Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Sept 16, 2011 9:04:21 GMT
AN INTERVIEW WITH JIM MORRISON AND THE DOORS
By Jacoba Atlas
Hullabaloo October 1968
Part 1
The Doors office is in a brightly painted yellow stucco building set back off Santa Moncia Boulevard. Located over an antique shop, it boasts a large front window which continues to bear traces of former inhabitants; signs for the Diner's Club and the Bank Of America are in the process of being removed.
Just inside the office, a secretary sits in solitary
splendor; she is surrounded by little more than a stereo
set and an electric typewriter. Bill Siddons, the
Doors' youthful manager, has a small office in the back.
From all appearances, everybody has just moved in. On
the walls are three Gold Records: one for The Doors,
one for Strange Days and one for "Light My
Fire."
Two of the Doors have already arrived: Jim Morrison,
wearing, despite the 80 degree Los Angeles heat a burgundy cossack shirt and the infamous "vinyl" pants; and Ray Manzarek, looking a good deal blonder, thinner, and altogether remarkable than he appears to in the stills which show him hunched over his keyboard, in introverted madness. Robby Krieger, burnished from days at the beach, and John Densmore, wearing even larger mutton-chop sideburns, comes in sometime later.
At the time of this interview, the new Doors single, "Hello, I Think I Love You," has just been released, and their third album. Waiting For The Sun, is in the final stages of completion.
Jim and Ray are talking.
Jim: Let's talk to Paul (Rothchild, the Doors producer) about "The Texas Radio." With a little blues accompaniment.
Ray: Yeah, but that's going to entail going in and
setting up for a whole recording. I mean, it would be
quick, but it wouldn't be that quick.
Jim: It would sound good just spoken, you know.
Ray (flipping through a manila folder containing some of Jim's poems): Maybe we should do something else. Alot of these little things are good, too.
Jim: These are just the ones I was going to show Paul. These are songs that we could use for the next album. I think that if I do "The Texas Radio." it should all be read.
Q: What is your third album like?
Jim: It's...just songs. There are no real long ones.
Q: Is it true that, at one point, you were going to use an entire side for a single song?
Jim: No, we tried that, but it didn't work out. But we
did use part of it. I think that we're going to wait
and do that later, maybe as part of a "live" album.
Our new album is called Waiting For The Sun. We're
thinking of adding something else to it.
Q: Are you planning to read more poetry on your LP's?
Jim: Yeah.
Q: Were you happy with the poem on Strange Days?
Jim: Yeah. I liked it alot. "Horse Latitudes." It was good.
Q: In "Hello I Think I Love You," you seem to be going back to a more simple sound. Although "The
Unknown Soldier" was a great song, it didn't seem to do
too well on the charts.
Jim: Well, I liked
"Soldier" and I'm not sure what the trouble was. Most of
the stuff at that time was real soft music, you know.
Q: Do you feel the content of the record hurt it on the
charts?
Jim: I doubt it, but it might have had something to do
with it. I don't know. There have been war songs
before. It wasn't really a war song anyway.<br>Ray: It
came out at a bad time. If it had come out maybe six
months later or three or four months later or right now,
it probably would have done all right. It was the
war thing, you know. When it came out, the war was
just sort of really coming to a head. I think that it
came out just when we started negotiations and that
everybody was really into a funny thing about the war. But now, I don't know, I guess that the war is over.
Everybody assumes it's over. It's not, of course. They're
still fighting.
Q: Will your next album be a "live" album?
Ray: I don't know when we're going to do a "live" album. We have a lot of ideas, but what happens when it actually comes time to record is another story.
Q: How do you interpret the difference between the sound of The Doors in person and the sound that you create in the studio?
Ray: Well, we're different but we're not really that different. There aren't different vibrations from the group but from the audience, that's the only thing. In a studio, we have pretty much the same feeling.
Q: The Doors are so popular now. Do you feel any pressure to give the audience the performance they expect from such a famous group?
