Van Morrison
The Authorised Bang Collection
Sony Legacy
WHEN Belfast's best beat combo, Them, disintegrated in 1966, frontman Van Morrison flew to New York to seek out Bert Berns, who had produced their two big hits, Baby Please Don't Go and Here Comes The Night, and written the latter. Berns's pedigree stretched back to songwriting in the Brill Building, with a string of hits for Solomon Burke and The Drifters to his name, and his new label, Bang!, was an acronym of the men behind it – himself, Ahmet Ertegün, Nesuhi Ertegün and Gerald (Jerry) Wexler, his colleagues at Atlantic, where he was house producer. It might have been a great partnership, but the talented Berns died of heart failure at the age of 38, and Morrison left for Warner Brothers after just one album, Blowin' Your Mind!, which included the classic Brown Eyed Girl. This three disc set gathers every note Morrison recorded for Bang!, including several takes of that hit and early versions of songs that found fuller form on Astral Weeks. Much less interesting are the 31 brief ditties from the much-bootlegged "Contractual Obligation Session", which fill the third disc and are as throwaway as the title suggests. Why the curmudgeonly Morrison has sanctioned their appearance after all these years is the only remaining mystery.
Keith Bruce
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here