Post by darkstar2 on Jul 24, 2008 19:00:52 GMT
THE DOORS REVIVED
They’ve Got The Guns But We’ve Got The Numbers
By: Todd Everett
Trouser Press
Volume 8, Number 7, No. 65
September 1981
Billy James has been besieged by telephone calls from magazine and newspaper writers. The tenth anniversary of Jim Morrison’s death is at hand. (It’s now passed: Morrison was reported to have succumbed to a heart attack in his bathtub in Paris on July 3, 1971.)
A best selling trade paperback biography of Morrison is now available in mass market edition. Albums by Morrison’s group, the Doors, are selling better than ever. And a surprising number of young bands are citing the Doors as major influences. These groups and many of their fans were barely old enough to go to school when Morrison and company released their first album 14 years ago. Ten years after their leader’s demise, and seven or so after the rest of the group disbanded, the Doors are a hot item.
As Columbia Records’ Los Angeles based manager of talent acquisition and development manager Billy James signed Morrison and an early incarnation of the Doors to the label in 1966. No one else at Columbia was interested, and the Doors were dropped without leaving a ripple. The group became the property of Elektra Records, a (then) New York based label expanding from folk music to the burgeoning rock scene. Coincidentally, James was hired to man the label’s new Los Angeles office. James is intelligent and sensitive (qualities not rampant in the record business), and knows what he’s talking about. He is therefore the Man to Ask about the LA bands. Telephone rings; another reporter, James picks up the handset. “Now, who’s died?” he sighs.
If Billy James is the man people call for informed opinion, Danny Sugarman is the one who’ll call you to offer it. Co-author with Jerry Hopkins of the Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive, Sugarman first met the Doors before he was in high school, and was - to hear him tell the story – pretty well inseparable from Morrison until the singer’s death.
“By the time I officially went to work for them, I was given the title, ‘office assistant.’ Most people would call me a go-fer, but I never really liked that term. I did just about anything. Hell, though, I would have been Jim’s pet if he’d asked me.” After Morrison’s death and the Doors’ official split, Sugarman mounted a veritable one man campaign to keep the faith. “I could tell you that the Doors were the greatest band ever, and that wouldn’t by hype – because I truly believe it to be the case.”
Though the relationship was strongest between Morrison and Sugarman, the still young Doors fan (just 25 now) stayed in contact with the rest of the group, and became involved in keyboardist Ray Manzarek’s management. If there were any rumors in circulation about the Doors, Sugarman could be counted upon to have started (or able to stop) them. While Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore kept pretty much to themselves, Sugarman answered questions on their behalf. He was used to it.
“When Jim was alive, he got tired of answering questions that he’d get in the mail. So I would end up answering them for him, over his signature. He thought that was just fine, that I was in tune with what he’d have said.”
Totally unofficially, Sugarman took it upon himself to keep the Doors in the news as much as possible. “Every six months, there’d be something about the Doors in (Rolling Stone) Random Notes,” he claims. Whether that specific figure is true or not – and whether or not Sugarman was the source of whatever information did come to the attention of the press (Elektra Records sure wasn’t) – the Doors managed to stay in the public consciousness far longer than their contemporaries (Love, the Seeds, the Palace Garden, etc.). It might be ventured that the Doors were every bit as prominent as the Byrds, and with considerably less product available or effort spent on their behalf.
“Every year,” Sugarman says, “the Doors catalogue has sold something like 300,000 albums for Elektra. And that was before the book came out.” Indeed, 10 of the Doors 12 albums are RIAA certified gold or more. There are three “Greatest Hits” packages (including one released in quadraphonic sound), and a fourth anthology (Weird Scenes Inside The Goldmine) that’s a sort of “best of the rest.”
It’s hard to pinpoint the Doors’ renaissance, but three sign posts stand out: Morrison’s ominous monologue “The End” providing period atmosphere on the soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now; the late 1978 release An American Prayer, and LP consisting largely of Morrison reciting poems over newly instrumental backing by the remaining members of the group; and the Hopkins/Sugarman biography.