Jim: We do feel a little compelled to play the same songs over and over, the songs that people come to hear, the ones they hear on the radio and on records. We used to invent things right on the stage, you know, but now we have huge crowds and only 40 or 50 minutes to play and that doesn't give us the time or the right atmosphere for that kind of improvisation.
Ray: Yeah, I really enjoyed that when we used to do it.
Q: Why can't you improvise now?
Jim: Well, we could - and I think that some people would like it - but it would disappoint alot of people who come to hear the songs that they know. Whenever we start a song that they know, they really start cheering.
Ray: And improvisation can't happen every night. I mean, when we used to do it, we were playing every night, and so there was alot of time and a lot of playing in which to do it. Now, we're only on stage for an hour. And we don't do concerts every night.
Jim: You can't afford to make mistakes. We used to be
able to afford mistakes because no one was watching
that closely.
Ray: Most of the time, there was no one in the club anyway. We could do anything.
Q: Someone told me that your recent performance at Santa Clara didn't go too well. If an audience isn't
responding to what you're doing, do you try to make a
change?
Jim: We played outdoors at Santa Clara. We've never done too well in those outdoor daytime concerts. I think that we need the night and a sort of theatre-type atmosphere and mood in which to work. There's something about the daylight and the open spaces that just sort of dissipates the whole magic.
Q: Do you think that you'll be able to overcome the outdoors in your upcoming Hollywood Bowl concert?
Jim: Well, it will be at night, and the atmosphere will be very theatrical. Santa Clara was just a big open field with a stage in the middle of it. Most of the people couldn't even see or hear what we were doing. As far as I can tell, I don't think anyone does well in these outdoor daytime things.
Q: At one time, you spoke a great deal about "total
theatre." Have you achieved "total theatre" in your
performances?
Jim: In a way, we have; in a way we haven't. I mean,
each time that somebody gets up on stage, it's
theatre. We might do an actual play, one with a plot or a story, and it wouldn't be just a lot of songs, you know.
I think that we'll do that. That's definately where
it's going. I think that what's going to happen now
will be a crisis of music, It's no longer primitive
rock music, as it was. There's been a split. A lot of
people will go into theatre and musicals and opera and
that kind of thing, and get further away from pure
music, but rock, the primitive rock music, will
re-assert itself eventually. Eventually, there'll come a
need for that basic blues beat again.
Q: Is this one of the reasons for the blues revival of
today?
Jim: Well, that's what's happening. Half of the people are getting classical, sophisticated and theatrical, and then there's the need for blues. There's a split. I'd like to do both. I enjoy both. I think that the
Doors have a combination of both now. I think that it's
a successful combination. But, we're either going
to have to go in that other direction, into theatre
and electronics and that kind of thing, or we're
going to have to get more basic again. I think that
we'll probably go in the other direction and someone
else do the basics.
Q: As a musician, Ray, do you feel that playing with the same people over and over again stagnates you in any way?
Ray: No, not at all. Because they're always doing something new. John and Robby are really great musicians. We vary. We always vary from performance to performance. We never know exactly what's going to be played. We never play any song the same way twice. The basic chord structure is there, and the song is there, but we play around with it. Like, I'll know at one point that I'll have to put in a rhythm structure. I feel that the musical exploration has just begun.
Q: Do you ever disagree musically?
Ray: No, I think that we all pretty much agree. Everybody suggests their ideas, and we weigh them. If something appeals to everyone, then we do it. If it doesn't we drop it.
Q: How many of the ideas for the film of "The Unknown Soldier" came directly from the group?
Jim: We conceived and directed the large sequence, the execution on the beach, but the rest of the film was stock footage that was done in New York. We had nothing to do with the final editing. But I think that it was a very effective film. I enjoyed it. A couple of times, we've run the film at a concert. As the film ends, we join in "live" and continue to play after it's over.
Q: Both of you studied film at UCLA. Why did you switch from film to rock?
Ray: Well, it was really a utilization of other talents. Jim was a writer, and I had always been playing music. We had these other things as well as music. Jim put his lyrics to songs, and I was able to work the songs out and to play the music. It was something that we had always done. It was perhaps an interim step between here and film.
