“This fact has been a secret kept in plain view.” What exactly this secret yields is a question that the book never quite answers. “Astral Weeks” was recorded in New York City, but it was “planned, shaped and rehearsed in Boston and Cambridge,” Walsh writes in his new book, which shares its title with the album. Walsh’s article included less-than-sylvan details about cash handoffs to gangsters, someone smashing an acoustic guitar over Morrison’s head and insights from the singer’s first wife, Janet Rigsbee (“Being a muse is a thankless job, and the pay is lousy”).
Walsh published an article in Boston magazine about “the untold story of how Van Morrison fled record-industry thugs, hid out in Boston and wrote one of rock’s greatest albums.” The album was the sylvan, ineffably spiritual “Astral Weeks,” released in 1968, when Morrison was 23. In 2015, the musician and journalist Ryan H.
ASTRAL WEEKS A Secret History of 1968 By Ryan H.