There’s no doubt that a Doors explosion does exist. This February. Elektra vice-president of sales, Lou Maglia told Record World’s Sam Graham that the most recent Doors greatest hits album, released last October was “approaching platinum…with out any significant AM exposure for a particular cut.” Every album in the Doors catalog, he continued, had “at least doubled or tripled it sales in 1980 compared to the previous year….The Doors’ first album just went crazy, it did nine times what it did in ’79-’80.” Waiting For The Sun and The Soft Parade increased their previous year’s sales sevenfold. In an age when quadraphonic technology seems destined for a small room in the Smithsonian, the quad Best of the Doors sold 100,000 copies in 1989-80 – with half of those sales, according to Maglia, during the last quarter of the fiscal year.
The Doors phenomenon has spread to other bands. Acts like Patti Smith and Iggy Pop have been openedly Doors influenced for years, but a new spate of groups have appeared on the scene. There are at least four straight Doors copy bands around the country: Crystal Ship and LA Woman in the east and Moonlight Drive in the mid west and Strange Daze on the west coast.
More significant, though, is the impression the Doors music has made on young musicians who adapt the sound to their own purposes. Michele Meyer, a booking agent for the Starwood Club in Los Angeles who sees literally hundreds of bands a year, cites not only the LA locals who are Morrison-inspired or have Doors connections (X, produced by Ray Manzarek; the Zippers, managed by Sugarman before they disbanded in June; the Willies produced by Krieger), but a far greater range of influence.
“All of that ‘new romantic’ shi is a salutre to the Doors. Droning instruments, long rambling lyrics – it’s all variations on “The End.” Echo and the Bunnymen are the biggest Doors copycats in the world. Bob Willingham of the Zippers, though, does the best Morrison impression this side of Iggy Pop.
Even though there are no Doors, as such, Sugarman and Rich Linnel are currently acting as managers of the non-group, with obvious great effect. “We’re setting up an official Doors fan club, to market authorized merchandise,” Sugarman says. “There’s an incredible amount of bootlegged Doors T-Shirts, buttons and so on out there. We can’t really do anything about it. Trying to get rid of bootleggers is like trying to stamp out thingyroaches; you get one and four more pop up a few feet away. But at least we’ll be able to control the quality of what we put out officially.” Money from this enterprise, as well as record sales, songwriting royalties and any other buy outs, is split among the remaining Doors, plus Morrison’s family and that of “his widow,” Pamela Courson (who died in May 1974, reportedly of a heroin overdose.)
Nor does the Doors revival show any signs of abating. Sugarman promises a “scrapbook” of Doors newspaper clippings, rare photos and various other ephemera. Though he refuses to discuss it, there are strong rumors of previously unreleased Doors material that’s suddenly become available, including concert tape (and possibly film) of an appearance at the 1969 Isle Of Wight Festival. Other Doors books are being written by people who knew them (or at least heard of them), there’s a one hour documentary (reviewed by Media Eye, TP 63) that will be available to cable TV or for use in the home.
Then there’s the Jim Morrison biographical movie. In yet another of his unceasing attempts to quell a persistent rumor, Sugarman says that under no circumstances will John Travolta play the late singer. “(Film producer) Aaron Russo is spreading that story. It just can’t happen. But remember what Russo did earlier; he told everybody he was going to film a biography of Janis Joplin, starring Bette Midler. He couldn’t get all the permission he needed, and came up with The Rose – which he claimed was not a biography of Janis Joplin. In the meantime, he’d profited from all the publicty.”
The reason Russo won’t be making a Morrison biography lies in the music. “We own all the Doors’ hits and he needs our permission to use them. He won’t get it.” Eagles manager, Irving Azoff, who holds the rights to those songs, is reportedly working on his own film deal.
