Van was short-tempered and drunk, and Wassel was Wassel. One night, Wassel went to see Van Morrison at his hotel. “I throw open the window, pick him up, flip him, shake him out by the ankles. “So here’s this disc jockey,” he said in 2001. When bribery failed, he used other means. When Van Morrison’s producer died abruptly of a heart attack at the end of 1967, Morrison’s contact at Bang Records became Carmine “Wassel” DeNoia, a “low level” mobster later convicted of bribing radio DJs to play certain records more heavily than others.