Hullabaloo October 1968
Part I Scans follow link
By Jacoba Atlas
Hullabaloo October 1968
Part 1
The Doors office is in a brightly painted yellow stucco building set back off Santa Moncia Boulevard. Located over an antique shop, it boasts a large front window which continues to bear traces of former inhabitants; signs for the Diner's Club and the Bank Of America are in the process of being removed.
Just inside the office, a secretary sits in solitary
splendor; she is surrounded by little more than a stereo
set and an electric typewriter. Bill Siddons, the
Doors' youthful manager, has a small office in the back.
From all appearances, everybody has just moved in. On
the walls are three Gold Records: one for The Doors,
one for Strange Days and one for "Light My
Fire."
Two of the Doors have already arrived: Jim Morrison,
wearing, despite the 80 degree Los Angeles heat a burgundy cossack shirt and the infamous "vinyl" pants; and Ray Manzarek, looking a good deal blonder, thinner, and altogether remarkable than he appears to in the stills which show him hunched over his keyboard, in introverted madness. Robby Krieger, burnished from days at the beach, and John Densmore, wearing even larger mutton-chop sideburns, comes in sometime later.
At the time of this interview, the new Doors single, "Hello, I Think I Love You," has just been released, and their third album. Waiting For The Sun, is in the final stages of completion.
Jim and Ray are talking.
Jim: Let's talk to Paul (Rothchild, the Doors producer) about "The Texas Radio." With a little blues accompaniment.
Ray: Yeah, but that's going to entail going in and
setting up for a whole recording. I mean, it would be
quick, but it wouldn't be that quick.
Jim: It would sound good just spoken, you know.
Ray (flipping through a manila folder containing some of Jim's poems): Maybe we should do something else. Alot of these little things are good, too.
Jim: These are just the ones I was going to show Paul. These are songs that we could use for the next album. I think that if I do "The Texas Radio." it should all be read.
Q: What is your third album like?
Jim: It's...just songs. There are no real long ones.
Q: Is it true that, at one point, you were going to use an entire side for a single song?
Jim: No, we tried that, but it didn't work out. But we
did use part of it. I think that we're going to wait
and do that later, maybe as part of a "live" album.
Our new album is called Waiting For The Sun. We're
thinking of adding something else to it.
Q: Are you planning to read more poetry on your LP's?
Jim: Yeah.
Q: Were you happy with the poem on Strange Days?
Jim: Yeah. I liked it alot. "Horse Latitudes." It was good.
Q: In "Hello I Think I Love You," you seem to be going back to a more simple sound. Although "The
Unknown Soldier" was a great song, it didn't seem to do
too well on the charts.
Jim: Well, I liked
"Soldier" and I'm not sure what the trouble was. Most of
the stuff at that time was real soft music, you know.
Q: Do you feel the content of the record hurt it on the
charts?
Jim: I doubt it, but it might have had something to do
with it. I don't know. There have been war songs
before. It wasn't really a war song anyway.<br>Ray: It
came out at a bad time. If it had come out maybe six
months later or three or four months later or right now,
it probably would have done all right. It was the
war thing, you know. When it came out, the war was
just sort of really coming to a head. I think that it
came out just when we started negotiations and that
everybody was really into a funny thing about the war. But now, I don't know, I guess that the war is over.
Everybody assumes it's over. It's not, of course. They're
still fighting.
Q: Will your next album be a "live" album?
Ray: I don't know when we're going to do a "live" album. We have a lot of ideas, but what happens when it actually comes time to record is another story.
Q: How do you interpret the difference between the sound of The Doors in person and the sound that you create in the studio?
Ray: Well, we're different but we're not really that different. There aren't different vibrations from the group but from the audience, that's the only thing. In a studio, we have pretty much the same feeling.
Q: The Doors are so popular now. Do you feel any pressure to give the audience the performance they expect from such a famous group?
Jim: We do feel a little compelled to play the same songs over and over, the songs that people come to hear, the ones they hear on the radio and on records. We used to invent things right on the stage, you know, but now we have huge crowds and only 40 or 50 minutes to play and that doesn't give us the time or the right atmosphere for that kind of improvisation.