“We get sacks and sacks of fan mail,” says Sugarman, “and half of it is from people who want to play Jim, or friends of people who think that they should play him. I have photos, videotapes, people come here to audition – and there is no film being made.”
As with any social phenomenon, the Doors resurgence invites analysis. The band is more popular now than there were when alive – the Humphrey Bogart effect. Who knows why?
Cynthia Kirk, who holds down the music chair at Daily Variety, takes the populist approach. “The Doors were hot in the McLuhanesque sense. They involved their audience in the show in a way that most other groups of the era didn’t. While members of the audience were puking in the aisles, Morrison was throwing up on stage. He was clearly one of them.”
Other analysts point to the Doors’ recurring theme of alienation, a state most latterday punks can relate to. The real story, though, may have to do with an element of the Doors few people bother to mention, other than causally. While Morrison’s black leather pants, quasi-James Dean image and desultory poetry make for good press, they don’t get you on the radio – and the Doors music is more popular now than ever before.
“A lot of AOR stations are getting into earlier product now,” Elektra’s Maglia told Graham, “rather than just playing cuts from the last few years. FM exposure for the Doors is tremendous right now.” This programming attitude is itself the subject for one of those “what’s wrong with radio?” articles, but the Doors who are being resuscitated and not like Quick Silver Messenger Service or the Remains – and nobody’s forcing impressionable youngsters to spend their money on Strange Days or L.A. Woman. There’s something special about the Doors, something whose appeal isn’t confined to nostalgia.
Sugerman wants the last word. “There’ll never be anything like the Doors again. They were a flamenco guitarist, a classical keyboard player, a jazz drummer and a poet. What are the odds of hitting that combination again? Heavy Metal may be popular now; that can’t be denied. But a lot of people are growing up and getting tired of heavy metal. I can listen to Deep Purple’s Machine Head only for a while at a time. You can listen to the Doors in the morning. You can listen to them on Sunday.”
Billy James, the Man to Ask, has the Answer. It is, like many good answers, a question. “Why are people still interested in Frecobaldi or Boccherini,” he replies with a shrug. “Because it holds up.”
END.
They’ve Got The Guns But We’ve Got The Numbers
By: Todd Everett
Trouser Press
Volume 8, Number 7, No. 65
September 1981
Billy James has been besieged by telephone calls from magazine and newspaper writers. The tenth anniversary of Jim Morrison’s death is at hand. (It’s now passed: Morrison was reported to have succumbed to a heart attack in his bathtub in Paris on July 3, 1971.)
A best selling trade paperback biography of Morrison is now available in mass market edition. Albums by Morrison’s group, the Doors, are selling better than ever. And a surprising number of young bands are citing the Doors as major influences. These groups and many of their fans were barely old enough to go to school when Morrison and company released their first album 14 years ago. Ten years after their leader’s demise, and seven or so after the rest of the group disbanded, the Doors are a hot item.
As Columbia Records’ Los Angeles based manager of talent acquisition and development manager Billy James signed Morrison and an early incarnation of the Doors to the label in 1966. No one else at Columbia was interested, and the Doors were dropped without leaving a ripple. The group became the property of Elektra Records, a (then) New York based label expanding from folk music to the burgeoning rock scene. Coincidentally, James was hired to man the label’s new Los Angeles office. James is intelligent and sensitive (qualities not rampant in the record business), and knows what he’s talking about. He is therefore the Man to Ask about the LA bands. Telephone rings; another reporter, James picks up the handset. “Now, who’s died?” he sighs.
If Billy James is the man people call for informed opinion, Danny Sugarman is the one who’ll call you to offer it. Co-author with Jerry Hopkins of the Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive, Sugarman first met the Doors before he was in high school, and was - to hear him tell the story – pretty well inseparable from Morrison until the singer’s death.
“By the time I officially went to work for them, I was given the title, ‘office assistant.’ Most people would call me a go-fer, but I never really liked that term. I did just about anything. Hell, though, I would have been Jim’s pet if he’d asked me.” After Morrison’s death and the Doors’ official split, Sugarman mounted a veritable one man campaign to keep the faith. “I could tell you that the Doors were the greatest band ever, and that wouldn’t by hype – because I truly believe it to be the case.”
