Too Rye Aye! Oh bollocks. That was someone else. But that’s the whole damn point, I suppose. The average Joe in the street usually arrives at Mr Morrison via everything but his actual records. Dexy’s Midnight Runners or gut-wrenchingly awful Julia Robert flick, the port may be different but the destination remains the same, Van Morrison surely remains the most ubiquitous cameo and namechecked figure in popular culture since Alfred Hitchcock tried to get in on the guestlist at Gatecrasher. So this latest release, pulled together by the centrifugal pressures of every marketing ploy known to the industry seems oddly appropriate, however spurious it seems at first glance. Van Morrison is your average director’s first choice when it comes to faintly credible, raw sounding romance; the thinking man’s Chris De Burgh, the scruff’s Frank Sinatra, the less Muslim Cat Stevens. That Martin Scorsese is a big fan is unsurprising: the connection being made when Robbie Robertson’s former roommate directed The Last Waltz. But for the life of me, I find it truly difficult to equate the rasping hoary growl of this prickly Irishman with movies like Bridget Jones’ Diary or An Officer And A Gentleman. In fact any picture, or any flick is likely to pale in comparison to the rich seam of images and moon-leaping narratives forged by these songs themselves. Who needs celluloid when you have the real thing?
But anyway, a best of by any other name: ‘Gloria’, ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’, ‘Jackie Wilson Said’, ‘Moondance’, ‘Brown Eyed Girl’, ‘Have I Told You Lately’ – they’re all here. At least his genius wasn’t conveyed to us this time by some shitty Jools Holland release.
Thank heaven for small mercies.