Creativity Quote by Van Morrison

Fame is supposed to be the payoff for talent; Van Morrison treats it like an occupational hazard, a sticky substance you can never quite wash off. The blunt repetition - "complete drag" twice, no metaphor, no poetry - is the point. Coming from a musician celebrated for mysticism and transcendence, the language is almost aggressively unromantic, like he’s slamming the door on the audience’s fantasy of the artist’s life.

The intent feels defensive and corrective. Morrison isn’t confessing vulnerability so much as refusing a contract: you don’t get to buy intimacy, access, or gratitude just because you bought the record. "Extremely disappointing" flips the script on celebrity culture’s promise that recognition will deliver satisfaction, security, even self-knowledge. Instead, fame arrives as an unwanted role that competes with the real work. He’s not rejecting music; he’s rejecting the bureaucratic side-effects of success: the constant visibility, the demands to perform a personality, the reduction of a complex career into a public-facing brand.

The subtext is also about control. Morrison’s prickly reputation - the guarded interviews, the combative moments onstage, the long suspicion of media narratives - makes this line read less like a one-off complaint and more like a philosophy. Fame is drag because it turns art into a product and the artist into public property. His refusal to romanticize it is, paradoxically, one of the most credible poses in pop culture: the star insisting he’d rather be a working musician than a famous one.