Happy Birthday Van Morrison! Report from The Man's 70th birthday bash

Van Morrison doesn’t play ‘Cyprus Avenue’.
Even though he’s playing Cyprus Avenue.
Which I take to be a gag. Because that’s the kind of mood he seems to be in.
At one point here - at the first of two sold-out performances, bringing this year’s EastSide Arts Festival to a close - he breaks off from covering a ripe old blues tune about uxoricide (Mose Allison's 'Parchman Farm') to tell us, straight-faced, that “the comedy section is over.”
Then there’s the time he sings “Whatever Happened to P.J. Proby?” and P.J Proby, standing three feet away, behind his own mic, answers with a wave of his arms.
And how about the moment - just before performing ‘Enlightenment’ - when he tells an actual joke?
“Heard the one about the Dalai Lama in New York?” Van drawls. “He walked up to a hot dog stand and said ‘make me one with everything’.
The drummer boom-tisks.
And, well, I laugh.
The days leading up to these gigs had seen them accumulate a significance that, apparently, had even surprised Morrison himself.
Predictably, he seems to have ignored the static and done what he wanted: throw a birthday party to himself. On his 70th. In a place that he knows very well.
Hence the arrival of Proby, and of Chris Farlowe on ‘Born To Sing’ (‘Whenever God Shines His Light’ gets a dust-off, but there’s no sign of Cliff Richard). And hence, too, versions of ‘Moondance’, ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ and ‘Brown Eyed Girl’. The latter maybe earning a grin by referencing ‘the Beechie’, a few hundred yards from where it flows.
It’s all very… festive.
At least as festive as it can be, at an afternoon gig with no booze and a guest-list filled with local politicians.
Local politicians who hear Van lead the audience (during a rapturous ‘In The Garden’) through a sing-along of “No guru, no method, no teacher”, and a gorgeous version of ‘And The Healing Has Begun’. Local politicians who may (or may not) remember when ‘Days Like This’ was used on an NIO ad campaign, aimed at consolidating the original ceasefires. Back when it sounded soft and hopeful and not half as vulnerable as it does today.
Van Morrison doesn’t play ‘Cyprus Avenue’.
But he plays ‘Ballerina’; looking to the sky as the chorus hits, and the story spins away from its original orbit. “New York is a long way from Cyprus Avenue,” he says. Although there have been times in his life when Hyndford Street - a quarter mile down the road - felt further. But here he is now, twice on one day, playing Cyprus Avenue.
Lost? Nah.
If this warm, witty, sly and soulful show is anything to go by, he couldn’t feel more at home.

Colin Carberry