Sir George Ivan Morrison OBE (born 31 August 1945), better known as Van Morrison, is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with a seven-decade music career. He has received two Grammy Awards.
As a youngster in the late 1950s, he played guitar, harmonica, keyboards, and saxophone for many Irish showbands, playing popular music of the day. Morrison, known to his fans as “Van the Man,” came to notoriety in the mid-1960s as the main vocalist of the Northern Irish R&B and rock band Them. He recorded the garage band classic “Gloria” with Them.
Morrison’s solo career began in 1967 with the publication of the smash single “Brown Eyed Girl” under the pop-oriented direction of Bert Berns. Following Berns’ death, Warner Bros. Records purchased Morrison’s contract and gave him three recording sessions for Astral Weeks. (1968). Despite being a slow seller at first, the record has since become considered a masterpiece. Morrison established himself as a prominent performer with Moondance (1970), and he expanded on that reputation throughout the 1970s with a string of critically praised albums and live performances.
Morrison’s albums have done well in Ireland and the United Kingdom, with over 40 hitting the UK top 40. Following the success of 2021’s Latest Record Project, Volume 1, he has achieved the top ten albums in the UK in four straight decades. Eighteen of his albums charted in the top 40 in the United States, and twelve of them were released between 1997 and 2017. Since reaching 70 in 2015, he has released more than one album every year on average. He holds two Grammy Awards, the 1994 Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, and the 2017 Americana Music Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting, and is a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
