Interview - Dr Peter Mills: A new way of looking at a career in music

Dr Peter Mills, apparently, has revolutionised popular music biography.

The Leeds Metropolitan University lecturer, is more modest than his publishers, who make this claim. "It is quite a grand claim isn't it?" says Dr Mills over a double espresso.

"It's a little inaccurate, because it isn't really a biography. That said, I do think the book creates the opportunity or presents a way of writing about music that hasn't been done before. So that's what I would claim, fairly unashamedly."

While he is not as bold as his publishers, Dr Mills has a right to claim a new way of writing about his subject, certainly. Hymns to the Silence: Inside the Words and Music of Van Morrison traces themes and the life of the singer purely through his music.

In his book, published by Continuum, Dr Mills provides a detailed study of Morrison's career, focusing on his music and discussing key themes, such as the American jazz and blues music which influenced his sound, the Irishness of his music and his style and use of his voice.

A fan since he was a student, the book is a perfect way for Dr Mills to celebrate the life of one of his favourite singers while maintaining a respectful distance.

"He's quite resistant to biography. He doesn't like his life being written about and I think that's fair enough. But the music that's out there in the public domain seemed to be under appreciated critically and that was something I hoped to address," says Dr Mills.

A senior lecturer in Media and Popular Culture at Leeds Met, Dr Mills has been a long-time, but not life-long fan of the music.

Growing up he listened to the music of his own generation – The Sex Pistols, The Jam, XTC, Elvis Costello – Van Morrison didn't really figure. "I'd hear of him, but never really heard his music," he says. He was, however, a fan of Dexy's Midnight Runners, best known for their song Come on Eileen, and as a teenager Dr Mills wrote to lead singer Kevin Rowland.

"In the early Eighties when I was growing up if you wanted to tell someone you thought they were great and you loved their music, you had to sit down and write a letter to them," says Dr Mills.

"My students tell me that they follow the musicians they look up to on Twitter and send messages to them digitally, but then you had to make the effort to sit down and write something."

Remarkably, the teenager received a reply from his idol and Kevin Rowland also suggested he might like to listen to a record called Astral Weeks by Van Morrison.

"He belonged to the generation before me, which is why I hadn't listened to him, but when Kevin Rowland suggested it, I went out and bought the record and listened to it, thought 'that's interesting', then forgot about it," says Dr Mills.

The narrative with Morrison re-opened when as an English Literature student in Liverpool, Dr Mills saw the Martin Scorsese documentary The Last Waltz, a movie of the final concert of The Band.

Dr Mills says: "They had lots of special guests, including Van and his performance of Caravan just knocked me out. I thought it was incredible and beautiful and it was only later that I remembered he was the same guy that Kevin Rowland had told me about. I thought 'I have to go back to that record' so I dug out Astral Weeks, heard it completely differently and then I really 'got' it." It was the start of a love affair with the music of Morrison. Dr Mills collected the back catalogue, but when it came to discovering more about his new musical hero, he found little that satisfied.

"There was very little available, which I found really strange," says Dr Mills.

"And what was available have been either attempts at biography or chronological lists of his career. They've all been okay, readable, but I kept waiting for someone to write the book which really explored his music and his life through it."

The book was not forthcoming. "I kept waiting and eventually I realised if I wanted to read the book, I was going to have to write it," he says. That was five years ago and the book is finally published this month.

"It's not a long fan letter, and it's a not a biography," says Dr Mills.

"I've always felt that he wasn't critically acclaimed as he ought to be and hopefully this will make people go back to the music," says Dr Mills.

"I don't expect it to trouble the best-seller list, but it's not written as a purely academic book. It's a reappraisal of his career told entirely through the music," says Dr Mills.

Hymns to the Silence, Continuum, 15.99.