Morrison spent the summer of 1968 playing small clubs and high-school gyms across New England, using a group of local musicians, including flute and soprano saxophone player John Payne, under the banner of the Van Morrison Controversy. The sublime eight-song album, recorded over just three days (25 September, 1 and 15 October) at Century Sound Studios, 135 West 52nd Street, New York City, represented what Morrison called “sophisticated poetry that is multi-layered in sounds”, a jazz-infused acoustic song cycle behind stream-of-consciousness lyrics about being transported to “another time” and “another place”. “Sophisticated poetry that is multi-layered in sounds” He was 23, broke, depressed, drinking heavily and living in Boston with his first wife, Janet Rigsbee (aka Janet Planet), with whom he worked on a group of imaginative songs he had written as a teenager back home in Belfast and during his residence in Ladbroke Grove in London.
Van Morrison was living what he called “a very hand-to-mouth existence” when he recorded the majestic Astral Weeks album in the autumn of 1968.
