Music |
Pay the Devil
Van Morrison
By
Published: Jan 01, 2006
Category:
Country
Pay the Devil
Van Morrison
Why don’t Jews drink? (I’m Jewish; I can tell this joke.)
Answer: Because it dulls the pain.
Van Morrison’s first-ever country CD makes me think of this joke, because it makes me think about drinking. By which I most definitely do not mean a frothy Cosmopolitan or a salty Margarita in some chi-chi bar. I mean whiskey. In a dive. Where you go night after night. Because you need to Get Over Her.
There’s a jukebox at that bar. And it’s stocked with country classics. By which I most definitely do not mean Tim McGraw, Faith Hill or Garth Brooks. I’m talking real country. Real classics. From deep in the Nashville vault.
Drinking hard stuff to country music has a great appeal to this bookish Jew. In my fantasy, it’s how real men process real feelings — the music intensifies the alcohol, and, in a magical alchemical process, the alcohol burns out the misery. And then, healed, you climb off (okay: stagger off) the barstool and go looking for love again.
As I understand it, Van Morrison hasn’t had a drink in decades. But he’s got a great imagination and an even better memory, for the 15 songs he’s recorded on ‘Pay the Devil’ are pretty much what a lovesick guy would punch up on the jukebox as he settles in for a long night of bourbon and the blues. Most of the songs date from the 1940s and 1950s, three are Morrison originals that sound old, and one, from the 1970s, is by the brilliant Nashville singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell.
Morrison doesn’t have any new ideas about these songs. He sings them straight, the way God intended, backed by more than a dozen musicians. Which is the punch line of another joke: The musicians are as Irish as Morrison. And Morrison, for all his love of country, reached 60 without ever stepping foot in Nashville.
Why this CD now? One might as well ask Morrison why he moved from English blues rock to Astral Weeks in 1968. "I just like the stuff I like," he says, by way of avoiding the question. "I’ve noticed in recent years that it [the music business] seems to be reverting back to a syndrome where people are required to promote their old hits rather than new stuff. What I do is just not about that."
Whatever the reason, this is a very welcome CD, coming, as it does, after a series of ho-hum R&B misfires from Morrison. They surely thought it was Something Special in Nashville, where Morrison appeared recently to promote this CD. The venue was the Ryman Auditorium, the original home of the Grand Old Opry. Tickets for Morrison’s first-ever Nashville show went on sale for $125. They sold out immediately. By the night of the concert, they were going for $1,000.
By that standard, the CD is a bargain. Add some heartbreak — there’s plenty around — and some amber drinks, and you’ve got the makings of a fine wallow. Or, straight up, without any alcohol or tears, you’ve got a quick, brilliant tour of the greatest music ever to come out of Tennessee.
To buy ‘Pay the Devil’ from Amazon.com, click here.
