Van Morrison talks Live Astral Weeks

We’re a little more than a month out from St. Patrick’s Day, so get ready for the deluge of Irish music likely to flow through here in the coming weeks. Let’s kick it off with a link to Paste’s brief interview with Van the Man (whose Irish Heartbeat will be featured among SITKOT’s upcoming list of top St. Paddy’s albums).

The interview focuses on Morrison’s classic Astral Weeks, which is getting a sort of live re-release with several of the the original players this February 24. Morrison had this to say about the remake:

“I wanted to do this material the way I had always heard it in my head—orchestrated with a full sound. It was time. These were written prior to ’68 over a period of five years. It took a lot of hard work. I wanted these songs to have a large string section for the original, but I could not afford it at the time.”

Read the full interview at PasteMagazine.com. Here he is doing “Sweet Thing”: