Van Morrison Quotes
"Music is spiritual. The music business is not."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Business, Music, Spiritual)
"Large audiences did not suit my low-key approach."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Audiences)
"Skiffle was a name that was attached to what was, in essence, American folk music with a beat."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Music, American, Folk, Name)
"It was really strange for me when I started to play concerts in America where the audiences were all sitting down."
- Van Morrison
(Related: America, Audiences, Play)
"In order to win you must be prepared to lose sometime. And leave one or two cards showing."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Cards, Order)
"The first piece of music that captured my imagination was probably Ray Charles Live At Newport."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Imagination, Music, First)
"If it's what you do and you can do it, then you do it."
- Van Morrison
"I've never felt like I was born with a silver spoon at all, although I've felt like howling at the moon a lot of times!"
- Van Morrison
(Related: Moon)
"If you're a pop singer, you don't need to evolve. You just get a set together, have some hit songs and play them over and over."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Play, Songs)
"The future is keeping you out of the present time."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Time, Future, Present)
"The point of jazz is, you do something and then you go on."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Jazz)
"There is no black-and-white situation. It's all part of life. Highs, lows, middles."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Life)
"There's always got to be a struggle. What else is there? That's what life is made of. I don't know anything else. If there is, tell me about it."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Life, Struggle)
"What you see is what you get."
- Van Morrison
"When I started you were more in touch with the people you were playing to. There wasn't the distance or the separation that there is now."
- Van Morrison
(Related: People, Now, Separation)
"You take stuff from different places, and sometimes you stick a line in because it rhymes, not because it makes sense."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Sense)
"You've got to separate the singer and the songs."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Songs)
"I'm very lucky, I'm happy with life because my experiences led me to do what I had to do. I don't have any regrets whatsoever."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Life)
"When I started studying tenor saxophone as a kid in Belfast, I did so with a guy named George Cassidy, who was also a big inspiration."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Inspiration)
"These days politics, religion, media seem to get all mixed up. Television became the new religion a long time back and the media has taken over."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Religion, Time, Politics, Media, Television)
"I don't think nostalgia has to be negative."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Negative, Nostalgia)
"I'm not a rock singer and I don't want to be a rock singer. I'm not interested. It doesn't seem to get across."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Want)
"You can't stay the same. If you're a musician and a singer, you have to change, that's the way it works."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Change)
"A famous person to themselves, they don't get up in the morning and think, I'm famous. I'm not famous to me. Famous is a perception."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Perception, Famous)
"As a developing musician, skiffle became a platform for me to start playing music."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Music)
"Being famous was extremely disappointing for me. When I became famous it was a complete drag and it is still a complete drag."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Being, Famous)
"Even today, skiffle is a defining part of my music. If I get the opportunity to just have a jam, skiffle is what I love to play."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Love, Music, Opportunity, Play, Today)
"Every performance is different. That's the beauty of it."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Beauty, Performance)
"Hearing the blues changed my life."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Life, Hearing)
"I always record far more than I can use. There's probably twice as much recorded as comes out."
- Van Morrison
"I don't feel comfortable doing interviews. My profession is music, and writing songs. That's what I do. I like to do it, but I hate to talk about it."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Music, Hate, Profession, Songs, Talk, Writing)
"I educated myself. To me, school was boring."
- Van Morrison
(Related: School)
"I just need somewhere to dump all my negativity."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Negativity)
"I learnt from Armstrong on the early recordings that you never sang a song the same way twice."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Song)
"I never bought the commercial thing, at any stage of the game."
- Van Morrison
"I never paid attention to what was contemporary or what was commercial, it didn't mean anything to me."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Attention)
"I think Paul McGuinness and U2 created the Irish music industry. It certainly wasn't there before that."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Music, Irish)
"I understood jazz, I understood how it worked. That's what I apply to everything."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Jazz)
"I went back to Belfast and started a club, the Maritime. No one had thought about doing a blues club, so I was the first."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Thought, First)
"I write songs. Then, I record them. And, later, maybe I perform them on stage. That's what I do. That's my job. Simple."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Job, Songs)
"I'd love to live in Ireland but I'd like to live as me, not what someone thinks I am. People don't understand - I lived there before I was famous."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Love, People, Famous, Ireland)
"I do see value in music criticism. Most of the criticism I have received over the years has been very good."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Music, Criticism, Value, Years)