Post by darkstar3 on Jan 14, 2011 17:02:05 GMT
Zig Zag Magazine
No.16 October 1970 2/6
The Doors
John Tobler & Mac
I don’t know what sort of an idiot attempts to compress the entire Doors story into 2 pages, but that’s what we’re about to do; so it’s bound to be sketchy and incomplete (to complement the sketchy incomplete Morrison interview which follows), but we hope at least to impart some information in response to the requests for such a piece.
The story doesn’t really start at the point in time when Elektra signed them, but it’s a good jumping off place because it was largely the perception of Jac Holzman, Elektra’s president, that thrust the Doors into international prominence. Until 1965, Elektra had been little more than a respected (for its executive/artiste relationship) and powerful folk label, dealing with traditional and then contemporary singers, but Holzman was aware of the slowly swinging interest of ‘folkies’ (for want of a better term) to ‘Beatles music’ (ditto); he’d seen the origins of the Byrds (briefly on his label as the Beefeaters), he’d seen the way John Sebastian’s head was going (Sebastian had been an Elektra session man up to his forming the Spoonful, who were also on the excitement caused by Butterfield in Chicago, and he realized that there were whole areas of rock ‘n roll which had been totally ignored by the commercial labels. It was Dylan’s electric debut at Newport folk festival in 1965 which made it all click into place, and started him looking for electric groups.
Early in 1966 Elektra signed their first real rock group, Love from Los Angeles – a band very much ahead of its time in relation to its contempories. “The later in 1966, after the success of Love, I went to the Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles to see them (Love) on stage and there were the Doors…the Doors who had previously been under contract, to Columbia and had been released by Columbia. Well, I just knew it. It took me three nights before I could tell there was something there, because they were kind of loose and disheveled as a band, although they had been together for some time. But the fourth night they sang ‘Light My Fire’ and that was the night I knew they were it. We signed the group after much difficulty and after several months we were able to come to an arrangement with them, and it’s been a very satisfactory, happy relationship. They’ve had the freedom pretty much to do what they wanted to do, they’ve been good to us.”
The Doors were in fact conceived early in 1965, growing out of a group called Rick and the Ravens – which included Ray Manzarek and his two brothers Rick and Jim, and which pumped out the old standards “Money,” Louie Louie,” “Hoochie Coochie Man,” etc. to the clean cut college boys. Manzarek (Ray) then happened to bump into Morrison (so legend would have it), who for some strange reason chose to sing “Moonlight Drive” for Ray’s benefit (it’s all in the press handout, folks). Manzarek: “When he sang those first two lines “Let’s swim to the moon, let’s climb through the tide, penetrate the evening, that the city sleeps to hide,” I said, ‘that’s it” I’d never heard lyrics to a rock song like that before, so we talked for a while before we decided to get a group together and make a million dollars.”
Morrison and a college room mate called Dennis Jacobs had often joked about forming a rock duo called the Doors: Open and Closed, which would have a repertoire of 2 songs; “I’m Hungry,” and “Want”. The group decided to use the abbreviated title of the Doors, which originally been pinched from Wm. Blake’s “There are things that are known and things that are unknown and in between are doors.”
John Densmore appeared in mid ’65 (Ray met him at once of the Maharishi’s meditation centers, would you believe?) and slipped easily into the mould of the drummer, excellent at his craft but outwardly thick in a studied sort of way: “Their songs were really far out to me. I didn’t understand very much, but I figure I’m the drummer, not the lyricist.” His last group had been called the Psychedelic Rangers!
On… to September 1965 when six Morrison originals including “Moonlight Drive,” “Summers Almost Gone,” “End Of The Night,” and Break On Through” were recorded as a demo for the Aura label Ray was on piano, Rick and Jim Manzarek on guitars, John on drums and an unidentified girl bass player was also present. She left soon after with Rick and Jim M, and, to continue the fairy story, Robbie Krieger, an ex jug band bottleneck player with degrees in psychology happened to bump into Ray and John at their mediation center.
The romanticism of the tale sags at this point, because the Doors then began a four month residency at a Sunset Strip club called “London Fog”, playing 7 nights a week, 4 sets a night for 20 dollars a night. A bit of hard graft which had them supplementing their small original repertoire with stuff like, “Gloria,” “Little Red Rooster” and “Who Do You Love.” So there they were, slogging away, and on the point of slumping into oblivion…ah, but wait – there is a twist in the tail. On the last night of their engagement (it’s in the handout, honest) they were seen by the Whisky A Go Go girl, who booked them into the club, where they played second billing to everyone from Them to the Turtles.
“I knew that Morrison had star quality the moment he started singing” said Miss Ronnie Haran, the booker. “They needed more polish, but the sound was there. Unfortunately none of them had a telephones – Morrison was; then sleeping on the beach – and it took a month to contact them again, but I finally did it.”
Around this time, it was rumors of their mammoth drug consuming capabilities which glamorized their music (this was before the nouveau-boutique-tight leather trousers had made Morrison bulge one of the band’s biggest assets); according to one source “Morrison was so consistently high on acid that he could eat sugar cubes like candy without visible effect.”
The music, however, got better and better – which is where we came in.
At this point we could shove in a lot of stuff about “the soft and gentle beauty of Morrison’s face, like an angel in a Renaissance painting,” and we also have access to some very ridiculous information such as Krieger’s favorite food is peanuts, Manzarek’s favorite color is blue, Densmore likes sensitive girls and Morrison’s favorite way to pass time with a girl is to talk, and so on ad infinitum. Presumably you’re as uninterested as we are in such unvital statistics and would rather read about their music.
