“A circular moment”: Mark Knopfler’s favourite Van Morrison song
In 2015, Van Morrison released Duets: Re-working the Catalogue. The Godfather of Celtic Soul put together a 16-track album, taking his extensive back catalogue and reworking the songs with a murderer’s row of talent. ‘Some Peace of Mind’ with Bobby Womack. ‘How Can A Poor Boy?’ with Taj Mahal. ‘Streets of Arklow’ with Mick Hucknall. Fine, they can’t all be winners, but one of the most celebrated was the version of Van The Man’s 1983 classic ‘Irish Heartbeat’, a collaboration with Dire Straits main man Mark Knopfler.
One might not imagine that Knopfler’s precisely honed yacht rock has much in common with Morrison’s woolly, jazz-inflected howl. However, Knopfler has been a Morrison die-hard for a long time. In the liner notes for the Duets record, he said, “I’ve loved Van, of course, and he’s been part of my life. His voice has been part of my life since I was a kid, from Them onwards. So, it’s a natural thing for me, and ‘Irish Heartbeat’ was my choice because I love that song. He does a beautiful version of that as well with the Chieftains.”
Knopfler’s pick for that album was a surprise to Morrison too, given how traditional the song is. He would also have had an idea of Knopfler’s taste because it’s not the first time he’s appeared on a track of Morrison’s. That came in 1982 with the song ‘Cleaning Windows’ from 1982’s Beautiful Vision.
The song is one of Morrison’s most acclaimed works of the era, a rose-tinted remembrance of his time as an up-and-coming, part-time musician, when he “blowing saxophone on the weekend / Baby, in the down joint” and during the week he was earning a living, you guessed it, cleaning windows. Knopfler played guitar on the track, and it’s clear that the experience stuck with him as over four decades later, he made the song one of his Desert Island Disks.
Speaking to Lauren Laverne in 2024, Knopfler talks of playing Van records and, in particular, hearing that voice through his headphones “in every place (he’d) ever lived, since (he) was a teenager.” So, it was a truly surreal experience to have that voice again going through his headphones, but this time because he’s in the studio with him, calling it a “circular moment.”
It’s a fine choice, too. There’s so much that’s heartwarming about the track. The song itself has a novelistic eye that takes the message beyond mere nostalgia. An opening lyric like “Oh, the smell of the bakery from across the street got in my nose / As we carried our ladders down the streets / with the wrought iron gate rows” puts the listener in a time and place in a way that recalls no less a song than The Beatles’ Penny Lane. Fine company to keep.
It goes deeper than the just the song that. There’s something beautiful about the fact that a song that pays tributes to Morrison’s heroes like Lead Belly, Jimmie Rodgers and Muddy Waters, also has a disciple of Morrison’s playing on it too. Proof, as if it was ever needed, of the timeless nature and ever-present influence of Van Morrison’s music.
