Van Morrison: Moondance (Rhino Reserve) [WARNER]

Why you'll love it

This Rhino Reserve edition presses Moondance on 180g vinyl in a gatefold jacket. Morrison produced it himself with Lewis Merenstein, and the title song is the one he plays most often in concert.

This edition

• Rhino Reserve series
• 180g vinyl
• Gatefold jacket
• Stereo mix

About the album

Most songwriters start with the words. For "Moondance," Van Morrison started with a melody, played on a soprano sax while he was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and wrote the lyrics to fit; he settled on "sophisticated" as the word for the result. It's a song about autumn, his favourite season, and it set the tone for his third album, a warmer, jazzier and more confident record than anything he'd made before.

He cut the title song at Mastertone Studio in New York in August 1969 with Lewis Merenstein, building it on John Klingberg's walking bass, a Jef Labes piano solo and a Jack Schroer alto sax solo that players still study. Around it sit "And It Stoned Me," "Crazy Love," the horn-driven "Caravan" and "Into the Mystic," songs that have kept late-night radio busy for half a century. Morrison wrote every song and produced the album with Merenstein.

Funnily enough, "Moondance" didn't come out as a single until 1977, seven and a half years later. Morrison wrote the tune first and found the words second. We write our shelf labels the same way, with noticeably less success.

Also at Kops: more Van Morrison on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Warner / Rhino (cat# RES1 1835), a reissue of the 1970 album.