The first time we saw the Doors (and the only time until the Isle Of Wight this August) was in early September 1968 when they did 4 sets at the Roundhouse. Their equipment was phenomenal, giving then a clarity and separation which has never been surpassed at that rotting dome, and the music was nothing short of brilliant, but there were criticisms that I tend to go along with. Morrison was just too clumsy and solid to do all that leaping and cavorting, a sort of animated potato sack, and so much of their act was obviously well rehearsed trickery which half gave the impression of chimpanzees going through a zoo tea party routine with a sort of temporary sincerity and enthusiasm. I remember though, that I was utterly captivated by Densmore’s concentration on the drums, Krieger’s peculiar picking style and Manzarek’s almost motionless hunched playing position…and whether it was just a ritual or not, the whole theatrical presentation of “The Unknown Soldier” was real, gripping and thoroughly amazing.
A TV documentary of the occasion was diabolically bad, and I had to answer the sneering condemnation of those I had beseeched to watch it. All the atmosphere and anticipation of the event had been withered, and the vocals had come out so thin and distorted that the producer must have almost felt like rejecting his film.
Now it’s not that we’re lazy or want to rely on other people’s minds or anything, but we, (being a couple of Doors freaks) could go on all night about their live music, their 6 albums, and do a chronological history of milestones in their careers and probably bore the pants off you; so we’ve decided to have a look at what various other people have had to say about them and trust you’ll find that incomparably more interesting. Since their rise to fame, all manner of writers and critics have explored every pore of the Doors and their music and consequently some very extraordinary conclusions have been drawn. We’re split them up into obvious sections.
THEIR MUSIC:
“They are unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged”…Lillian Roxon
“How can we dismiss anyone who gave us ‘The End’ and ‘When The Music’s Over,’ which have got to be in sort of pantheon when the rock era is ultimately re-evaluated, 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”…Harvey Perr
“A veritable tidal wave of pungent electric sound that heralds a major breakthrough in contemporary music.
“Contagious music is alive and well wherever Jim Morrison and the Doors appear. Morrison himself looks every inch the street punk gone to heaven and re-incarnated as a choir boy. His lyrics – amplified by the relentless rhythms of his fellow Doors – become a mighty myth of catharsis, with an Oedipal backbeat. “Break loose’ is his most frequent command, and its mere utterance sends waves of sheer rapport through an audience…Richard Goldstein (on ‘The End’)
“The Doors were abysmal. Since watching them drag their weary way through that embarrassing set. 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 the charisma going; but this time they blew it”…John Coleman on the Isle Of Wight
Nik Cohn brackets them with Iron Butterfly and Blue Cheer as exemplifying hype at work – asserting that their success is mainly due to the bullshit which surrounds their music and image; he puts them down (in a nutshell) as showbiz/well rehearsed theatre/little more than competent musically (which is about how a lot of heads think about them; they are good, even a great group but their self imposed mystique of paganism (going to seed of late) and their predictable theatrics put them off the live group).
“Jim’s really an artist. I kept feeling that he was creating right in front of me. The sound waves are his canvas, the group is his brush and their talents are his colours. Right there he has enough to create a masterpiece. Then he puts himself into the middle of it and becomes part of his art. It frames him and he IS and CREATES at the same time”…Lris Weintraub
MORRION’S SEXUALITY, which is the major reason for some heads rejecting the Doors as being a strictly teenybopper type band (‘The men don’t like it, but the little girls understand’). This subject also appears to have drawn vastly more comment than their music.
“I have never seen such an animalistic response from so many different kinds of women”…Howard Smith
“There was a pretty girl called Andres from Eye Magazine, who did an article on the Doors last month. She knew Morrison’s sexuality too well, from the viewpoint of the adult woman, to stay in a teenybopper state of admiration for him. She got a cigarette burn on the left boob to show for the interview” (?)…John Kreidl.
“The king of orgasmic rock, whose records currently outsell any others in the US, screamed obscenities from the bandstand, appeared to masturbate in full view of his audience, exposed himself and assaulted officials of the concert hall”…The Miami Herald March 1 1969 (which is all we propose to mention about the Florida bust, because presumably everyone is familiar with the whole event.
“The Doors are missionaries of apocalyptic sex”…The Saturday Evening Post.
“In print and the spoken rumour, Jim Morrison has grown to the sex-death, acid-evangelist of rock…as sort of Hell’s Angel of the groin.”….Mike Jahn
“We Could Be So Good Together is a straight forward invitation by cocksman Morrison to screw, and should turn on his younger female admirers. But is Light My Fire about sex, drugs or revolution”…Jay Ruby
“Morrison said, ‘We can play music all night if that’s what you want, but you want, but you don’t really want that do you? You want something more, something different, something you ain’t never seen before, don’t you?” Indeed that is what the poor creeps came for, and quite rightly too, for that is what their publicity mill has been building all these months. It was 14000 roller derby pop fans waiting to see the crack up, the ‘Naked Door.”..John Carpenter
“The Doors are about as sexy as skinpopping phlegm. It isn’t the Doors that turn me off, especially not that nifty guitar player, it’s that pretentious slob Morrison. Come on baby, bite my tyre, yech! The Duke of Mucous. Although I like and would enjoy balling to The Unknown Soldier, Moonlight Drive and Love Street.”…Peter Stampfel
“In addition to prodigious feats of sexuality, he is credited with some bizarre episodes of exhibitionism. At university, Morrison reportedly climbed the 16 storey bell tower with a willing lass; and in a moment of exuberance, swung out on the bell tower shutter, 200 feet above the heads of terrified onlookers – all this stark naked.
THE DOORS AS GODS
“I believe Morrison to be a being not of this earth”…mystic and voodoo adept L Silvestri (we can’t trace the source).
