What concert begins in 2026 with a presenter announcing: “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome…”? In what recital by a legend with six decades of career are his classic songs barely heard? Who would think of going on stage in a suit at 38 degrees in the shade? Who sings five meters from the edge of the stage, sheltered between musicians and instruments? For these questions there is an answer: Van Morrison. It happened last night in Madrid, at the Botanical Nights.
The Northern Irish veteran offered a delicious concert full of blues and with hardly any concessions, which perhaps disappointed some, who were expecting at least a dozen of his emblematic songs. In exchange, he put his voice, still powerful and expressive, at the service of a good handful of swampy and deep blues songs. At times, the venue seemed like a rhythm & blues venue where people listened with their eyes closed, frowning and gently shaking their heads. That is, feeling this ancient music that scratches the insides so much.
Morrison appeared last year in the Botanical Nights series and repeats this with the same script: two days (today, Wednesday is the second event), with 4,000 people each, with everything sold out. And it is always worth investing the 100 euros of entry because her voice retains its distinctive features and continues to sound vigorous and captivating, always capable of vividly transmitting emotions and moods. If this continues, a Van Morrison concert will always offer memorable moments. As happened last night in the Botanical Garden of the Complutense University of Madrid.
The one from Belfast requires that they still perform with natural light and the recital began at an unusual 8:30 p.m., so some spectators arrived with their tongues hanging out after completing their work day. About to turn 81 (on August 31) and with a sharp face, a sign that he is thinner, it was shocking to see him on stage, with his temperature skyrocketing and dressed in a blue suit, long-sleeved shirt (you could tell because a small piece came out of the cuffs of his jacket), a white hat and glasses with mirrored lenses. This Morrison is a strange guy even for climate issues. He almost always sang holding the microphone stand with his hands and when one of his musicians performed a solo, he watched him without worrying that he was thus turning his back on the audience. No one would like to be in the shoes of that instrumentalist who was scrutinized by that demanding teacher. Can you imagine what would happen with a bad grade? Something like this happened with the chorus girls and the boss did not hesitate and corrected them in front of the entire audience.
He moved little (for what, with that voice) and looked frequently towards a music stand, we suppose with some song lyrics, which are already many pages written during the last six decades and memory cannot handle everything.
He based a good part of the hour and a half he delivered on his last two works, the notable Remembering Now, from 2025, with its own material, and Somebody Tried to Sell Me a Bridge, from 2026, made up of blues versions. It started with a batch of the latter: Deep Blue Sea, Kidney Stew Blues o Madame Butterfly Blues. He played the saxophone and, above all, and very well, the harmonica, the latter blowing into a small microphone. bala that expelled a harsh, distorted sound.
Sometimes he growled and felt the black music he always loved with encouraging sentences: “All right.” There is the one from Belfast closing the circle, returning to the origins to savor those devilish rhythms that propelled him, for the happiness of the world, to the profession of being a musician. Because the motivation that floated in the hot Madrid night had to do with the passage of time, age, the end of the road, and what matters: enjoying the moans of happiness and the expressions of pain that those slaves left us on the plantations in the southern United States that were later electrified in Chicago.
He approached the blues in a serene way, giving his excellent band space for the members to display solos and instrumental mischief. There was a lot of improvisation, as usually happens in Morrison’s concerts, which varies the repertoire considerably from one night to the next. It was fun to see the Belfast man act as conductor. He pointed to the saxophonist to start a solo, then extended his palm to stop and indicated with another gesture that the keyboard player should take over.
He closed this first part with songs, most of them slow, to enjoy that penetrating voice, of Remembering Now: Down to Joy, Back to Writing Love Songs, The Only Love I Ever Need Is Yours o If It Wasn’t for Ray. Surely the moment that will be remembered in a few years was the interpretation of I Believe to My Soul, by Ray Charles, which Morrison recorded on that colossal live album of 1974, It’s Too Late to Stop Now. His prodigious voice sounded there like in the best of times. He then made a version of Night Time Is the Right Time, where one of the two showgirls especially shined.
Once this topic was finished, the fun moment of the night arrived. “It’s all done, friends, it’s all done,” the singer launched, when he was barely an hour into the concert. Was he saying goodbye already? No: his face, until that moment expressionless, smiled. Don’t believe it, it was light, but the spectators were rubbing elbows with their neighbors in the seats: “Look, he smiled, it’s funny.” He also gave in, quite an excess in this man who is stingy with affection, a couple of “thank yous” and a “thank you very much” at the end of the concert, all three in Spanish.
He remembered his own repertoire already in the last section to deliver Real Real Gone and a sensational Enlightenment. Y sand saved for last a very swing of Moondance y Gloria, and then it seemed that these two songs consisted of an unexpected gift to a music-loving public that knows that when they go to a Van Morrison concert they are not going to face a blurred figure of what once was.
Since Van Morrison always has to act as Van Morrison, he left after Gloria while his group continued instrumentally with the song. The guitarist almost broke his neck from looking to the side of the stage so much to see if the boss would deign to come out to sing a final verse of Gloria. Two minutes, three… here goes a drum solo to kill time. Five minutes. But the star didn’t appear, because what he wanted last night was to sing the blues.