Carl's Rock Songbook, No. 130: Van Morrison, "What's It Gonna Take?"
& a Comparison with Kevin Morby
So last time we unraveled some complex songwriting work by one of our best millennial-gen artists, Kevin Morby, a rewarding exercise in my view, although we ended by applying to his songs this straightforward retort from Van Morrison’s latest:
You’ve gotta stop, sitting on a fence.
We saw that Morby expressed sorrow in one of his songs about forgetting what it feels like to dance, but to underline the passivity and neutrality which this comes with, see these lyrics from another new song of his, “Stop before I Cry”:
And I wanna go out dancing,
soon as the world returns.
Apparently, the “world” just up and left. We had no choice, have no choice, and the choices that are being made are not ascribable to any particular persons. Compare and contrast Morrison’s lyrics from his new album.
From “Can’t Go on This Way”:
Can’t go out dancin’
can’t find no joy
can’t go on holidays
can’t stay abroad.
Klaus is the wizard,
Gates is playing God!
Can’t go on this way,
it’s just not on.
Government keeps lyin’
everyone is just sad…
...but not sad enough,
to start getting mad.
Do you have any choice in this matter?
Do you have a voice?
Or do you just want to weep?
And go back to sleep.
From “Money from America”:
Klaus Schwab, Prince Charles, Zuckerberg, and Gates,
tell us that we, have to wait.
…No more, Economic Forum!
No more, PM just to bore us!
No more, for them as well,
‘cause they’re starin’ at the--
The Gates from Hell!(2x)
Yeah, he’s naming names. He believes in some version of the “there is a WEF conspiracy to do the Great Reset” theory, in part by population-reduction by nefarious means. I do not think such a theory is correct—I remain open to correction, but to explain the Covid/Vax Disaster, I at present think in terms more of a number of overlapping “little conspiracies” within Big Pharma and the international Deep State. But having just recently seen this 30-minute film about a likely-Gateses-prodded W.H.O. campaign that tricked many Kenyan women to accept fertility-destroying agents (by means of what they thought was merely a tetanus vaccine!), I am perfectly fine with labelling Bill and Melinda as Satanic agents.
From “Damage and Recovery”:
Took our rights before our eyes.
Fear-mongering media, hypnotize.
How can this be?
Please tell me why,
In our so-called free
society.
Is freedom just a memory?
I’m watching you, you’re watching me.
Meanwhile, artists like Morby are mumbling on, sure, with an approach to lyrical art that can make claims to greater psychological precision and suggestive/allusive power, about more subjective/personal aspects of our situation. But as liberal democracy becomes more and more undermined by those apparently determined to replace it with a tech-ist/progressivist regime, this nuanced and veiled artistic strategy for songwriting is feeling less and less fitting. I acknowledge that it is second-nature for not a few artists, such that it could never be wholly ditched by them; and I get how it serves practical purposes of self-protection. But I feel obliged to also stress the fact that when a new form of despotism is spreading its tentacles, the more elusive sort of artist often becomes tempted, as I illustrated with the example of the Georg Dreyman character in my essay on The Lives of Others, to strike an implicit bargain with the emerging masters: “Let me continue to keep openly sharing my artistry, which, though it might criticize the way of life you are establishing in an esoteric or sub-textual manner, I will make sure it never directly opposes you, and remains most-obviously interpretable as supportive.”
What’s It Gonna Take? is the second album Van Morrison has released since he came out against lockdown policy. The first of these was Latest Record Project, Vol. 1, and it is the clearly superior release, for despite loving many of the new songs, I have to admit that the new album is a lesser affair, and has three to four weak songs.
That last fact is actually pretty surprising—what many Morrison fans will tell you is that “he hasn’t made a bad album,” despite the fact that for the last decade or so, he’s released so many, ones remarkably similar in style, all of them largely sticking to a classic R ‘n’ B sound, a more-developed version of the basic sound you hear on older records like Moondance and Tupelo Honey. Some of these have an iffy track or two, but seldom more than that.
I’m not saying that this is a bad album, for we still get ten or so very solid numbers, and in several of these his band hits a rhythmic drive superior to anything on the last release, and really to anything most bands are capable of; but I am saying it’s below the usual Morrison standard. He only had solid material for three LP sides, but insisted on putting these three or four iffy songs out, and even though he knew the establishment critics are waiting to pounce. As I indicated in my review of Latest Record Project, Vol. 1, his 28(!!!) songs on that were lyrically the freshest thing going, and musically quite strong, but the establishment critics chose to lie about their quality.
On this one, there is even a slight defect in terms of lyrical timeliness, because it’s evident that nearly all of them had to have been penned prior to August 2021: in most of them, Morrison is talking again about lockdowns, but tellingly, there’s not a single bit about a.) the vax mandates, or b.) the vax harms.
