The Lost Doors Album: Celebration Of The Lizard!

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The Great Lost Doors Album Celebration Of The Lizard!

February 19th 1968
TTG Recording Studios Hollywood CA.

It was today 43 years ago that The Doors embarked on their most ambitious project when they turned up at TTG Studios Hollywood California and immediately got down to recording the centre piece of what would be the bands third album.
Entitled Celebration Of The Lizard it was to be a majestic example of the spoken word and rock music as at last Jim Morrison was going to realise his dream of melding poetry to rock music and embark on a new direction for The Doors that who knew where it would lead the band.

They apparently began the first days recording in the highest of spirits ready to get to grips with this the most ambitious Doors project to date.
To allow for any creative ideas that might emerge during the recording they declare that spontaneity would be the order of the day and Jim Morrison inserts a harmonica segment just after the Lizard King opening to the piece.
That first days recording leaves them pleased with their first days effort although on reflection they find many flaws in the overall cohesive structure and these flaws will later prove costly for the band.

We know a lot of information about this album including it’s design as Jim saw it in a snakeskin LP jacket likely with a gatefold sleeve and possibly with the album lyric as appears on WFTS.
We know less as to what would have appeared alongside COTL but The Unknown Soldier was recorded and would be released as a single so that was likely to have been on the album.
Not sure We Could Be So Good Together would have appeared as I get the sense it was intended as a B Side and would not have fitted in with Jim’s concept for the COTL album.
What would NOT have been on is easier. Hello I Love You would never have appeared as when Adam Holzman suggested it to his dad after COTL failed the band were not at all keen to revisit their demo. So for the same reason Summer’s Almost Gone would not have appeared.
Yes The River Knows is also likely to have been missing as that certainly does not fit in with the COTL idea.
My Wild Love is a possibility as is Wintertime Love. Not sure about Spanish Caravan or even Love Street but Five To One sounds like it would fit right in with the concept Morrison was trying to envisage.
It was also reported by the LA Times that the band planned to include a studio version of Gloria on the COTL album, which would have been interesting.

So a lot we know and a lot we don’t.

Bear in mind this is not to be confused with the WFTS album, which is a completely different LP.
This thread is for comments about the Great Lost Doors Album Celebration Of The Lizard which was to have become the third Doors album and would be a completely different animal to the one which took it’s place.


Some associated threads for information onthe time period.

The Doors unhinged..Soft Parade cause & effect


Waiting For The Sun

COTL thoughts on the studio attempt?

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

It is indeed a common mistake Doors fans make that today was arguably the beginning of the recording of Waiting For The Sun.
I have made that mistake plenty of times myself.
But although it was most likely the day the band began recording their third album in earnest that album was not Waiting For The Sun. Of course they had already recorded Unknown Soldier and would release it as a single but when that was recorded it's not clear what vision the band had for the third album.

Morrison came up with the idea of the concept of a poetry based third album but was Unknown Soldier part of this or simply a single based project in addition to this?

We are not really sure and Unknown Soldier was released in March 1968 probably as a tatster for the album but like I say it is not that clear what The Doors (and for that read Morrison) had as a vision for COTL.

So for the sake of argument let's take today as the beginning of the third album and regard it as COTL rather than WFTS.
Let's put Unknown Soldier in as possibly part of the COTL album
and lets engage in a bit of Historical whimsy and wonder what The Doors could have come up with if they had managed to nail the thing.

It will be an interesting excercise to discuss this even though we don't have a huge amount of information as after COTL failed the album became a very different thing to what Jim Morrison envisaged.

But it is a fact that what The Doors embarked upon and what eventually saw the light of day were worlds apart.

The epic sweeping majesty of COTL, a poetry based fusion of rock and spoken word/song and the bubblegum pop of a HILY orientated album that we ended up with shows a complete 180 degree turn in the focus of the project.

Gone was the eruditeness of a side and a half of swirling poetic drama and in it's place a solid if not exceptional Doors effort that would find favour with the mainstream audience rather than the enlightened Doors audience.

I will hit the books and see what I can find out about this album and post it on this thread over the next few weeks.
Feel free to comment or post anything you find about the COTL album!

