COTL thoughts on the studio attempt?

where can i get a copy of studio cotl....?

Things came to a head during the recording of the third album which Jim had originally wanted to call ‘The Celebration Of The Lizard’ He had intended using one whole side of the album for that poem and as he was in full Lizard King period wanted the sleeve of the album in synthetic snakeskin carrying the title in gold lettering.
Ray in his not unusual role of middle man tried to explain that the album was not going to work. He explained that it was too ‘vague’ and too ‘slight’. Jim’s face dropped. He finally got the band to agree that the album would have short extracts of his poetry which he would recite. Jim even went as far as to record the poetry but the whole idea was eventually dropped. The way Jim described the event to a journalist at about the time of the sessions reflects a calm he was probably far from feeling.
“I was going to add a bit of poetry in the spaces between the songs. But who wants to listen to a guy who is just talking? It’s the music that counts. That’s what they want to hear. Anyone can talk. But how many guys can play music and sing?”
From Stumbling Into Neon

ISNT THERE A STUDIO VERSION ON LEGACY- THE ABSOLUTE BEST OF THE DOORS??

WHY THEY DO THAT THEN??
I NEVER BOUGHT THE ALBUM, SO MANY DOORS COMPALATIONS OUT THERE.

AHHHH I SEE SAYS THE BLIND MAN!!!

On February 19th/20th 1968 The Doors enter the TTG Studios with Bruce Botnick and begin work on what was meant to be the centre piece of their third album the lyric poem 'The Celebration Of The Lizard'.
Despite the initial euporia at tackling such a project the cohesiveness of the piece falls apart and is never recovered so the work is eventually dropped and apart from an early demo/rehearsal that was taped nothing satisfactory exists except for the odd live version.

Wonder what that first session was like for the lads....its a pity that it never amounted to the album centrepiece it was supposed to be.......also a shame that the other recorded versions don't seem to exist. The LA Times reported that they had recorded/rehearsed versions varying from 23 to 36 minutes and were expecting it to feature as one whole side of the album and part of the second. Bit like The Doors version of Thick As a brick.......

I remember the first time I read 'Shaman As Superstar' which was part of the WFTS songbook back in the early 70s and got a glimpse of what life was like for The Doors in the studio......Jim did not take it well when Ray told him COTL was not gonna work....
"I'm the square of the Western hemisphere" You like people? I hate 'em...screw 'em...I don't need 'em....Oh I need 'em...to grow potatoes"!
Would have been interesting if it had worked and had as was envisaged ended up as a stage play with a Doors backing....


TH E D O O R S B E G I N R E C O R D I N G W A I T I N G F O R T H E S U N
Mon. Feb. 19th - Tue. 20th: In The Studio
The Doors go into T.T.G. Recording Studios in Hollywood, newly equipped with state of the art 16-track recording capabilities, and begin recordings for their third album Waiting For The Sun.
On the first day...
"The Celebration of the Lizard" and spontaneity are the order of the day and the band, full of high spirits and diligence, tackles production of this crucial arrangement which is to cover one side of the album.

On the 2nd day.......
The Doors again concentrate their energies on "The Celebration of the Lizard" and are again pleased with the results. However, the band pays so much attention to the small details and intricacies of the piece they lose the overall cohesiveness and it lacks the smooth transitions from part to part that is essential to the orchestration of the piece. The Doors are dissatisfied with the overall feel, especially the perfectionist Paul Rothchild, and the piece is in jeopardy of making the cut. Jim however is satisfied with the piece but loses the argument to technical aspects. He and the others like the feel but the song does not seem structured strongly enough to make it on a professional record.

