, Morrison and his wife moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he found work performing in the local clubs. Morrison began performing with a small electric combo doing blues numbers, songs from Blowin' Your Mind! and from Morrison's Them band days. Two of the musicians soon left but Morrison did retain the bassist, Tom Kielbania, a student at the Berklee School of Music. At that juncture, Morrison decided to try an acoustic sound, and he and Kielbania began performing shows in coffee houses in the Boston area as an acoustic duo with Morrison playing guitar and Kielbania on upright bass. Before this, Morrison had primarily recorded and performed with electric musicians. The acoustic medium would provide him "greater vocal improvisation and a freer, folkier feel."

Later, Kielbania heard jazz-trained flautist John Payne for the first time while sitting in on a jam session. He Invited Payne to the club where he played with Morrison, hoping Morrison would invite him to join them, and after allowing Payne to sit-in on one performance, Morrison did extend an invitation that Payne accepted. The trio of Payne, Kielbania, and Morrison continued performing for four months. In the weeks they played at the Catacombs, they began to develop the template for Astral Weeks. It was around this time that Warner Bros. Records approached Morrison, hoping to sign him to their roster. Presumably their interest focused on his prior success with "Brown-Eyed Girl", not on Morrison's current acoustic work. Regardless, their interest allowed Morrison to return to the recording studio.

At the time, Warner Bros. had a deal with Inherit Productions, the production arm of Schwaid-Merenstein which was founded by manager Bob Schwaid (who worked for Warners Publishing) and producer Lewis Merenstein. Merenstein received a call from Warner Bros. to go see Morrison in Boston and related how eight or nine producers had gone to hear Morrison thinking they were going to hear "Brown Eyed Girl" and "it was another person with the same voice." Merenstein first heard Morrison play at Ace Recording studio and recalled that when Morrison played the song, "Astral Weeks" for him, "I started crying. It just vibrated in my soul, and I knew that I wanted to work with that sound." While Merestein had been to see Morrison, Schwaid had set to work on resolving Morrison's contractual troubles.

Still legally bound to Bang Records, Morrison would yet have more issues with them in the future. For the time being, Schwaid managed to free him from those obligations, under several conditions. First, Morrison had to write and submit to Web IV Music (Bert Berns's publishing company) three original compositions per month over the course of one year. Morrison fulfilled that obligation by recording thirty-six nonsense songs in a single session. Such action risked legal reprisals, but ultimately none transpired. Morrison then had to assign Web IV one half of the copyright to any musical composition written and recorded by Morrison and released as a single within one year from 12 September 1968. That demand became a moot point when Warner Bros. refrained from releasing any single during that time frame. (No single was released from Astral Weeks.) Finally, Morrison had to include two original compositions controlled by Web IV on his next album. Morrison fulfilled that demand with two of his own compositions, "Madame George" and "Beside You". (Although the versions subsequently released were vastly different musically than the original versions recorded with Bang.)