Van Morrison “Night Time Is the Right Time” live - Hyde Park London 11th July 2025 London, Hyde Park, July 11, 2025, the billboard is clear: from 4:45 PM to 5:45 PM Van Morrison will perform, from 6:30 PM to 7:30 PM Yusuf/Cat Stevens, and from 8:20 PM to 10:20 PM Neil Young. They say that if you’re good at writing, you know where to start: I don’t know where to start. Because I still hold tight to the despair and final rage of Neil Young, but by this point, we would already be at the end. So there has to be a beginning, straight, linear and clean, orderly, like everything that happens inside and outside Hyde Park, the sublime organization, as it must be for something that gives the world the miraculous beauty of music. And so yes, we can start, because the first to take the stage is a gentleman almost 80 years old (in August) with his summer shirt, his hat, and the ever-present sunglasses. An extraordinary band, in the true sense of musicians who sleep with their instruments. And he is the one to kick off the music: Van Morrison, Van The Man. He walks on stage as if going down to the sea to play bowls, sings with the same ease as drinking a glass of water, with the calm of a gentleman who practically carries Music inside him. It’s so impressive you can’t understand how it’s possible.
He never shouts, never goes off-pitch, he trains his vocal cords while you’re thinking he’s singing, yet he never fully opens his mouth. And when he starts with Into The Mystic you think it’s the vocal timbre closest to God, to Allah, to Zeus, to Buddha, that he’s the favored son, chosen to make men understand that the voice is an instrument to bring joy and convey love and serenity, not cries and pain. He even smiles, and on stage does whatever he wants, and you know perfectly well what he’s doing without the slightest hint of effort when he sings Carrying a Torch or Night Time is the right time by Ray Charles, Crazy Jane on God and Whenever God Shines his Lights. He never takes a break during the setlist, plays the saxophone and you don’t understand where he gets all that breath from, but you will understand because the finale dedicated to Gloria, Van trains, he trains his voice, and then he leaves, surrounded by the amazement of those who have seen him for the hundredth time, he leaves with his summer shirt, his hat, his glasses and that voice, yes.
AND HE LEAVES with the stride of someone who knows he is the best and without making the slightest effort, in fact none at all. And so, still astonished by Van’s natural extraordinariness, Yusuf/Cat Stevens takes the stage, dedicating to Van Morrison “Midday (Avoid City After Dark) – I love Van The Man and this song is dedicated to him.”
I would never have been able to write as well as Graziella Balestrieri did on the pages of "ilmanifesto.it" and she continues here for anyone who wants to read it all
Van Morrison, Cat Stevens e Neil Young, a Hyde Park la cura e la rabbia | il manifesto chiaro: iniziare: musica:
