The Doors In Concert!

"Morrison wasn't on stage when the music began. Suddenly there was a confrontation on one of the downhill aisles leading to the stage. He stumbled down the steps, entangling his black leather and a mass of tangled hair with the offstage darkness. He stopped to pose, and a flash of light caught him trying to regain his balance. The taunts began immediately. He responded with force indifference or a threat of random violence. The other Doors were in other rooms. They played on, almost oblivious to his ranting and raving. A familiar riff would begin, the audience would briefly come to attention, and he would leave the spotlight to inflict his boredom on them. He would fall into shadows searching for worthy opponents. There were glimpses of physical confrontations: crew cutted jocks protecting their interested girlfriends from his suggestions. Morrison's fist shooting blindly in the direction
of obscene threats as a fat security guard grabs at
him with a pathetic attempt to control the situation.
Morrison embraces the guard and tries to pull him towards the stage while delivering a passionate plea for
weight loss. The guard frees himself, runs up the aisle
to derisive laughter, dropping his hat. Morrison
tries to wear the hat but it is too small and suddenly
he is disgusted with the whole scene and lets out a
frenzied scream. Silence in the theatre for the moment.
The audience stared as though it was a horrible car
crash where the spirit was maimed and the blood ran
into the gutter of the soul. Morrison twitched in some
kind of death throes. The concert ended abruptly.
Morrison howled but it was not with ecstasy. It was more Ginsberg than Blake. The lights came up before the band could walk back up the aisles and the audience booed. Morrison stood still listening. I stared so that my eyes would forever cover him. Some people were leaving, others still booing, a few watched him as intensely as I did. Then in this haphazard atmosphere he threw back his head and began to chant and dance in place like some possessed American Indian brave consecrating a sacred land, cleaning the abuse and disdain with singular belief so powerful that shivers ran through me. And my heart froze with undeniable blessing. A girl ran at him with scissors flashing to cut his hair and he disappeared into a circle of anonymous flesh carried him away."
David Dalton. author of ‘The LastHoly Fool’
witnessing the power of The Doors

www.jimlizardking.de/yy3.gif
[/img]

"It always bothered me to have the police hanging around the shows waiting to bust us on any word or thing we did. But we expected it, it was all part of the trip."
Robby Krieger. 1978.

"I just try to give the
kids a good time."
Jim Morrison 1969.

A concert by The Doors scheduled for June 28 in Plaza
Monumental bullring here was cancelled at the last moment when it was recalled that the date also marked the first anniversary of the 1968 student revolt in this
city. It was feared that the crowds of youths who would
turn out for the rock event might serve as a catalyst
for some elements to touch off a demonstration
commemorating the anniversary.
Variety Magazine July 9 1969.
On The forthcoming gig at Mexico City's Forum Cafe

"I'd rather play for 20 million acid heads than a
convention of beer drinkers."
Ray Manzarek. 1971.

"The audience was one of the best we've ever had. Everyone seemed to take it so easy. It's probably the most informed, receptive audience I've ever seen in my life."
Jim Morrison on the Roundhouse London gigs

The house lights dimmed, The Doors were announced, and a peculiar tension built in the air; an excitement pulsed and moved from the shadowed corners, lacing the room with an emotional current. "Hello," said Jim. And they began to play. He was a reviled figure: hated by the press; never taken seriously by critics who felt themselves lost amid his cinematic imagery. He had dressed himself in funereal leather, dropped his pants, shouted obscenities, and was guilty only of believing a myth he had created. And after all, that's something almost all rock stars are guilty of.
Eric Van Lustbader,Madison Square Garden's Felt Forum. CircusMagazine,September 1971

"A hushed 'Here they come' ran through the crowd and necks craned expectantly towards the small gate outside the right field foul line.
The three Doors' musicians...mounted the stage
looking all business. They positioned themselves with
their instruments and immediately started playing.
After a short musical introduction, singer-warlock Jim
Morrison, wearing skin-tight leather pants, a pea coat and a sullen expression, leaped up the side stairs,
faked a spastic stumble crossing the stage, and lurched
into the lyrics in a slightly hoarse voice. it is undeniably compelling. The creative nature of the Doors'
musicianship became more apparent with every song. Their versatility with the instruments and their unique rapport in the tight arrangements provided a perfect backdrop for Morrison's jolting images...the whole situation began to take on an atmosphere of unreality." Greg Robertson,Hi-Corbett Field Baseball Stadium -
Randolph Park, Tucson,1968
Tucson Daily Citizen,June 29,1968

"The Doors latest album, Waiting For The Sun, wasn't half what it
would have been if the original plan included Jim
Morrison's "Celebration Of The Lizard" had succeeded.

With this in mind, I looked forward eagerly to The Doors' concert.
Even as influenced as it was by too much Hamm's beer (throughout the
concert, The Doors, particularly lead singer Morrison, kept swigging
from sixteen-ounce cans), it was something else.

People who came to hear cuts from their albums flawlessly dupilcated
must have been disappointed, for Morrison seemed quite bored by all
the old Doors' material, which with the beer and the standard
performers' response to playing sleepy old Minneapolis added up to
ineffectively delivered numbers laden with ad libs and vulgarities.

The appearance of local blues harpist Tony Glover and a change to
blues material brought Morrison around. Ray Manzarek, organist for
The Doors, seemed to respond well.

Backed by Densmore's beat, Morrison managed to do some of the singing
that he has become known for. The standard closing "Light My Fire"
was a return to Morrison's lethargy in spite of a dynamic effort by
the rest of the group.

The concert was a success only by grace of Morrison's inital effect
as a superstar and a very good poet and by the hard work of the rest
of the band. Morrison broke off in nearly every song after the first
couple of stanzas, leaving it up to the others to improvise until he
was ready to sing again. This may be one reason why the rest of the
group is so good.

Watching Morrison himself was a great part of the show, and he could
hold your attention sitting down, but in the rows farther back people
were more dependent on their ears than their eyes and it must have
really dragged at times.

Yet a concert by The Doors is supposed to be something out of the
ordinary. People come to see The Doors as much for their
unpredictability as for their music. The Doors come to affect you and
create a response, and the one they created depends on you and on
what they want to do.

Morrison instrumented the effect this time. He didn't give the
audience what they expected. He gave then what they wanted. He gave
them The Doors. "
Minneapolis Daily Newspaper, "Doors Ham It Up In Concert" by: Tim Boxell November 1968.

JIM MORRISON AND THE DOORS -
The Doors appeared at the Inglewood Forum on December 14, 1968 performing songs from the Soft Parade album complete with a string sextet and brass ensemble. Sweetwater opened the show followed by Jerry Lee Lewis who was treated crudely by the impatient crowd who eagerly awaited the Doors.
Part way through the
Doors performance the audience starts screaming for
Light My Fire. "The incessant clamoring for Light My
Fire makes the audience seem harshly unsympathetic to
anything else the band wants to introduce. The attitude of these ever-increasing "top 40" fanatics who demand
nothing but the hits will contribute significantly to the
band's disgust with the way rock 'n' roll is - or isn't
- developing. The Doors observe a change in the
audience as their music became more popular. Their
apprehensions will peak within a few months when they record the spontaneous "Rock Is Dead" session and Jim Morrison accosts the audience in Miami." After
giving the audience what they want by playing LMF Jim
sits down on the stage and asks the audience directly
what they really want. Jim suggests that they could
play music all night long but thats not what they
really came here for, "you want something different,
something more." At this point the band breaks into
Celebration of the Lizard. "As tonight's rendition of
Celebration of the Lizard draws to a conclusion, each of the band members leaves the stage individually. First John Densmore, then Robby Krieger, then Ray Manzarek with Morrison all alone onstage as he quietly recites the final poetic verses of the compostion and then solemnly walks off the stage. The effect is transcendent as opposed
to the usual thunderous applause exhibited at the
end of the show, the somewhat stunned audience of
over 18,000 send out a brief ripple of quiet
acknowledgement, and then stare mutely before leaving the venue in
near silence."
Michael Lydon of the New York Times ,
December 1968

"It is officially reported that over a half a million people have come to the Isle Of Wight for this festival. One of the reason ... one of the reasons, ladies and gentlemen is on the stage now. Please welcome, The Doors ! " ; M.C. Rikki Farr.

"The Doors were abysmal. Since watching them drag their weary way through that embarrassing set, people I’ve rapped to often tell me what I missed and how good Manzarek was and how well they did Light my Fire and how foxy Morrison looked. It must be fucking hard work for people who dug the band in the past to keep those pretty illusions floating around. They were bored and apathetic, to them it was just another gig to keep their charisma going; but this time they blew it." (Coleman, John.
"IOW 70: The Music". Friends, October 2, 1970.