“Had the Doors not existed, they would have been created out of a need so intense and so American that it overshadowed not only the deities but their offspring, not only the musicians but the music”…Robert Somma
“There isn’t another face like that in the world. It’s so beautiful and not even handsome in the ordinary way. I think its because you can tell by looking at me that he is God. When he offers to die on the cross for us, it’s ok because he IS Christ. He’s everything that ever was all that can never be and he knows it”…Kris Weintraub
Some quotes from Morrison:
“I was less artificial, less theatrical when I began, but now the audiences we play for are much larger and the rooms much wider. It’s necessary to project and to exaggerate – almost to the point of grotesqueness. I think that when you’re a small dot at the end of a large arena, you have to make up for that lack of intimacy with expanded movements.”
“You can say I’m an actor-dancer-musician-politician…there were five of them, what’s the other? Oh yeah, writer, that’s it.”
“The Doors are basically a white blues band.”
“I don’t think you can divide humanity into the young and old. The more important distinction is like the old story of the ant and the grasshopper. In every human being there is a conflict like the ant and the grasshopper…to play and work…and more or less, we are all afflicted with this conflict. Music appeals to the grasshoppers. They might be as hardworking as anyone. Just the way that many older people tend toward the working style, there are some that tend toward the playing style. Music appeals to grasshoppers it’s a change from the daily grind. It provides an alternative. It’s not so din as the ant style.”
“I’m interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that appears to have no meaning.”
“We’re getting tired of waiting around
Waiting around
With our heads to the ground…
We want the world and we want it NOW” John/Mac
There is a good interview with Morrison in Rolling Stone/July 26 1969)
Albums:
The Doors EKS 74007
Strange Days EKS 74014
Waiting For The Sun EKS 74024
The Soft Parade EKS 75005
Morrison Hotel EKS 75007
Absolutely Live 2665 002
References:
Jazz & Pop (various issues)
Early Elektra Press Hype Kits
Eye Magazine (defunct NY) April 1968
The Encyclopedia of Rock (USA only)
Los Angeles Free Press (various issues)
The Poetry Of Rock (Corgi Books) 1969
Friends
Pop From The Beginning
Crawdaddy (various issues)
NY Village Voice
Vibrations/Boston May 1969
Jim Morrison & The Door; an unauthorized book (not published here)
Rock, World Bold As love (USA only)
Whilst at the Isle Of Wight festival John managed to interview Jim Morrison:
John: I've discovered a book on sale at this festival called The Doors Song Book, which appears to be a pirated version of all the words off all the albums, including the new one. What do you reckon
about that?
Jim: Well, I don't mind if they've got all the words spelled right. A lot of time they really screw up the meaning, just one word or one
semi-colon can ruin the whole thing.
John: Do you approve of having the lyrics on the back of your album or on the inside sleeve, because in England, two of them have had the lyrics and three haven't. Do you think it makes a difference? We didn't have the words to the `Unknown Solider' for instance.
Jim: Yeah, they really got botched up. I don't think it matters. I don't think it's necessary but….
John: You don't mind that somebody's making some bread out of your words?
Jim: No, what harm could it do?
John: Is this the first festival of this sort you've played?
Jim: Yes, it is.
John: How do you find it? I mean the chaos and the devastation and he you know, it's ok in here, but have you been outside?
Jim: Well, it's kind of hard walking around out there. I did get round back around the camp sites a little bit, but this one seems to be pretty well organized for such a huge event. I didn't have such a good time last night, because I had to perform, and I'd just gotten
off the plane. But tonight, I came back, and I can see why people like it. I think all they're wrong. I think they're going to become increasing significant in the next three or four or five years.
John: When I talked to some cats who came back from Woodstock, like Clive Selwood (London's Elektra representative), he said it was terrible. You know, the sheer inability to cope with the multitudes, and now they're made the film, and everyone's saying
`Woe! Beautiful revolution.'
Jim: I'm sure that these things get highly romanticized but I was a kind of that opinion myself when I saw the film. It seemed like a bunch of young parasites, being kind of spoonfed these three or fours days of….well you know what I mean. They looked like victims and
dupes of a culture, rather than anything, but I think that may have been sour grapes, because I wasn't there, not even as a spectator, so I think that even though they are a mess, and even though they are
not what they pretend to be, some free celebration of a young culture, it's still better than nothing. And I'm sure that some of the people take away a kind of myth back to the city with them, and
it'll affect them.
John: I take it that you don't believe in this sudden, miraculous revolution that's being spoken about as if we're all going to go back to London and take over.
Jim: That would be unreal to me. I don't want to say too much because I haven't studied politics that much, really. It just seems that you have to be in a constant state of revolution, or you're dead. There always has to be a revolution, it has to be a constant thing, not
something that's going to change things, and that's it. You know, the revolution's going to solve everything. It has to be every day.
John: I figure that you've got to convince people gradually to change, not to say, `Pow, we're coming in!' like the Black Panthers.
Jim: There have to be Black Panthers too. They have to change too, to become leopards some day, right?
John: You played mostly tracks off your first two albums last night. Why was that, because you thought we'd know them better?
Jim: No, we knew them better.
John: You don't do many gigs at that rate then?
Jim: Yeah, we do, but never anything like this. I don't think that our particular music style holds up very well in a huge outdoor event. I think that the particular kind of magic that we can breed when we do, when it works, works best in a small theatre.
John: Like the last time you came to England?
Jim: Yeah, that was beautiful, I think.
John: Yeah, right, I saw the last set; you know, when the dawn was breaking on Saturday, and it was incredible.
Jim: I think that was one of the best concerts we've ever done.
John: I was talking to the guy this morning who made the film, and I said –<br>
Jim: Which one?
John: Geoffrey Canon – he's a writer for The Guardian –<br>and he said that they were trying to put over the immediacy of rock, rather than the Doors, and I said well, I think you should have been trying to
put over the Doors, because the sound recording was really shitty,
you know.
