During my days as an SAT tutor in college, I used to tell my students that there are three kinds of words: ones you know, ones you don’t know and ones you think you know but don’t really. If artists were organized the same way, Van Morrison would land in the third category for me.
Not that I didn’t know his music prior to seeing him live for the first time at The Shrine Auditorium in L.A. on Jan. 16. I grew up hearing songs like “Brown-Eyed Girl,” “Moondance,” “Gloria,” “Domino” and “Wild Night” on oldies radio in Southern California.
As an artist, though, Van the Man is so much more than the Northern Irish voice behind some of the most recognizable hits of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. At least, that’s how he portrayed himself during a nearly two-hour set that, while stirring and sprawling, clearly left something on the table.
Song Selection: 6/10
And what, pray tell, was left on the table? How about some of the Belfast Cowboy’s biggest hits?
Folks shuffling out of the building could be heard complaining about not hearing “Brown-Eyed Girl” and, to a lesser extent, “Here Comes the Night,” “Jackie Wilson Said” and “Gloria.” To the first of those, Morrison himself might’ve retorted, “You should’ve come to both of my shows,” since he sang about laughing and a-running (hey hey), skipping and a-jumping on Friday night.
Except, the first of his shows was a late addition to the Shrine schedule, months after tickets to the Saturday show went on sale.
That disappointment aside, the songs Morrison did play made seeing him live worthwhile. He got the crowd clapping and whooping with “Wild Nights” bleeding into a bluesy medley that began with “Baby Please Don’t Go” and had everyone tapping their toes to a supremely jazzy edition of “Moondance.”
He and his band threw in an ode to Ray Charles early (“I Believe to My Soul”) and gave the packed house a taste of “That Old Black Magic” toward the end, with a little help from his daughter, Shana Morrison.
Still, as enjoyable as Morrison’s setlist was on its face, there’s no avoiding the 800-pound gorillas he left in his catalogue.
Song Quality: 9/10
That being said, everything Morrison and his band played sounded nigh on pitch perfect. His voice still has that strangely syrupy quality to it after all these years, at the ripe age of 70. His work on the saxophone and harmonica, like his vocals, hit all the right notes at the right angles, without any flash to overwhelm the comfortable, understated essence of the classic melodies.
The band behind him did a bang-up job, as well. They all more than held their own—and some, like the keyboardist who busted out his trumpet from time to time and the bassist who seamlessly switched between standup and electric, pulled double duty behind Morrison, who mixed up his own instrumentation throughout.
Few of the songs, if any, came across as pitch-perfect facsimiles of their recorded counterparts. But that wasn’t due to any degradation in Morrison’s pipes. Rather, most of the set was performed as a series of jazz numbers rather than discrete songs. There was always variation on familiar themes in a way that illuminated the true nature of Morrison’s work as that of a scatman from the Isles.
Sound Quality: 8/10
By and large, Morrison’s band came across crisply and echoed comfortably through the classic confines of the Shrine. The venue’s ceiling, looking like a North African tea lounge, once again worked well to absorb just enough of the sound to keep the sound clear. Any issues with Van’s vocals pertained more to his own occasionally intelligibility than the failings of the audio equipment.
There were some blips in the sound, though, when Morrison’s special guest (more on him later) took the stage. While Morrison’s microphone worked fine, that of his accompaniment came off a bit fuzzy and fried.
Stage Presence: 7.5/10
There’s a cool charisma about Morrison that makes his freeform moments on stage fun, even if they seem odd. At one point, he deviated into a string of celebrity impressions, from Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino to Christopher Walken and Clint Eastwood. Some were stronger than others, particularly his De Niro (“You talkin’ to me?”), but all lent charm to the act.
Through another lens, though, they might’ve painted Morrison as loopy. At times, he would wander just off stage, even while singing. His final walkoff was more of an Irish goodbye; he exited without truly bidding the audience farewell, but left his band to play out the string on its own.
Even with the confusion and misdirection, Morrison the man was captivating on stage, whether he was ripping into his harmonica like a fresh corn cob, pumping on his sax or seducing the crowd with his unmistakable voice.
Lights and Visuals: 5/10
It’s not so much that Morrison’s visuals were mediocre as it was that they were sparse and appropriate for the occasion. A jazz show doesn’t require a manic light display or fancy effects to spruce it up. It’s all about the musicians doing what they do and having just enough light and color splashed across them to do it.
To that end, the dulcet tones of the spotlights did the trick. Like the songs themselves, they gave the band the venue it needed to work and Morrison the proper attention to make his swooning that much more accessible to all in attendance.
The Crowd: 9/10
For a show featuring an artist most familiar to folks in their 50s and 60s, the audience was surprisingly diverse. This was not a concert attended solely by aging Baby Boomers seeking to satiate their nostalgia cravings—not that there weren’t plenty of those folks around. The crowd skewed younger than expected, perhaps because the Shrine is literally across the street from the campus of USC.
Regardless of age, the crowd was (almost) entirely appropriate for an evening of easy listening. There were those who felt the need to shout out to Van outside of the usual applause lines, perhaps hoping to be noticed (if not remembered) by a living legend. But those blips of energy were welcomed in a house that piped up when it needed to and mostly listened quietly the rest of the time.
Fit With Venue: 10/10
The Shrine Auditorium is tailor-made for shows like this. The seats are cushy and comfortable, as they should be for a performance that didn’t stir much standup dancing. The acoustics of the space handled the delicacy of the music with aplomb. And the setup of the venue itself, as a 6,300-seat theater that once housed the Oscars, highlighted Morrison and his band both visually and aurally. Where the Forum, as a rock and roll venue, tends to accentuate the driving energy of Morrison’s contemporaries, the Shrine did well to accompany the intimacy that he and his band worked so well to establish with their music and presentation.
Extras: +5
Seeing and hearing Morrison sing alongside his daughter was touching, but the house really got a kick when he brought out former recording partner and fellow OBE Tom Jones to sing “Sometimes We Cry” and “I’m Not Feeling It Anymore.”
Overall, the way Morrison brought his music to life as the building blocks of a jazz ensemble rather than fodder for a pop run-through lent a light to his songs that’s certainly detectable in the classic recordings, but only in trace amounts compared to the real deal.
Total: (54.5+5)/70 = 59.5/70