Politics & Power Quote by Van Morrison

Van Morrison’s bafflement at seated American audiences is really a culture clash disguised as a throwaway tour anecdote. Coming out of the U.K. and Ireland’s club-and-dancehall circuits, live music isn’t a polite recital; it’s a communal combustion engine. People move, shout, spill drinks, and make the night with the band. So when Morrison hits the U.S. and finds everyone planted in chairs, the “strange” isn’t just about posture. It’s about power and permission: who gets to be loud, physical, and unruly in public.

The line also catches America’s habit of treating popular music like prestige art the moment it enters certain venues. The sit-down crowd signals ticket prices, theater layouts, unionized sightlines, and a kind of middlebrow respectability that translates “rock and soul” into “performance.” You don’t dance; you consume. You applaud at the approved moments. Morrison, whose whole aesthetic leans toward trance, sweat, and spiritual release, is implicitly calling out that containment. His music wants bodies, not just ears.

There’s a subtle accusation tucked inside the confusion: if the audience is seated, the relationship turns transactional. The band delivers; the crowd judges. Standing crowds meet you halfway; seated crowds evaluate you from a distance. Morrison isn’t romanticizing chaos so much as defending the idea that a concert is a shared ritual, not an appointment with entertainment.