Parenting & Family Quote by Van Morrison

There is something quietly radical about a legend pointing the camera away from himself. Van Morrison could tell the familiar myth: prodigy kid, self-made genius, destiny humming in the reeds of a tenor sax. Instead he names George Cassidy, a local teacher and “big inspiration,” and in doing so punctures the heroic narrative that often calcifies around stars.

The intent reads as both gratitude and calibration. Morrison’s music is steeped in mysticism and personal canon-making, but here he insists on craft: studying, starting as a kid, having a guy show you the ropes. “Belfast” matters, too. It’s not just a birthplace; it’s a scene, a set of rooms and mentors and borrowed records where American jazz filtered into a Northern Irish adolescence. The tenor saxophone signals a particular lineage - tougher, breathier, more communal than the romantic frontman mythology we attach to singers. He’s reminding you he came up as a player, not just a voice.

The subtext is also about authenticity, a word Morrison’s audience prizes even when it’s impossible to define. By anchoring his origin story in a named relationship, he claims credibility through apprenticeship rather than branding. It’s a subtle correction to celebrity culture’s obsession with singular genius: behind every “voice of a generation” is usually a specific person who taught them how to listen, how to phrase, how to persist.

It also reads like a Belfast-sized act of loyalty. Fame tends to erase the people who were there first; Morrison, notoriously guarded, offers a rare glimpse of softness: the kind that sounds like memory, not PR.