A short statement announced the news to the world: the musician Van Morrison, the one they call Van The Man, is to become a father again at the age of 64.

For fans of the reclusive singer, who seldom mentions his personal life in public, it amounted to an astonishing fit of candour. They were informed via his website that “Gigi and Van Morrison are proud to announce the birth of their first-born son, George Ivan Morrison III”.

“Gigi” referred to Gigi Lee, Morrison’s manager and the executive producer of the DVD of a live replaying of his 1968 album Astral Weeks, widely regarded as his masterpiece. The message went on to say that

“Little Van, born Dec 28, 2009” was “the spitting image of his daddy” and was a dual citizen of the UK and America.

On the global message board Twitter, fans dissected the revelation. Some offered congratulations, others seemed surprised that the singer was still alive. Within a few hours, all over the world, Ivan Morrison III was being referred to as the “Mini-Van”.

Morrison’s first child, from his first marriage to Janet Minto, is now 39; he had two more children with Michelle Rocca, a former Miss Ireland.

He becomes the latest to embark upon what has become almost a rite of passage for middle-aged musicians, a path trodden by Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton and Rick Parfitt.

Psychologists have suggested that such men are driven by a desire to extend their lifespan: musicians themselves often say that late fatherhood has given them a second chance at family life, after years of drink, drugs and touring, when they are financially and emotionally stable.

By the time Rod Stewart fathered children again, at 60, his house was equipped with a full-sized football pitch. Mick Hucknell has said that the arrival of a daughter when he was 47 helped him to avoid a midlife crisis.

David Bowie, who named his first-born son Zowie Bowie and then missed most of his childhood, has said that he relished the chance to bring up a daughter in his fifties, by which time he was teetotal and happily married.

He has claimed that one of the biggest challenges for the older rock musician is the hours that fatherhood entails. “Musicians who are used to getting up at noon or 1pm . . . are bleary eyed for the rest of the day,” he said.

Eric Clapton even wrote a song about it, entitled So Tired: “My mood is getting snappy/Daddy won’t change no nappy.”

What effect George Ivan Morrison III will have on his notoriously prickly father remains to be seen.

Ken Livingstone, who became a father at 57, advised that “the social life will go for the first few years”, though he added that in his late 50s he was “quite happy to let it go”.

Lord Brocket, who recently fathered a child at 57, feels that “by the age of 50 most of us have slowed down a bit, are not trying to rule the world and have worked those long hours trying to set up the business that will support the family. So this time we can actually spend quality time with the child at the most crucial part of its development. I’m sure that a bond with a child now is that much stronger.”

Explore Music

• CD Reviews

• Live Reviews

• Classical

Editor's choice

• Sugababes — a band or a brand?
• Scorsese: ‘The emotional always comes first’
• Helena Bonham Carter: 'I'm not a dirty person'