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

A reminder of what the fuss was all about!

The Celebration Of The Lizard
Lions in the street and roaming
Dogs in heat, rabid, foaming
A beast caged in the heart of a city
The body of his mother
Rotting in the summer ground
He fled the town

He went down South and crossed the border
Left the chaos and disorder
Back there over his shoulder

One morning he awoke in a green hotel
With a strange creature groaning beside him
Sweat oozed from its shiny skin

Is everybody in?
The ceremony is about to begin

Wake up!
You can't remember where it was
Had this dream stopped?

The snake was pale gold
Glazed and shrunken
We were afraid to touch it
The sheets were hot dead prisons
And she was beside me
Old, she's not, young
Her dark white hair
The white soft skin

Now, run to the mirror in the bathroom
Look! She's coming in here
I can't live thru each slow century of her moving
I let my cheek slide down
The cool smooth tile
Feel the good cold stinging blood
The smooth hissing snakes of rain . . .

Once I had, a little game
I liked to crawl back into my brain
I think you know the game I mean
I mean the game called 'go insane'

Now you should try this little game
Just close your eyes forget your name
Forget the world, forget the people
And we'll erect a different steeple

This little game is fun to do
Just close your eyes no way to lose
And I'm right there I'm going too
Release control we're breaking thru

Way back deep into the brain
Way back past the realm of pain
Back where there's never any rain
And in the labyrinth of streams
Beneath, the quiet unearthly presence of
Dreadful hill people in the gentle hills around
Reptiles abounding
Fossils, caves, cool air heights

Each house repeats a mold
Windows rolled
Beast car locked in against morning
Rugs silent, mirrors vacant
Dust blind under the beds of lawful couples
Wound in sheets
And daughters, smug
With semen eyes in their nipples

Wait
There's been a slaughter here

(Don't stop to speak or look around
Your gloves and fan are on the ground
We're getting out of town
We're going on the run
And you're the one I want to come)

Not to touch the earth
Not to see the sun
Nothing left to do, but
Run, run, run
Let's run
Let's run

House upon the hill
Moon is lying still
Shadows of the trees
Witnessing the wild breeze
C'mon baby run with me
Let's run

Run with me
Run with me
Run with me
Let's run

Not to touch the earth
Not to see the sun
Nothing left to do, but
Run, run, run
Let's run
Let's run

House upon the hill
Moon is lying still
Shadows of the trees
Witnessing the wild breeze
C'mon baby run with me
Let's run

Dead president's corpse in the driver's car
The engine runs on glue and tar
C'mon along, we're not going very far
To the East to meet the Czar

The mansion is warm, at the top of the hill
Rich are the rooms and the comforts there
Red are the arms of luxuriant chairs
you won't know a thing till you get inside

Run with me
Run with me
Run with me
Let's run

Some outlaws lived by the side of the lake
The minister's daughter's in love with the snake
Who lives in a well by the side of the road
Wake up, girl! We're almost home, yeah!

Should see the gates by morning
We should be inside by evening

Let the carnival bells ring
Let the serpent sing
Let everything

We came down
The rivers and highways
We came down from
Forests and falls

We came down from
Carson and Springfield
We came down from
Phoenix enthralled
And I can tell you
The names of the Kingdom
I can tell you
The things that you know
Listening for a fistful of silence
Climbing valleys into the shade

I am the Lizard King

Retire now to your tents and to your dreams
Tomorrow we enter the town of my birth
I want to be ready'

This comes from the 40 year COTL which is different quality to the bootleg version that appears on Legacy when The Doors lied and said it was from thier archive.
This version has since been removed from Legacy which tells you all you need to know.
I never really appreciated this demo version which is without doubt better than the bootleg version.
I am not even sure whether this is the same version as the bootleg so will compare the two later today using the transcript from the 40 year version.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Bruce Botnick mentions some interesting stuff on the sleeve of the 40 Year reeamster of WFTS.

