page_title: It's Too Late to Stop Now
section_title: Tour and performances
hierarchical_section_title: It's Too Late to Stop Now / Tour and performances
caption_attribution_description: English: A famous rock venue of the past, now a church. It's opposite another derelict rock venue, The Sir George Robey.
context_page_description: It's Too Late to Stop Now is a 1974 live double album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. It features performances that were recorded in concerts at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, California; the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, and the Rainbow in London, during Morrison's three-month tour with his eleven-piece band, the Caledonia Soul Orchestra, from May to July 1973. Frequently named as one of the best live albums ever, It's Too Late to Stop Now was recorded during what has often been said to be the singer's greatest phase as a live performer.
context_section_description: Noted for being a mercurial and temperamental live performer, during this short period of time in 1973, Morrison went on one of his most diligent tours in years. With his eleven-piece band, The Caledonia Soul Orchestra, which included a horn and string section, he has often been said to have been at  his live performing peak.
  Morrison said about touring during this period:
  I am getting more into performing.  It's incredible.  When I played Carnegie Hall in the fall something just happened.  All of a sudden I felt like 'you're back into  performing' and it just happened like that...A lot of times in the past I've done gigs and it was rough to get through them.  But now the combination seems to be right and it's been clicking a lot.
  Evidence of his newly invigorated joy in performing was on display during the ending of the  over-ten-minute-long dynamic performance of "Cyprus Avenue". When an audience member shouts out, "Turn it on!", Morrison good-naturedly replies, "It's turned on already."  At the very end he finished the concert with a final heartfelt, "It's too late to stop now!" giving the album its title (this line first appeared on the song "Into the Mystic").
  The concert performances were described by Erik Hage as "sequences of a young soul lion whipping the crowd into a frenzy and then stopping on a dime—teasing out anticipation, rushing, receding, and coaxing every drop out of his band."
  Guitarist John Platania says "He had a funeral for a lot of his old songs on stage. With Caledonia, he really got off on performing. There was definitely joy getting onstage at that point. That was a wonderful time for everybody. It was really like a family. Ordinarily, with rock 'n' rollers, jazzers and classical musicians in the band, you'd think it was a three-headed serpent but everybody got along famously."
  The performances on the live album were from tapes made at the beginning of the tour in Los Angeles and also in Santa Monica and  London. Marco Bario, who attended the opening night concert at The Troubadour, said in Playgirl: "he was exceptional. The mood was right, the audience was receptive, and the music left no comparisons to be made. It was the finest opening night performance by a consummate musician that I have ever witnessed."
  The London concerts were the first time he had appeared in that city since performing with Them, six years earlier. The two concerts at the Rainbow Theatre in London were referred to as "the rock event of the year" by critics according to Ritchie Yorke in his biography. The 24 July 1973 London Rainbow concert was the first BBC simulcast broadcast simultaneously on BBC 2 television and Radio 2 stereo so that viewers with strategically sited loudspeakers could enjoy "stereo TV". The broadcast took place on 27 May 1974.
caption: The Rainbow Theatre in London
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