Van Morrison & Willie Nelson: Lessons in keepin' on
In the case of both Willie Nelson and Van Morrison, their attitude clearly is I’m going to keep on going as long as I can.
One of the more interesting things about getting older is watching how my musical heroes confront their own mortality. In the case of both Willie Nelson and Van Morrison, their attitude clearly is I’m going to keep on going as long as I can, and I’m gonna have as much fun as I can doing it.
Last Man Standing (Legacy) is his second album in a row to confront the fact that he’s not going to be around forever. But where his last album God’s Problem Child explored this topic with a mixture of covers and originals, this time around it’s all originals co-written with producer Buddy Cannon. And while mortality hovers around just about every song on this disc, the songs are never downhearted or downbeat. In fact, Last Man Standing may well be the most rocking album he has yet put out, which is somewhat astounding considering he’s 84, and the overall attitude is one of defiance.
It is clear from the start that Nelson’s vocal and guitar skills remain intact. The songs are written in Nelson’s matter of fact writing style where he says what he has to say in the most direct way possible, but he’s long known how to make it work.
The album begins with the title track with starts with the lines: I don’t want to be the last man standing/But wait a minute maybe I do over a beat that’s just short of Bo Diddley. The next song “Don’t Tell Noah” rocks just as hard, with a bunch of humorous and sarcastic lines, before moving into straight funky country with “Bad Breath” which is a song about exactly that with the key line, “Bad breath is better than no breath at all.”
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