Jim: However, I thought the film was very exciting. To get it on national television, I think that's incredible. The thing is, the guys that made the film had a thesis of what their film was going to be , before we even came over. We were going to be the political rock
group, and it have them the chance to whip out some of their anti-merican sentiments, which they thought we were going to give them, and so they had their whole film before we came over. But I still think they made a very exciting film.
John: You know, when you were at the Roundhouse, there was something… It was amazing, all those people sitting there. It was so crowded it was much worse than this, because it was an enclosed space, and there
was a queue of two thousand people waiting to get in at two o'clock in the morning. A ridiculous scene. Why haven't you been here since then?
Jim: I guess we've been too busy, and actually, there didn't seem to be that much demand. I mean, we couldn't go back to the Roundhouse;
it would have to be a step forward, and there didn't seem to be any real, uh…<br>
John: No. Well the Roundhouse is no longer an auditorium in the same way.
Jim: Oh, Calcutta's on there, right?
John: Right.
Jim: That seems strange.
John: They put sort of a terraced seating in not long after you came.
Jim: Well, that was a beautiful scene two years ago, at the Roundhouse where it's kind of a penny theatre, you know.
John: Right…It's the kind of thing one remembers for years and years, which is why I'd have expected an earlier return.
Jim: That's the reason. We were busy, and also there just didn't seem to be any real demand for it. What's the name of the magazine you
guys put out?
John: Zig Zag
Jim: I've seen it. I'd like to start a magazine, newspaper
thing in L.A. sometime. The trouble is, if you try and do it to sell copies, and get the advertising and all that, then you can't uh…….
John: Well, you certainly lose a lot of your enthusiasm when you start getting involved in business hustles. Anyway, wouldn't L.A. be rather a difficult market, with so many publications?
Jim: Well, that's it. I would only do it if I could finance it
myself, so I wouldn't have to advertise. You know those little magazines, one issue things, the Surrealists and Dadaists used to put out? Manifestos, and all that?
John: Yeah, right.
Jim: Hey look. An actual movie (As Jimi Hendrix is filmed going up the backstage ramp followed by a man struggling with an enormous camera.) Hey that's beautiful. Looks like a priest.
John: Do you think in view of what you've done that you will do a tour now?
Jim: Well, we had planned one….we had planned to do it after this, eight or nine places in Europe, including Italy and Switzerland and Paris, places like that, but I have to go back to this trial in Miami. I'm in the middle of that, so it blew the whole trip.
John: That is such a drag, as far as we here are concerned.
Jim: I thought it was going to be, but it's actually a very
fascinating thing to go through. A thing that you can observe.
John: I talked to Jac Holzman (of Elektra), and he said that it was going on so long now that perhaps nothing would ever be done about it, because it would go to appeals and appeals and appeals, but the trouble is if it keeps you in a position where you can't get out
of he country for too long, it's a drag for us here.
Jim: I think maybe we'll come back next Spring, March, April. That's a good time of year.
John: That would be good. Are you happy with the live album?
Jim: Yeah, I like it.
John: We haven't heard it yet.
Jim: It's just about to be released here. I think it's a true
document of one of our good concerts. It's not insanely good, but it's a true portrait of what we usually do on a good night. I think you'll like it.
John: Well I've really dug all the others. I heard that your favorite album was The Soft Parade. Is that right?
Jim: Oh, I don't know. I guess I don't have a favorite. Well, let's see. I think my favorite, besides the live one, is Morrison Hotel.
John: That's very good. That was getting back to the first two, perhaps, it seemed to me. Was that……….
Jim: Just in respect that we didn't use any other musicians on it, except a bass player.
John: Lonnie Mack
Jim: But it wasn't a conscious attempt to get back to anything.
John: No, but it was publicized a bit like that here, which is perhaps unfair, because the first album is an epic. I'm literally on my third copy of it, I wore out two.
Jim: Yeah, you know, that's terrible, that's like a
novelist's first novel, and no one ever lets him forget it. Why don't you write'em like Look Homeward Angel anymore?
John: No, you're certainly progressing, aren't you? I mean, I thought Morrison Hotel was a knock out, whereas The Soft Parade disappointed me in places.
Jim: It kinda got out of control, and it took too long in making, spread over about nine months, and just got of hand. There was no, uh together, some kind of unified feeling and style about it, and that's what that one lacks.
John: Are you happy with Elektra?
Jim: Yeah, it's been a great relationship.
John: I'm an Elektra freak. I've got about seventy Elektra albums.
Jim: Well, now that it's become part of a large corporation, it'll be interesting to see if the label gets better, or if they kinda get…or if it gets assimilated. Hopefully, it might give them the chance not
to worry about tedium of popular field, and do the thing that they do best, which is classical, experimental electronic things, giving a chance to people that haven't had really a chance to be commercially successful in their own times. Maybe this will give them a chance to
get back to that.
John: What is what they first became known for.
Jim: I think with us it was just really a freak. They've never repeated that.
John: Jac Holzman saw you when he went to see Love playing somewhere, didn't he? That was the story.
Jim: Right. They had Love, and someone associated with them brought someone in to see us, and that's…..yeah, that's actually it. Because
Love was the popular underground group in L.A. at that time, and we figured, well, if they went to Elektra, it must be a good label.
John: And then you got famous, and Love didn't.
Jim: Yeah. In a way that's true. I think it was said about Love, they were incredible….well, it's really Arthur Lee, I suppose because… although the first Love group was a very, very great group. But I don't think they were willing to travel, and go through all the games and numbers that you have to do to get it out to a large number of people. If they'd done that, I think they could have been as big as anyone. And someday they will.
John: Right. Thanks very much for your time.
