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Hard Nose the Highway | 
 enlarge | Artist: Van Morrison
Label: Polydor / Umgd
Category: Music
Buy New: $42.97
New (3) Used (4) Collectible (1) from $29.99
Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 88666
Format: Original Recording Reissued, Original Recording Remastered
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
UPC: 731453745223
EAN: 0731453745223
ASIN: B000002GNM
Release Date: June 3, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Same day shipping. Free upgrade to 1st class mail for all CDs. Professional packaging material. Friendly customer service.
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| Tracks:
| • | Snow in San Anselmo | | • | Warm Love | | • | Hard Nose the Highway | | • | Wild Children | | • | The Great Deception | | • | Bein' Green - Van Morrison, Raposo, Joe | | • | Autumn Song | | • | Purple Heather - Van Morrison, |
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| Customer Reviews:
 A must for Van fans, one of his most mellow, serene albums.... October 16, 2008
Grigory's Girl (NYC)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a very sweet, succinict, but excellent addition to the prolific discography of Van Morrison. It's usually not mentioned with his great albums, but it's very good and is better than other artist's best albums.
The opener, Snow in San Alsemo, is gentle and soothing (especially with the beautiful choir in the background). It's representative of the album as a whole. The Great Deception is a good song, but it's probably the first example of the virtiolic, angry Van, which has popped up on many subsequent albums (usually with lyrics bitching about the music industry). Even Van's take on the Kermit the Frog standard Bein' Green works really well (even though Joe Rasposo wrote it). The epic song here, Autumn Song, is one of Van's most mellow and pleasing epics. It's actually one of my favorite Van songs. The only distraction of the album is the awful cover art (especially the back of the CD jacket). A critic was once reviewing Bob Dylan's notoriously awful Knocked Out Loaded, and mentioned it had the worst cover art since Van Morrison's Hard Nose the Highway. While the music on Hard Nose is vastly superior to Knocked Out Loaded, the critic (possibly Steve Simels of Stereo Review) was right. The cover art here is pretty awful. Aside from that, Hard Nose is one of Van's most mellow yet still beguiling and beautiful efforts.
 Hard Nose December 28, 2007
Denise Swift (Yankee Hill, CA United States)
My "Older" (33) boyfriend bought this album for me when I was 21 back in '76. I was living in the Bay Area. It fit well. The man had great taste.
Being a musician myself I am swimming in music all the time. This album has always been on the top of my list. I had to purchase it in cassette. Then again in CD. Then again. Now I need it again.
Most Van Morrison fans have never heard of this album. I have given it
as gifts and they were blown away at how different it is from his other
works, and yet so vantastic.
For me it is his best work. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE his newer stuff
after he got fat and lost his hair. I just don't understand how these guys on here think it's okay to charge $39.99 for a copy of this CD.
Pisses me off. Should be the usual CD price. Screw that!
Can't find it on download, either.
Peace, Deadwood D.
 Here and there, and yes, it really does go everywhere... November 6, 2007
finulanu (Here, there, and everywhere)
Well, you gotta give Van credit: he never stays in the same place for very long. Abandoning the mystical, soul-tinged folk of St. Dominic's Preview, he now goes for soft-rock. This does not yield the best results. "The Great Deception"; "The Wild Children" and the title track are all in this vein, and while it's interesting to hear Van experiment, each is overlong and comes up notably short in the idea department, though "Deception" has some pretty solid lyrics to it, at least. But riding one riff for five minutes wears thin for most artists. And I would've really liked to hear him change it up. The other two suffer from the same problem: five minutes really isn't too long, but their lack of melodic ideas and changes keep them from being interesting. And while the novelty factor of hearing Van the Man sing "Bein' Green" in a blues format is high, the sap level on that is pretty high too. I could've easily done without it. I've heard there's a good version of "The Wild Children" on It's Too Late to Stop Now, but I've never heard It's Too Late to Stop Now, so I can't say I agree. Don't misunderstand, though, this is not to say Van was spent on ideas at this point. He still had a lot left in him, mixing classical with folk on the haunting "Snow in St. Anselmo" and keeping an eleven-minute jazz experiment entrancing the whole way through ("Autumn Song"); the catchy pop song "Warm Love" is also worthy of attention. Plus his take on "Wild Mountain Time" is beautiful. If you can sit through all the filler, the grade "A" music makes it all worthwhile. If not, there are several better examples of Van's talent out there.
An under-appreciated mellow Van gem October 1, 2007
K. Swanson (Austin, TX United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A 4 star Van album; 4.5 for anyone else!
It being October, the mind turns to fall, and that to me is usually accompanied by a few spins of this wax.
The whole Hard Nose record has the relaxed joy of a colorful and happy October day, and not only due to two classic fall tracks, Purple Heather and Autumn Song. Bein' Green and the rest also slide down deceptively easy; there's a lot of emotional and musical depth on quiet display here, and Van's voice reaches its mellow peak, and never really gets much sweeter than this as his recording career goes on.
Some great lyrics, too; Snow In San Anselmo is both beautiful and funny---the string bit illustrating the speeders is always a smile. The title track is another standout.
In fact, there's not a weak moment on the album, and some very strong ones.
Check out Purple Heather; no one else ever touched Van at this kind of reading. The man can sing a song and really make you feel it.
passes the test of time May 6, 2007
Barnard E. Turner (singapore)
While Morrison's legendary stage-fright has paradoxically made some of his most compelling albums the live ones, this is a consistent collection which has little of the unevenness of other studio "sides" (sorry, oldie generation!). "The Great Deception" is one of those songs which point, among other things, to the hype of the media industry and which lasts the years. "Put your money where your mouth is/ then we can get something going": a rallying call from the "Hard Nose" track itself which could charactericise the later, well-received trend of pop-star activism (inc. that of of Morrison's Killiney neighbour Bono, etc.). Stylistically, Morrison is experimenting as ever, a classic phase in his career. Could anyone else set the name "Tennessee Williams" (and repeat it) and make it a credible line ("Wild Children")? The reference to "On the Waterfront" (Rod Steiger and Marlon Brando) in the same song makes one curious to revisit the movie. A classic version of "Purple Heather," gradually crescendoing in the classic Morrison style, reflective, scatting, building up, breaking out almost in resistence to itself and then fading. Sung just like one was actuallly thinking the words for the first time, which is the greateness of the man at his best, interweaving strings as a dialogue partner. Had it in my collection for years but hadn't listened to it for some time. Was impressed by it. A great intro to Morrison too.
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