Veedon Fleece – Fifty Years of Solitude Later

Preface – Tell me of Poe, Oscar Wilde and Thoreau

There are films, books, and records that change your life, sometimes. They arrive at the most inconvenient times—or perhaps not. They come when we’re receptive, when our defenses have crumbled, when we find ourselves alone in a room, staring at the ceiling, lost in our darkest thoughts. The film of my life is Dead Poets Society, which I saw when I was very young. The book is The Town and the City by Jack Kerouac, which I read at sixteen. Sometime later, I listened to the record of my life. In truth, there were not fewer than three. One was Born to Run by Springsteen, another was Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan, and the third, which arrived last, was Veedon Fleece.

Now, Veedon Fleece holds a secret key. If you manage to find it, a world opens up. It’s a world of suggestion and poetic flight. I don’t know if it’s due to that fluid, lyrical style, halfway between Irish folk and jazz. An album that takes you to places you didn’t think you could reach. Discoveries, after all, are always the result of chance, of fortune. Some are bestowed upon us by kindred souls, authentic Cicerones who guide us gently through the labyrinths of knowledge, through what is conventionally referred to as the state of the art. For me, Veedon Fleece was the discovery of a world, and the spiritual rebirth I used to overcome a difficult time—one of those shadow lines I sometimes find myself crossing.

Later on, I read Walden by Henry David Thoreau, during a hieratic moment of introspection and withdrawal from the outside world. Listening to “Fair Play” brings back memories of my Roman interlude, when I awkwardly tried to court an economics student from Crotone. She told me she loved horror stories, and I gave her my copy of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe had kept me company through a turbulent and reckless adolescence, when I decided to educate myself by reading everything I could get my hands on.

Hearing the passage from “Fair Play” revealed a new kindred spirit to me, and his name was Van Morrison. The Irish songwriter, in this wonderful piece, reveals to the world his literary curiosity, typical of the self-taught. Yet this is not a limitation but a starting point toward a broader and deeper knowledge. As Thomas Wolfe says: “To lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the friends you loved, for greater love; to find a land more kind than home, more rich than earth… where the pillars of this earth are planted… toward which the conscience of the world is tending; a wind is rising, and the rivers flow.”

I had found my richer land, and I found it by losing myself in the grooves of a marvelous green record, whose title was so elusive and magnetic that for weeks I didn’t have the courage to listen to anything else. That’s what discovering Van Morrison did to me. But the Magic Time lies in the ability to still feel, even after more than twenty years, that same sensation. Surely more delicate now, perhaps less defined, but when the double bass kicks in and the piano draws warm and watery chords, I enter that enchanted universe, into an astral dimension that makes me reflect on past lives, on situations from many years ago, on memories I didn’t know I had. 

There’s no way to understand why certain works give us these sensations. Maybe it’s all part of the game, maybe we’re just too sensitive and have spent too many hours listening to songs and records that are just a bit too melancholic. And yet, I’m convinced that you too, while reading these words of mine, will be lost in the mist of memories, in the most intimate and sincere thoughts of that first time you listened to Veedon Fleece by Van Morrison. It was 1974, maybe 1994, or perhaps just a few weeks ago. After all, it makes no difference—just like The Band used to sing in their song.

Veedon Fleece – Fifty Years of Solitude Later

The opening track, Fair Play, takes its title from Van Morrison’s friend Donall Corvin, who used to say “fair play to you” as a kind of ironic compliment. It's a 3/4 ballad that name-drops Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry David Thoreau. According to Morrison, it came “from whatever was going through my head,” and marks a return to writing in a stream-of-consciousness style already present in some tracks from earlier albums. Linden Arden Stole the Highlights continues with Who Was That Masked Man (sung in falsetto), a lyrically rich and evocative piece. The storyline centers on a mythological Irish expatriate living in San Francisco who, once cornered, turns violent and goes into hiding, “living with a gun.” It's a direct reference to the TV series The Lone Ranger. Morrison described the antihero Linden Arden as “the image of an Irish immigrant living in San Francisco – a very tough guy.”