Though the relationship was strongest between Morrison and Sugarman, the still young Doors fan (just 25 now) stayed in contact with the rest of the group, and became involved in keyboardist Ray Manzarek’s management. If there were any rumors in circulation about the Doors, Sugarman could be counted upon to have started (or able to stop) them. While Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore kept pretty much to themselves, Sugarman answered questions on their behalf. He was used to it.
“When Jim was alive, he got tired of answering questions that he’d get in the mail. So I would end up answering them for him, over his signature. He thought that was just fine, that I was in tune with what he’d have said.”
Totally unofficially, Sugarman took it upon himself to keep the Doors in the news as much as possible. “Every six months, there’d be something about the Doors in (Rolling Stone) Random Notes,” he claims. Whether that specific figure is true or not – and whether or not Sugarman was the source of whatever information did come to the attention of the press (Elektra Records sure wasn’t) – the Doors managed to stay in the public consciousness far longer than their contemporaries (Love, the Seeds, the Palace Garden, etc.). It might be ventured that the Doors were every bit as prominent as the Byrds, and with considerably less product available or effort spent on their behalf.
“Every year,” Sugarman says, “the Doors catalogue has sold something like 300,000 albums for Elektra. And that was before the book came out.” Indeed, 10 of the Doors 12 albums are RIAA certified gold or more. There are three “Greatest Hits” packages (including one released in quadraphonic sound), and a fourth anthology (Weird Scenes Inside The Goldmine) that’s a sort of “best of the rest.”
It’s hard to pinpoint the Doors’ renaissance, but three sign posts stand out: Morrison’s ominous monologue “The End” providing period atmosphere on the soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now; the late 1978 release An American Prayer, and LP consisting largely of Morrison reciting poems over newly instrumental backing by the remaining members of the group; and the Hopkins/Sugarman biography.
There’s no doubt that a Doors explosion does exist. This February. Elektra vice-president of sales, Lou Maglia told Record World’s Sam Graham that the most recent Doors greatest hits album, released last October was “approaching platinum…with out any significant AM exposure for a particular cut.” Every album in the Doors catalog, he continued, had “at least doubled or tripled it sales in 1980 compared to the previous year….The Doors’ first album just went crazy, it did nine times what it did in ’79-’80.” Waiting For The Sun and The Soft Parade increased their previous year’s sales sevenfold. In an age when quadraphonic technology seems destined for a small room in the Smithsonian, the quad Best of the Doors sold 100,000 copies in 1989-80 – with half of those sales, according to Maglia, during the last quarter of the fiscal year.
The Doors phenomenon has spread to other bands. Acts like Patti Smith and Iggy Pop have been openedly Doors influenced for years, but a new spate of groups have appeared on the scene. There are at least four straight Doors copy bands around the country: Crystal Ship and LA Woman in the east and Moonlight Drive in the mid west and Strange Daze on the west coast.
More significant, though, is the impression the Doors music has made on young musicians who adapt the sound to their own purposes. Michele Meyer, a booking agent for the Starwood Club in Los Angeles who sees literally hundreds of bands a year, cites not only the LA locals who are Morrison-inspired or have Doors connections (X, produced by Ray Manzarek; the Zippers, managed by Sugarman before they disbanded in June; the Willies produced by Krieger), but a far greater range of influence.
“All of that ‘new romantic’ shi is a salutre to the Doors. Droning instruments, long rambling lyrics – it’s all variations on “The End.” Echo and the Bunnymen are the biggest Doors copycats in the world. Bob Willingham of the Zippers, though, does the best Morrison impression this side of Iggy Pop.