"We started recording WFTS in late 1967 at Sunset Sound Recorders with Unknown Soldier and Spanish Caravan. A highlight on Caravan was when legendary acoustic bass player Leroy Vinegar played with the guys.
As the New year came around we had a desire for a change of scenery and it was decided to change studios. The studio was down the street on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Highland Avenue and was called TTG which stood for Two terrible Guys.
It was a wordplay because the owners were the exact opposite: two kind and nice though very crazy guys.
One of them Ami Hadani was a general in the Israeli Air Force.
If he was recording an album and got a cal to go and fight the Egyptians, he'd leave, catch a flight, fight the fight and come back and finish your album. Though you had to have patience as it could take a couple of months for him to return.
the other was Tom Hidley who went on to be the architect of what became The Record Plant.
Upstairs in the big studio Frank Zappa was recording with The Mothers Of Invention. Part of the scene that became part of ours was Alice Cooper.
Alice was a nice guy who had some of the same carefree gonzo attitude that Jim had. So it was always 'was he going to live to finish the album' kind of thinking.
One time in particular comes to mind with both Jim and Alice hanging from the upstairs studios railing dangling 20 feet off the floor.
This was one of the spices that permeated the recording and gave WFTS some of it's special flavour"

Of course Bruce is selling an album here and that album is WFTS which at the time he talks of did not exist as the album they were recording was COTL.
We already knew that Unknown Soldier was recorded as that was the current single release but Spanish Caravan is an interesting addition to the knowledge of COTL.
So perhaps we can indeed add Spanish Caravan to the list of contenders for a place on the COTL album.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

This is the version of the poem from the actual WFTS album cover.

The Celebration Of The Lizard

Lions in the street and roaming
Dogs in heat, rabid, foaming
A beast caged in the heart of a city
The body of his mother
Rotting in the summer ground
He fled the town

He went down South and crossed the border
Left the chaos and disorder
Back there over his shoulder

One morning he awoke in a green hotel
With a strange creature groaning beside him
Sweat oozed from its shiny skin

Is everybody in?
The ceremony is about to begin

Wake up!
You can't remember where it was
Had this dream stopped?

The snake was pale gold
Glazed and shrunken
We were afraid to touch it
The sheets were hot dead prisons
And she was beside me
Old, she's not, young
Her dark red hair
The white soft skin

Now, run to the mirror in the bathroom
Look! She's coming in here
I can't live thru each slow century of her moving
I let my cheek slide down
The cool smooth tile
Feel the good cold stinging blood
The smooth hissing snakes of rain . . .

Once I had, a little game
I liked to crawl back into my brain
I think you know the game I mean
I mean the game called 'go insane'

Now you should try this little game
Just close your eyes forget your name
Forget the world, forget the people
And we'll erect a different steeple

This little game is fun to do
Just close your eyes no way to lose
And I'm right there I'm going too
Release control we're breaking thru

Way back deep into the brain
Way back past the relm of pain
Back where there's never any rain
And the rain falls gently on the town
And over the heads of all of us
And in the labyrinth of streams
Beneath, the quiet unearthly presence of
Nervous hill dwellers in the gentle hills around
Reptiles abounding
Fossils, caves, cool air heights

Each house repeats a mold
Windows rolled
Beast car locked in against morning
All now sleeping
Rugs silent, mirrors vacant
Dust blind under the beds of lawful couples
Wound in sheets
And daughters, smug
With semen eyes in their nipples

Wait
There's been a slaughter here

(Don't stop to speak or look around
Your gloves and fan are on the ground
We're getting out of town
We're going on the run
And you're the one I want to come)

Not to touch the earth
Not to see the sun
Nothing left to do, but
Run, run, run
Let's run
Let's run

House upon the hill
Moon is lying still
Shadows of the trees
Witnessing the wild breeze
C'mon baby run with me
Let's run

Run with me
Run with me
Run with me
Let's run

The mansion is warm, at the top of the hill
Rich are the rooms and the comforts there
Red are the arms of luxuriant chairs
And you won't know a thing till you get inside

Dead president's corpse in the driver's car
The engine runs on glue and tar
C'mon along, we're not going very far
To the East to meet the Czar

Run with me
Run with me
Run with me
Let's run

Some outlaws lived by the side of the lake
The minister's daughter's in love with the snake
Who lives in a well by the side of the road
Wake up, girl! We're almost home, yeah!

