Star Magazine nº 44 Feb 1979 (Spain)

[casandra]

Revista Star, nº 44 (Febrero 1979), págs. 28-36

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

This is an interesting and unusual one...cool....thanks for posting this.

[casandra]

Many thanks, Alex.

Here, the translation of introduction. The rest of the article is the transcription of An American prayer album translated into Spanish.

The author of the article, one of the best Spanish journalists engaged in musical criticism, he wrote a letter to The Doors, when he was a young and Jim Morrison sent him a signed copy of the book An American Prayer. He has written many articles about the Doors and has also done television and radio programmes about them. I think he has a special affection for Jim, for that gesture.


JIM MORRISON’S LAST MESSAGE


(It has come, it is here: Courtesy of Elektra Records, naturally)

Hey, do you keep some interest in missing rock poets' posthumous works? Yes? Take note about a Jim Morrison's LP, the next release in the market of the rhythm and melody. Exactly, the same Morrison who said goodbye to the world in a Parisian bathtub just over seven years. How is that possible? Sure, the people has reason to be suspicious after Jimi Hendrix's name, filled in colorful covers, make them to buy very strange recordings where it was not very clear the ultra guitarist’s presence.

We rewind to that July of 1971. When news of the death leaped into the air, Elektra Records was quick to deny that it was a suicide alleging that Morrison was full of plans like an LP record containing his poetic musings. And here now that ghost record is materialized although someone believed that should be a project outlined in rave and drunkenness nights. It seems that before leaving California, Jim was already in a study leaving bits of his poetry for posterity. Or maybe there were some tapes recorded privately that suitably polished and retouched have become this "An American Prayer" (Hispavox will edit here).

The questions remain. If there was such a valuable material why the release has taken so long? Well, the answer is not clear. Elektra had announced the release of "an album with Morrison's poetry" for many months. And the poet-singer's pals had not felt the need to hurry because they don't want to be accused of exploiting his late friend’s memory. On the other hand, the tapes were unfinished, they were too short to justify the issue of an LP. But the years have passed and no one bitter one dollar: The Doors -trio version-, and the Butts Band were groups that went through more pain than glory by the rock of the seventies, Robbie Krieger and Ray Manzarek's solo careers didn't shine on the musical firmament too much. And because times are tough and nobody wants a ex-rock-star, the three survivors of the quartet have come together to fine-tune the last album of Jim Morrison & The Doors.

Is this the right time to release a Jim Morrison's "new album"? I don't believe that. His phallic obsession can be up childish to our ears. The apocalyptic burden of his verses is too loud for these bland times of disillusionment and apathy. His narcissism is so transparent, so little subtle! And this idea of involving the crowd in the Dionysian rock ceremony reeks to utopia in the present days when the barrier between the performer (entertainer) and audience (people who is paying to be entertained) is firmly fixed. You can play with sex and death, chaos and war, cruelty and love, but is preferred to be part of a beautiful and modern pose. The charisma of a revolutionary and unorthodox Jim Morrison already is not profitable at these days although now there are many stars that have slipped through the gap left by the Doors, who have taken advantage of their heady mixture of rock and poetry. But these are other times and now I fear that Jim Morrison is old-fashioned.

Which does not prevent this album is powerful and disturbing. Manzarek, Densmore and Krieger have been mounting an aggressive sound with (A) songs taken from the last -and splendid- phase of The Doors with Morrison, (B) the tapes of poetry and stories recorded by Morrison before leaving for Europe and (C) new music recorded specifically to accompany the morrisonian ravings. Is it immoral to have made this collage? Would Morrison have preferred that the tapes were destroyed after his death -as Kafka-manner? Is this a true representation of his creator's style?

Well, the discography industry is greedy and doesn't let to miss something marketable. And I appreciate it as this "An American Prayer" explicits Jim Morrison's greatness -and weaknesses-. For example, "Roadhouse Blues" live version reminds us that despite all their shortcomings, the Doors' music could make deadly, barbarous, overwhelming. Just as the brutal piece of "Peace Frog" which appears in "Dawn's Highway".

And the power of the word. In "The Hitchhiker", the combination of "Riders on the storm" with fragments of a conversation where someone confesses to killing a stranger is chilling and perfectly paradigmatic of the degeneration of Californian paradise. The description of the first encounter with the fear in "Dawn's Highway" also impresses with the autobiographical value such as later excerpts, scraps of Morrison's adolescence in military bases (his father was a senior naval officer) where the erotic violence is omnipresent. No surprise but...

The rest? You have to be in the years that those verses were written: Richard Nixon drunk with power, the Vietnam War grew in intensity, universities rebelling, counterculture drowning in their own poison. They are images, metaphors, allusions that can screech in your ears, but reaching corporeality in Morrison's voice. The final cut of the album is "An American Prayer", the (incomplete) reading of the book of the same title published in 1970 in a limited print run. "Crap, slapstick, amateurism, overly pessimistic, fatalism without poetic quality" will say the mandarins of High Culture if they ever encounter that text. But there are lines that hurt, that fire the imagination ... and especially in recited the LP version.

Regarding additions, it is easy to recognize the contemporary origin of the riff that appears in the first and second side of the album. But it is not at odds: the Doors always wanted to be a very funky band as Booker T. & The MG's. More incongruous is the final Baroque goop of "An American Prayer", which is neither more nor less than an electric adaptation "Adagio for Strings and Organ" by Tomaso Albinoni, which has dignity and more but makes that Morrison sounds like one of those actors who recorded LP's of cloying recitals. Jim would not have liked that..., guys!

What follows now is a full transcript of Jim Morrison's words in "An American Prayer" including the parts that have not been included in the poetry booklet that is included in the album. Of course, reading is no substitute to listening the album, where the verses are also accompanied by background music, sound effects, live recordings, samples of the fiercest Doors. But complements it. It's the latest missive from Jim Morrison (though it doesn’t take his handwritten signature, okay?).

Transcription by Diego A. Manrique