Early March: In the studio
Producer Paul Rothchild is becoming evermore the perfectionist demanding take after take and the sessions are going awry right from the beginning. Jim is very uninterested in the process of recording and with his constant drinking and partying he is becoming very unreliable and quite creatively unproductive. He has somewhat taken an 'I don't care' attitude and after his masterpiece "The Celebration" is rejected he withdraws and rebels. It takes over 130 attempts to get "The Unknown Soldier" recorded to Paul's high standards. John Densmore gets fed up with everything and quits but returns the next day.
Ray and Robby sense that something needs to be done about Jim. They talk to Paul and decide to hire someone to keep an eye on Jim while out drinking to make sure he gets to the studio and to upcoming gigs on time. Paul suggests they hire Bobby Neuwirth, a former roadie with Bob Dylan's band, who can think and drink on a par with Jim, to pose as a film maker. Elektra pays half of Neuwirth's salary and John, Ray and Robby pitch in on the other half. Jim quickly figures out what is going on but plays along for awhile. Neuwirth soon figures out there is no one that can stop Jim from drinking and joins him in bars all over town drinking and partying while giving Jim a companion to talk film with or to relate and bounce ideas off of while they're out and about. He becomes more of a drinking partner than an overseer and coordinator.
The recording sessions are getting worse and worse. Jim often keeps the others waiting for hours and hours and blows his chance to get his masterpiece "Celebration of The Lizard" on the record. It was supposed to cover one entire side of the LP but is too disjointed musically and with Jim's attitude in the studio it never comes to fruition. The Doors do make a version Jim likes but the others disagree with him. Upset, he leaves for a few hours returns extremely drunk, lowers the lights and goes into the recording booth completely plastered and sings the take of "Five To One". (If you listen closely to the part at the end of the song where he says: "Hey come on honey...(swig)... go along home and wait for me baby and I'll be there in just a little while..." you can hear him take a swig of his bottle of Brandy.)
Jim, feeling the pressures of having to come up with new material, often while in the studio, is drinking more and more. Jim takes off whenever he feels, often frequenting the local taverns, and invites all kinds of party goers and groupies back to the studio. John can't take it anymore and quits again. Robby after a few days talks him into to coming back and on the road with the band.
Though the album is nowhere near finished it is time to release a single. "The Unknown Soldier"/ "We Could Be So Good Together" single is released. Many radio stations avoid playing the song due to its war anthem. To promote the single, Elektra produces a short film climaxing with Jim getting shot while bound to a pole on the beach.
From Doors Interactive History

It is possibly during this time that Densmore misses a weekend of Doors gigs and is replaced by a local drummer for several concerts. Before coming back to the fold.

Things came to a head during the recording of the third album which Jim had originally wanted to call ‘The Celebration Of The Lizard’ He had intended using one whole side of the album for that poem and as he was in full Lizard King period wanted the sleeve of the album in synthetic snakeskin carrying the title in gold lettering.
Ray in his not unusual role of middle man tried to explain that the album was not going to work. He explained that it was too ‘vague’ and too ‘slight’. Jim’s face dropped. He finally got the band to agree that the album would have short extracts of his poetry which he would recite. Jim even went as far as to record the poetry but the whole idea was eventually dropped. The way Jim described the event to a journalist at about the time of the sessions reflects a calm he was probably far from feeling.
“I was going to add a bit of poetry in the spaces between the songs. But who wants to listen to a guy who is just talking? It’s the music that counts. That’s what they want to hear. Anyone can talk. But how many guys can play music and sing?”
From Stumbling Into Neon

It would be interesting to know when the band actually performed the (whole) song live for the first time......it was played during the Fillmore East shows of March 22/23 1968 but its not likely the whole piece was performed.
Mike Jahn says of it in his book which highlights these gigs...
"with one eye on the audience and one on his books of Indian lore Morrison is beginning to sing his long in preperation COTL....The Lizard takes nearly a half hour in concert and The Doors have no intention of attempting it all....though its reputation has spread through the underground. They did it in San Diego and the audience was speechless."
He goes on to mention the band cut it short and go into LMF. The San Diego reference most likely refers to the bands gig at the Community Hall in November 67 and was likely another shortened preview of the piece as they had not (as far as we know) refined it by that time into what it would become.
The likely candidate is The Kaleidescope in LA (later The Aquarius) on April 11th which was a benefit for striking KPPC/KMPX radio staff in California which received a lot of support from the artistic community at the time.


