Down the Road (Van Morrison album)

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Down the Road
VanMorrison DowntheRoad album cover .jpg
Studio album by
Van Morrison
Released14 May 2002
RecordedAutumn 2000 – September 2001
StudioWool Hall, Bath, Somerset, England
Genre Celtic rock, blues, R&B
Length67:09
Label Universal
Producer Van Morrison
Van Morrison chronology
You Win Again
(2000)		Down the Road
(2002)		 What's Wrong with This Picture?
(2003)
Singles from Down the Road
  1. "Hey Mr. DJ" b/w "Someone Like You"/"Bright Side of the Road"
    Released: May 2002
  2. "Meet Me In The Indian Summer" b/w "In the Afternoon/Ancient Highway/Raincheck/Meditation/Joe Turner Sings/Don't You Make Me High"/"In the Midnight"
    Released: August 2002

Down the Road is the twenty-ninth studio album by Northern Irish singer Van Morrison (see 2002 in music). The album has a nostalgic tone, lyrically and musically, and its arrangements mix R&B and blues with country and folk, and, with a few exceptions, like "Georgia on My Mind," the music is most often rooted in 1950s and early 1960s popular music.

Contents

The album charted at #6 in the UK and #26 in the US, while consistently charting in the top 20 across Europe.

Recording

The album was originally recorded with singer and pianist Linda Gail Lewis within a month of the release of You Win Again . It was originally entitled Choppin' Wood, [1] but Morrison re-recorded it, removing Linda Gail Lewis' contributions to the songs and deleting other songs from the album. Morrison recorded another nine songs to the album in late 2001 and retitled it Down the Road. [2] The songs that were included were increased from an original ten to fifteen tracks and a lengthy sixty-seven minutes. One of the original songs, "Just Like Greta", that was not included on the album would appear on Morrison's 2005 release Magic Time , without a rerecording. It was finished by year's end in 2001 and released after numerous delays. [1]

Composition

The songs on the album lean towards the blues the singer listened to in his youth. The title track was originally entitled "Down the Road I Go" and was first recorded in 1981 with guitarist Mark Knopfler. [3] The song was re-recorded with Linda Gail Lewis in November 2000 with additional lyrics. "Choppin' Wood" is a tribute to the singer's father, George Morrison, who had died suddenly from a heart attack more than a decade earlier. [4] In "The Beauty of the Days Gone By", Morrison attempts to come to terms with approaching old age. In the song "Whatever Happened to P.J. Proby?" Morrison refers to musicians P. J. Proby and Scott Walker and makes political references to Screaming Lord Sutch, the former leader of the British Monster Raving Loony Party, who died in 1999. In the second verse of the song Morrison claims that he

Don't have no frame of reference no more
Not even Screaming Lord Sutch
Without him now there's no Raving Loony Party
Nowadays I guess there's not much

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [5]
The Music BoxStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [6]
Pop Matters (favorable) [7]
Rolling Stone Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [8]
ShakingThrough.net(4.2/5) [9]

Down the Road was commercially and critically one of Morrison's most successful albums. It charted higher in the U.S. than any of Morrison's albums since 1972's Saint Dominic's Preview .

John Metzger of The Music Box wrote, "every few years, Morrison manages to tap into some magical space that sums up both his career and his influence in one fell swoop ... not that they're all that groundbreaking, they're just penultimate pieces of perfection. Such is the case with his latest near-masterpiece Down the Road, which finds him fondly recalling the folk, blues, and jazz to which he grew up listening." [10]

Pop Matters critic John Kriecbergs stated in his review: "Bolstered by yet another outstanding collection of backing musicians, ... Down the Road rivals some of Morrison's strongest work." [11]

Cover

The album cover depicts the front of a record store with a window full of LP covers by blues, R&B, jazz, and old rock & roll artists, a deliberate blueprint of the album's influences. The shop pictured was a real record store, Nashers Music Store in Walcot Street, Bath, UK, specially dressed for the photo-shoot.

Track listing

All songs by Van Morrison except as indicated.

  1. "Down the Road" – 4:15
  2. "Meet Me in the Indian Summer" – 3:57
  3. "Steal My Heart Away" – 4:20
  4. "Hey Mr. DJ" – 3:45
  5. "Talk Is Cheap" – 4:19
  6. "Choppin' Wood" – 3:26
  7. "What Makes the Irish Heart Beat" – 3:47
  8. "All Work and No Play" – 4:51
  9. "Whatever Happened to P.J. Proby?" – 3:13
  10. "The Beauty of the Days Gone By" – 5:45
  11. "Georgia on My Mind" (Hoagy Carmichael, Stuart Gorrell) – 5:35
  12. "Only a Dream" – 4:57
  13. "Man Has to Struggle" – 5:07
  14. "Evening Shadows" (Acker Bilk, Morrison) – 4:01
  15. "Fast Train" – 5:01

Personnel

Musicians

Production

Charts

Album

UK Album Chart (United Kingdom)

YearChartPosition
2002UK Album Chart6

Billboard (North America)

YearChartPosition
2002The Billboard 20025
Chart (2002)Peak
position
Norway5
Sweden10
Italy20
Australia7
Netherlands13

[12]

Certifications

RegionCertification Certified units/sales
Australia (ARIA) [13] Gold35,000^
United Kingdom (BPI) [14] Silver60,000^

^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.

Notes

  1. 1 2 Heylin. Can You Feel the Silence? p493
  2. ↑ Heylin. Can You Feel the Silence? p529
  3. ↑ Heylin. Can You Feel the Silence? p523
  4. ↑ Rogan. No Surrender. p21
  5. ↑ Ruhlmann, William. "allmusic review". allmusic.com. Retrieved 19 May 2010.
  6. ↑ Metzger, John. "The Music Box review". musicbox-online.com. Retrieved 19 May 2010.
  7. ↑ Kreicbergs, John (12 June 2002). "Pop Matters review". popmatters.com. Retrieved 19 May 2010.
  8. ↑ Fricke, David (9 May 2002). "Rolling Stone review". rollingstone.com. Archived from the original on 23 November 2007. Retrieved 19 May 2010.
  9. ↑ Station, Laurence (27 May 2002). "ShakingThrough.net review". shakingthrough.net. Retrieved 19 May 2010.
  10. ↑ "Van Morrison:Down the Road". musicbox-online.com. Retrieved 8 August 2008.
  11. ↑ "Van Morrison:Down the Road". popmatters.com. Retrieved 9 August 2008.
  12. ↑ Australian charts
  13. ↑ "ARIA Charts – Accreditations – 2002 Albums" (PDF). Australian Recording Industry Association . Retrieved 3 June 2019.
  14. ↑ "British album certifications – Van Morrison – Down the Road". British Phonographic Industry . Retrieved 3 June 2019.

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References

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