PETER URPETH finds Van the Man up to his usual tricks, on and off the stage

To the names due for review from this evening’s concert should be added the formation of Blas, a gathering of women traditional Gaelic singers performing new and specifically commissioned work for the Festival. However, your reviewer was stood half a mile from the tent waiting to gain entry to the Big Top while they performed, and along with him stood a fair portion of the evening’s audience.

For this apologies are due to the band, but there were mitigating circumstances aplenty. One obvious reason why this unusual (for this Festival) delay might have occurred is that thanks to Van Morrison, the ticket buying public were being stopped and stripped of their cameras as they made their way in.

The festival crowd queuing back down Bayhead in Stornoway. © Peter Urpeth

One wonders if the Heb Celtic Festival is not, actually, bigger than all of this, and should have refused to engage with Van’s petulant shenanigans, advising the Irish crooner to enter the spirit of this festival or stay at home. I also imagine that Van’s strict timetabling (jet in jet out) ensured that the organisers could use no flexibility as to the start and finish times of Blas’ set, and hence they sang whilst we queued.

This reviewer certainly did not see or hear any specific warnings that the organisers may have issued to ticket holders to turn up early and don’t bring a camera. To this must be added the fact that Van Meldrew’s games did not stop once inside the tent with the stage-side screens, so helpful in enabling those at the back of the tent to get a good view, left blank for Van’s set.

His fans will have to draw their own conclusions as to acceptability of all this behaviour – personally I find self-indulgent ego mania a real turn off when it comes to music and musicians and we were all knee deep in it last Thursday.

And so to the performance. On one level at least Van certainly did up-end expectations and the trepidation of hype that put the fear on many prior to this gig by playing non-stop for well in excess of an hour and for drawing on material from across the new and entire back catalogue of his work with a good smattering of work from the last two decades and as early as 1970.

The opening half of his time on stage was dedicated to an exposition of the variety of 50s and 60s jazz and blues styles that have come to overtly dominate his music over the years. The canvas includes deep blues, skiffle, rock and roll, Brit trad with strains of Acker Bilk and Louis Armstrong and smooth Blue Note bopism to boot, and not all of it is in its own terms that convincing.

When Van Morrison recorded for Blue Note records many said it was his natural home. In retrospect it was only his natural home in the regard that by then Blue Note had come to represent a certain conservatism in jazz and was far removed from the sense of zeitgeist that in the 1950s propelled the label to the forefront of the new music.

To the dispassionate much of the first part of Van’s set was incongruous on a ‘Celtic’ music stage (but then what is Celtic music anyway?) but it was well received, mind, begging the question as to how much similar music by other artists Van’s fans would listen to? The answer is simply that that’s the following he’s built and sustained over many years (he is 60 in August for whatever that means) and he has certainly taken a legion of followers on a very personal journey, and if it rocks your boat, as they say.

For my money, if Van really is the stuff of legends it only really shows when he heads back in time and in particular to the slower, soulful blues that lets that magnificent and expressive voice take centre stage.

With the jet doubtlessly powering up on the runway, and with the dying echoes of a set that included ‘Bright Side of the Road”, ‘Days Like This’ and ‘Here Comes the Night’, along with new material such as ‘Celtic New Year’ from the latest album ‘Magic Time’ (on Van’s own Exile label), fading rapidly, Van seemed to chill and relax and he became visibly more engaged with his audience.

Hence Van the Man finally produced a sequence that for many will more than compensate for the earlier agro, and the rapturous acclaim that greeted it maybe proves another point. Out came ‘Moondance’, which swung and glistened; out came ‘Star of the County Down’, which further ignited the large crowd; and then there was a ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ that shook the big top to its foundations.

On these numbers, so perfect for the swaggering bluesy blur of his voice, Van rolled back the years and also seemed far more at home than on the other material. This is his real music – it’s emotional, intimate and accessible. Shame that the cove can’t get back to his roots as a man as well.

Now for the hardest act of the Festival. Galician piper Xose Manual Budino had the unenviable task of following Van to the stage. Budino is obviously a gifted piper from within the traditions of native Galicia. A number of Galician musicians have graced the Heb Celtic Festival stage over the years and of these Budino has the most straightforward relationship to the fusion of the tradition with new music.

There is a certain rocky drive and momentum to his music but too often it clatters with unsubtle dance and techno beats, even so he deserves a better chance on the Heb Celtic stage than this with the energy levels of the crowd at odds with the programme schedule enforced by Van Morrison.

© Peter Urpeth, 2005