The hardest working soul in show business

Sometime this year, Van Morrison and his band will probably arrive in a town near you to play a show. It won't be at the biggest venue around, but you can be sure he will not be found, like so many of his contemporaries, on a pokey stage in a wee bar-room on the wrong side of town.

Depending on what night of the week it is, the set could feature anything from glittering classics which have withstood the trials and tribulations of decades, to tunes which were tossed off a few months previously and are already beaten dockets and shadows of past glories.

As always, you pay your money and you take your chances with the Drumshanbo Hustler. He remains the most fascinating artist this little island has ever produced, exemplified by the many and varied attempts to explain or explore Morrison's muse. New books appear all the time aiming to provide an insight: indeed, Johnny Rogan's second book on Morrison will be published later this year.

The man himself continues to treat this industry with suspicion and downright contempt. It's all about the work, he will insist on those (surprisingly numerous) occasions when he has come face-to-face with a tape-recorder. Back in 1989, he laid out his stall for all to see: "I write songs. Then I record them. And, later, maybe I perform them on stage. That's what I do, that's my job. Simple." Little has changed since. Forget about Van the Man, he'll say time and time again, just listen to Van the man's music.

So lets go back to the music. Before Christmas, a whim took me back to various Morrison albums scattered all over the house. One after another, from His Band & The Street Choir to The Philosopher's Stone, the albums received a spin. It was a chance to rediscover songs and ideas I'd completely forgotten about.

Many things stood tall. The Caledonian soul fervour of his It's Too Late To Stop Now live album. Summertime In England taking off for the clouds on a soaring lyrical odyssey. How nearly all of what has been released since the No Guru, No Method, No Teacher album contains nothing as revealing, moving or rewarding as its predecessors.

Try as you may, you can't escape the influence of Morrison's seminal works. Back in 1986, he was railing against copycats who were ripping off his songs on A Town Called Paradise. One wonders, then, if he has cocked an ear to the new Irish acoustic guitar troubadours, whose sole ambition at times seems to be to copy Astral Weeks, an album Morrison knocked out in 48 hours when he was 23 years of age and has never seen fit to rehash or repeat. Or perhaps he would be more comfortable watching Republic of Loose, their fired-up preacherman shtick echoing younger days when Morrison prowled stages in a similar fashion? These days, though, the music takes a back seat for most when Morrison comes up in conversation. It's all about the grumpy curmudgeon, the caricature, the man who exerts more energy getting into a state about media intrusion and machinations than any commentator around. He's a great man to do a spiel about the perils of the press, usually (and ironically) in interviews to plug a new album.

Musically, Morrison has spent the last couple of years going back, way back. When he's not pushing skiffle, blues or soft-shoe country tunes, he's riffing off a painstakingly intense jazz vibe. It's music that he feels most comfortable with, music which takes him back to his roots and which informed his initial musical curiosity back in Belfast.

There's certainly little reluctance shown when it comes to casting his net back to these sources, but there continues to be little interest shown by the artist in re-evaluating or re-examining any of his work since. Besides some occasional live excursions, there's no attempt to recall those folk, jazz and soul muses which produced so much magic in the 1970s and 1980s. You have to admire someone who doesn't look back, but you can't also help wondering what might happen if Morrison did roll back those particular years.