I attended with my friends Eddie and Zoe Irvine and Helen Brooker.

Stuart Baillie writes:

I’m at The Strand cinema in east Belfast, one of 150 people who have gathered here to witness Van Morrison, back on the scene. He once featured here during the skiffle boom, playing tunes between the matinee features. He was a teenager, Lonnie Donegan ruled and rock was young. Did he play with Deanie Sands and George Jones, or the Sputniks, the original combo from Hyndford Street? I’m not the Vanorak I once was, but there are a few here who will know the chapter and the verse. I meet one wide- eyed individual who has seen Morrison perform almost 1,000 times. He’s rather excited but hey, to see the legend close-up, intense and revisiting his own history, that’s quite a deal.

Van is affable, connected and seemingly glad to be here. He hears that this is a hardcore audience and counters with the admission that this is a hardcore band. Sure enough they have the chops to play the blues the jazz and the country – whatever suits the drift. He plays a few selections from ‘Pay The Devil’ – Nashville in spirit but apparently recorded “with a bunch of cowboys in south Wales”. Therefore we roll with the sentiments of ‘This Has Got To Stop’, even though the author tells you that it never will.

I’ve probably mused a few times about Van’s senior years and the tightening circle of his art, the salmon returning to the spawning ground. Tonight is the most glorious illustration of this. His daughter Shauna on backing vocals, the players vamping and riffing and the quiet sizzle of ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’. Once he sang it with rage. These days, there’s an acceptance that you may lose a few lovers to the allure of New Orleans. But onwards, inevitably.

He plays sweet blues in the tradition of T Bone Walker. He rails about the UK media in a manner that is acutely conditioned by experience, even though he speaks for all of us. ‘Thanks For The Information’ is tender. ‘Monte Carlo’ is a slow drive down a beautiful corniche and ‘Pagan Heart’ summons up the spirits of John Lee Hooker and Robert Johnson, way back to Dockery’s plantation.

What a trip, such a privilege and yes, a magic location. The ley lines of east Belfast pulsate beneath us. We are wholely, into the music.