Here Comes Your Van

When I was a little boy, the air over Belfast Lough was busy with Short Skyvans, Blackburn Buccaneers and the Avro Vulcans with their bold, delta wings. They were being tested, fixed and finessed. My dad worked at Sydenham Air Yard and I felt that he was personally responsible for their worthiness in those skies.

Many of the adults I knew were working on planes, hired by the shipyard or in one of the engineering works nearby. A lucky few were in the drawing offices or some other tidy location but mostly it was about the dirt and the din and the dynamic of the east. I still remember my grandfather's shins, mottled with bruises, and the metal shreds in my dad's hands.

The noise and the scale of that era has largely gone. But on this September occasion, you trust that Van Morrison has not forgotten. It's imprinted in his music. You hear it in the lyric of 'Into The Mystic' when he sings about the foghorn wailing him home as the saxophone starts to swell. And therefore we've all come to Aircraft Park, part of the inaugural East Belfast Arts Festival, blessed by sunshine and hoping that Van Morrison might also feel a sense of occasion and place.

We'll not assume too much from Van, but indeed, the artist seems to be sharing some of that sentiment with us this evening. He opens with 'Brown Eyed Girl' and soon there's the autumnal vista of 'Orangefield'. The band is throbbing skillfully, the singer's daughter Shana is steering the harmonies and there's a very delighted audience beneath the canvas. We hear the shimmering invitation of 'Moondance' and a version of 'Jackie Wilson Said' that officially perks the night.

He sings the old blues stomper 'Help Me' with apparent delight and during 'Star Of The County Down', his arms are pointing out the map references like a giddy traffic cop. All of this is pure value but the transcendence happens during 'On Hyndford Street', a homage to the backstreets off the Beersbridge Road. On the recorded version it's all about the reverie and the powerful Sunday silence. But tonight he's riffing and reminiscing like Jack Kerouac or Allen Ginsberg. Those beat guys were writing poetry with a jazz attitude, loving the sax of Charlie Parker as much as they admired a word-slinger like Walt Whitman. And so Van channels his memory out of those same viaducts, taking us way, way back and simultaneously so high. Moment of the year, I'd say.

'Gloria' is lashed out with such authority and emphasis that you know an encore won't be optional. A major musical figure, back in his own parish, singing it home and exciting your soul. That's where it comes from, man.