Van Morrison sits in a chair, sipping water, in a New York hotel room. He's the picture of well–dressed calm in a dark–gray suit, a cream–color shirt and a black ascot, with ginger–red hair peeking out from under his fedora. But there is no mistaking the challenge in his eyes, even through his brown–tinted sunglasses or in his gritty Irish brogue. "It wasn't pop or rock," he says flatly. "The record was anti–pop and –rock." Morrison sighs with irritation. "I don't get the part about it being classic rock. I never got that."

Morrison, 63, is talking about his 1968 album Astral Weeks, an acoustic–soul masterpiece that is his most universally acclaimed record and, until recently, his most neglected in concert. Four decades later, the singer has returned to Astral Weeks with a passion. He performed the album in its entirety last November in L.A. (captured on the new Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl) and re–created the record again at four recent New York shows. A tour is in the works.

orn George Ivan Morrison in Belfast, Morrison recorded Astral Weeks in two eight–hour sessions in New York in the fall of 1968. The eight songs are a hushed balance of spidery improvisation and lyric mystery, with Morrison citing places, faces and blurred memories in deep–blues growls, trancelike chanting, and ascending, almost wordless release. In fact, Morrison, then 23, made the LP at the lowest ebb of his singing life: after the collapse of his electric–R&B band Them and the success of his 1967 single "Brown Eyed Girl," in the midst of frustrating recording and production deals. But in Astral Weeks songs such as "Cyprus Avenue," "Beside You" and the epic "Madame George," Morrison achieved a creative breakthrough that combined the elemental fury of his Them classics "Gloria" and "Mystic Eyes" with the higher powers of American jazz and gospel.

Morrison is now fiercely possessive of his triumph, claiming he's heard other artists cover Astral Weeks tracks but has stayed unimpressed. "They couldn't do it," he says. "That's another reason why I'm doing this now. I'm the only person who can."