Ray: Yeah, I really enjoyed that when we used to do it.
Q: Why can't you improvise now?
Jim: Well, we could - and I think that some people would like it - but it would disappoint alot of people who come to hear the songs that they know. Whenever we start a song that they know, they really start cheering.
Ray: And improvisation can't happen every night. I mean, when we used to do it, we were playing every night, and so there was alot of time and a lot of playing in which to do it. Now, we're only on stage for an hour. And we don't do concerts every night.
Jim: You can't afford to make mistakes. We used to be
able to afford mistakes because no one was watching
that closely.
Ray: Most of the time, there was no one in the club anyway. We could do anything.
Q: Someone told me that your recent performance at Santa Clara didn't go too well. If an audience isn't
responding to what you're doing, do you try to make a
change?
Jim: We played outdoors at Santa Clara. We've never done too well in those outdoor daytime concerts. I think that we need the night and a sort of theatre-type atmosphere and mood in which to work. There's something about the daylight and the open spaces that just sort of dissipates the whole magic.
Q: Do you think that you'll be able to overcome the outdoors in your upcoming Hollywood Bowl concert?
Jim: Well, it will be at night, and the atmosphere will be very theatrical. Santa Clara was just a big open field with a stage in the middle of it. Most of the people couldn't even see or hear what we were doing. As far as I can tell, I don't think anyone does well in these outdoor daytime things.
Q: At one time, you spoke a great deal about "total
theatre." Have you achieved "total theatre" in your
performances?
Jim: In a way, we have; in a way we haven't. I mean,
each time that somebody gets up on stage, it's
theatre. We might do an actual play, one with a plot or a story, and it wouldn't be just a lot of songs, you know.
I think that we'll do that. That's definately where
it's going. I think that what's going to happen now
will be a crisis of music, It's no longer primitive
rock music, as it was. There's been a split. A lot of
people will go into theatre and musicals and opera and
that kind of thing, and get further away from pure
music, but rock, the primitive rock music, will
re-assert itself eventually. Eventually, there'll come a
need for that basic blues beat again.
Q: Is this one of the reasons for the blues revival of
today?
Jim: Well, that's what's happening. Half of the people are getting classical, sophisticated and theatrical, and then there's the need for blues. There's a split. I'd like to do both. I enjoy both. I think that the
Doors have a combination of both now. I think that it's
a successful combination. But, we're either going
to have to go in that other direction, into theatre
and electronics and that kind of thing, or we're
going to have to get more basic again. I think that
we'll probably go in the other direction and someone
else do the basics.
Q: As a musician, Ray, do you feel that playing with the same people over and over again stagnates you in any way?
Ray: No, not at all. Because they're always doing something new. John and Robby are really great musicians. We vary. We always vary from performance to performance. We never know exactly what's going to be played. We never play any song the same way twice. The basic chord structure is there, and the song is there, but we play around with it. Like, I'll know at one point that I'll have to put in a rhythm structure. I feel that the musical exploration has just begun.
Q: Do you ever disagree musically?
Ray: No, I think that we all pretty much agree. Everybody suggests their ideas, and we weigh them. If something appeals to everyone, then we do it. If it doesn't we drop it.
Q: How many of the ideas for the film of "The Unknown Soldier" came directly from the group?
Jim: We conceived and directed the large sequence, the execution on the beach, but the rest of the film was stock footage that was done in New York. We had nothing to do with the final editing. But I think that it was a very effective film. I enjoyed it. A couple of times, we've run the film at a concert. As the film ends, we join in "live" and continue to play after it's over.
Q: Both of you studied film at UCLA. Why did you switch from film to rock?
Ray: Well, it was really a utilization of other talents. Jim was a writer, and I had always been playing music. We had these other things as well as music. Jim put his lyrics to songs, and I was able to work the songs out and to play the music. It was something that we had always done. It was perhaps an interim step between here and film.
Hullabaloo October 1968
Part I Scans follow link
