In 1965, their single “Here Comes the Night” hit #2 in the UK and their rendition of “Baby, Please Don’t Go” reached #10, but in late 1966 Morrison, age 21, left the group and moved to New York to pursue a solo career, soon signing with Bang Records. From 1964-66, he fronted rock quintet Them and their version of the Morrison-penned “Gloria” became a garage-rock staple after reaching #75 in the Billboard Hot 100 in 1964. Morrison, of course, had achieved some degree of fame before 1968. Virtually every musician, music lover and casual radio listener in the developed world has heard songs by and knows the name Van Morrison, the Belfast-born blue-eyed-soul troubadour and multi-instrumentalist who for almost 60 years has been crafting and performing acoustical masterpieces with his exquisite, virtually unparalleled blend of folk, jazz, blues and roots and diving deep “into the mystic” while vehemently rejecting creative restraints.īut what many don’t know is that the roughly nine months Morrison spent living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1968 were elemental in his then-unprecedented transformation from British Invasion-era pop star to legendary musical maverick, evidenced by his second solo album, Astral Weeks, released that year and which famed music critic Lester Bangs lauded as “a mystical document.” In the weeks before becoming a household name, Morrison had envisioned, written and rehearsed that seminal work in Cambridge and Boston, and the area’s influence is unmistakable in some lines on the album’s back jacket: “I saw you coming from Cambridgeport with my poetry and jazz” and “I saw you coming from the Cape, way from Hyannis Port all the way.”

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