Van Morrison in Cambridge: The Forgotten Summer of Astral Weeks
- dthholland
- 4 hours ago
- 6 min read
Of all the ways to start your career in music, having a future legend turn up at your parents’ doorstep isn’t the usual path. But that’s exactly what happened to John Sheldon one day in 1968. Sheldon, just 17 years old and already recognised locally as a guitar prodigy, was at his parents’ home in Cambridge, Massachusetts when he answered the door to find a short, dough-faced man in a button-down shirt standing awkwardly on the porch. Behind him, an upright bass player loomed with an instrument almost as tall as the man himself.
The man was Van Morrison, although not yet the household name he would soon become.
“I didn’t really know quite what to make of him,” Sheldon later said. “He didn’t say very much, he had no social, kind of, ‘How you doing?’ There wasn’t any of that. We played for a while, and the first thing I remember him saying was, ‘Are you available for gigs?’”
Thus began John Sheldon’s brief but memorable role as Van Morrison’s guitarist, at a crucial yet often overlooked moment in the singer’s early solo career.
Scraping by in Boston
At the time, Morrison’s reputation rested largely on the success of “Brown Eyed Girl”, his catchy pop anthem that had done well on American radio. Yet success, as ever in the music world, was relative. Van Morrison wasn’t yet a star with entourages and arenas; he was a working musician trying to secure whatever gigs he could find.
“There was a gig at the Boston Tea Party,” Sheldon recalled, referring to the legendary rock venue on Lansdowne Street. “But we had no drummer. I remember going out in a car with Tom [Kielbania, the bass player] and Van. We drove by Berklee [College of Music] and saw this guy on the sidewalk. Tom said, ‘Hey, it’s Joe. Joe, do you want to play drums?’ This is the kind of level that things were happening at then.”
Life at the Sheldon household quickly grew a little chaotic. Morrison, intense and often brooding, was not the easiest of guests. He tied up the family phone line with lengthy arguments about royalties for “Brown Eyed Girl” and filled the house with strangers on Sunday mornings. “My parents would come in for breakfast on Sunday,” Sheldon remembered, “and it would be a bunch of people they didn’t know.”
Still, Morrison was clearly evolving. One morning, he arrived with an unusual announcement. “Van came over to the house in Cambridge and he said that he had a dream and in the dream there were no more electric instruments. So he got rid of the drummer and rehearsed with just me and Tom. Tom played a standup bass, me on the acoustic guitar. So that’s when we started playing songs like ‘Madame George.’”
In hindsight, it was a glimpse of the acoustic, dreamlike sound that would soon crystallise on Astral Weeks.
A Meeting at Ace Recording Studios
After a few weeks, Morrison, Sheldon, and Kielbania found themselves at Ace Recording Studios, a modest but respected recording facility across from Boston Common. It was one of the few places in the city where a serious recording could happen.
They were there to meet producer Lewis Merenstein, who, by all accounts, had a knack for recognising something extraordinary when he heard it.
Thirty seconds into Morrison’s playing, Merenstein would later recall, “my whole being was vibrating. I knew he was being reborn…I knew I wanted to work with him at that moment.”
Sheldon remembered Merenstein telling Morrison, “I think you’re a genius, and I want you to make a record for Warner Brothers.” It was obvious to everyone in the room that Merenstein’s enthusiasm was directed solely at Morrison.
The song Morrison played that day was “Astral Weeks”—and the impact was immediate. Yet this impromptu audition would mark the end of Sheldon’s direct involvement. When Morrison left for New York to record Astral Weeks with seasoned jazz musicians, Sheldon was not invited to join him.
Memories of a Shining Summer
Looking back, Sheldon’s memories are not filled with bitterness but with a sense of having witnessed something rare and beautiful. His mind returns to a single image: Morrison sitting in the garden at his parents’ home, strumming melancholy tunes under the summer sun.
“It’s sort of a shining memory, I’d guess you’d say. He’s out in the sun, he’s playing those songs, and they’re very melancholy. They’re mournful songs. Years later, maybe 10 years later, a friend of mine got me stoned and put on Astral Weeks, and I went, ‘Hey, man, this is good.’”