"For nearly everyone it was the very first time that they had ever seen the legendary Jim Morrison. Whether he lived up to their expectations we’ll never know, nevertheless both he and the Doors were given a resounding welcome. Having seen the Doors on a number of occasions, I can report that this was a good, if somewhat subdued, performance which consisted mainly of songs from their three-year old first album. A bearded Morrison was just content to stand quite still and deliver his rather sombre songs, while organist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robbie Krieger and drummer John Densmore provide an equally sinister backing. The Doors music is a very acquired taste, but it seems that it is liked by many."
"Yes, There Was Music Too !".
Roy Carr New Musical Express, September 5, 1970.

"At five minutes past midnight, The Doors shambled onstage. Despite all the reports to the contrary, I found them magnificent, with Morrison’s voice coming over clear and passionate.
“The Doors sneaked out on stage and everybody in the world stood up. Everybody else behind them threw beer cans at them until they sat down.
A bearded Morrison was content to stand quite still and deliver his somewhat sombre songs while organist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robbie Krieger and drummer John Densmore provide a sinister backing.
It was something like listening to a Doors album through a bad record player that runs slow. Apparently they’d had a lot of backstage hassles. The equipment wasn’t right and by the time they got on they were in a bad mood, which showed through to the audience. They just played Doors numbers, no attempt at communicating, no response to the inevitable applause. They got an inevitable encore, but declined to take advantage of it, they just moodied their way off the stage.”<br>The bootleg recording of their set shows how good they were with tight versions of ‘Back Door Man’, ‘When The Music’s Over’ and ‘Light My Fire’-bellowed like a great bull- as well as the mysterious, unreleased ‘Ship Of Fools’ and ‘The End’, which was ominous to the point of nightmare.
“Backstage, Morrison was at the bar, bewhiskered and looking like a lumberjack, preoccupied with his Miami court case, on the charge of indecent exposure. A bra-less wench, starstruck by the superstar blurted out ‘You mean if you did it in New York you’d just get a fast fine and that’s all?’.
“I didn’t do it anywhere” replied Morrison with distaste.
Within a year Morrison was dead –or, some people claim, not.
His grave in Paris an object of twisted veneration."
Taken from “Nights in Wight Satin” an illustrated history of the
Isle of Wight Pop Festivals by Brian Hinton.
Published by The Isle Of Wight County Council. 1990.

“He used to stop and listen to what the audience had to
say. We didn’t know what the hell was going on”<br>Robby Krieger 1972.

“I first saw Morrison when I was 12 years old in concert and he was the most powerful, dangerous, unpredictable man I had ever seen.
The lights were out, three musicians walked on stage there was incense on the organ and the spotlight hit him midway thru the air as he hit the mike screaming the intro to 'When The Musics Over' and boy did that wake me up!"
Danny Sugerman
BBC Radio 2 "Dark Star" documentary 7th July 2001

"During the concert during the ‘Wake Up’ plea, Morrison
exploded into a fury of movement climaxing in his
collapsing on the stage as dozens of arms from the audience reached out in an attempt to make contact with the man already becoming a myth. Union regulations demanded the show end at midnight but Morrison pushed the envelope again. “Don’t let them push us out” he declares and the show goes on an hour overtime.Detroit Cobo Arena bars The Doors from entering their doors again." Danny Sugerman. 2000

Milwaukee Arena November. 1st 1968
The Doors, to the uninitiated, are no wooden set of guitar pickers and brassy vocalists. They are possibly the leading exponents of acid rock - acid in terms of drug oriented, perhaps; acid in terms of social commentary, certainly. They plug into Morrison as 1,300 watts of amplified sound blast into their minds, a sound so loud it drives thought
out, a sound so loud it pins the value judgements of
the adult world to the far wall of the arena and
leaves them squirming helplessly. From 'Light My Fire'
to 'The End'...the sinister lyrics socked their
satanically sensual message to the crowd.
Pierre-Rene Noth,Milwaukee Journal,November 2 1968

