Van Morrison has told reporters that he doesn't care too much for the studio experience, but favors the unpredictable freedom of a live performance. Such a statement seems contradictory when considering The Belfast Cowboy's notorious stage fright (at a 1976 farewell concert for The Band, Morrison refused to enter on stage when announced – manager Harvey Goldsmith recalls having to literally kick him onstage). However, comprehension of this two-headed beast that encompasses both Morrison's love of the live performance and his practically aloof relationship with his audience, might be a kind of Rosetta stone in understanding and fully appreciating both Astral Weeks, the landmark album considered the artist's greatest work, and “Astral Weeks” its iconic opening track.

It's certainly unconventional. From its opening riffs, “Astral Weeks” sounds interrupted as opposed to commenced, as if the listener was lucky enough to walk through the wrong door. iTunes will give away the song's seven minute and length and subsequently intimidate the youthful listeners of our Interweb-and-Speed generation. However, “Astral Weeks” does not bring with it a self-declared majesty, as do most pop songs outside the comfortable boundaries three-to-four minutes. It doesn't really even have “movements”. Morrison only plays two chord progressions, each consisting of two chords, over and over again, while other instruments enter and exit and enter again, like a time-lapse video of entire whole twenty-four hours wherein you happen to notice the same dogs and people in frame a few times.

This is the key right here to understanding why Astral Weeks is regarded as Morrison's best album. An artist who openly states that he dislikes the confines of the recording booth, yet, by his actions and his own accounts, detests the limelight and roar of the crowd to the point of trembling fear creates puzzling questions of locations. Where is the arena wherein such an artist can truly thrive? The answer, for Van Morrison, is neither one nor the other, but both. You create a new world, where Van the Man feels unencumbered by the devouring eyes of his adoring fans, but without the iron bars and concrete floors of overdubbing and track layering.

Once the listener stops thinking of “Astral Weeks and Astral Weeks in terms of traditional pop structure and starts thinking of the album and its opener as extended jam sessions, during which Morrison has forgotten where and when and who he is, Astral Weeks projects itself from the plane of pleasant jazz-blues-soul hybrid to a higher, Dionysian consciousness. Make no mistake – the only people having orgies to Astral Weeks, are aging baby-boomers and I would hate for anyone to confirm this speculation with hard evidence because some things are ruined forever by seeing your parents fuck. But the Dionysian involves more than dangerous frat-house levels of wine gargling and grinding up on whatever says, or bleeds, yes. In Nietzsche's estimation (and who will argue with that man and his Goliath of a 'stache?), the Dionysian experience occurs when a being loses all consciousness of itself in the discovery of a universal truth. In this case, by losing himself, Morrison finds himself. And the easy access by the artist and his band to this limited space, communicates more clearly the album's thematic intent than any study in the songs lyrics could provide, no matter how close or how couched in turgid theorems they may be. That no-man's land – between innocence and experience; between fear and confidence; between joy and sadness; love and hate; light and dark – is these 8 tracks' very breath.

As an album opener, “Astral Weeks” is not a sudden burst of light, but a sunrise peeking over a mountaintop; not a heavy door swinging wide, but the creaking of a an old iron gate, separating a forgotten mansion from the forward-thrusting tumult of the exterior world; not a fustian sermon, but the sort of truth that tiptoes quietly into the human heart and camouflages itself as something ubiquitous like the wallpaper in your childhood home. Describing “Astral Weeks” is infinitely easier in terms of what it is not, rather than what it is.

Perhaps such a dearth of singular terms and easy targets is what renders this song a magic potion for the ear drums. It seems impossible to imagine any listener - Charles Manson, George “Corpsegrinder” Fischer, Pol Pot or The Fucking Grinch – not being instantly enchanted by the jangly guitars, soaring flutes, unwavering string arrangements and percussion like soft rain on the window. Most of all, it is impossible when listening to Van Morrison's bluesy, imploring tenor to not imagine it as a most effective sedative - for lions, tigers, Mike Tyson, bears, or any other sort of savage beast.