{"id":34276,"date":"2025-08-31T07:17:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-31T07:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/34276\/"},"modified":"2025-08-31T07:17:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-31T07:17:10","slug":"celebrating-van-morrison-at-80","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/34276\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Van Morrison at 80"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">\nThe prolific Belfast singer songwriter turns 80 today\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Van Morrison poses for a publicity photo circa 1977. Photo: Getty\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/f928ab3d-0cdc-439e-9963-cd23fe6e9a25.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Van Morrison poses for a publicity photo circa 1977. Photo: Getty<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">I didn\u2019t know my Uncle Coleman too well, although as a chef in Slane Castle he slipped me a complimentary ticket to the David Bowie gig I mentioned in last week\u2019s paper. What I do know is that he had the good sense to marry my Auntie Rosalie.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">As opposed to the men in my family, who are best viewed in the dark and even then only from a great distance, they had several daughters together who are all as gorgeous as each other, and were probably honoured with a plaque by Meath County Council for improving the region\u2019s DNA pool immeasurably.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The prolific Belfast singer songwriter turns 80 today Van Morrison poses for a publicity photo circa 1977. Photo:&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[18,117,19,17,337,23942,26706],"class_list":{"0":"post-34276","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-people-culture-magazine","14":"tag-van-morrison"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}