The Doors were received enthusiastically by Mexican
youth, but not by the city officials or the Mexican
press. The Doors were brought down to open up Mexico for future presentations by other top rock groups, according to Mexican promoter Mario Olmos. It had beenm reported before their arrival that they had been granted permission by president Gustava Kiaz Ordaz to perform in Mexico City's Plaza Monumental bullring where the poorer
classes of people would be able to afford the price of
admission. But it didn't work out that way. Instead, The
Doors found themselves confined to perform during their
four-night stay at the Forum Club and at a select crowd that could afford the 200 pesos ($16) cover charge. Attempts were made to get permits for the group to perform at the Mexican arena, the National Auditorium, and even in a security-tight closed performance for the
students of Mexico's National University, but permission
was not granted. Mayor Corona Del Rosal was afraid
that a large public appearance by The Doors would
spark some kind of riot or demonstration by students
who have been in a state of agitation during the past
year. Plans that had been announced to benefit shows,
videotape concerts, and a photo art display did not
materialize either. The Mexican press was not too kind to The Doors either. El Heraldo was quoted as calling the group "hippies" and referring to them as undesirables.
The group was also denied accommodations in several
of the large hotels and ended up staying in a
smaller private hotel in one of the residential sections.
There was no doubt that The Doors were a sensation at
the Forum, where they played to record-breaking
audiences nightly. With a selection of recorded songs, some that have not been released, and improvisations, they literally rocked the rafters loose. Jim Morrison, singing from the gut, completely losing himself as he does when he performs, had the audience totally absorbed, alternately screaming, chanting, and completely silent.
Pat Alisau Variety magazine July 8th

"The intensity begins the moment they stalk on stage and it doesn't let up until the purge is over, the catharsis is complete. Even between numbers, there is no relaxation - no chit-chat, no horsing around. Like the great actors of Japan, The Doors project all the nore intensity when they are silent. The Doors are carnivores in a land of musical vegetarians. "
Eagles Auditorium - Seattle, WA July 1967
Tom Robbins, Helix, Member of the Underground Press Syndicate, July

"Soon The Doors are making
music, Morrison slouches over the rigid microphone and
the Hullabaloo's turntable stage slowly begins to
spin them towards a wildly screaming audience as the
curtains pull back. A wild strobe of Instamatic flash
bulbs silhouettes frantically waving hands in a
lightning sky. Girls press forward against the stage.
Morrison grunts, begins squirming, singing, and there's
another barrage of flash bulbs and press towards the
stage. The music weaves and screams into one climax
after another. Morrison is literally raping the
microphone between his quivering thighs, advancing toward the hungry girls pressing against the stage. And then he trips on the microphone and falls. It happens
along with a musical peak and the girls scream,
thinking this is the way it should be. Morrison picks
himself off the floor. He shouts the lyrics. Picks up the
microphone stand and throws it hard. The girls can't believe it. Few are frightened, most of them have eyes that mirror an erotic spell. And Morrison jumps hard among the fallen stand. Picks it up again and throws it
hard once more. Shouting the lyrics. Screaming. You
look at the girls and you swear they're having orgasm.
Morrison destroys the mike and the stand."
The Hullabaloo, Hollywood June 8th 1967.
Hank Zavellos, "The Doors," Happening Magazine,
1968

"With the Beatles & The Stones it was girls going crazy. But with The Doors there were actually young guys going nuts with high energy releases and destroying stuff."
Robby Krieger.1980.

July 23 - The Doors at Eagles Auditorium Seattle, WA
"The intensity begins the moment they stalk on stage and it doesn't let up until the purge is over, the catharsis is complete. Even between numbers, there is no relaxation - no chit-chat, no horsing around. Like the great actors of Japan, The Doors project all the nore intensity when they are silent. The Doors are carnivores in a land of musical vegetarians".
Tom Robbins, Helix, Member of the Underground Press Syndicate, July 1967

October 6 - California State Gymnasium Los Angeles, CA
Horror...the 20th Century...the drugs...horror...the Doors,"
"At times during the brilliant improvisational sections to numbers, Morrison was like a conductor/dictator gone berserk. He would thrash about attempting to zap the potent energy so abundant within him to each individual member of the group. He screamed at them, urging them onto more volume, more notes, more intricacies, more, MORE, MORE. He thundered back to his life-line microphone in time to reinstate pure human horror in the black air of the auditorium.
Jan Vogels, UCLA Daily Bruin, Oct. 12, 1967