Sun, sun, sun
Burn, burn, burn
Soon, soon, soon
Moon, moon, moon
I will get you
Soon!
Soon!
Soon!

Let the carnival bells ring
Let the serpent sing
Let everything

We came down
The rivers and highways
We came down from
Forests and falls

We came down from
Carson and Springfield
We came down from
Phoenix enthralled
And I can tell you
The names of the Kingdom
I can tell you
The things that you know
Listening for a fistful of silence
Climbing valleys into the shade

I am the Lizard King
I can do anything
I can make the Earth stop in its tracks
I made the blue cars go away

For seven years I dwelt
In the loose palace of exile
Playing strange games
With the girls of the island

Now I have come again
To the land of the fair, and the strong, and the wise

Brothers and sisters of the pale forest
Children of Night
Who among you will run with the hunt?

Now Night arrives with her purple legion
Retire now to your tents and to your dreams
Tomorrow we enter the town of my birth
I want to be ready'

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

There was a lot going on during this period as the band started to put together the COTL album.

Jim gets the blame as usual and there is talk of him getting so drunk at sessions that he was too stupefied to do any work and bringing hangers on into the studio which caused all sorts of problems.

The band hired Bobby Neurwith to be Jim's minder and keep him on the straight and narrow.
Also the band was tiring of Sal (Sal Bonafede) and Ash (Asher Dann) who were their managers and had been scaring the musical side of The Doors by trying to get Jim to give solo a shot.
They bought the pair out and appointed their road manager Bill Siddons as new manager of the band.

By March The Unknown Soldier was completed and released as a single along with a promotional film. But given the sensitivity of the times it did not receive that much airplay and was banned from many stations.
Morrison himself later said that it was not about the Vietnam War but simply war in general but radio stations were unsure of it's impact so refused to play it.
It did rather well considering.

The band had continued to record COTL and eventually a 25 minute version was recorded with all the elements of the piece in place.
But only Jim was satisfied with the cut and the other Doors and Paul Rotchchild thought the track too difficult to get musically and so as a result they would not spend further time on trying and effectively killed off the COTL concept.

Questions abound at this explanation of things.
Why were such seasoned musicians unable to make the track work in a studio when they were able to produce a workable version on stage.
LA Woman was recorded practically live as was the bands debut album. Was Rothchild simply looking for an excuse to drop such a lengthy piece and replace it with more manageable material.
Was Morrison's drinking excess the cause of the failure or simply the effect of it's failure.

The initial enthusiasm of 19th February seemed to have been capable of producing a decent demo of COTL. Surely given that the studio and the producer were at the higher end of the available technology a workable end product could have and surely should have been the result.

Morrison wanted this to succeed and I for one cannot believe that he would have obstructed it's evolution by fucking up the sessions. But after it was deemed by the band and the producer too unwieldy to be worth spending time on I can understand his frustration and anger.

[casandra]

After what you said, Alex, I believe that options for the “Lost album” could have been:

A
Gloria
Spanish Caravan
Unknown soldier
Five to One

B
The Celebration on the Lizard

At that time, I think that album probably wouldn’t have been understood or apreciated for the most of the people, as being too dark and deep, but it would have gained points by critics over the years. But clearly it is not a “pop album”, but an explicit album with Morrison’s poetic view (exotic, dramatic, primitive, anti-war,..).

An album like this would be returned The Doors to underground or couterculture circuits and concerts in small theaters... who was willing to take the risk? I’m sure that Elektra didn’t want it, either Rotschild, either the other three Doors.

They threw in the towel too soon. COTL required hard work and they didn’t want to waste their time and money on something they probably thought it was Jim’s caprice.

So they also told Jim that COTL didn’t work technically and he hadn’t a technical knowledge about music, so he had to give up himself.

Howewer, I think he had a secret hope that COTL could be improve if he sang it at the concerts, and he did it.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Celebration Of The Lizard.


The handwritten draft for the Celebration Of The Lizard.


Not To Touch The Earth section of COTL.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Feb 19, 2011 15:43:06 GMT casandra said:

At that time, I think that album probably wouldn’t have been understood or appreciated for the most of the people, as being too dark and deep, but it would have gained points by critics over the years. But clearly it is not a “pop album”, but an explicit album with Morrison’s poetic view (exotic, dramatic, primitive, anti-war,..).