Jim: Good Luck.
END.
No.16 October 1970 2/6
The Doors
John Tobler & Mac
I don’t know what sort of an idiot attempts to compress the entire Doors story into 2 pages, but that’s what we’re about to do; so it’s bound to be sketchy and incomplete (to complement the sketchy incomplete Morrison interview which follows), but we hope at least to impart some information in response to the requests for such a piece.
The story doesn’t really start at the point in time when Elektra signed them, but it’s a good jumping off place because it was largely the perception of Jac Holzman, Elektra’s president, that thrust the Doors into international prominence. Until 1965, Elektra had been little more than a respected (for its executive/artiste relationship) and powerful folk label, dealing with traditional and then contemporary singers, but Holzman was aware of the slowly swinging interest of ‘folkies’ (for want of a better term) to ‘Beatles music’ (ditto); he’d seen the origins of the Byrds (briefly on his label as the Beefeaters), he’d seen the way John Sebastian’s head was going (Sebastian had been an Elektra session man up to his forming the Spoonful, who were also on the excitement caused by Butterfield in Chicago, and he realized that there were whole areas of rock ‘n roll which had been totally ignored by the commercial labels. It was Dylan’s electric debut at Newport folk festival in 1965 which made it all click into place, and started him looking for electric groups.
Early in 1966 Elektra signed their first real rock group, Love from Los Angeles – a band very much ahead of its time in relation to its contempories. “The later in 1966, after the success of Love, I went to the Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles to see them (Love) on stage and there were the Doors…the Doors who had previously been under contract, to Columbia and had been released by Columbia. Well, I just knew it. It took me three nights before I could tell there was something there, because they were kind of loose and disheveled as a band, although they had been together for some time. But the fourth night they sang ‘Light My Fire’ and that was the night I knew they were it. We signed the group after much difficulty and after several months we were able to come to an arrangement with them, and it’s been a very satisfactory, happy relationship. They’ve had the freedom pretty much to do what they wanted to do, they’ve been good to us.”
The Doors were in fact conceived early in 1965, growing out of a group called Rick and the Ravens – which included Ray Manzarek and his two brothers Rick and Jim, and which pumped out the old standards “Money,” Louie Louie,” “Hoochie Coochie Man,” etc. to the clean cut college boys. Manzarek (Ray) then happened to bump into Morrison (so legend would have it), who for some strange reason chose to sing “Moonlight Drive” for Ray’s benefit (it’s all in the press handout, folks). Manzarek: “When he sang those first two lines “Let’s swim to the moon, let’s climb through the tide, penetrate the evening, that the city sleeps to hide,” I said, ‘that’s it” I’d never heard lyrics to a rock song like that before, so we talked for a while before we decided to get a group together and make a million dollars.”
Morrison and a college room mate called Dennis Jacobs had often joked about forming a rock duo called the Doors: Open and Closed, which would have a repertoire of 2 songs; “I’m Hungry,” and “Want”. The group decided to use the abbreviated title of the Doors, which originally been pinched from Wm. Blake’s “There are things that are known and things that are unknown and in between are doors.”
John Densmore appeared in mid ’65 (Ray met him at once of the Maharishi’s meditation centers, would you believe?) and slipped easily into the mould of the drummer, excellent at his craft but outwardly thick in a studied sort of way: “Their songs were really far out to me. I didn’t understand very much, but I figure I’m the drummer, not the lyricist.” His last group had been called the Psychedelic Rangers!
On… to September 1965 when six Morrison originals including “Moonlight Drive,” “Summers Almost Gone,” “End Of The Night,” and Break On Through” were recorded as a demo for the Aura label Ray was on piano, Rick and Jim Manzarek on guitars, John on drums and an unidentified girl bass player was also present. She left soon after with Rick and Jim M, and, to continue the fairy story, Robbie Krieger, an ex jug band bottleneck player with degrees in psychology happened to bump into Ray and John at their mediation center.
The romanticism of the tale sags at this point, because the Doors then began a four month residency at a Sunset Strip club called “London Fog”, playing 7 nights a week, 4 sets a night for 20 dollars a night. A bit of hard graft which had them supplementing their small original repertoire with stuff like, “Gloria,” “Little Red Rooster” and “Who Do You Love.” So there they were, slogging away, and on the point of slumping into oblivion…ah, but wait – there is a twist in the tail. On the last night of their engagement (it’s in the handout, honest) they were seen by the Whisky A Go Go girl, who booked them into the club, where they played second billing to everyone from Them to the Turtles.
“I knew that Morrison had star quality the moment he started singing” said Miss Ronnie Haran, the booker. “They needed more polish, but the sound was there. Unfortunately none of them had a telephones – Morrison was; then sleeping on the beach – and it took a month to contact them again, but I finally did it.”
Around this time, it was rumors of their mammoth drug consuming capabilities which glamorized their music (this was before the nouveau-boutique-tight leather trousers had made Morrison bulge one of the band’s biggest assets); according to one source “Morrison was so consistently high on acid that he could eat sugar cubes like candy without visible effect.”
The music, however, got better and better – which is where we came in.
At this point we could shove in a lot of stuff about “the soft and gentle beauty of Morrison’s face, like an angel in a Renaissance painting,” and we also have access to some very ridiculous information such as Krieger’s favorite food is peanuts, Manzarek’s favorite color is blue, Densmore likes sensitive girls and Morrison’s favorite way to pass time with a girl is to talk, and so on ad infinitum. Presumably you’re as uninterested as we are in such unvital statistics and would rather read about their music.