It was good—very good.
Astral Weeks: A Rock ’n’ Roll Masterpiece
Today, Astral Weeks is rightly seen as a towering achievement. Martin Scorsese cited its influence on the opening sequence of Taxi Driver. Philip Seymour Hoffman quoted it in his Oscar acceptance speech. Elvis Costello once called it “the most adventurous record made in the rock medium.” Legendary rock critic Lester Bangs described it as the most significant record of his life, a “mystical document.”
Yet despite its status, the Boston roots of Astral Weeks have largely gone unnoticed. The album’s back cover even hints at it:
I saw you coming from the Cape, way from Hyannis Port all the way,
When I got back it was like a dream come true.
I saw you coming from Cambridgeport with my poetry and jazz,
Knew you had the blues, saw you coming from across the river…
Despite this, Morrison later claimed, rather implausibly, that he had written the poem long before ever setting foot in Massachusetts. Meanwhile, Boston has made little effort to link itself to Astral Weeks, missing an opportunity to connect itself to one of rock’s most transcendent works.
Why Was Van Morrison in Boston?
The backstory of how Morrison wound up in Boston is stranger than fiction. After the breakup of his Belfast band, Them, Morrison had little direction. He signed a contract with American producer Bert Berns—a figure described by his biographer Joel Selvin as someone who “reeked of Pall Malls, cheap cologne, and hit records.”
Berns was a master of short-term commercial hits. Morrison, in contrast, saw himself as a serious artist. Their working relationship soon became strained. Without Morrison’s approval, Berns released his first solo album under the title Blowin’ Your Mind!, complete with psychedelic fonts and a sweaty-looking photo of Morrison to match the prevailing ‘summer of love’ aesthetic.
Morrison was furious. To make matters worse, despite the success of “Brown Eyed Girl,” he saw little of the money. Their arguments over royalties grew increasingly bitter—until Berns died suddenly of a heart attack at the end of 1967.
Dealings with Carmine “Wassel” DeNoia
After Berns’s death, Morrison’s dealings passed into the hands of Carmine “Wassel” DeNoia, a man with connections to organised crime. Wassel’s approach was less about artistry and more about coercion.
When the author contacted Wassel decades later, he answered the phone cheerily with “Hello, City Morgue.” In person, he remained blunt: “I helped that guy out. If he ever sees me again, he better stand up and salute me!”
Wassel claimed to have introduced Berns to the underworld connections that helped secure Bang Records a competitive edge. In that world, business disputes were often resolved with muscle, not mediation.
The Guitar Incident
Tensions came to a head when Wassel visited Morrison and his girlfriend Janet Rigsbee at the King Edward Hotel. Morrison, drunk and angry about a broken radio, began cursing in Gaelic. Wassel’s response was swift and violent: he smashed Morrison’s prized Martin acoustic guitar over his head.
The threat of deportation—and the real possibility of further violence—left Morrison no choice but to act. He and Janet quickly married, giving Morrison legal grounds to stay in the United States. Not long after, they relocated to Cambridge.
Finding His Feet in Boston
Boston in 1968 wasn’t exactly welcoming Van Morrison with open arms. Even with “Gloria” a staple of garage bands everywhere, Morrison found it hard to land gigs.
“My band then was called the Hallucinations,” Peter Wolf recalled, describing the psychedelic blues outfit that was a staple at the Boston Tea Party. “One day during rehearsal, this guy came into the club asking for the manager. He was looking for a gig. He was speaking real funny.”
Wolf, who would later front the J. Geils Band and become a rock icon himself, recognised Morrison’s pedigree but also understood the struggle. “The gigs and opportunities in Boston weren’t coming easy,” he said.
And yet it was in these makeshift rehearsals, student clubs, suburban gardens and cramped recording studios that Astral Weeks was born—a masterpiece shaped by hardship, serendipity, and a burning creative need to reinvent.
