"It's All Been Splendid Fun!" The Van Morrison Interview (Part One)

This interview - a FMF© exclusive - with the musician known as "Van Morrison" will, it is fervently hoped, dispel at last and once and for all the myths surrounding this enigmatic and larger-than-life character, revealing him for the man he really is; a sensitive and deeply committed artist who has, over the years, created a persona that threatened to overwhelm him.

A little background: "Mr Morrison" (we'll get to that) was once a neighbor of mine at the Bide-A-Wee Residential Motel in Petworth, Washington, D.C., located between the Armed Forces Retirement Home and Rock Creek Cemetery on Blockbuster Avenue, accessed by a private alley next to the Polish Polecat Poledance Club. The Bide-A-Wee was a haunt of artists, and much patronized by those shunning publicity, or on the lam. I'd recognized the great Irishman in the lobby, but respected his privacy as much as he respected mine. One morning, he knocked at my door wearing his trademark damask smoking jacket, fez, and Persian slippers, and enquired - in a surprisingly aristocratic English voice - if I could "possibly spare a drop of milk for one's morning cuppa." I was of course delighted to oblige, and he kindly invited me to share it with him. His room was opulently furnished with fine antiques and costly wall hangings. A tall bookshelf displayed leather-bound volumes, and a vase of fresh-cut flowers stood on an ormolu table. Over a "cuppa" served from an exquisite Dresden bone china set, we fell to chatting about this and that, an informal and very private conversation that I present here, in confidence, for the first time.

FMF: You're not registered as Van Morrison, then?
VM: Good lord no! Nobody uses their real name here, eh, Mr. Foam?
FMF: You're obviously not Irish!
VM: Ah! I suppose it had to come out sooner or later. One was born Cholmondeley [pronounced Chumley - Ed.] St. John [pronounced Sinjun - Ed.] Featherstonehaugh [pronounced Fanshaw - Ed.], to the Great Titterington Featherstonehaughs. Papa was Lord Featherstonehaugh of Great Titterington, where Titterington Hall has been in the family since the Crusades. So naturally one had a privileged upbringing.
FMF: But you moved to Belfast?
VM [shudders]: Heavens no! That came later. Dreadful place. Full of unemployed drunkards bombing each others' legs off.
FMF: So your earliest musical influences weren't American Rn'B singles brought into the docks by merchant seamen?
VM: I should rather think not! Mama was celebrated for her salons, chamber music soirées, at which one was a keen attendee! I think one became quite addicted to the celeste at an early age! More tea?
FMF: Thank you. When did you first sing in front of an audience?

"Madame George"

VM: Ooh! That would be the Footlights Revue whilst one was up at Cambridge. One had adopted the highly theatrical persona of Madame George - spent an entire term in drag! Happy days! And the act proved riotously popular!
FMF: But still no touch o' the Blarney?
VM: Well, when one was sent down from Cambridge one decided to work up a new act. My little circle of dissolute gentry found Irishmen most amusing at that time, their delightful accents, red noses, funny walks, and so Madame George, with a lot of hard work and cathartic rehearsal, became George Ivan Morrison, the absolute antithesis of everything I was in real life. Curmudgeonly, abusive, aggressive, drunk ... and disgustingly working class. I had in mind the quintessential Irish poet, inarticulate yet somehow in touch with his muse. We - my little band of classically trained musicians and I - toured the Working Mens' Clubs of Belfast as an Rn'B band, keeping our true identities secret. My! They were rough brutes! But strangely exciting ... one could sense the homoerotic sublimated in their virile displays of drunken violence - quite intoxicating!
FMF: This would be Decca recording artists Them.
VM: Them being showbiz argot for, well ... as in [arch look] "he's one of them." One is constantly amazed the public didn't catch on!
FMF: And then the move to Boston, as a solo artist.
VM: Yes! And that was when this little Irishman, my creation, became ... Frankenstein.

(Part Two to follow after a suitable pause. Maybe.)