The first time we saw the Doors (and the only time until the Isle Of Wight this August) was in early September 1968 when they did 4 sets at the Roundhouse. Their equipment was phenomenal, giving then a clarity and separation which has never been surpassed at that rotting dome, and the music was nothing short of brilliant, but there were criticisms that I tend to go along with. Morrison was just too clumsy and solid to do all that leaping and cavorting, a sort of animated potato sack, and so much of their act was obviously well rehearsed trickery which half gave the impression of chimpanzees going through a zoo tea party routine with a sort of temporary sincerity and enthusiasm. I remember though, that I was utterly captivated by Densmore’s concentration on the drums, Krieger’s peculiar picking style and Manzarek’s almost motionless hunched playing position…and whether it was just a ritual or not, the whole theatrical presentation of “The Unknown Soldier” was real, gripping and thoroughly amazing.
A TV documentary of the occasion was diabolically bad, and I had to answer the sneering condemnation of those I had beseeched to watch it. All the atmosphere and anticipation of the event had been withered, and the vocals had come out so thin and distorted that the producer must have almost felt like rejecting his film.
Now it’s not that we’re lazy or want to rely on other people’s minds or anything, but we, (being a couple of Doors freaks) could go on all night about their live music, their 6 albums, and do a chronological history of milestones in their careers and probably bore the pants off you; so we’ve decided to have a look at what various other people have had to say about them and trust you’ll find that incomparably more interesting. Since their rise to fame, all manner of writers and critics have explored every pore of the Doors and their music and consequently some very extraordinary conclusions have been drawn. We’re split them up into obvious sections.
THEIR MUSIC:
“They are unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged”…Lillian Roxon
“How can we dismiss anyone who gave us ‘The End’ and ‘When The Music’s Over,’ which have got to be in sort of pantheon when the rock era is ultimately re-evaluated, 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”…Harvey Perr
“A veritable tidal wave of pungent electric sound that heralds a major breakthrough in contemporary music.
“Contagious music is alive and well wherever Jim Morrison and the Doors appear. Morrison himself looks every inch the street punk gone to heaven and re-incarnated as a choir boy. His lyrics – amplified by the relentless rhythms of his fellow Doors – become a mighty myth of catharsis, with an Oedipal backbeat. “Break loose’ is his most frequent command, and its mere utterance sends waves of sheer rapport through an audience…Richard Goldstein (on ‘The End’)
“The Doors were abysmal. Since watching them drag their weary way through that embarrassing set. 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 the charisma going; but this time they blew it”…John Coleman on the Isle Of Wight
Nik Cohn brackets them with Iron Butterfly and Blue Cheer as exemplifying hype at work – asserting that their success is mainly due to the bullshit which surrounds their music and image; he puts them down (in a nutshell) as showbiz/well rehearsed theatre/little more than competent musically (which is about how a lot of heads think about them; they are good, even a great group but their self imposed mystique of paganism (going to seed of late) and their predictable theatrics put them off the live group).
“Jim’s really an artist. I kept feeling that he was creating right in front of me. The sound waves are his canvas, the group is his brush and their talents are his colours. Right there he has enough to create a masterpiece. Then he puts himself into the middle of it and becomes part of his art. It frames him and he IS and CREATES at the same time”…Lris Weintraub
MORRION’S SEXUALITY, which is the major reason for some heads rejecting the Doors as being a strictly teenybopper type band (‘The men don’t like it, but the little girls understand’). This subject also appears to have drawn vastly more comment than their music.
“I have never seen such an animalistic response from so many different kinds of women”…Howard Smith
“There was a pretty girl called Andres from Eye Magazine, who did an article on the Doors last month. She knew Morrison’s sexuality too well, from the viewpoint of the adult woman, to stay in a teenybopper state of admiration for him. She got a cigarette burn on the left boob to show for the interview” (?)…John Kreidl.
“The king of orgasmic rock, whose records currently outsell any others in the US, screamed obscenities from the bandstand, appeared to masturbate in full view of his audience, exposed himself and assaulted officials of the concert hall”…The Miami Herald March 1 1969 (which is all we propose to mention about the Florida bust, because presumably everyone is familiar with the whole event.
“The Doors are missionaries of apocalyptic sex”…The Saturday Evening Post.
“In print and the spoken rumour, Jim Morrison has grown to the sex-death, acid-evangelist of rock…as sort of Hell’s Angel of the groin.”….Mike Jahn
“We Could Be So Good Together is a straight forward invitation by cocksman Morrison to screw, and should turn on his younger female admirers. But is Light My Fire about sex, drugs or revolution”…Jay Ruby
“Morrison said, ‘We can play music all night if that’s what you want, but you want, but you don’t really want that do you? You want something more, something different, something you ain’t never seen before, don’t you?” Indeed that is what the poor creeps came for, and quite rightly too, for that is what their publicity mill has been building all these months. It was 14000 roller derby pop fans waiting to see the crack up, the ‘Naked Door.”..John Carpenter
“The Doors are about as sexy as skinpopping phlegm. It isn’t the Doors that turn me off, especially not that nifty guitar player, it’s that pretentious slob Morrison. Come on baby, bite my tyre, yech! The Duke of Mucous. Although I like and would enjoy balling to The Unknown Soldier, Moonlight Drive and Love Street.”…Peter Stampfel
“In addition to prodigious feats of sexuality, he is credited with some bizarre episodes of exhibitionism. At university, Morrison reportedly climbed the 16 storey bell tower with a willing lass; and in a moment of exuberance, swung out on the bell tower shutter, 200 feet above the heads of terrified onlookers – all this stark naked.
THE DOORS AS GODS
“I believe Morrison to be a being not of this earth”…mystic and voodoo adept L Silvestri (we can’t trace the source).
