Whenever Irish music journalists meet, talk inevitably turns to encounters with Van Morrison. This is an Irish musician who sits pretty alongside Joyce, Beckett and Yeats at the top table of Irish artistic achievement. While others were still struggling with “Sha La La”, Van was telling us about the esoteric order of Rosicrucianism. But then the Belfast poet, Tom Paulin, once presciently wrote “Morrison comes not out of traditional Protestantism, but evangelical Protestantism. With a slight paraphrase: Rave on, Van Morrison, rave on thy holy fool.

Source: The Irish Times September 22, 2020 09:34 UTC