Astral Weeks - Legacy

Legacy

Immediately upon release, the album was a favourite with critics and had an impact on future releases of other musicians such as Bono and Bruce Springsteen. Mike Ragogna with The Huffington Post wrote that Astral Weeks influenced Springsteen's 1973 first album Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and two of the songs from his second.

In his 1975 book, Ritchie Yorke wrote "It was almost as if Van Morrison, elusive at any time, had deliberately created an album of music which would indefinitely withstand the vulgarity of music industry image-making. Later they might say that other albums were reminiscent of Astral Weeks, but they could never claim that Astral Weeks was like anything else."

Greil Marcus refers to the impact of the album calling it a "common language" and relates that: "I was so shocked when I was teaching a seminar at Princeton just a couple years ago, and out of 16 students, four of them said their favorite album was Astral Weeks." Marcus goes on to say, "Now, how did it enter their lives? We're talking about an album that was recorded well before they were born, and yet it spoke to them. They understood its language as soon as they heard it."

Elvis Costello described 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." Johnny Depp, in a Rolling Stone interview in 2008, recalled how when he was a preteen his older brother (by ten years) tiring of Johnny's favorite music of the time said, "'Try this.' And he put on Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. And it stirred me. I'd never heard anything like it." Steven Van Zandt (Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band) has said: "Astral Weeks was like a religion to us." Joan Armatrading has said that Astral Weeks was the first album she purchased as a teenager and that it opened her up musically. In August 2010, director and choreographer, Jessica Wallenfels, staged a production in Portland, Oregon of a rock opera/story ballet of Astral Weeks called "Find me Beside You".

Astral Weeks has often appeared on "best of all time" album lists including the #2 rating by Mojo In 1995 and the #19 ranking by Rolling Stone in 2003.The Times listed Astral Weeks at #3 of The Times All Time Top 100 Albums. In 1998, it was voted the 9th greatest album of all time in a "Music of the Millennium" poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4 and The Guardian. In 2000, Q magazine placed it at #6 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever. It was listed along with Moondance among the All-Time 100 albums by CNNTime magazine in November 2006. In 2009, it was voted #6 on the list of The 100 Greatest Singer-Songwriter Albums of All Time by the editors at Amazon.com. In December 2009, it was voted the top Irish album of all time by a poll of leading Irish musicians taken by Hot Press magazine. In 1999, Astral Weeks and Moondance, Morrison's next album, were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Astral Weeks was reissued by Warner Bros. on 180 g. vinyl in December 2008.