I believe what happened is this: by 2019 Morrison was already writing on elite-class betrayal/mendacity, and the Covid events of 2020 confirmed his instincts and jumped his wave of creativity up to a new height, such that by late 2020 and early 2021 he knew he had a bumper-crop of fresh songs, so many he couldn’t possibly put them on a single album. So he teasingly gave the 2021 release that Volume One subtitle, worked that summer to bang the remainder into shape, and those are what we have here. But in the 2020-22 period, unlike in any other in rock history since the 1965-1970 one, it was possible for a set of songs that were thematically cutting-edge when composed, to seem a tad behind the times if their release were delayed, even by a mere eight-to-ten months! Those are the kind of times we are living in now.
Morrison’s decision to hold back any songs he’s been writing since the foul advent of the mandates meant that when the time came to deliver his promised “volume two,” he was running a bit short, and either had to make the release feel anti-climatic by it only being a single LP, or, he had to pad it. My “padding preference” would have been for him to have included his original three anti-lockdown songs, which remain unavailable on a regular release, but instead we got these four: 1) “I Ain’t No Celebrity,” whose title alone conveys its unconvincingness, 2) “Stage Name,” a lame-sounding song about the high-priority topic of people not knowing that “Van” isn’t his real name (it’s George Ivan Morrison), and two protest songs, 3) “Fodder for the Masses” and 4) “Fighting Back Is the New Normal.” With these last two he pairs his protest points with a frothy sub-genre of early-60s R ‘n’ B that we associate with Twist Party records. This odd combo of theme and music just isn’t going to click for most people, although the same approach is taken for the title track, “What’s It Gonna Take?” and I think it works well-enough there. As explained in my review of the first record, Morrison has been seeking out a more immediate lyrical style, one more in the tradition of blues and country. Here, he’s additionally experimenting with the idea that a protest song doesn’t have to have a portentous, or in any way serious-sounding, musical accompaniment. Within certain limits, the “dance/protest song” has worked for many artists, as it has for Van in songs that feature his more typical bluesy or soul modes, such as last year’s “My Time After a While” or this year’s “Not Seeking Approval.” But listen to this instead:
Fighting back—is the new normal.
Gotta take a tip, from the French.
Fighting back—is absolutely essential.
You gotta stop, sitting on a fence.
I’m with him on the message, and as for the song’s whole package—it’s good for a chuckle. If it works for you, great, but it’s a stretched experiment. The tough decision-demanding subject matter—look at that scary Invasion of the Bodysnatchers album cover!--just doesn’t fit the mode of the music. (Maybe Morrison should have put, on the back cover, another illustration of the Bodysnatchers couple, but this time with them dancing the Twist!)
So that’s the wee bit of bad news here, but if you avoid playing those four oddities, you’ve still got an eleven-song set of classic Morrison, and one tuned to our present state of affairs.
The strongest songwriting here is in the song I already wrote on, “Pretending,” but he’s also making some interesting (if initially confusing) lyrical points in “Money for America.” It’s a song about both money/corruption in high places and “free” government money during the pandemic. It is also the most vivid expression of Van’s outrage over our situation on either album. If his songwriting sometimes drifts toward whiney complaining, I do notice that its moments where it deploys direct anger always feel on target, and never over-done. On that note I should also report that while the pre-release of “Pretending” and “Nervous Breakdown” had me expecting a somewhat down Morrison, the spirit of the new record is one that generally conveys confidence in the righteousness of his protest, even if a couple doubts about final victory are present, and “Pretending” is the final song.
There is also some interesting lyrical work in “Absolutely, Positively, the Most,” which seems to be connecting faith in God with the maintenance of one’s spiritedness—that’d be a song worth taking a closer look at.
The remaining songs are straightforward, requiring little to no interpretive work on the part of the listener.
Finally, we can observe that the theme of protest on this newer album, while still directed at our corrupt elites, has turned more towards asking his fellow citizens why they are not resisting:
What’s it gonna take,
for you wake-up?
What’s it gonna take,
for you to break?
Now that know we are in a situation that goes way beyond the sins of lockdown, the question is all the more pressing.
FWIW, one of the four songs I criticize above, "I Ain't No Celebrity" is growing on me, despite the brazenly illogical assertion of the title/chorus.
Thanks very much for posting this review! Although I picked up a copy of "Latest Record Album Vol. 1" (reviewed here: https://seanarthurjoyce.substack.com/p/where-have-all-the-rebels-gone-indeed), I had missed this newer album. Van is among the very few stars who has had the balls to tell it like it is, along with Eric Clapton, who narrowly averted a career-ending disaster after he took a Covid vaccine.
And who else? Can we name even one? Even that so-called bad boy of shock rock, Alice Cooper, was shilling for the vaccines, along with Elton John, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. Sometimes I think ageing rock stars should just shut up and realize when they're past it. Van clearly is not, and as you say his willingness to take a risk to speak truth to power energizes his creativity. I found the same thing when I spoke to writers who clammed up during lockdowns: they said their creativity had "mysteriously" dried up. The price you pay for compliance while a crime is being committed.
You might also enjoy a review I wrote about a much earlier Van Morrison album, "Common One" from 1980, an overlooked gem in a career catalogue studded with them. I tease out artistic resonances in the record with Rainer Maria Rilke's poetic masterpiece, "A Book for the Hours of Prayer": https://seanarthurjoyce.substack.com/p/morrisons-book-for-the-hours-of-prayer