The ‘revenge recordings’: How Van Morrison got out of a shitty contract — dangerousminds.net

Van Morrison and Jim Morrison, no relation The “revenge recordings” of Van Morrison provide a fascinating test case of the limits of authenticity in pop music—how inauthentic and desultory can a gifted musician’s performance be and still retain musical value, if such it does? The two years after the release of “Brown Eyed Girl” in June 1967 was a heady period for Van Morrison. He suddenly had a smash hit on his hands, reaching #10 on the Billboard Hot 100, his scorned New York record producer Bert Berns died, and he jumped from Berns’ Bang Records to Warner Brothers, for whofm he would record and release his masterpiece, Astral Weeks. After the death of Berns on December 30, 1967, Morrison found himself in a contract dispute with Berns’ widow Ilene; among other things, Morrison was barred from performing on stage or recording in the New York area. Morrison was already annoyed because he had had no say in the release of Blowin’ your Mind! in September 1967 and had only found out about it when a friend called to say that he had purchased it in a store.

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