Post by darkstar3 on Jan 14, 2011 14:45:53 GMT
Denver Post
April 13 1970
By Jim Pagliasotti
6,000 At Rock Performance
IT’S ALL IN THE ACTING TO DOORS’ MORRISON
An overflow crowd of 6,000 young theatre-goers was treated to a two hour production of The Doors Sunday night at the University of Denver Arena.
Although it was billed as a concert, the show was long in drama and rather short in music. There were moments when the theatrics seemed to be a dramatization of every parent’s nightmare fantasy about rock music bands and their effect on young people.
There was this singer on stage named Jim Morrison who had been arrested for indecent exposure during a performance in Miami Beach. He didn’t do anything like that in Denver, but it added to the drama, you see.
ON HIS BACK
He began by leaping onto the stage, grunting out two lines of “Back Door Man,” spinning and falling flat on his back (whether by accident or design, he later repeated in purposely) as if struck by all the gathered voltage in the mountain amplifiers behind him, then rising in the red and purple light with a high pitched evil laugh and singing. He never missed a beat.
And out of the darkness, the audience of young girls and young men loved every minute of it. It went on like that for two hours, and the audience clapped, shouted and stomped feet and screamed for more. I’ve seen The Doors six times in the past three years and the audience reaction has been the same each time.
And I still don’t know why.
OVERWHELMING SENSUALITY
It’s all a bit like reviewing puberty rites. There is a sensuality that is nearly overwhelming, at the same time terribly ludicrous. Morrison has a charisma about him. It is his thing, an aura he has carefully nurtured. The band behind him is good support. Their music is one dimensional – rhythm for the sake of tension and release it provides Morrison, and thereby, the audience.
“The singer, not the song” is a fitting line. The Doors without Morrison would be a fairly good trio, Robby Krieger plays sparse, interesting guitar lines, Ray Manzarek is a competent organist, and John Densmore bangs out heavy, driving rhythms on drums. With Morrison, they are a lesser band but a great one.
THEATRICAL ACTOR
Jim Morrison is something for the world to behold, and contemplate. He writers terribly pretentious lyrics, (“Before I slip into the Big Sleep – I want to hear the scream of the butterfly” is one of the milder examples), his voice has a range of perhaps three quarters of an octave, his phrasing isn’t particularly good and he doesn’t even move well.
What he does is simply put it all out front. He is crude in the extreme, drinking beer on stage in huge gulps, belching into the mike, screaming indistinguishable lyrics while going through spastic contortions, straddling the mike, strangling it in a death grip, falling to the floor in agony-ecstasy throes of passion, then as quickly changing the tempo to a slow, whispered, intensely felt interpretation.
Above all, he is dramatic. It is truly theatre, with music as its pulse. He acts out the role of rock music star, larger than life, the collective emotion of a hypertense generation. The concert as catharsis.
For the parents I mentioned earlier, I should offer the opinion that it’s all completely harmless.
The Doors do a song that goes, “Break on through, break on through to the other side.” Most groups in rock have done just that, and all of us are trying. The Doors are stationary, hung in the frame of their own theatrics, but all of us, at one time or another, must pass through The Doors to get to the other side.
END.
April 13 1970
By Jim Pagliasotti
6,000 At Rock Performance
IT’S ALL IN THE ACTING TO DOORS’ MORRISON
An overflow crowd of 6,000 young theatre-goers was treated to a two hour production of The Doors Sunday night at the University of Denver Arena.
Although it was billed as a concert, the show was long in drama and rather short in music. There were moments when the theatrics seemed to be a dramatization of every parent’s nightmare fantasy about rock music bands and their effect on young people.
There was this singer on stage named Jim Morrison who had been arrested for indecent exposure during a performance in Miami Beach. He didn’t do anything like that in Denver, but it added to the drama, you see.
ON HIS BACK
He began by leaping onto the stage, grunting out two lines of “Back Door Man,” spinning and falling flat on his back (whether by accident or design, he later repeated in purposely) as if struck by all the gathered voltage in the mountain amplifiers behind him, then rising in the red and purple light with a high pitched evil laugh and singing. He never missed a beat.
And out of the darkness, the audience of young girls and young men loved every minute of it. It went on like that for two hours, and the audience clapped, shouted and stomped feet and screamed for more. I’ve seen The Doors six times in the past three years and the audience reaction has been the same each time.
And I still don’t know why.
OVERWHELMING SENSUALITY
It’s all a bit like reviewing puberty rites. There is a sensuality that is nearly overwhelming, at the same time terribly ludicrous. Morrison has a charisma about him. It is his thing, an aura he has carefully nurtured. The band behind him is good support. Their music is one dimensional – rhythm for the sake of tension and release it provides Morrison, and thereby, the audience.
“The singer, not the song” is a fitting line. The Doors without Morrison would be a fairly good trio, Robby Krieger plays sparse, interesting guitar lines, Ray Manzarek is a competent organist, and John Densmore bangs out heavy, driving rhythms on drums. With Morrison, they are a lesser band but a great one.
THEATRICAL ACTOR
Jim Morrison is something for the world to behold, and contemplate. He writers terribly pretentious lyrics, (“Before I slip into the Big Sleep – I want to hear the scream of the butterfly” is one of the milder examples), his voice has a range of perhaps three quarters of an octave, his phrasing isn’t particularly good and he doesn’t even move well.
What he does is simply put it all out front. He is crude in the extreme, drinking beer on stage in huge gulps, belching into the mike, screaming indistinguishable lyrics while going through spastic contortions, straddling the mike, strangling it in a death grip, falling to the floor in agony-ecstasy throes of passion, then as quickly changing the tempo to a slow, whispered, intensely felt interpretation.
Above all, he is dramatic. It is truly theatre, with music as its pulse. He acts out the role of rock music star, larger than life, the collective emotion of a hypertense generation. The concert as catharsis.
For the parents I mentioned earlier, I should offer the opinion that it’s all completely harmless.
The Doors do a song that goes, “Break on through, break on through to the other side.” Most groups in rock have done just that, and all of us are trying. The Doors are stationary, hung in the frame of their own theatrics, but all of us, at one time or another, must pass through The Doors to get to the other side.
END.