Morrison is a notoriously unreliable narrator of his own musical history and has changed his tack on the meanings and inspiration behind Astral Weeks, especially as its reputation has gone from flop to fan and critical favorite. Walsh sources intel from dozens of folks, though not from Van himself. And why Boston? As Secret History outlines, Morrison knew no one in Boston, which was effectively dead as a music city (sorry, Ultimate Spinach fans) when he arrived. We follow the author as he hunts for witnesses who can explain a heretofore unexamined and mysterious time in Morrison’s career. Walsh’s voice is casual, his prose accessible, and his humor occasionally eviscerating. The secret history unspools like an endless bar yarn, an almost-impossible tale in which obscure and famous figures are tethered in conspiracy and coincidence.
The result is a portrait of a time and place so expansive it makes the creation of Astral Weeks, one of the most transcendent and lasting albums of the ’60s, seem nearly incidental. These intersections created pathways in music culture that are visible to this day.
Which is to say, it’s a Van Morrison book that is also about the Velvet Underground (whose White Light/White Heat was released in January ’68), LSD seers, the making of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point as it relates to a hippie cult and its messianic leader, and the messy relationship between Boston’s chaotic underground and its repressive mainstream.
But the mystery of why and how the singer-songwriter came to be in Boston-a faltering Belfast phoenix landing in a fizzled folk scene-is merely the entry point for Walsh’s romp through the city’s countercultural history. Walsh pursues the story behind the inspiration and creation of the now-classic Van Morrison album of the same name, searching for the unexplored answers that have been hiding in plain sight. IN ASTRAL WEEKS: A SECRET HISTORY OF 1968, Ryan H.
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