April 19 - Westbury Music Fair Westbury, NY
Mr. Mojo Risin
"Morrison wasn't on stage when the music began. Suddenly there was a confrontation on one of the downhill aisles leading to the stage. He stumbled down the steps, entangling his black leather and a mass of tangled hair with the offstage darkness. He stopped to pose, and a flash of light caught him trying to regain his balance. The taunts began immediately. He responded with force indifference or a threat of random violence. The other Doors were in other rooms. They played on, almost oblivious to his ranting and raving. A familiar riff would begin, the audience would briefly come to attention, and he would leave the spotlight to inflict his boredom on them. He would fall into shadows searching for worthy opponents. There were glimpses of physical confrontations: crewcutted jocks protecting their interested girlfriends from his suggestions. Morrison's fist shooting blindly in the direction of obscene threats as a fat security guard grabs at him with a pathetic attempt to control the situation. Morrison embraces the guard and tries to pull him towards the stage while delivering a passionate plea for weight loss. The guard frees himself, runs up the aisle to derisive laughter, dropping his hat. Morrison tries to wear the hat but it is too small and suddenly he is disgusted with the whole scene and lets out a frenzied scream. Silence in the theater for the moment. The audience stared as though it was a horrible car crash where the spirit was maimed and the blood ran into the gutter of the soul. Morrison twitched in some kind of death throes. The concert ended abruptly. Morrison howled but it was not with ecstasy. It was more Ginsberg than Blake. The lights came up before the band could walk back up the aisles and the audience booed. Morrison stood still listening. I stared so that my eyes would forever cover him. Some people were leaving, others still booing, a few watched him as intensely as I did. Then in this haphazard atmosphere he threw back his head and began to chant and dance in place like some possessed American Indian brave consecrating a sacred land, cleaning the abuse and disdain with singular belief so powerful that shivers ran through me. And my heart froze with undeniable blessing. A girl ran at him with scissors flashing to cut his hair and he disappeared into a circle of anonymous flesh carried him away."
David Dalton. . New York: 1991

May 24 - Hi-Corbett Field Randolph Park, Tucson, AZ
Teeners' verdict on The Doors: GROOVY"
"A hushed 'Here they come' ran through the crowd and necks craned expectantly towards the small gate outside the right field foul line. The three Doors' musicians...mounted the stage looking all business. They positioned themselves with their instruments and immediately started playing. After a short musical introduction, singer-warlock Jim Morrison, wearing skin-tight leather pants, a pea coat and a sullen expression, leaped up the side stairs, faked a spastic stumble crossing the stage, and lurched into the lyrics in a slightly hoarse voice. it is undeniably compelling. The creative nature of the Doors' musicianship became more apparent with every song. Their versatility with the instruments and their unique rapport in the tight arrangements provided a perfect backdrop for Morrison's jolting images...the whole situation began to take on an atmosphere of unreality."
Greg Robertson, Tucson Daily Citizen, June 29, 1968

talking about the doors in concert, the doors live in concert double cd is a fave of mine. but was it all recorded from a single gig in new york or two seperate ones? or was it a compilation from numerous concerts? there are a lot of references to new york on there, e.g. Jim says "well thats new york for you, the only people who rush the stage are guys, yer know" and the guy at the end after soul kitchen sounds very new yorkish to me.

that bloody ray geezer! ;D
i think the cd is excellent, some great live stuff on there. gloria is great, COTL superb, build me a woman, and a fuckin brilliant soul kitchen, oh and who do you love, its a brilliant cd!
the end is also one of the best on there, is it the one from hollywood bowl? i think it is, not listened to that cd for a bit. ;D

LMF was from Boston I do believe & The End is as you say the Bowl.
I doubt Morrison planned what he was gonna do...at least not in the sense we would define planning.
I would imagine he would walk on stage with a few ideas in his head and once the lights went up take it as it came!
R$ay sells shows now with his mates but back then The Doors sold experiences not shows.
You walked in and you never knew what the hell you were gonna see.....must have been a truly amazing thing to go to a Doors gig!
Something we can only imagine today...pity!

www.jimlizardking.de/261104_11.gif
[/img]

STAGE DOORS

The art of The Doors is, more and more, removed from those standards of art by which rock music is measured. It is, therefore, understandable that The Doors keep getting the worst imaginable reviews from those who put them on some sort of rock pedestal in the first place. It is also understandable that The Doors are still around and are likely to remain forever, despite all that crap, their art surviving all their critics.

The trouble is that The Doors have not conformed to fashion and have not, as almost every other major rock group has done, made a fetish of growing, changing, developing, and reverting to form. They have, instead, played out their own fantasies at their own pace in their own way, saying the hell with everyone else. The result was a subtler, deeper growth than that of almost all of their contemporaries. But, as I said, it is not as a rock group that these changes have taken place; it has become increasingly clear that their art is the art of restlessness and rebellion, the art of getting through that restlessness and that rebellion by personal investment, by piling up of obsessive, compulsive images; the art, finally, of poetry and drama, where the personal and the obsessive are the shrines at whose feet true artists always worship.

