Van Morrison, I've been thinking lately, is the intellectual's Grateful Dead. They offer an amplified nirvana, fueled by chemicals; he offers the dark night, fueled by despair, self-pity, ennui. In either case it is easy to listen, but I'm beginning to wonder why anyone should want to.

I would like to find something nice to say about Hard Nose the Highway,… but that would be silly. It was a bad record. [Veedon Fleece] is not. It is a boring one, and in a way, I think bad records are preferable. They at least require outrageous response. With records like this, one must be careful. A little too much, on one side or the other, and the album begins to sound interesting. That would be misleading.

Van Morrison found his blues early, stepping out into the unknown with TB Sheets and Astral-Weeks…. [But,] like other prodigies (Bob Dylan comes...