Van Morrison’s Nostalgia
In his sixty-year career, Van Morrison moved from telling us not to look back to singing oldies-but-goodies and songs laced with nostalgia. Here are some recent examples of oldies from 2023: “Red Sails In the Sunset”, and “Sea Of Heartbreak”.
It is 1965, and Van Morrison is the lead singer for Them. The band releases “Don’t Look Back”. In 1997, John Lee Hooker covers “Don’t Look Back”. Morrison produces the song and joins Hooker in a duet. The message is the same as that of 1965. Key lyrics from the song:
Don’t look back to the days of yesteryear,
You cannot live on in the past,
Don’t look back.
. . .
Stop dreaming and live on in the future.
Them with Van Morrison
By 1990, in the album Enchantment, Morrison has started looking back in “Memories”
Memories
Of summer days so long ago
Well, people in the places that we used to know
Oh, those memories
How they linger in the twilight
And in the wee small hours
Sometime just before the dawn
Oh, those memories
Oh, happy times, those memories
All I have now is memories
Memories of you
After telling us to not look back, Van Morrison in the 21st Century writes a number of songs that do look back. An example is “In Tiburon”, a song that makes me nostalgic for a time and place I never experienced–the clubs in southern California featuring West Coast Jazz and the beat poets and writers.
Across the bay in San Francisco
Where city lights and Ferlinghetti stay
North Beach alleyways and cafés
Kerouac and Ginsberg
Gregory Corso and Neal Cassady all held sway
Vince Guaraldi would play Cast Your Fate To The Wind in the distance
Lenny Bruce got busted at the Hungry Eye
The No Name Bar down in Sausalito
Across the street where Chet Baker used to play
My heart was beating on the hillside
Near Belvedere and Tiburon
I need to take you back, back down to 'Frisco
Now we need each other, need each other to lean on
Vince Guaraldi would play Cast Your Fate To The, Fate To The Wind
And we'd listen
In the evening across the way
Chet Baker would play down at the Trident
With his horn he blew everybody away
In 2002, Morrison released the album Down the Road with the song “The Beauty Of Days Gone By.”
The beauty of the days gone by
It brings a longing to my soul
To contemplate my own true self
And keep me young as I grow old
'Cause beauty of the days gone by
The music that we used to play
So, lift your glass and raise it high
To the beauty of the days gone by
“Memory Lane” is on the same album.
Now I'm back here again with more questions than answers
And I'm standing in the pouring rain
There's something moving, moving in the shadows
And it's getting dark now, up on Memory Lane
I stop a while and ask some strangers
Is this the place that was once called Memory Lane?
I don't know where I am, don't know what I'm after
I'm stuck here back up on Memory Lane
Morrison’s latest release from 2025 is the album Remembering Now. It is suffused with nostalgia, as in the song that is also titled “Remembering Now.”
Blooming days of wonder
Golden days of youth
Nothing but the truth
This is where it started
This is where I'm at
This is who I am
And, “Stomping Ground”
Take me down to Standtown
Take me back to Orangefield
Take me right back to Bloomfield Village
Back to my old stomping ground
Take me down to the corner of Woodcot Avenue
Where the corner boys used to hang
Back to my old stomping ground