By CHERIE DONNELLAN
SINGER Joe Creighton might have created a Van Morrison tribute show but the Irish-born Melbournian said he has no interest in meeting the blues legend.
“I’m not at all interested in Van Morrison as a person, just his music,” Creighton asserted.
“It would probably ruin the illusion of his music [for me].”
But Creighton conceded that the “spirit” of Morrison’s music was undeniably influential on his development as an artist.
“I used to have a school band [when living in Belfast] and we used to play a lot of current songs, Van Morrison’s songs. I followed his music quite a bit.”
Creighton said his show, Into The Mystic, featuring an eight-piece band, would encompass some of Morrison’s greatest hits.
He hoped to sway fans to embrace Morrison’s earlier work, including Creighton’s favourite album, Astral Weeks.
“The actual song, Astral Weeks, is obscure [but] I often open my show with it.
“The more hardcore fans know it [and] the people who don’t often email me after and say they went out and bought the album.
“It’s so poetic.”
Creighton praised his band mates, who had played with Glenn Shorrock, Wendy Matthews, Scarecrow, John Farnham, Johnny O’Keeffe and The Black Sorrows.
“It’s always been the brief to have musicians of a high calibre.”
Guitarist and vocalist Gary Young and keyboardist and singer Cres Crisp actually helped inspire Creighton’s idea for Into The Mystic, he said.
“Gary called me one night asking to fill in for [his] band, Rusty Nails.
“He said ‘Are you free to do a shitty gig for shit money?’. I laughed and was actually free, so I did it.
“In the break we were hatching the idea of a theatre show [featuring Morrison’s music].”
Creighton said the theatrics he wanted for the show was “a work in progress”.
“I want take it to that era where I could have images of the riots in Belfast in the ’70s – connect the music and the images.”
Creighton plays The Studio on 13 April.