Where The Doors have arrived, in terms of maturity, and of making some new statement about themselves and on their restless art, was there for all to see in their two appearances recently at the Aquarius Theater, where they recorded a live album. This album, I'm sure, will convince everyone that The Doors have gotten it together, because the electricity in the air, the magic that was created that evening, was a testament to the fact that whatever it was The Doors had once upon a time, when they and their world were younger, they not only had again in spades but had the added virtue of being as sublime and self-assured as they were once brash and vulgar (not vulgar in the bad sense, since the best rock n roll has always had more than a trace of real vulgarity, which after all is a true American trait, and not necessarily one to be ashamed of or to avoid on artistic terms).

There was Jim Morrison, more the rabbinical student than the Sex God and looking more comfortable in the new guise. Seeming less selfconscious, but singing, if anything, better than even his greatest fans thought he could sing, and projecting truer sex than he ever did when he writhed calculatedly, because the sex was warmer, more secure. Not that he wasn't capable of the old theatrical excitement as he proved in one electrifying moment when he disappeared from the stage for a few minutes, then showed up suddenly in a blue flame (all right, so it was only a blue light shining on him!) above the audience's head, growling out "The Celebration Of The Lizard."

For me it was the personal pleasure of seeing what Morrison could really do, since the only other live appearance of The Doors that I had seen was the Hollywood Bowl concert, which was a drag. It was the excitement of seeing them live up to an image that had become all but distorted, for surely the bum-rapping The Doors have received in the past year was as out of proportion to the reality of their talent as perhaps the early praise was. That, indeed, may be the real tragedy of their public image, the fact that they were praised too much too soon and were forced almost immediately, before getting a chance to move on in their own direction, to become a commercial commodity, to have to live up to an already overblown success image.

I'm not altogether sure that my own admiration of The Doors has anything to do with their music. Some of it is terrible, but I find the degree to which they give themselves to banality is more strikingly impressive than the degree to which lesser artists consciously avoid banality. It seems to me that if a group has truly reached the poetic heights, they should enjoy the luxury of making gross mistakes; too few do either one or the other. It's like Morrison's poetry; some of it is the work of a genuine poet, a Whitman of a revolution-ready 60s, and some of it is embarrassingly sophomoric. There is no crime in going from one artistic extreme to another; these are, after all, human flaws, and there is no art if there is no humanity.

But again, it's not their music at all, and maybe not even the poetry or the musicianship or the charisma, neither the albums nor the Aquarius concert, all of it as strange and beautiful and exciting as it is, that really makes me admire The Doors. Instead it's the vibes I get from them because of the thing I feel they're trying to get into and get us into, a world that transcends the limited one of rock, and moves into areas of film and theater and revolution. Seeing Morrison not on stage, but living his life, in those quieter moments; seeing him at a production of Norman Mailer's The Deer Park, at every performance of The Living Theater, at the opening of The Company Theater's James Joyce Memorial Liquid Theater; always at the right place at the right time, involved furiously in the kind of art that is pertinent rather than tangential to living. That kind of person doesn't have to have poetry in him but if he does, when he does, you tend to look at it more closely, take it more seriously. In the case of Jim Morrison and The Doors, it is worth the trouble. They have approached Art, no matter how much they have offended, amused, or even thrilled the rock critics. The standards by which their art must be measured are older and deeper.
by Harvey Perr 1969
The Los Angeles Free Press August 8, 1969

I think also its got a lot to do with the 'times' themselves..
Music is more commercial than ever nowadays and manufactured bands appear every week......the days of driving arround in a van looking for a gig in a pub are long gone....now bands set up websites and send CDs to record companies.
30 years ago we had so many bands who were living on a bag of chick peas desperate to get noticed.
Jim so broke he slept on a roof or on the beach....
does not happen nowadays....Neil Young said best it in Crime In The City
The artist looked at the producer
The producer sat back
He said, What we have got here
Is a perfect track
But we don't have a vocal
And we don't have a song
If we could get
these things accomplished
Nothin' else could go wrong.
So he balanced the ashtray
As he picked up the phone
And said, Send me a songwriter
Who's drifted far from home
And make sure that he's hungry
Make sure he's alone
Send me a cheeseburger
And a new Rolling Stone.

Thats what made so many good artists in the 60s....a hunger.....not just for food (as many were destitute before they found fame) but to prove thier talent.
That hunger resulted in some amazing 60s and 70s gigs and albums.
Hunger like that does not exist much nowadays......there are so many outlets for artists due to the Net, TV and record companies desperately trying to find the next big thing......
We will NEVER see the likes of the music in the 60s and 70s again.....there will never be another Jim as its practically impossible to find anyone that hard up....