"with one eye on the audience and one on his books of Indian lore Morrison is beginning to sing his long in preperation COTL....The Lizard takes nearly a half hour in concert and The Doors have no intention of attempting it all....though its reputation has spread through the underground. They did it in San Diego and the audience was speechless."
Mike Jahn Jim Morrison & The Doors

I wonder if one of those poetry snippets he recorded is the intro to Soft Parade that is on the new box set?

I am troubled immensely by your eyes,
I am struk by the feather of your soft reply,
The sound of glass speaks quick distain,
And conceals what your eyes fight to explain

i think the reason why cotl is never done on a record is that it´s missing the magic they had created on stage with that masterpiece. the version on absolutely live is 100 times better than the one on legacy. with the live version you can cet a piece of the magic at that time while the sudioversion is a cheap plastic rip off. i think the song is a mix of poetry jim used in different songs to start new songs)as on the absolutely live cd all different poems are numbered as different songs. i think cotl still was a work in progress wich needed more time to put it on a record to get it the way they wanted it. they only problem was that a few(not calling names*lol*) didn't want to invest time on cotl while recording a few different songs(wich are made easier) have a greater chance of scoring a new hit.
like i said, i love the live version and think the version on the legacy album isn't what i've expected. i expected a version wich was better than the live version but they came up with a version wich is nothing like they were capable of. i'm missing the darknes of the end(studio) and it almost seems like the legacy version is missing the soul of them all. like they were doing it from sheet music instead of the great improvisation they have on stage.

i (almost)thought it was a waste of space on the cd, but on the other hand, who would have bought legacy if it was the so manniest best of album?

i did know that the version on absolutely live was mixed, but i have to day that it's a great job and you can't hear that it is from different tapes(no cuttingsounds and a constant sound from the audience) i downloaded the legacy version on the net and the first time i heard it, i was dissapointed.was that the track where we should buy a new cd for? i think i can do a better job in my 16 track studio than they did on legacy.

The "studio COTL" that we have seems to be a demo version. Bruce Botnick had said so around the time of "Perception", either in person to a very prominent Doors collector or during a promo interview. He mentioned that it was recorded at the end of 1967 (Nov-Dec) and that some other songs were also taped. It looks like this has been done at the "I.D. Sound Recorders" studio - the former Liberty studio, where Bruce had worked. It is known that it was Bruce who was responsible - no Paul on this demo session.

Later, Bruce stated that this demo was recorded between the SD and WFTS sessions. This quote can be found in Shindig (2017). IMO this version is more credible; I just can't see the COTL demo recorded at Nov-Dec. 1967. But first things first.

When did WFTS sessions happen? The first exact mention was done by Doug Lubahn in his book: 9.01.1968 to 28.03.1968, but not on the daily basis. IMO this means that Doug had been employed during this period of time, and any other sessions proceeded without him. So we can assume that the basic tracks and the main vocals were finished on 28.03.

Then, we've learned the date of the working mix of the album - 18.04.1968 (WFTS 50th Anni. edition).

Now, we have Vince Treanor's book. This great source is somehow alternating between things witnessed by Vince first-hand, and things Vince or his helpers (?) gleaned from other accounts. Like, Vince acknowledges the "1967 demo". If it is from 1967, then it hasn't been possible for Vince to witness it. Any studio things he witnessed must be since the beginning of 1968.

Vince says that the first session was on 14.01.1968 (Sunset). Everything before it was rehearsals. (BTW, Lubahn describes rehearsals as taking places in the Doors office, as early as October 1967 - but there was no Doors office that early. It could be he talks about the rehearsals for the single - The Unknown Soldier - those are quite possible for Oct. 1967; as for the album stuff, it depends on what exactly the band had by that moment.)

Vince says the 14.01.1968 session was for COTL; at least they did some run-through for Paul. Unfortunately, what Vince says is not formulated with some exactness. Later, I'll give specific examples of this.

BTW 14.01.1968 was Sunday and it's hard to imagine the pressing need for The Doors to have a session on a Sunday. But the session on 3.3.1968 which gave us Easy Ride had been also on Sunday, so there's some strange anomaly with this.

So it could be understood that Paul did not like the state of COTL and the next session, 15.01.1968, was devoted to Spanish Caravan. It had been described by Joan Didion and the mention of the upcoming West Covina shows is crucial. Also, that the band planned to rehearse in West Covina.