An album like this would be returned The Doors to underground or couterculture circuits and concerts in small theaters... who was willing to take the risk? I’m sure that Elektra didn’t want it, either Rotschild, either the other three Doors.

They threw in the towel too soon. COTL required hard work and they didn’t want to waste their time and money on something they probably thought it was Jim’s caprice.

So they also told Jim that COTL didn’t work technically and he hadn’t a technical knowledge about music, so he had to give up himself.

Some good thinking there Casandra.
I agree with your point that the album would have given the band some good underground credibility.

A lot of great bands did stuff that was what we Called progressive rock in the 60s and early 70s which meant it used the studio technology to the full and was not the type of stuff that appealed to the pop crowd.
These bands did not sell that much but certainly had a solid fan base who liked their music.

I think The Doors would have always sought mainstream acceptance but a concept like COTL would have given them a lot of respect from the more intelligent rock fans who were prepared to look and listen to new concepts and ideas.

I come from a very working class background from a very industrial are but I went to school with and counted as friends many who were really into the higher end of the rock market.
Of course we watched Top Of The Pops and listened to daytime radio but we were also nightbirds and would tune into John Peel, Bob Harris, Anne Nightingale or Alan Black who played some incredible music and what impressed us most was they did not talk above the tracks but let the music have the attention not them. John Peel who was our most respected DJ was a Doors fan and if I remember correctly he introduced the band at one of the Roundhouse shows.
An album like COTL would have appealed to these people and I still think The Doors would have found an audience here.
It was Hello I Love You that broke the band here in the UK with a #15 hit.
Of course they never had another when Jim was alive but Morrison Hotel and Absolutely Live made the charts here.
The Doors were never popular throughout the 60s and 70s here but were what we would say 'bubbling under' waiting for the right circumstances to reemerge.
Obviously Apocalypse Now was that circumstance and it was another art piece The End that proved the catalyst to The Doors being a one hit wonder in the UK to becoming a legend.
We never paid much attention to Light My Fire in Britain and only Jose Feliciano had a hit with it here in 1968.
I actually thought The Doors were covering him rather than the other way round.
The point I am making is that the pop charts were not always the way forward. There were plenty of knowledgeable rock fans who could understand complicated album concepts and see what the band was trying to say and like it!
HILY may well have been a good solid pop hit for The Doors and at that time was a bigger seller than LMF as it was a hit in Europe as well as the US.
But an album like COTL though a slow burning Underground experience it would have struck a chord with people who were experiencing, as 1970 approached, bands like Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, Barclay James Harvest, Pink Floyd and many others who were trying to produce thinking mans music rather than pop trivia.

If COTL had been realised HILY would probably never have been heard but I do believe that The Doors would have been heard in 1968 with an album that featured poetry rather than the standard rock experience.

The Doors then would have progressed from Acid to High Art in a matter of two years.
In stead of becoming a bit lost in 68 and 69 before rediscovering themselves as what they had started out as back in 1966, a very fine blues band.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The Great Lost Doors Album Celebration Of The Lizard!

February 20th 1968
TTG Recording Studios Hollywood CA.

The Doors record a second unabridged version of Celebration Of The Lizard and are again pleased with the result.
In retrospect however it seems they became so absorbed in the intricacies of the complex composition that it was difficult for them to hear the entire piece objectively.
The overall result is remarkable but the different segments lack the smooth transitions that are crucial to sustaining coherence.
Producer Paul Rothchild is the first to discern that the piece’s general construction lacks that cohesiveness.
Bearing Rothchilds observations in mind Morrison labours diligently to connect the different melodies into a complimentary unit.
Despite the dynamic impact of the original configuration, The Doors are dissatisfied with it’s overall orchestration and reluctantly accept that it’s not coming together.
From On The Road.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

A very interesting and indeed contradictory paragraph from On The Road.
Contradictory as it points out that Jim worked really hard to put the piece together but most accounts of this period tell of a drunk Jim doing his best to screw up sessions.
As I questioned before was the drunken Jim the cause of the session failure or an effect of the sessions failure to produce COTL an album of art over pop triviality.
Not that I am saying that WFTS is a trivial album as I love the LP and have done for over 40 years but it's not what COTL was envisaged to be.
Rothchild gives up rather easily. This the man who demanded of The Doors over 100 takes for one track.
Yet he is not prepared to give COTL this kind of attention.
Seems strange to me that after two days the band and the producer are keen to give up on COTL.

