"The idea [of A Period of Transition album] was to get a break from everything for a while because I've been doing it for so long. I started doing it when I was 12."
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Quote collection
Van Morrison quotes (page 13 of 13)
259 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Enlightenment says the world is nothing Nothing but a dream, everything's an illusion And nothing is real."
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"If you get into introspective blues or something where you're stretching out a bit, large audiences don't respond to this, so you have to give them what they want, basically."
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"I don't feel comfortable doing interviews. My profession is music, and writing songs. That's what I do. I like to do it, but I hate to talk about it."
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"I'd found that what I wrote and put out on records somehow was not fitting into how I perform on stage."
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"There was a conflict - the actual putting together of the reality of the situation didn't seem to gel. I'd been doing kind of a slow ballad type of thing on records, but when it came to performing, I felt I was limiting myself."
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"What excited me when I first came into it was the performing aspect and doing blues-oriented material, rock/blues oriented stuff, basic stuff, basic what they call rock 'n' roll."
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"The thing about albums is just coming up with new material. I just got tired of that syndrome of putting out an album and then some reviewer claims that this song or that song has something to do with x y or z."
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"I don't have any regrets about the album [Veedon Fleece]. But it's the same old story - an album is basically 35 or 40 minutes of what you do. It's 'part' of what you do."
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"Performing was the natural thing originally and the rest of it [records and so on] is just like offshoots of that. That's how I see it anyway."
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"It's real difficult to pin down directions. I just want to do collaboration-tape stuff."
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"The theory is that you don't play a song the same way twice because it's jazz. That's where I'm coming from."
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"We're [with Robbie Robertson ] jazz musicians. The context may be rock 'n' roll but it's still jazz. It's jazz and that means improvization...you play a tune the way it feels and you play it differently every time. It can never be the same."
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"Definitely Muddy Waters has been a prime influence for anybody who's ever done anything rock 'n' roll."
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"I just can't stand jazz/rock. I think it's the worst thing that's come down the river yet."
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"[Rock 'n' roll] is still a primitive form and there's no way you can get away from that. It's one of the primitive art forms and that's why it's good and that's why it's lasted...you know, it hasn't become sophisticated and it's not in the opera house."
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"The job of the jazz people is to take it as far as it will go and that's what they're doing. But in the process of taking it out there, there has to be some times when they're not getting it right. It all depends on what you dig. I personally don't think the fusion of jazz with the heaviness of rock is working."
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"Singing is my profession - there is no plan B."
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"If you're putting somebody down, you're doing it because you're just seeing a part of yourself that you don't like. That's all that is."
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