Hymns to the Silence: Inside the Words and Music of Van Morrison

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Acknowledgments
Author's Note
Introduction
Chapter One Imagining America: Jazz, Blues, Country, and the Mythologies of the West
Chapter Two What Makes the Irish Heart Beat? The Irishness of Van Morrison
Chapter Three Get the Words on the Page: Van Morrison as Writer
Chapter Four Caught One More Time: Themes and Thematics
Chapter Five Listening to the Lion: Van Morrison as a Singer
Chapter Six On the Burning Ground: Liveness and the Recording Studio
Chapter Seven Down the Road: Van Morrison, Exile, and the Idea of Eternal Movement
Chapter Eight A Three Cornered Quartet: Van Morrison and the Art of Through Composition
Postscript Make It Real One More Time Again: Astral Weeks Live
Appendix One - The 2006 Shows
Appendix Two - Recording Studios
Bibliography
Discography.

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This is a groundbreaking study of every aspect of Van Morrison's artistic career - his influences, lyrical themes, vocal performances, his relationship with America, and more. In 1991 Van Morrison said, 'Music is spiritual, the music business isn't'. Peter Mills' groundbreaking book investigates the oppositions and harmonies within the work of Van Morrison, proceeding from this identified starting point. "Hymns to the Silence" is a detailed investigative study of Van Morrison's remarkable career. The book takes several intriguing angles. It looks at Morrison as a writer: specifically as an Irish writer, who has recorded musical settings of Yeats poems, collaborated with Seamus Heaney, Paul Durcan and Gerald Dawe, and who regularly drops quotes from James Joyce and Samuel Beckett into his live performances. It looks at him as a singer, at how he uses his voice as an interpretive instrument. And there are in-depth chapters on his use of mythology, on his stage performances, and on his continuing fascination with America and its musical forms. "Hymns to the Silence" is a passionate, eloquent study of the complex and influential art of one of the giants of popular music.

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It is one of my favourite Morrison songs, a perfect ball of love and desire, belief and rock'n'roll, and, perhaps more oddly, one of the most frequently performed songs at his shows. Peter Mills, in Hymns to the Silence, refers to it as ''this dark horse of a song'' - a way to describe the surprising appeal of a song that was never a hit, but has proved compelling to many

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