‘this life and then the next … my universe at rest’. It’s a feeling that I continually strive for but rarely achieve

While many pop and rock musicians enjoy careers that last a lifetime, the sad fact is that most of these performers have a creative lifespan of just five or 10 years at best and then coast on their hits for the next 30. I suppose it’s an extension of the maxim that you get 18 years to make your first album and six months to make your second. It’s not a bad life. A friend of mine is the keyboard player in Steppenwolf – not the original keyboard player, not the guy who can be heard on Born to Be Wild or Magic Carpet Ride – and if you handed me what he earns in just one year touring with them on the oldies circuit, I’d retire and be living on a beach in Thailand or the Philippines.

But there are some men and women who just keep on going. They don’t let age stand in their way and aren’t content to keep putting out 20 different versions of Blah Blah Blah Sings His Hits …. Live! They may have billions of dollars in the bank and more groupies than you can shake a stick at (if that’s your idea of a good time) but something in them makes them keep trying to do something new. So respect to the Rolling Stones – sure, every album they’ve done in the past 20 years is instantly forgettable, but at least they keep trying. And respect to Paul McCartney for doing yet another Fireman album at the age of 64 – good or bad almost doesn’t matter, just the fact that he’s still engaged enough to be trying something different. And then there’s Leonard Cohen, who at the ripe young age of 74 just kicked off a tour, playing for three hours each night -– and he’s working on an album of new songs, too.

One disturbing gimmick starting to show up more frequently is veteran rockers performing classic albums from their catalogue in their entirety. That’s fine as far as a concert experience goes. I’m sure it was a thrill for the people who got to see Patti Smith recreate her seminal Horses album live in London for its 20th anniversary. Brian Wilson’s done tours for both Smile and Pet Sounds. Arthur Lee did Love’s classic Forever Changes album in concert right before he died. Recently Lou Reed took Berlin around the world (well, Asia, not so much) in an expanded version that resulted in a theatrical film as well as subsequent CD and DVD releases.

The latest example of this trend is Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl, Van Morrison’s live recreation of his second solo album. Astral Weeks was a unique album – when it was released in 1968, it sounded like nothing he had done before and signalled the direction the rest of his career would take. Morrison had reached fame as the lead singer for the Irish r’n’b band Them, earning eternal fame early in his career with Gloria. His first solo success, Brown Eyed Girl, was in a similar vein. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, he dropped Astral Weeks on us. A mélange of jazz, blues, folk, it sounded like nothing Morrison had done before.

On the title track Van asked, ‘If I venture in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dream … could you find me?’ and the answer from the public seemed to be a resounding ‘No!’ Acclaimed by critics as a masterpiece, almost no one bought it. It took more than 20 years for this record to go gold. Van being the cranky genius he is, for 40 years he’s bitched and moaned about the record – about the arrangements, the production, even the running order of the songs.

So the announcement that he would perform this album in its entirety in concert got me excited. But if there’s no doubt in my mind that this is a concert I would have killed to attend, I can’t find much use for the live CD. (Amazon has exclusive rights to the DVD of the show.) Yes, he’s changed the song order and the arrangements are subtly different. But after 40 years, he hasn’t really improved on anything. The original album is still easily obtainable and still sounds great. So go out and buy, download or steal the original Astral Weeks if you don’t already have it (and if you don’t, shame on you), but if you want a great live Van Morrison record then go for 1974’s It’s Too Late to Stop Now (with his powerful version of Ray Charles’ I Believe to My Soul) or even 1994’s A Night In San Francisco - the medley of Bobby Bland’s I’ll Take Care of You and James Brown’s It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World stops me in my tracks every time.

Van Morrison may be content to rest on his laurels but Bruce Springsteen hasn’t reached that point yet. I’ve written about my fanboy idolatry of Springsteen in these pages before but the truth is, most of what he’s done in the past 20 years is music that I admire rather than enjoy. Nothing has hit me on a gut level in the same way that Born to Run or Darkness on the Edge of Town did. So it’s a real surprise to me that I’ve been playing his new album, Working on a Dream, almost non-stop since its release a few weeks ago. Springsteen has been working with producer Brendan O’Brien over the course of several albums to expand his sonic palette and this album is the culmination of that partnership, along with some great melodies and touching lyrics.

For Springsteen, expanding the sonic palette means looking backwards to some extent, but at the same time casting his net a bit wider than he has in the past. My favourite song on the album, This Life, starts out sounding like Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys and quickly moves into classic Springsteen lyric territory – ‘As you slip into my car the evening sky strikes sparks’ – and yet manages to go places he’s never gone before, simultaneously yearning and content, ‘this life and then the next … my universe at rest’. It’s a feeling that I continually strive for but rarely achieve in my own life.

From there he moves on to Good Eye, its distorted vocals and guitar sound as if they came from an RL Burnside record, ending with what sounds like a bit of banjo for good measure, before moving off into Tomorrow Never Knows, a relatively straight country song. You also get Springsteen’s tribute to Danny Federici and his title song from the film The Wrestler. There’s a lot to love here.

I know that a lot of people have been complaining that Queen of the Supermarket is the worst song Springsteen has ever released. ‘When is the last time Bruce Springsteen went grocery shopping?’ they ask. This misses the point. Springsteen was never a highway patrolman or an Okie choking on dust during the depression but no one complained about that. And people shouldn’t complain about this song, which features one of the best vocal arrangements of
his career. I won’t say that Working on a Dream is Springsteen’s best studio album in two decades but it’s definitely the most enjoyable one.

Hard to believe, but U2 have now been around for 30 years. I saw them play on their first US tour – I think Bono was all of 20 at the time – and they were already so damned good, though the worst part was the look on their faces that said they knew it. I looked at those kids on stage and knew they were going be in it for the long haul. Fast forward to 2009 and we have No Line on the Horizon, just their 12th studio album. I’ve only had a chance to listen to it a few times and – well, Wow! If they take time between albums, that’s clearly because they’re putting a lot of thought into what they do. It’s very clear that they sound down with producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois to once again radically rethink their approach and their sound. For me, the album works on every level and sounds better every time I play it. The more closely you listen to it, the more it rewards. If they can keep this up, hopefully we won’t have to deal with a Joshua Tree tribute concert in 2017.