Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl is the fifth live album recorded by Northern Irish singer/songwriter Van Morrison, and released in the UK on 9 February 2009, and in the United States on 24 February 2009. It was recorded during two live concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California in 2008 and released on Morrison's new Listen to the Lion label and distributed by EMI.
The live performances of the eight original songs that feature on the album were recorded on 7 and 8 November 2008. Coincidentally, they took place forty years after the classic Astral Weeks was first released by Warner Bros. Records in 1968. One of the original musicians, guitarist Jay Berliner, joined with the many other musicians on the revisited version of Astral Weeks.
The New York Daily News in the 4 January edition named Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl as one of the "Five Most Anticipated Pop Music Events for 2009".
A DVD of performances from the concerts, Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl: The Concert Film is an Amazon.com Exclusive and was released on 19 May 2009.
The album won Live Album of the Year at the MPG awards held on 11 February 2010.
Production
With only one rehearsal prior to the concerts and with Morrison, as producer, insisting on no post-production engineering, the live album sounds essentially as it was heard by the concert goers. Morrison has said about the concerts and live sound of the recording: "The Hollywood Bowl concerts gave me a welcome opportunity to perform these songs the way I originally intended them to be." He was further quoted: "There are certain dynamics you can get in live recordings that you cannot get in a studio recording...There was a distinct alchemy happening on that stage in Hollywood. I felt it." "The new record was recorded live, what [you hear] is what was played in its raw form. There was no mixing, no tweaking, no post-production at all, and I like that raw and edgy sound in real time."
Astral Weeks Live in New York City
Van Morrison began a week of concerts and television appearances in New York City on 27 and 28 February 2009 to promote the new album. He performed the Astral Weeks songs along with some of his classics in two concerts at the WaMu Theater in Madison Square Garden and again on 3 and 4 March at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. During his stay in NYC, he made a guest appearance performing "Sweet Thing" on Jimmy Fallon's debut as host of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on 2 March 2009. Morrison made another rare TV appearance the next morning on Live with Regis and Kelly on 3 March 2009.
Reviews and critical analysis
Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl received rave reviews by prominent critics prior to release. Andy Whitman in Paste called the live album both "nearly miraculous" and a "tour-de-force", also further assessing it: "something delightfully unexpected and daring in a late career that has been increasingly characterized by playing it safe and keeping it simple." Another early review by Mike Ragogna of The Huffington Post notes: "Through it all, Morrison is where he wants to be, onstage and in Heaven, singing, playing sax, guitar, and harmonica. The band's camaraderie is communicated musically, especially between Morrison and Astrals original guitarist, Jay Berliner."
The word transcendent has often been used in the reviews of the concerts and live album of the Astral Weeks songs. A Blogcritics reviewer sums up his review with: "Van Morrison found the perfect outlet for his work. Not simply a rerelease, performing the songs again gives them even more soul than they did in 1968. There's a freedom to his voice that fills you up - like going to church - you feel deep inside. It's simple. It's transcendent." Daily News critic Jim Farber concluded: "But its most transcendent moments showcase the pleasure of letting a singer take his voice to the limit." The Observer critic's review commented that: "Transcendence is an overused word, but when Morrison hits his stride he seems to float onto another plane."
Van Morrison on performing Astral Weeks live
Speaking of the 1968 Astral Weeks recording, Morrison told David Wild with Rolling Stone: "It received no promotion, from Warner Bros.—that's why I never got to play the songs live. I had always wanted to play the record live and fully orchestrated—that is what this is all about. I always like live recording and I like listening to live records too. I'm not too fond of being in a studio—it's too contrived and too confining. I like the freedom of live, in-the-moment sound."