Van Morrison Goes Astral on The Tonight Show

As Morrison prefaces the Astral Weeks set-closer, “Madame George,” by likening the song to a series of opium-induced hallucinations — “à la Fellini, if you know what I mean” — a couple seated behind me tell me they’ve driven all the way from Tulsa for the three Orpheum concerts and will not go home disappointed. This is the sort of devotion Morrison inspires in his fans and, more often than not, richly rewards. We may come to see him bare his scars, and his soul, but we also come in search of the mysterious healing that he has so often sung about, and which he seems able to find only inside his own music. We come baring our own scars and tattered souls, hopeful that before the curtain falls and the lights go up, that healing will — for him and for us — have begun.