Up on Cypress Avenue again with Van the Man

Royal Albert Hall, London SW7
Forty-one years after recording the seminal Astral Weeks, the fiery singer brings it live to a British audience for the first time

So, we ventured in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dreams (and mine and his), and, 41 years on, Astral Weeks still makes crazy sense.

For extended moments, especially those when Van Morrison tipped his head back and peeped through his extremely stylish dark glasses at the baffled ceiling of the Royal Albert Hall, looking for cobwebs, maybe, or spiritual connection, we might have been right there on 25 September 1968, in the Century Sound Studios in New York City, where this wondrous thing was created and now, for the first time, was being performed live, in its rejigged entirety, in this country.

At other moments, when distracted by this man of a thousand tics, for instance, or pondering the wisdom of climbing into a tight rubber suit at the age of 63, you were invited to wonder why. Why now? Why this album? It's because this is what he does and what he does is perform, either reluctantly for the media, or in another world for himself or, if he's feeling good, warmly for us.

It was always a marginal project, mining his past. For an audience of greys, retired or blasted hipsters, this was like rereading the Bible and hoping that not a word had been changed. Because that's the way we consume music, like religious tracts, mantras of truth from our past. That is what we want when it is packaged for live consumption.

Well, what do you know? He's done the impossible. He's made it better. He's dressed it up, given it room to breathe, with the band of his choice (and what an ensemble this is) - all the better for nostalgics to buy it again ... on vinyl.

Get the circle? This is not to demean the performance, just to put it in context. What was good in '68 and ignored by all but the hip music critics has become blessed and a very good business.

Who could have a problem, though, with Van Morrison singing "Madame George" at you - live and exclusive - with Jay Berliner, the extraordinary Berliner on guitar, just as he did in '68? Not those who paid up to £200 a shot to be here, for which outlay they also got Richie Buckley, a treasure in his own right, to side with Van again, to guide the band with sax, flute and vocals and good humour. Their call-and-response on "Common One" in the first half was up there with Van's teaming with Georgie Fame.

If the band had the dress sense of a pall bearer (black is the old black, guys), they also had the sensitivities of a midwife, nurturing each song as if giving birth to a lovely pink baby of a song. They came into their own after the interval, stoically ignoring the sight of their boss in that Michelin Man suit.

The trick with jazz - and that, essentially, describes the leanings of this outfit - is to create a framework for accessible anarchy. There were hitches - Morrison chided the otherwise synchronised violinist Tony Fitzgibbon midway through "Madame George" - but, in the main, it was skintight, balanced and so pretty.

Berliner picked and thrummed to perfection, as Morrison's voice soared just like a ballerina into the cathedral heights, the highlight of the night. He scaled some mighty peaks, too, on "Slim Slow Slider", more rhythmic than the original, but haunting still.

Before the inevitable "Gloria" encore, he treated us to "Listen to the Lion". The growl was in, the eyes were shut and, as his late friend Ronnie Scott used to say, he'd made a happy man very old.

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