Van Morrison: Hard Nose The Highway - 1973
"As a concept for the album, I was just trying to establish how hard it was to do what I do. Plus there were some lighter things on the other side of it. One side has a kind of hard feeling while the other is soft" - Van Morrison
1973’s Hard Nose The Highway was very much an album of transition for Van Morrison. It was the one where the Celtic soul started to give way to diversified, spiritually-motivated material that would result in low-key, ethereal, quietly atmospheric albums like 1974’s Veedon Fleece. This album was the stepping point to that one.
The opener, Snow In San Anselmo, begins with some choral vocals before Morrison’s voice arrives - considerably high-pitched now in comparison to the bluesy growl or upbeat soulful tone of the previous few albums. The pace of the music has slowed down too. It is still impeccably played as always - lovely bass, keyboards and guitar. This is now the kind of laid back soul-rock that Morrison would record for many more years. There is a strange, rather incongruous upbeat jazzy part in the middle, however, before the gentle, relaxing groove returns. The choral backing is somewhat superfluous too, the song would be better without it, in my opinion. Nevertheless, the sound quality, by the way, is truly superb.
Warm Love is an entrancing romantic number with some lovely flute backing and a tender vocal from Morrison. It continues the laid-back, ethereal, bucolic and loved-up blueprint laid down on Astral Weeks' Sweet Thing. Just as on Sweet Thing the bass is subtly beautiful.
Hard Nose The Highway is one of those typical brassy soulful tracks but not as upbeat as on previous albums. Morrison’s soul is now much slower in pace, still brass-dominated, but nowhere near as flighty. When Van goes into the “further on up the road” voice part, it sounds almost like a live recording, the type of which would appear on the It’s Too Late To Stop Now album.
Wild Children is a lovely, sensitive piano-led ballad about the generation of his, born in 1945 at the end of the Second World War. Van gets all emotional about Tennessee Williams, Rod Steiger, James Dean, Marlon Brando, rivers and streams. Bucolic and nostalgic for “the days before rock ’n’ roll” - a theme he would return to many times over the years. This was one of his first of that type of song. Beautiful it is too. A warm, comforting bass sound and jazzy guitar on it. Van Morrison is capable of some of the most observant, sensitive lyrics you will hear put to music. The Great Deception ploughs a similar furrow, musically and lyrically it expresses some of the cynicism towards the duplicitous things “they” do to him that he would express many more times over the years.
Bein' Green is a song from the children’s TV programme Sesame Street and was sung by future muppet, Kermit The Frog. Morrison turns it into a Ray Charles-style soul ballad, most convincingly.
Autumn Song is a beautiful, extended, ten minute slice of Morrison laid-back jazz rock. Some critics are dissatisfied with this song. I disagree. It has an affecting ambience and its musicianship is excellent. It just sort of washes over you like a warm bath. Ideal for an early autumn evening. Maybe it should have ended two minutes before it did, but I can live with that. It is worth thinking upon that, amongst the seriously great and diverse albums released in 1973, this is one of those rarely mentioned, yet it is one of the most ahead of its time, both musically and lyrically.
The closer is a most winsome cover of the traditional Caledonian air, Purple Heather, given the orchestrated Morrison treatment. Some great violin on this track and some ad hoc style scat vocals.
This proved to be a little-mentioned but important album in the musical and thematic development of Van Morrison as an artist. Many future albums would follow its lead.