"The central image of 'The Celebration' is a band of youths who leave the city and venture into the desert. Each night after eating they tell stories and sing around the fire. Perhaps they dance. It is for pleasure and to enhance the group spirit."
Jim Morrison to Hank Zevallos for Poppin Magazine 1969.

It seems to me like Jim is describing The Doors who started off like this on Venice beach but by 1968 they did not want to join their lead singer in the dance around the campfire and preferred a good hotel to the desert.
To quote Jim there was 'something wrong something not quite right' about the beginning of 1968 and the events surrounding the Great Lost Doors Album!

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Originally the plan was to include another major piece in the groundbreaking tradition of 'The End' and 'WTMO' from the true previous albums. This was to be the musical version of an epic poem Jim had written called 'The Celebration Of The Lizard' with 'Not To Touch The Earth' serving as it's center.
When the sessions stalled and dragged it became the only section of the epic poem to make it onto what would become WFTS. The poem as a whole describes a mass exodus from modern civilisation and a return to a more tribal manner of existence.
The roving travelers of Celebration are stopped during their journey to recount their adventures and restate their purpose and that's what creates the poems phantasmagoric stream of images.

from WFTS 40 year remaster booklet.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Jim walks into the studio and accosts a vacant mike. He writhes in languid agony, jubilant at the excuse to move. But Rothchild keeps the vocal mike dead, to assure maximum concentration on the problem at hand. From behind the glass partition, Jim looks like a silent movie of himself, speeded up for laughs. The musicians barely bother to notice. When he is drinking, they work around him. Only Ray is solicitous to smile. The others tolerate him as a pungent but necessary prop.

He teeters about the tiny room, digging his boots into the carpeting. Between belches, he gazes at each of us, smirking as though he has found something vaguely amusing behind our eyes. But the séance is interrupted when Rothchild summons him. While Jim squats behind the control panel, a roughly recorded dub of his “Celebration of the Lizard” comes over the loud speakers.

Gently, almost apologetically, Ray tells him the thing doesn’t work. Too diffuse, too mangy. Jim’s face sinks beneath his scaly collar. Right then, you can sense that “The Celebration of the Lizard” will never appear on record – certainly not on the Doors new album. There will be eleven driving songs, and snatches of poetry, read aloud the way they do it at the Ninety-Second Street Y. But no Lizard King. No monarch, crowned with love beads, and holding the phallic scepter in his hand.

“Hey, bring your notebook to my house tomorrow morning, okay?” Rothchild offers.

“Yeah.” Jim answers with the look of a dog who’s just been told he’s missed his walk. “Sure.”

Defeated, the Lizard King seeks refuge within his scales. He disappears for ten minutes and returns with a bottle of Brandy. Thus fortified, he closets himself inside the anteroom used to record isolated vocals. He turns the lights out, fits himself with earphones, and begins his game.

Crescendos of breath between syllables. His song is half threat, and half plea:

Five to one
One in five
No one here
Gets out alive

Everyone in the room tries to bury Jim’s presence in conversation. But his voice intrudes, bigger and blacker than life, over the loudspeakers. Each trace of sound is magnified, so we can hear him guzzling and belching away. Suddenly, he emerges from his Formica cell, inflicting his back upon the wall, as though he were being impaled. He is sweat drunk, but still coherent, and he mutters so everyone can hear, “If I had an axe…man, I’d kill everybody…’cept…uh…my friends.”

Sagittarius the hunter stalks us with his glance. We sit frozen, waiting for him to spring.

“Ah, I hafta get one o’ them Mexican wedding shirts,” he sighs with brandied breathiness.

Robby’s girl, Donna, takes him on: “I don’t know if they come in your size.”

“I’m a medium… with a large neck.”

“We’ll have to get you measured, then.”

