Van Morrison has a 'mountain of material' he wants to release

Van Morrison has had to research “alternative outlets” to release his albums.

The 77-year-old mu legend admits he’s going to need to stop himself from writing more tunes because he has so much piled up it makes his “head spin”, but he’s hoping to find another way of releasing the material instead of the traditional route of a record label because they can only put so many records out each year.

Speaking to fellow muian and activist Billy Bragg for the April issue of MOJO magazine, Van said: “It’s been a problem getting records out, so I’ve been looking at other alternative outlets.”

He explained: “Well the big companies can only do one or two big records a year. This one has taken five months to get it out from its delivery. So there’s no way they can cope with two a year even. But I’ve always been prolific. Even now I’m working on stuff I recorded in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, compiling stuff I did that they just couldn’t get out. People laugh when I tell them this but back in the day Warner Brothers only wanted 22 minutes a side for their albums. They were saying to me that it can’t be over 22 minutes a side because the levels drop and all this. So I was recording maybe 40 songs but only 10 ended up on the album. So my plan is now to find an alternative outlet to get all that stuff out.

Asked if he’s still penning more songs, he replied: “Oh yeah, in fact, I have to curb the writing, because once I write stuff, I want to go in and record it, so I have to curb it – I have so much stuff it makes my head spin. Original stuff, covers, it’s a mountain of material.”

Van is releasing his 44th studio album, ‘Moving on Skiffle’, next month, a record inspired by his childhood love of the folk mu genre, which was popularised by Lonnie Donegan in the 60s.