Recently, there were documents published on the Mild Equator site showing the intention of Bruce to record The Doors live on the West Covina date. What is unclear - the purpose. Wasn't it too early for a live album? Or, did the Elektra brass know that The Doors have problems with material for the new album - this early? It seems that Jac Holzman did not press the band and Paul for the studio sessions before the start of 1968, as the band had a quite solid live schedule.

So, the West Covina dates come and go - no recording, no COTL performed. Obviously COTL wasn't anywhere near ready. (Even for a demo, I would add.)

Then the band rehearses and probably records something else at Sunset. We know that Spanish Caravan and Summer's Almost Gone were used for the purposes of the 18.04.1968 working mix as the Sunset recordings. But, Vince says there were some further Sunset sessions - after the start of the TTG ones, that is. (If SAG comes from one such session, this would mean The Doors had no intention from the very start to record it. We just don't know.)

Then there were various events - Morrison arrested in Las Vegas, Adam Holzman's birthday, The Doors concert on 10.02.1968 (Berkeley) and 17.02.1968 (Phoenix). After these, the TTG sessions - since 19.02.1968.

It's hard to make a unified impression between what is said about the COTL sessions on 19-20.02.1968 in "On The Road" and in Treanor's book. But Vince reports the important thing: on 19.02. the band played the whole COTL, and on 20.02 Paul started recording it in sections. Then he made a composite of the best takes of these sections, and his verdict was, the piece is too much, but NTTTE is what was needed. Then on 28.02.1968 the NTTTE sessions start.

(One thing that "On The Road" and Treanor's book have in common re: 19-20.02. TTG sessions - that Paul wasn't present on the 19.02. one - hint, hint...nudge, nudge... In theory, it could be the demo was recorded on 19.02.1968. But, the tape of this COTL demo does not seem to be from TTG. I.D. Sound seems to be the proper location for COTL demo.)

Big questions are:
1) what was the need for the demo?
2) what about the March session for COTL, and how come COTL became 36 mins from 24 min long?

One thing I haven't mentioned so far - somehow, Vince states all the times in his book that COTL was intended as one side of the album with Jim's poems on another side. There is not a single mention of a Doors LP with some Doors songs on the other side.

----------
Now all the things are IMO.

1) IMO the demo was not for the band and not for Paul, but strictly for the top brass. IMO Jac Holzman heard it, did not like it (who would?), and told Paul that, would Jim and the band be able to come up with a decent COTL during the very first TTG sessions, to proceed, and if not, to halt the COTL immediately as the Doors album piece. But, it wouldn't be good to offend Jim Morrison with straight-out rejection. And this is why IMO there were talks of an album with COTL and Jim's poems - as a backing plan. Such an album would be Jim's. So IMO that was some diplomatic solution by Jac.

2) We don't know anything for sure about the March session. The demo of COTL is 17 min, and it's next to impossible to imagine a version (or a need) for a 36-min version. Either the reporter got something wrong (there were similar reports of "rock gigantism" on the Beach Boy's "Heroes & Villains" in 1967, at the very least), or Jim Morrison experimented with his work past its "Doors deadline" of 20.02.1968, probably with the purpose of showcasing his poetry. When all he needed to do was to develop a piece close to his demo (which differs from the printed version only regarding the ending and some bits within NTTTE).

As for when the COTL demo was recorded - IMO this happened some time after 10.02.1968 (Berkeley show), but the explanation requires another long post. I should mention here just one thing - that such a notion, COTL demo in the time period 11-19.02.1968, satisfies Bruce's quote of demo having been recorded before the WFTS sessions. Technically the sessions have started on 9.01.1968 or 14.01.1968 at Sunset, but IMO the participants do not keep the Sunset sessions (those before 19.02.1968) in high regard; it was quite often that they said that the WFTS sessions started at TTG. So there are different angles from which one can look at Botnick's words (BTW, he's the guy who stated that Jim had sung all (LOL) 24 songs he'd written (LOL) to Ray on that fateful 1965 beach meeting, and that it had been Jim who told him so, and that Ray confirmed.)