“Uh-uh…I don’t like to be measured.” His eyes glow with sleep and swagger.

“Oh, Jim, we’re not going to measure all of you. Just your shoulders.”

NEW YORK MAGAZINE
September 5 1968
The Shaman As Superstar
By Richard Goldstein

[gizmo]

i'm just thinking that it's odd from the rest to say they couldn't record it, they did it live so what's the point of it's to hard to record?
when you play it in a studio it's easier to record than doing it live.
it's all about the money, and still is(ray and robby)
though i'm thinking that if it would be for the fouth album it would have cotl on one side (the 36 minute version) with shamans blues perhaps to fill the rest up and side B would have touch me - easy ride - wild child and the soft parade.
the soft parade was the only album wich wasn't really the doors as we knew them at that time so cotl would have fitted perfectly on that album (and if shamans blues didn't fit on the a side it would have been great on wfts)
but the thing wich really suprised me that they where that stupid not even giving it a try to record it, if you can do it live than it's peanuts to do it in the studio coz you can do it over and over if you make a mistake. and since cotl is build up on small pieces of music wich have a great variety of styles so it all had to be recorded on different tapes and later being mixed to one song.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

"The Lizard and the snake are equated with the subconcious forces of evil. Even if you've never seen one a snake seems to embody everything that we fear.
It (Celebration Of The Lizard) is a kind of invitation to dark forces"
Jim Morrison describing his new poetry opus.

When the media began to pick up on The Lizard King persona Jim tried to distance himself from his own creation.

"It's all done tongue in cheek. I don't think people realise that it's not meant to be taken seriously. When you play a bad guy in a movie, that's not you, it's just something you keep for the show.
I don't really take it seriously. That's supposed to be ironic"

The most ironic part was that everybody did indeed take it seriously.

[gizmo]

he was a genius in interviews, each answer is like he have done a preinterview to know the questions and thought about the answers.

[casandra]

I agree with you, Alex.

I am impressed by your knowledge about music of 60-70’s!!!

The dilemma for The Doors was: art or money. A record with COLT would have sold less and they wanted fame, fast money and concerts in big arenas. They chose the easy way.

Rothschild and the other Doors discarded COTL from the beginning. It makes no sense that they said the piece was not working after two or three days of recordings. It is a 20-30 minutes song and not a 2-minute pop ditty!

As you say doesn’t make sense that Jim was drunk when he was working hard to make progress COTL, following Rothschild’s observations.

I think that a record with COTL, The Doors would have been massacred by the teen pop magazines journalists, but the serious and especialized critics surely would applaud the record.

The idea about the fourth album might make sense, but I think it was a way of put off the problem.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

A lot of new technology was at hand during the TTG recording of the Celebration Of The Lizard album that never was.
Bruce Botnick says in the WFTS booklet that the album was kind of a first as they used the, then state of the art, Dolby noise reduction processors.
He goes on to say that because of this and the fact the TTG studio was carpeted which deadened noise and made the studio 'almost inert'.
The drum sound for Five To One, which was one of the tracks sure to make the COTL album, was 'gritty, distorted and nasty fitting the song perfectly.'
He goes on to say that the version of COTL that actually made the 40 year remix of WFTS was a version he made 'without Paul Rothchild as a work in progress.'
This is interesting as producer Rothchild was not there during one of the COTL recording sessions which seems to indicate that he was not at all into that particular song poem.
I may be doing him an injustice and there might be a perfectly ordinary reason as to why he was missing but given the tyrannical way he ran his studio it seems odd that he allowed a subordinate to record a 17 minute version of an important if not vital piece of music that was to be the centre piece of the new album and underpin everything else they recorded.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

It was March 1968 and a special time for me. I had just met my wife to be and The Doors were had become a houshold phenomenon. Everybody and anybody wanted to be around the band. Hangers on later to be known as groupies were everywhere and drink and cannabis was in abundance. Some of these folks became background hummers on My Wild Love.
Bruce Botnick WFTS 40 yeare remaster booklet.

