In l968, Butler lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just down the block from Van Morrison. Whenever they passed one another on the street, Butler would nod. Morrison would just stare. Or glare. "Unpleasant," Butler concluded.

Butler has seen Van Morrison in concert many times over the past 35 years. He has never had to reconsider his opinion. This Van Morrison is one chilly, angry guy.

But we shouldn't judge artists on personality, only their work. And so the important thing to know is that, in l968, Morrison went to New York, and, in just two or three days and for a total cost of about $22,000, recorded “Astral Weeks.”

For a record --- that’s what we called musical releases back then, so let’s preserve the language here --- that’s #19 on the Rolling Stone list of all-time greats, “Astral Weeks” seems almost unknown. On classic rock and alternative radio alike, Butler never hears it. Over the years, Butler has bought it for dozens of people, many of them Morrison fans, and not one seemed to know of its existence.

Clearly, “Astral Weeks” is no “Moondance.”

What it is is much harder to say. A song cycle that’s jazzy, tormented, light years from the psychedelia that dominated rock music in 1968. A visionary meditation that’s both timeless and prescient (its “Madame George” is the first song Butler ever heard about a drag queen). A mystical space shot hurled aloft on butterfly wings (the backup musicians are an acoustic guitarist, acoustic bassist, a subliminal drummer, a flutist and, from time to time, a string quartet) and anchored by a voice that starts in Ireland, transits to Mississippi and ultimately resides in that place called Genius.

And the writing! This is how the record starts:

If I ventured in the slipstream
Between the viaducts of your dreams
Where the mobile steel rims crack
And the ditch and the back roads stop
Could you find me
Would you kiss my eyes
And lay me down
In silence easy
To be born again

The great rock critic Lester Bangs wrote reams in praise of “Astral Weeks,” but this passage pretty much sums it up for Butler:

Van Morrison was twenty-two --- or twenty-three --- years old when he made this record; there are lifetimes behind it. What “Astral Weeks” deals in are not facts but truths. “Astral Weeks”, insofar as it can be pinned down, is a record about people stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralyzed by the enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend.

Yeah, you can play it as background music; it’s that pretty. But if you listen to it --- really listen to it --- you will find yourself being taken deep inside, to the part of you that, Butler suspects, you care about most: the part where the only thing that matters is what happens between you and one other person. Though it may be quiet in there, it’s far from peaceful; this is where we conduct the epic battle between self and surrender, between risk and loneliness.

It’s a very personal piece of music; this is just how it seems to Butler. Who is now on his fifth or sixth copy. And who, 35 years after the fact, still believes that if you give “Astral Weeks” a chance, you will play it as long as you live.

--- by Jesse Kornbluth, for HeadButler.com

To buy “Astral Weeks” from Amazon.com, click here.

Copyright 2004 by Head Butler Inc.