The Places of Van Morrison’s Songwriting

Venturing in the Slipstream

Geoff Munns

$263

Hardback

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English

Routledge
21 December 2022

Folk & traditional music; Rock & Pop music; Popular culture

Series: Routledge Studies in Popular Music

What can we learn about Van Morrison’s life and work as a songwriter through his songs? This book looks closely at the lyrics and music from a selection of his songs. Some are very well-known - ‘Brown Eyed Girl’, ‘Cleaning Windows’ and ‘The Healing Game’. Others are less familiar.

Through these songs the book offers insights into some of the most important ideas that the songwriter has explored across his five-decade plus career, starting from the Them period and extending through his solo albums. These readings show how thinking about Morrison’s use of place provides a specific lens that contributes to a greater understanding of his art. The songs are organized into chapters that reflect many of the important places in Morrison’s work as he ventured professionally and imaginatively away from the places of his upbringing towards a wider musical world. These places are in city streetscapes and country landscapes – in home places of streets and ditches, in the enclosed spaces of rooms, in the expansive reaches of the natural world, in indeterminate and specific foreign lands. A picture emerges of the journey that Van Morrison details through his songs, one that sees him first wandering as a boy through his East Belfast haunts, and then venturing out to a wider world away from this local place.

By: Geoff Munns
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
Weight: 512g
ISBN: 9781032253947
ISBN 10: 1032253940
Series: Routledge Studies in Popular Music
Pages: 180
Publication Date: 21 December 2022
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Geoff Munns is Adjunct Associate Professor with the School of Education, University of Western Sydney. He has been a schoolteacher, school principal, a teaching academic and a university researcher. His recent doctorate explored the use of place in Van Morrison’s songwriting.