Even though there are no Doors, as such, Sugarman and Rich Linnel are currently acting as managers of the non-group, with obvious great effect. “We’re setting up an official Doors fan club, to market authorized merchandise,” Sugarman says. “There’s an incredible amount of bootlegged Doors T-Shirts, buttons and so on out there. We can’t really do anything about it. Trying to get rid of bootleggers is like trying to stamp out thingyroaches; you get one and four more pop up a few feet away. But at least we’ll be able to control the quality of what we put out officially.” Money from this enterprise, as well as record sales, songwriting royalties and any other buy outs, is split among the remaining Doors, plus Morrison’s family and that of “his widow,” Pamela Courson (who died in May 1974, reportedly of a heroin overdose.)
Nor does the Doors revival show any signs of abating. Sugarman promises a “scrapbook” of Doors newspaper clippings, rare photos and various other ephemera. Though he refuses to discuss it, there are strong rumors of previously unreleased Doors material that’s suddenly become available, including concert tape (and possibly film) of an appearance at the 1969 Isle Of Wight Festival. Other Doors books are being written by people who knew them (or at least heard of them), there’s a one hour documentary (reviewed by Media Eye, TP 63) that will be available to cable TV or for use in the home.
Then there’s the Jim Morrison biographical movie. In yet another of his unceasing attempts to quell a persistent rumor, Sugarman says that under no circumstances will John Travolta play the late singer. “(Film producer) Aaron Russo is spreading that story. It just can’t happen. But remember what Russo did earlier; he told everybody he was going to film a biography of Janis Joplin, starring Bette Midler. He couldn’t get all the permission he needed, and came up with The Rose – which he claimed was not a biography of Janis Joplin. In the meantime, he’d profited from all the publicty.”
The reason Russo won’t be making a Morrison biography lies in the music. “We own all the Doors’ hits and he needs our permission to use them. He won’t get it.” Eagles manager, Irving Azoff, who holds the rights to those songs, is reportedly working on his own film deal.
“We get sacks and sacks of fan mail,” says Sugarman, “and half of it is from people who want to play Jim, or friends of people who think that they should play him. I have photos, videotapes, people come here to audition – and there is no film being made.”
As with any social phenomenon, the Doors resurgence invites analysis. The band is more popular now than there were when alive – the Humphrey Bogart effect. Who knows why?
Cynthia Kirk, who holds down the music chair at Daily Variety, takes the populist approach. “The Doors were hot in the McLuhanesque sense. They involved their audience in the show in a way that most other groups of the era didn’t. While members of the audience were puking in the aisles, Morrison was throwing up on stage. He was clearly one of them.”
Other analysts point to the Doors’ recurring theme of alienation, a state most latterday punks can relate to. The real story, though, may have to do with an element of the Doors few people bother to mention, other than causally. While Morrison’s black leather pants, quasi-James Dean image and desultory poetry make for good press, they don’t get you on the radio – and the Doors music is more popular now than ever before.
“A lot of AOR stations are getting into earlier product now,” Elektra’s Maglia told Graham, “rather than just playing cuts from the last few years. FM exposure for the Doors is tremendous right now.” This programming attitude is itself the subject for one of those “what’s wrong with radio?” articles, but the Doors who are being resuscitated and not like Quick Silver Messenger Service or the Remains – and nobody’s forcing impressionable youngsters to spend their money on Strange Days or L.A. Woman. There’s something special about the Doors, something whose appeal isn’t confined to nostalgia.
Sugerman wants the last word. “There’ll never be anything like the Doors again. They were a flamenco guitarist, a classical keyboard player, a jazz drummer and a poet. What are the odds of hitting that combination again? Heavy Metal may be popular now; that can’t be denied. But a lot of people are growing up and getting tired of heavy metal. I can listen to Deep Purple’s Machine Head only for a while at a time. You can listen to the Doors in the morning. You can listen to them on Sunday.”
Billy James, the Man to Ask, has the Answer. It is, like many good answers, a question. “Why are people still interested in Frecobaldi or Boccherini,” he replies with a shrug. “Because it holds up.”
END.