Streets of Arklow paints the picture of a perfect day in “God’s green land,” paying homage to County Wicklow, which Morrison had visited during his Irish stay in 1973. In the song’s opening lines — “And as we walked through the streets of Arklow, oh the colors of the day warm, and our heads were filled with poetry, in the morning coming soon at dawn” — critic John Kennedy sees the thematic seeds of the entire album: nature, poetry, God, rediscovered innocence, and lost love. You Don't Pull No Punches, but You Don't Push the River is considered one of Morrison’s finest compositions. He revealed that the song owed a great deal to readings from Gestalt therapy. Gestalt therapy focuses primarily on awareness of the individual’s thought processes, feelings, and actions, paying more attention to the “what” and “how” rather than the “why” of a behavior or decision.

On side two of the album, we find Bulbs and Cul de Sac, songs that revolve around emigration to America and the longing for home. The album closes with three love songs: Comfort You, Come Here My Love, and Country Fair, with the last two embracing the style of a traditional Irish ballad. According to Clinton Heylin, these tracks explore the soothing power of love, showing what the lover can do for the beloved. Come Here My Love sounds like the song of a man learning to love again. Thematically, Country Fair is a sequel to And It Stoned Me, with the difference that while the latter opened an album, the former is used here to close one. Elvis Costello listed Veedon Fleece among his favorite records, pointing to Linden Arden Stole the Highlights as the piece that makes the album so special.

The album cover shows Van Morrison sitting in the grass between two Irish wolfhounds. The photographer, Tom Collins, shot the original image outside the Sutton Castle Hotel, a villa overlooking Dublin Bay, where Morrison first stayed when he returned to Ireland on holiday. Several authors have speculated about the mysterious object referenced in the album title, Veedon Fleece, also mentioned in the lyrics of You Don't Pull No Punches, but You Don't Push the River. Scott Thomas suggests that the Veedon Fleece envisioned by Morrison symbolizes everything longed for in his earlier songs: spiritual enlightenment, wisdom, community, artistic vision, and love. Steve Turner concludes that “the Veedon Fleece seems like the Irish equivalent of the Holy Grail — a religious relic that would answer his questions if only he could find it on his journey along the west coast of Ireland.” For Van Morrison, the title has no single meaning. It could even be a person’s name. “I’ve got a whole imagery of characters in my head that I’m trying to fit into what I write. Veedon Fleece is one of them, and suddenly I just started singing it, in a stream-of-consciousness way.”

In 1978, Van Morrison recalled that he had recorded the songs just four weeks after writing them: “Veedon Fleece was a batch of songs I wrote and recorded four weeks after I composed them. When you make an album, you write a few songs; you might have four, and then suddenly you write two more, and suddenly you’ve got enough for a record.” According to drummer Dahaud Shaar, the sessions were conducted in a very informal way. Bassist David Hayes said: “Every night for a week he came in with two or three new tunes, and we just started playing with him, without too much direction, simple and direct.” Jim Rothermel remembered that during the California sessions, the takes were often the first ones, and many times the band hadn’t heard the songs before. The string and woodwind arrangements were handled by Jef Labes in a New York studio. The song “Come Here My Love” was written during the sessions, while “Country Fair” came directly from the Hard Nose the Highway period. “Bulbs” and “Cul de Sac” were edited in New York with musicians Morrison had never worked with before: guitarist John Tropea, bassist Joe Macho, and drummer Allen Schwarzberg. The approach is much more rock-oriented and upbeat, compared to the core of songs that define the album. Veedon Fleece marks the beginning of a period of increasing poetic confidence, with a Muse that, though operating through stream of consciousness, is firmly under the lyricist’s control. The songs recorded on the album were influenced by his 1973 trip to Ireland, which was his first visit since leaving Belfast in 1967.

Conclusion

Veedon Fleece is like a fine wine you keep in the cellar for a special occasion. It deserves to be savored slowly, in the right atmosphere. Under the right circumstances, this LP can stir emotions that one often forgets in the midst of this hectic yet flat modern existence. It’s a record to be played loud or, alternatively, listened to through headphones for a more intimate, secluded experience. It carries qualities reminiscent of certain strands of jazz, while at the same time enjoying the unmistakable immediacy of 1970s folk songwriting, to which it clearly belongs.

Dario Greco