Vinyl Record

Van Morrison - The Healing Game

Van Morrison - The Healing Game on LP vinyl. A 1997 record available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel, Ireland.

LP · 1997

Available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel.

Buyer notes: 1997 LP, currently available from the Kilmorna Collection vinyl shelf. Pay for pickup in Listowel or ship within Ireland for EUR 5.50.

The Healing Game is Van Morrison's 1997 album of return, renewal and musical memory, made after a stretch of 1990s records that kept moving between spiritual reflection, jazz phrasing and rhythm-and-blues craft. It opens with Rough God Goes Riding, a stormy invocation that sets the record's scale, then moves through Burning Ground, Waiting Game, Sometimes We Cry and the title track with the confidence of a bandleader who knows exactly how to let horns, backing voices and groove circle a phrase. The album is steeped in Belfast memory, street-corner singing, radio ghosts and the sense that music can recover what ordinary speech cannot. It is polished, but not soft: Morrison sounds engaged with the old materials of blues, gospel and soul as living methods for working through time, damage and persistence.

The Healing Game matters because it is one of Morrison's strongest 1990s statements, reconnecting his spiritual vocabulary with muscular R&B arrangements and autobiographical memory. It shows the late-century version of his craft: less mythic than the early classics, but deeply fluent.

For collectors, this is a key later Van Morrison title, especially for shelves that do not stop at the 1968-1974 run. It rewards listeners who want the mature bandleader mode, where brass, backing vocals and repeated phrases build a healing ritual rather than a nostalgia exercise.

Soulful 1990s Van Morrison with horn-driven R&B, gospel backing voices, reflective ballads, jazz inflection, Belfast memory and rolling mid-tempo warmth.

Recommended for: Van Morrison collectors exploring beyond the early classics; Listeners drawn to horn-led soul, gospel and R&B textures; Fans of mature songwriter albums with memory and spiritual force.

When was The Healing Game released? The Healing Game was released in 1997. Which songs define the album? Rough God Goes Riding, Burning Ground, Sometimes We Cry and The Healing Game are central to its sound and mood. Is The Healing Game part of Van Morrison's classic early period? No. It is a later album, but it reconnects strongly with the soul, gospel, blues and memory work that run through his catalogue.