Astral Weeks is the title of a famous folk-rock and R & B album by (Northern Irish) musician Van Morrison released in November of 1968 (see 1968 in music) on the Warner Brothers Records label. Astral Weeks was critically acclaimed upon its first release and remains a cult favorite, in spite of never achieving significant mainstream sales success.

The influential rock journalist Lester Bangs wrote in 1979: "It sounded like the man who made Astral Weeks was in terrible pain, pain most of Van Morrison's previous works had only suggested; but like the later albums by The Velvet Underground, there was a redemptive element in the blackness, ultimate compassion for the suffering of others, and a swath of pure beauty and mystical awe that cut right through the heart of the work."

Greil Marcus, in an interview in The Believer (June/July 2006, p. 78), said that Martin Scorsese told him that the first half of his movie Taxi Driver was based on Astral Weeks.

(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)