No Guru, No Method, No Teacher: the story of a masterpiece

No Guru, No Method, No Teacher: the story of a masterpiece

“In popular song, no one has ever fulfilled the visionary ambitions of William Blake like Van Morrison.” (Nick Coleman)

Van Morrison’s No Guru, No Method, No Teacher is his sixteenth studio album, released on July 1st, 1986. Nearly four decades have passed since then, and yet the record resists the passage of time with disarming ease. This is not a nostalgic nod to numbers and anniversaries, but rather a sincere astonishment at how current and vital the album still sounds. Morrison, acting as producer, arranger, and performer, took full command in this phase of his career, offering one of the most complete examples of how to craft a record and shape a distinctive sound. What today we might call an "upgrade"—a qualitative leap that doesn’t make earlier works feel dated, but does reveal new compositional and sonic peaks thanks to both the technology of the time and the cohesion of the musicians involved. We are dealing here with a major work—a masterpiece that deserves to be discussed, dissected, and analyzed in a structured and balanced way. For me, this process is both a joy and a responsibility: gathering insights, offering a fresh reading, and trying my best to share all that this album carries in terms of artistic, conceptual, and even spiritual depth.

Where were we?

The final track on A Sense of Wonder (1985)—the album that directly precedes No Guru—had already led us into Van Morrison’s mystical, enchanted universe. No Guru continues the journey begun with Beautiful Vision and Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, connecting with A Sense of Wonder in a fluid, symbiotic way. But it also zooms forward, opening onto a new landscape: a “mystical garden” where time does not stop but flows gently, against the current. We are transported into the land of eternal youth—Tir Na Nog, the mythical Celtic paradise—which Morrison uses to open Side B of the LP. But before that, Side A offers a sequence that can be compared to the likes of Moondance in terms of quality and thematic cohesion. Got to Go Back, which now reads almost like a nod to the sci-fi nostalgia of Ready Player One or Simon Reynolds’ brilliant essay Retromania, is a programmatic manifesto. It’s a diary page from young Van, still in school, discovering the profound soul of Ray Charles through I Believe to My Soul. We are grounded—sitting in an imaginary alcove—but the emotional altitude is rare and elevating. Morrison and his musicians achieve something close to magic: opening windows into everyday life, evoking a Proustian sensitivity with the elegance of sound and simplicity of gesture. It’s like tasting a madeleine and suddenly finding yourself in a village called Paradise. Morrison’s originality lies in his absolute freedom—his refusal to conform to templates, his unshakable trust in the currents of the heart and in emotions that, through music, become poetry in its most complete and fascinating form. Asked about the hidden meaning of the album title, Morrison said: “Well, in one of the songs there’s a line where I try to get you to observe a program of transcendental meditation. If you listen to the song carefully until the end, you’ll achieve a mental stillness. I would like to state once again that I do not belong to any organization, that I have no guru in my service, no teachers, no methods to submit to, and everything I say in the track is true.”

The album title also echoes a quote by Jiddu Krishnamurti, dated 1966: “...there is no teacher, no pupil; there is no leader; there is no guru; there is no Master, no Savior. You yourself are the teacher and the pupil; you are the Master; you are the guru; you are the leader; you are everything.” Critically, No Guru was widely praised, thanks above all to the album’s remarkable cohesiveness. Morrison returns to his central themes—his nostalgia for Ireland and for childhood, his restless spiritual search, now less bound to dogma and more open to a naturalistic form of faith. Nature, in its vitality and beauty, becomes the only true Muse. This is a deeply inspired meditation on the relationship between body and mind, man and nature. Listening to an album like this can be a transcendent experience—as enriching as a great novel, an auteur film, or a visit to the Uffizi Gallery. We must also credit Jim Stern and Mick Glossop, the sound engineers, and the ensemble of musicians who recorded the album in London and then at the Record Plant Studios in Sausalito, California. Terry Adams, the wonderful cellist from the Caledonia Soul Orchestra, returns here, as do several core collaborators from Morrison’s past albums: David Haynes on bass, John Platania on guitar, and Jef Labes on piano and string arrangements (notably on Tir Na Nog). New faces also appear—some, like Kate St. John and her oboe, who enriches Got to Go Back, Here Comes the Knight, and Foreign Window, remain for a while. Others, like percussionist Babatunde Lea, simply pass through. But more than a matter of standout performances, what truly defines this album is its collective force—a synergy, a near-mystical blend of instruments, timbres, arrangements, and lyrics. There’s a hidden current running through the album, something as natural and life-giving as drinking from a spring after a long walk through uneven terrain. It’s like emerging from a cave into the light and rediscovering the better part of yourself. To fully experience it, one needs an open mind and a listening disposition. These are simple songs, but never simplistic. At their finest, Morrison’s compositions reach emotional depths we thought we had forgotten. Like the first day of school, the first kiss with the love of our life, or a sacred moment we keep tucked away among the golden pages of our private diary. As Brian Hinton noted, in No Guru “there is a grace and majesty that I have rather rarely experienced in rock music.”

I find it genuinely hard to name a weak track. But if I were forced to choose a handful of unforgettable songs, I would point to this brief sequence: Got to Go Back, Oh the Warm Feeling, In the Garden, Tir Na Nog, and Thanks for the Information. We are in the presence of greatness here, and it is fair to place these compositions alongside those from Astral Weeks, Moondance, Veedon Fleece, and Into the Music. And let me say this as clearly as possible: you don’t need to be a cultured person to love an album like this. It reveals itself to those with open hearts and listening ears. The rest will follow—if you’re lucky.

To quote the unmatched Henry David Thoreau: 

“There is a kind of fertile sadness that I do not wish to avoid, but rather shall seek earnestly. It becomes concretely joyful for me because it keeps my life from falling into the banal.”

Dario Greco