“Had the Doors not existed, they would have been created out of a need so intense and so American that it overshadowed not only the deities but their offspring, not only the musicians but the music”…Robert Somma
“There isn’t another face like that in the world. It’s so beautiful and not even handsome in the ordinary way. I think its because you can tell by looking at me that he is God. When he offers to die on the cross for us, it’s ok because he IS Christ. He’s everything that ever was all that can never be and he knows it”…Kris Weintraub
Some quotes from Morrison:
“I was less artificial, less theatrical when I began, but now the audiences we play for are much larger and the rooms much wider. It’s necessary to project and to exaggerate – almost to the point of grotesqueness. I think that when you’re a small dot at the end of a large arena, you have to make up for that lack of intimacy with expanded movements.”
“You can say I’m an actor-dancer-musician-politician…there were five of them, what’s the other? Oh yeah, writer, that’s it.”
“The Doors are basically a white blues band.”
“I don’t think you can divide humanity into the young and old. The more important distinction is like the old story of the ant and the grasshopper. In every human being there is a conflict like the ant and the grasshopper…to play and work…and more or less, we are all afflicted with this conflict. Music appeals to the grasshoppers. They might be as hardworking as anyone. Just the way that many older people tend toward the working style, there are some that tend toward the playing style. Music appeals to grasshoppers it’s a change from the daily grind. It provides an alternative. It’s not so din as the ant style.”
“I’m interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that appears to have no meaning.”
“We’re getting tired of waiting around
Waiting around
With our heads to the ground…
We want the world and we want it NOW” John/Mac
There is a good interview with Morrison in Rolling Stone/July 26 1969)
Albums:
The Doors EKS 74007
Strange Days EKS 74014
Waiting For The Sun EKS 74024
The Soft Parade EKS 75005
Morrison Hotel EKS 75007
Absolutely Live 2665 002
References:
Jazz & Pop (various issues)
Early Elektra Press Hype Kits
Eye Magazine (defunct NY) April 1968
The Encyclopedia of Rock (USA only)
Los Angeles Free Press (various issues)
The Poetry Of Rock (Corgi Books) 1969
Friends
Pop From The Beginning
Crawdaddy (various issues)
NY Village Voice
Vibrations/Boston May 1969
Jim Morrison & The Door; an unauthorized book (not published here)
Rock, World Bold As love (USA only)
Whilst at the Isle Of Wight festival John managed to interview Jim Morrison:
John: I've discovered a book on sale at this festival called The Doors Song Book, which appears to be a pirated version of all the words off all the albums, including the new one. What do you reckon
about that?
Jim: Well, I don't mind if they've got all the words spelled right. A lot of time they really screw up the meaning, just one word or one
semi-colon can ruin the whole thing.
John: Do you approve of having the lyrics on the back of your album or on the inside sleeve, because in England, two of them have had the lyrics and three haven't. Do you think it makes a difference? We didn't have the words to the `Unknown Solider' for instance.
Jim: Yeah, they really got botched up. I don't think it matters. I don't think it's necessary but….
John: You don't mind that somebody's making some bread out of your words?
Jim: No, what harm could it do?
John: Is this the first festival of this sort you've played?
Jim: Yes, it is.
John: How do you find it? I mean the chaos and the devastation and he you know, it's ok in here, but have you been outside?
Jim: Well, it's kind of hard walking around out there. I did get round back around the camp sites a little bit, but this one seems to be pretty well organized for such a huge event. I didn't have such a good time last night, because I had to perform, and I'd just gotten
off the plane. But tonight, I came back, and I can see why people like it. I think all they're wrong. I think they're going to become increasing significant in the next three or four or five years.
John: When I talked to some cats who came back from Woodstock, like Clive Selwood (London's Elektra representative), he said it was terrible. You know, the sheer inability to cope with the multitudes, and now they're made the film, and everyone's saying
`Woe! Beautiful revolution.'
Jim: I'm sure that these things get highly romanticized but I was a kind of that opinion myself when I saw the film. It seemed like a bunch of young parasites, being kind of spoonfed these three or fours days of….well you know what I mean. They looked like victims and
dupes of a culture, rather than anything, but I think that may have been sour grapes, because I wasn't there, not even as a spectator, so I think that even though they are a mess, and even though they are
not what they pretend to be, some free celebration of a young culture, it's still better than nothing. And I'm sure that some of the people take away a kind of myth back to the city with them, and
it'll affect them.
John: I take it that you don't believe in this sudden, miraculous revolution that's being spoken about as if we're all going to go back to London and take over.
Jim: That would be unreal to me. I don't want to say too much because I haven't studied politics that much, really. It just seems that you have to be in a constant state of revolution, or you're dead. There always has to be a revolution, it has to be a constant thing, not
something that's going to change things, and that's it. You know, the revolution's going to solve everything. It has to be every day.
John: I figure that you've got to convince people gradually to change, not to say, `Pow, we're coming in!' like the Black Panthers.
Jim: There have to be Black Panthers too. They have to change too, to become leopards some day, right?
John: You played mostly tracks off your first two albums last night. Why was that, because you thought we'd know them better?
Jim: No, we knew them better.
John: You don't do many gigs at that rate then?
Jim: Yeah, we do, but never anything like this. I don't think that our particular music style holds up very well in a huge outdoor event. I think that the particular kind of magic that we can breed when we do, when it works, works best in a small theatre.
John: Like the last time you came to England?
Jim: Yeah, that was beautiful, I think.
John: Yeah, right, I saw the last set; you know, when the dawn was breaking on Saturday, and it was incredible.
Jim: I think that was one of the best concerts we've ever done.
John: I was talking to the guy this morning who made the film, and I said –<br>
Jim: Which one?
John: Geoffrey Canon – he's a writer for The Guardian –<br>and he said that they were trying to put over the immediacy of rock, rather than the Doors, and I said well, I think you should have been trying to
put over the Doors, because the sound recording was really shitty,
you know.
