Post by darkstar3 on Mar 23, 2011 21:53:34 GMT
Original UK VHS
Sometimes known as NOHGOA: A Tribute To Jim Morrison after the TV release of this Jim Tribute
BAM Magazine
The California Music Magazine
"Always Free"
Issue No. 107
July 3 1981
VISUALS
Coming Soon:
A One Hour Doors Video
By Blair Jackson
Little of the available film of The Doors has been shown publicly since Jim Morrison’s death ten years ago. The Doors own erract 40 minute documentary, A Feast Of Friends, is absent from the repertory cinema circuit that regularly screens films about the Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix and others. And save for the occassional clip on a show like Heroes of Rock and Roll and Hollywood Heartbeat, The Doors have been largely absent from TV since their heyday.
That will change in the next couple of months (there is no film release date yet) when a new one hour video called No One Here Gets Out Alive: A Tribute To Jim Morrison starts popping up on TV, most likely on one of the big cable systems.
The show was edited and directed by Gordon Forbes, produced by Hollywood Heartbeat creator Richard Mann, and shaped by Danny Sugerman (who co-wrote the best selling Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive, with Jerry Hopkins) and Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek. The program includes plenty of exciting rare Doors footage, as well as current interviews with the surviving members of the group, producer Paul Rothchild, Sugerman and Hopkins. Wisely, the makers of the show opted to let the interviews and vintage clips create a narrative history of The Doors instead of relying on a hackneyed melodramatic narration.
It is the assorted live footage that will likely fascinate the legions of young rock and roll fans, who have been sucked in by The Doors mystique the last few years (as well as those of us old enough to have seen and appreciated the Doors in their prime.) The first time we see Morrison onstage in the show, in an old black and white clip shot in Europe in ’68, he is grunting, groaning, squirming as the band lays down the savage blues opening of “Back Door Man.” In just these few seconds, The Doors appeal is instantly apparent: here is a band combining an earthy, almost animalistic sensuality with steamy blues based rock and roll. It’s utterly wild and untamed. As Manzarek says about Morrison shortly after this clip, “He was a shaman. He was possessed.” This is brought home even more vividly in the next concert footage from the Roundhouse in London, 1968. Morrison recites a portion of his epic poem, “Celebration of the Lizard” and he seems to use half a dozen totally different voices within a period of perhaps fifteen seconds. His delivery is frighteningly effective and certainly more powerful than on the “official” recorded version of “Celebration of the Lizard” on Absolutely Live.
More said (but fascinating nonetheless) are clips featuring “Moonlight Drive” from the Jonathan Winters Show; “Touch Me” from a late ’68 Smothers Brothers Show (including the string section!); and “People Are Strange” and “Light My Fire” from the Ed Sullivan Show. Freed from the restraints of prime time television, Morrison and The Doors at their best in another clip from the groups triumphant Hollywood Bowl gig in ’68. As Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore snake through the hypnotic opening to “The End”, we see Morrison totally absorbed in a fluid but biazarre psychedelic dance that looks to be a mix of an Indian medicine man’s gyrations and standard late 60’s free dancing.
To its credit, the show is far from being just a one hour florification of The Doors. Morrison’s frailties are freely discussed and analyzed, as when John Densmore sadly says of the group’s last tours. “There was something real special when we played, and I saw it slipping away.” Some of those special moments are captured in this televison show, which should go a long way towards explaining to the uninitiated what The Doors magic was all about.Forbes, Sugerman et al had access to virtually all the Doors footage available, and they chose well. I would have liked to have seen a clip from the infamous ’69 Miami concert (which led to Morrison’s conviction on obscenity charges) and perhaps something from The Doors’ final tour with Morrison, but as it is there is a good cross section of songs showing The Doors at the peak. And a special treat is the inclusion of the devastating opening of Apocalyse Now, which features the song “The End” over a scene of a jungle landscape exploding in napalm flames.
There have been unconfirmed rumors that Feast Of Friends might also be resusitated in some fairly soon, and according to one source close to The Doors, there is a possibility that if the No One Here Gets Out Alive video is successful, a full length feature documentary, along the lines of This Is Elvis, will be constructed about The Doors. That would be Nirvana for Doors fans.
END.
