Johnny Rogan: Van Morrison - No Surrender

Anyone coming to this thorough and sometimes exhaustive biography to find out why Van Morrison is such a curmudgeon will learn soon enough: it seems he has always been a grumpy, sullen and, when young, an occasionally violently surly character.

As a child he had lamentable social skills and was terribly uncommunicative. As a teenager, girls found him annoying and boring, and when he started making music he would be truculent and unco-operative with bandmates. He was a sour and regular drunk.

There seems no reason for any of this, although his early experiences of commercial success with the group Them — during which they were, as with most bands of the period, ripped off by smart management — left him bitter about the music business, even to this day.

All this — plus Rogan's persistent recounting of the Troubles in Ireland which provide a backdrop to Morrison's Belfast childhood — are given plenty of play in a frequently unflattering but well-researched life of a man who rarely gives interviews (and not for this book), and is often litigious when biographies appear. But he has also made some of the most sublime and spiritually inspired music in rock.

Despite his moodiness, Morrison was a musical conduit who could channel visceral American soul and blues through his Irish heart and then, in America and away from the constraints of the politicised Belfast scene, explore the mystical side of himself. Once he'd stopped drinking a bottle of vodka before shows.

Rogan is especially good in conjuring up the young Morrison's powerful performances in pubs and clubs around Belfast and although various band members and fellow travellers line up to attest to Morrison's testiness and personal problems, Rogan balances those unfavourable testimonials by equally throwing the focus on the music. He argues persuasively that whereas Astral Weeks (1968) has become the best loved album of Morrison's long career, other albums (notably Veedon Fleece in 1974) are as inspirational and of great emotional and spiritual depth.

Latterly Morrison's career has become only of passing interest — ironically his most recent album Magic Time is his best in at least a decade, despite him still railing against being ripped off 40 years ago.

Rogan offers an insight into the private life and career of this singular artist although constantly tethering Morrison to the politics of Belfast, even when the musician had long since left Ireland and was largely apolitical anyway, smacks of the author having done the research and being determined to use it regardless.

In the late 80s Q magazine sent Spike Milligan round to interview Morrison, a longtime Goon fan. Morrison was typically evasive and uncommunicative so Milligan went outside, took his clothes off, put on a fake penis nose and came back in. Only then did Morrison lighten up.

Milligan said later: "F***ing hell, you have to do a lot to make him laugh!"

* Graham Reid is an Auckland writer and critic.
* Random House, $59.95