Van Morrison – No Guru. No Method. No Teacher
(Mercury Records 1986 MERH94)
Matrix No’s: A2/B2 – UK Pressing
Sleeve in Nr MINT/Excellent+ condition
– a little light rubbing near the top – back cover has some light ringwear
Inner Sleeve in Nr MINT condition
Vinyl in Nr MINT condition
(there are some light surface marks visible on the vinyl when held up to the light but they don’t affect the sound quality)
Sir George Ivan Morrison OBE (born 31 August 1945) is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter, instrumentalist and record producer. His professional career began as a teenager in the late 1950s playing a variety of instruments including guitar, harmonica, keyboards and saxophone for various Irish showbands, covering the popular hits of that time. Van Morrison rose to prominence in the mid-1960s as the lead singer of the Northern Irish R&B band Them, with whom he recorded the garage band classic “Gloria”. His solo career began under the pop-hit oriented guidance of Bert Berns with the release of the hit single “Brown Eyed Girl” in 1967. After Berns’s death, Warner Bros. Records bought out his contract and allowed him three sessions to record Astral Weeks (1968). Though this album gradually garnered high praise, it was initially a poor seller.
Moondance (1970) established Morrison as a major artist, and he built on his reputation throughout the 1970s with a series of acclaimed albums and live performances. He continues to record and tour, producing albums and live performances that sell well and are generally warmly received, sometimes collaborating with other artists, such as Georgie Fame and The Chieftains.
Much of Morrison’s music is structured around the conventions of soul music and R&B, such as the popular singles “Brown Eyed Girl”, “Jackie Wilson Said (I’m in Heaven When You Smile)”, “Domino” and “Wild Night”. An equal part of his catalogue consists of lengthy, loosely connected, spiritually inspired musical journeys that show the influence of Celtic tradition, jazz and stream-of-consciousness narrative, such as the album Astral Weeks and the lesser known Veedon Fleece and Common One. The two strains together are sometimes referred to as “Celtic soul”. He has received two Grammy Awards, the 1994 Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, the 2017 Americana Music Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting and has been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2016, he was knighted for services to the music industry and to tourism in Northern Ireland. He is known by the nickname Van the Man to his fans.
No Guru, No Method, No Teacher is the sixteenth studio album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison, released in 1986 on Mercury.
Upon release in 1986, it was well received by critics and charted at number twenty-seven in the UK and number seventy on the Billboard 200.
The album was recorded at Studio D and Record Plant Studios in Sausalito, California in 1985 with Jim Stern as engineer. The basic takes were recorded at Studio D with Chris Michie, Jef Labes, Babatunde Lea (credited as “Baba Trunde”), David Hayes and Morrison. Overdubs, guitar solos, strings and back-up vocals were added at the Record Plant with the masters taken to Townhouse Studios in London. Overdubs with Ritchie Buckley on saxophone, Martin Drover on trumpet and oboe played by Kate St. John were added in the London studio.
The song “In the Garden” was a favorite fan concert performance for years. Morrison told Mick Brown in 1986 on the Interview Album: “I take you through a definite meditation process which is a form of transcendental meditation. It’s not about TM, forget about that. You should have some degree of tranquillity by the time you get to the end. It only takes about ten minutes to do this process.” There are references back to Astral Weeks with gardens wet with rain and a childlike vision. The words are poetic as in the line “you are a creature all in rapture/You had the key to your soul”.
“Got to Go Back” features Kate St. John‘s oboe and reminisces of school days back in the singer’s childhood in Belfast. “Oh, The Warm Feeling” is also a song of feeling the safety of family and love in childhood.
“Foreign Window” is a song concerned with dealing with some sort of self-imposed therapy and having to go on no matter what. Brian Hinton remarks, “There is a grace and majesty here which I have experienced from little else in rock music.”
“Here Comes the Knight” is a pun on the Them song “Here Comes the Night” and quotes from the epitaph on the gravestone of one of Morrison’s favorite poets, W. B. Yeats. The Yeats Estate had denied Morrison’s request to transform a Yeats poem to music, but the gravestone was considered public property: “Here come horsemen through the pass / They say cast a cold eye on life, on death”.
“Ivory Tower” echoes Yeats once more.
The song “Thanks For the Information” is a comment on the cliches of the business world.
Track listing
All songs written by Van Morrison
Side one
- “Got to Go Back” – 5:00
- “Oh the Warm Feeling” – 3:16
- “Foreign Window” – 5:20
- “A Town Called Paradise” – 6:13
- “In the Garden” – 5:46
Side two
- “Tir Na Nog” – 7:14
- “Here Comes the Knight” – 3:41
- “Thanks for the Information” – 7:16
- “One Irish Rover” – 3:30
- “Ivory Tower” – 3:34
Personnel
Musicians
- Van Morrison – guitar, vocals
- Teressa “Terry” Adams – cello, string section leader on “Tir Na Nog”
- June Boyce – backing vocals
- Richie Buckley – tenor and soprano saxophones
- Nadine Cox – harp on “Tir Na Nog”
- Martin Drover – trumpet
- Joseph Edelberg – violin
- David Hayes – bass
- Rosie Hunter – backing vocalist
- Jef Labes – piano, synthesizer, string arrangement on “Tir Na Nog”
- Chris Michie – guitar
- John Platania – guitar
- Rebecca Sebring – viola
- Kate St. John – cor anglais, oboe
- John Tenney – violin
- Bianca Thornton – backing vocals
- Jeanie Tracy – backing vocals
- Babatunde Lea (credited as Baba Trunde) – drums
Production
- Van Morrison – Producer
- Mick Glossop – Engineer
- Jim Stern – Engineer
- Assistant Engineer – Lenette Viegas
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