"My favourite part of the record was My Wild Love. Jim heard it as some sort of misty moors folk song. he wanted to record it with a banjo and the rest of the Doors didn't. It became a real head butting thing with Jim.
'If I can't record it and do it the way I want I'm not gonna record anything at all.' I was casting around for an idea of how to solve this Irish celtic dilemma.
I said 'let's try to do it acapella'.
Everybody went for it. Jac came in. he was I am sure that Jim was actually there and the log jam had been kind of opened up that he came out into the studio and took his place in the lineup. yes Jac Holzman did in fact take part in the acapella version of My Wild Love. I think of Jac as a recording artist.'
Bobby Neurwith
Follow The Music P#210.

For the track Unknown Soldier which was recorded in Sunset Sound Studios before they got to TTG Paul Williams of Crawdaddy magazine recalls being drafted in to create live sound effects.
'We stomped our feet on wooden boards to create the sound of marching and cocked prop rifles in unison to create the sound of a firing squad. When you're a young rock journalist dropping in on a recording session to see your friend (Rothchild) and to see a favourite band (I did love The Doors) you never know when you'll end up making a sound heard round the world and more or less forever on a hit single that will be an effective anti war statement.'

"Bobby Neurwith hanging around Jim got to be a real good mimic.
One night we were recording Five To One and Jim was fucked up, inebriated and we didn't know what to do. So Bobby did the vocal and he had it all down. The way he was hanging onto the mike and slurring his words. 'Heyyy why don't you come over and get close to meeee' It was hysterical. Jim was watching. He laughed, yeah he really laughed. I don't know whether he got the vocal that night. Probably the next day."
John Densmore Follow The Music P#210.

This was probably after COTL had began to falter as a concept as before Jim was noted to be working hard to make it work.
For me Densmore is cruel to morrison as he always (as do the others) states the effect and never explores the cause.
Morrison was a drinker in 1967 and several Doors gigs went tits up due to jim being drunk but as he saw his vision of what the band was meant to be simply evaporating under paul Rothchild he basically rebelled the only way he knew how which was sadly to get piss drunk.
For me too many Doors stories focus on Jim the drunk but they never dare explore why he was this way. The blame squarely on the whisky bottle and the fictitious 'get out of jail free' card for The Doors in Jimbo the evil alter ego of Morrison.
they never seem to have the courage to look at themselves in a mirror and explore their part in all this.
Manzarek the ego maniac obsessed with greed, Densmore the cowardly whiner who threw his drumsticks up in the air and came out in rashes and Krieger another coward who hides today behind his 'I just wanna play music man' demeanour and hid behind his two bandmates and was never able to confront his own guilt at the Doors demise.

Nothing is ever simple with this band and the way they have handed all the blame to a dead man shows what cowards these three were in 1968 and are still today.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

My guess for the make up of The Celebration on the Lizard would be this.


A
The Celebration on the Lizard

B
Unknown Soldier
My Wild Love
Five to One
Spanish Caravan
Gloria

I place COTL on side A as this was the most important track.
Jim seemed to want My Wild Love badly on this album so I would place it between the two heavy hitters on side B.
They had recorded Spanish caravan before TTG so I would imagine this would be there. Gloria would be an obvious album closer. A nod to their earliest days before success reared it's ugly head and drove such a wedge between the band.

We know Morrison wanted to put poetry between the tracks on the album. This was after COTL failed and became WFTS.
It's debatable whether he would have done this for the COTL album but it has to be considered a possibility.

For me Jim seemed to put his heart and soul into the project but his dissillusionment at that failure left him bereft as importantly the band itself turned against him.
There would never be a four sided diamond Doors again after this.
The music may well have remained constantly good but the relations within the band and with Elektra changed during the first months of 1968.
No longer was there a visionary quest to discover the Art of The Doors and instead there was a headlong rush to capitalise on the success of Morrison (not The Doors) before this once brilliant star imploded.
What became WFTS was in fact a disaster for The Doors. The short sighted drive to be successful more costly than could be imagined.
The Pyrrhic victory of Rothchild which was supported by 3 of the 4 Doors was the beginning of the bands demise.
No longer were The Doors, The Doors but instead two competing factions whose vision of the furture were so at odds that neither would ever be quite the same.
The winners are difficult to discern as one faction got rich and the other became a legend.
Which one will History remembere with most fondness.
Only Time will tell on that one.