and merciless reviews. In February 1980, Morrison and a group of musicians traveled to Super Bear, a studio in the French Alps, to record (on the site of a former abbey) what is considered to be the most controversial album in his discography; later “Morrison admitted that his original concept was even more esoteric than the final product.” The album, Common One, consisted of six songs, each of varying length. The longest, “Summertime in England” lasted fifteen and one-half minutes and ended with the words,”Can you feel the silence?”. NME magazine’s Paul Du Noyer called the album “colossally smug and cosmically dull; an interminable, vacuous and drearily egotistical stab at spirituality: Into the muzak.” Even Greil Marcus, whose previous writings had been favourably inclined towards Morrison, said: “It’s Van acting the part of the ‘mystic poet’ he thinks he’s supposed to be.”