Last year, at the peak of the pandemic, the Irish rock legend Van Morrison made his displeasure with the UK’s lockdown measures very well-known. Morrison released a statement about “pseudo-science,” planned a legal challenge against the live-music ban in Northern Ireland, and shared a series of anti-lockdown protest songs, including “Born To Be Free” and the Eric Clapton collaboration “Do You Want To Be A Slave?” Right now, Morrison is getting ready to release his new double album Latest Record Project: Volume 1, which includes songs like “They Own The Media,” “Why Are You On Facebook?,” and “Where Have All The Rebels Gone?” In a recent interview, Morrison claimed that people are mad at him because freedom of speech is not currently “in the framework.”

As MSN points out, Morrison recently spoke with the Times‘ Saturday Review, and he had some things to say about freedom:

The only other person who has any traction or motivation to speak out about what’s going on, to get out there and question things, is Eric [Clapton]…

If I can write about it, I do. Poetic licence, freedom of speech … these used to be OK. Why not now? I don’t understand it. Some people call it a cult. It is like a religion. Whether anyone agrees with me or not is irrelevant…

Just as there should be freedom of the press, there should be freedom of speech, and at the minute it feels like that is not in the framework… If you do songs that are an expression of freedom of speech, you get a very negative reaction.

Morrison also called into question whether live shows would come back soon, claiming that World Economic Forum executive chairman Klaus Schwab “is running the whole thing”:

I heard that some music promoters met with the people at Imperial College who are running the whole thing…. Well, really, Klaus is running the whole thing… Your guess is as good as mine because freedom is not a given any more. You have to fight for it. That’s where the blues come in.