Quote Of The Day By Van Morrison: 'It Can Destroy You If ...'

Van Morrison has been one of the most consistent and prolific figures in the world of popular music since first emerging as the frontman of the garage rock group Them in the mid-1960s (inspiring proto-punks such as Patti Smith in the process). Though he established himself with an early signature song in the form of the international hit "Brown Eyed Girl" in 1967, his first widespread critical acclaim came in 1969, after he released the seminal album "Astral Weeks" in late '68. Blending the mysticism of his native Ireland with blues, jazz, and more, he pioneered his own expansive style, which came to be known as Celtic Soul.

Since then, he has never let up working, releasing dozens of studio albums and gaining a reputation as one of the world's great live vocalists and band leaders. But he has also long been notorious for his ambivalent attitude toward the fame he has accrued down the years, sometimes refusing to engage with his audience and appearing to be bad-tempered on stage and in public appearances. Whether that affects one's appreciation of an artist is, of course, down to the listener, but Morrison's interest in his own fame and audience perception is the subject of our Quote of the Day.

"When you're famous, people constantly project on you. This happens to everyone, but with famous people it's amplified. It can destroy you if you don't understand what's happening."

Today's Quote of the Day comes from a 2025 interview Van Morrison gave to the British magazine On: Yorkshire, on the release of his 47th studio album "Remembering Now." The album had been generally well received by both fans and critics, representing his first full-length release of self-written material in several years.

Interviewer Dylan Jones questions Morrison regarding his spiritual beliefs. Morrison's discography has been noted for his willingness to explore his own spirituality, and many critics have characterized him as a visionary and mystic searching for answers to what lies behind the material world. The quote in question comes during a discussion as to whether he has to wait for divine inspiration, or if he can summon it — and on first pass, seems abrupt. But in fact, Morrison's concern with how his fans relate to him does factor into his creative processes, as he explains.

Van Morrison characterizes his spirituality as creative energy that must be properly harnessed. "You have to deal with the energy," he explains. "Back in the '70s, I didn't know how to deal with it — it was burning me out ... I was given this book by Carl Jung, 'Man and His Symbols.' I started to discover what it was about — projection."

An influential psychoanalyst, Jung posited that human beings unconsciously project their own interior world onto those around them, essentially seeing others through the lens of their own perception without realizing it. This may have affected Morrison negatively during his 1970s hey day, in that he was trying to reconcile the art he wished to create with the vision his fans had of him — first as a rocker, then as a poet, then as a spiritual artist.

But there is a more contemporary context that explains Morrison's concern with fame and projection around this time. In 2025, Morrison was coming out of a contentious period during which he alienated a portion of his fanbase after releasing music criticizing governments' responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. "I was getting quite a lot of negative feedback during this period," Morrison admits, and later in the same interview, he blames the media for feeding into the projection of him that dominated the early 2020s. "The media constantly projects negativity — they think that sells. So they create what I call a 'third party' ... That took a long time to work through and come out the other end, learning to handle it." And his palpable joy on songs such as "Back to Writing Love Songs" suggests that he has.

• "It's about staying connected to that original energy, that original impulse that got you into it in the first place. And if you can do that, then you're always drawing from the same well. It's the same creative source."

• "People who say that other people are difficult are usually difficult. That's what I find."

• "I think when you get past your second album it all becomes something of a routine. So you have to struggle against that, find a way of making what you do sound fresh and new each time."

• I've had situations where I'm offered whole bands ... But they have to be tuned into what I'm actually doing, more than even the music. It's more than just playing the songs, it's the total thing ... and what I'm doing is very difficult for people to just come in and play."

• "I think 'Astral Weeks' is a classic ... It's revolutionary, it was completely original. 'Moondance' is classic. It's the first time that anybody had assimilated things that way. Not coming from the ego place now, but the way I did it was classic. I put things together that nobody's ever put together like that before. I'm proud of that."

• "A lot of times people say, 'What does this mean?' A lot of times I have no idea what I mean. If you can't figure out what it means, or it's troubling you, it's not for you. Like [Jack] Kerouac, some of his prose stuff, how can you ask what it means? It means what it means. That's what I like about rock 'n' roll — the concept — like Little Richard. What does he mean? You can't take him apart; that's rock & roll to me."