Jim: However, I thought the film was very exciting. To get it on national television, I think that's incredible. The thing is, the guys that made the film had a thesis of what their film was going to be , before we even came over. We were going to be the political rock
group, and it have them the chance to whip out some of their anti-merican sentiments, which they thought we were going to give them, and so they had their whole film before we came over. But I still think they made a very exciting film.
John: You know, when you were at the Roundhouse, there was something… It was amazing, all those people sitting there. It was so crowded it was much worse than this, because it was an enclosed space, and there
was a queue of two thousand people waiting to get in at two o'clock in the morning. A ridiculous scene. Why haven't you been here since then?
Jim: I guess we've been too busy, and actually, there didn't seem to be that much demand. I mean, we couldn't go back to the Roundhouse;
it would have to be a step forward, and there didn't seem to be any real, uh…<br>
John: No. Well the Roundhouse is no longer an auditorium in the same way.
Jim: Oh, Calcutta's on there, right?
John: Right.
Jim: That seems strange.
John: They put sort of a terraced seating in not long after you came.
Jim: Well, that was a beautiful scene two years ago, at the Roundhouse where it's kind of a penny theatre, you know.
John: Right…It's the kind of thing one remembers for years and years, which is why I'd have expected an earlier return.
Jim: That's the reason. We were busy, and also there just didn't seem to be any real demand for it. What's the name of the magazine you
guys put out?
John: Zig Zag
Jim: I've seen it. I'd like to start a magazine, newspaper
thing in L.A. sometime. The trouble is, if you try and do it to sell copies, and get the advertising and all that, then you can't uh…….
John: Well, you certainly lose a lot of your enthusiasm when you start getting involved in business hustles. Anyway, wouldn't L.A. be rather a difficult market, with so many publications?
Jim: Well, that's it. I would only do it if I could finance it
myself, so I wouldn't have to advertise. You know those little magazines, one issue things, the Surrealists and Dadaists used to put out? Manifestos, and all that?
John: Yeah, right.
Jim: Hey look. An actual movie (As Jimi Hendrix is filmed going up the backstage ramp followed by a man struggling with an enormous camera.) Hey that's beautiful. Looks like a priest.
John: Do you think in view of what you've done that you will do a tour now?
Jim: Well, we had planned one….we had planned to do it after this, eight or nine places in Europe, including Italy and Switzerland and Paris, places like that, but I have to go back to this trial in Miami. I'm in the middle of that, so it blew the whole trip.
John: That is such a drag, as far as we here are concerned.
Jim: I thought it was going to be, but it's actually a very
fascinating thing to go through. A thing that you can observe.
John: I talked to Jac Holzman (of Elektra), and he said that it was going on so long now that perhaps nothing would ever be done about it, because it would go to appeals and appeals and appeals, but the trouble is if it keeps you in a position where you can't get out
of he country for too long, it's a drag for us here.
Jim: I think maybe we'll come back next Spring, March, April. That's a good time of year.
John: That would be good. Are you happy with the live album?
Jim: Yeah, I like it.
John: We haven't heard it yet.
Jim: It's just about to be released here. I think it's a true
document of one of our good concerts. It's not insanely good, but it's a true portrait of what we usually do on a good night. I think you'll like it.
John: Well I've really dug all the others. I heard that your favorite album was The Soft Parade. Is that right?
Jim: Oh, I don't know. I guess I don't have a favorite. Well, let's see. I think my favorite, besides the live one, is Morrison Hotel.
John: That's very good. That was getting back to the first two, perhaps, it seemed to me. Was that……….
Jim: Just in respect that we didn't use any other musicians on it, except a bass player.
John: Lonnie Mack
Jim: But it wasn't a conscious attempt to get back to anything.
John: No, but it was publicized a bit like that here, which is perhaps unfair, because the first album is an epic. I'm literally on my third copy of it, I wore out two.
Jim: Yeah, you know, that's terrible, that's like a
novelist's first novel, and no one ever lets him forget it. Why don't you write'em like Look Homeward Angel anymore?
John: No, you're certainly progressing, aren't you? I mean, I thought Morrison Hotel was a knock out, whereas The Soft Parade disappointed me in places.
Jim: It kinda got out of control, and it took too long in making, spread over about nine months, and just got of hand. There was no, uh together, some kind of unified feeling and style about it, and that's what that one lacks.
John: Are you happy with Elektra?
Jim: Yeah, it's been a great relationship.
John: I'm an Elektra freak. I've got about seventy Elektra albums.
Jim: Well, now that it's become part of a large corporation, it'll be interesting to see if the label gets better, or if they kinda get…or if it gets assimilated. Hopefully, it might give them the chance not
to worry about tedium of popular field, and do the thing that they do best, which is classical, experimental electronic things, giving a chance to people that haven't had really a chance to be commercially successful in their own times. Maybe this will give them a chance to
get back to that.
John: What is what they first became known for.
Jim: I think with us it was just really a freak. They've never repeated that.
John: Jac Holzman saw you when he went to see Love playing somewhere, didn't he? That was the story.
Jim: Right. They had Love, and someone associated with them brought someone in to see us, and that's…..yeah, that's actually it. Because
Love was the popular underground group in L.A. at that time, and we figured, well, if they went to Elektra, it must be a good label.
John: And then you got famous, and Love didn't.
Jim: Yeah. In a way that's true. I think it was said about Love, they were incredible….well, it's really Arthur Lee, I suppose because… although the first Love group was a very, very great group. But I don't think they were willing to travel, and go through all the games and numbers that you have to do to get it out to a large number of people. If they'd done that, I think they could have been as big as anyone. And someday they will.
John: Right. Thanks very much for your time.
Jim: Good Luck.
END.