Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Jun 24, 2011 8:28:13 GMT
Jim Morrison: An American Prayer
A book could be written (and has been), about James Douglas Morrison, sometime sex symbol, filmmaker, poet, drunk and rock 'n' roll star, so I won't try for any potted biography tactics here.
Suffice to say that The Doors (the group of which Jimbo was undisputed leader, for our younger readers), were in their time just about all things to all men. Some saw them as a hype from Sunset Strip, others viewed the rebel child and his sidekicks as the only truly American rock group of the 60s, the antidote to Haight-Ashbury and flower-power.
Jim, poet of L.A., death and the city, killers in the desert. The little girls worshipped, there were hit singles, all the albums went gold. Every kind of drug/ perversion imaginable, or what? Nik Cohn wrote a book on rock and dismissed them in a few lines. Their song 'Light My Fire' became a nightclub standard. Jim died. Some say not.
Morrison spawned Iggy Stooge and Patti Smith (ask them). The Doors, excellent musicians, made two post-Jim respectable albums but the magic, the secret beauty was gone. Keyboarist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore have waxed a few failed records between them since then, but Morrison's ghost still haunts them.
This album has been talked about as being 'set for imminent release' for the past three years, comprising as it does extracts from Jim's unfinished poetry album and live outtakes. Live, Morrison flashed cock, raised hell and got arrested. Erotic politicians – "just a catch-phrase for journalists". The album shifts scene constantly; waking dream or movie.
Beautifully packaged, with photos, lyrics and drawings, 'An American Prayer' sounds utterly contemporary. If, as Pete Silverton suggested to me, the newly-recorded backing which the other Doors have added to Morrison's words sounds like "disco", I think that's because The Doors (out of Huxley and Blake, the name) have always sounded jazzy and bluesy rather than rocky: they were ahead of the time.
The title track, the last thing on the record, is both marvellous and sad, because it illustrates that Krieger's blue, lyrical guitar only sounds right when working with Morrison's expressive, sensual intonations. Krieger was always more flamenco than punko, while Jim was more Lautreamont than Presley.
It's a minor quibble, but the only thing some may dislike about the album is the way that segments of previously issued material have been woven into the tapestry. It may be appropriate (and extremely effective) to cue 'Riders On The Storm', with its line about "a killer on the road", as backing to a Morrison monologue where he's supposedly on the telephone telling how he murdered someone in the desert, but those of us who have all the group's old records might find that it gives us the feeling of listening to a promotional crash-course 'History Of The Doors' LP. On the other hand, given the undoubtedly fragmentary nature of the material available for use on 'An American Prayer', it's interesting to hear a short piece of 'Queen Of The Highway' with the lines about 'Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding/ Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind', in conjunction with a cleaned-up, low-fi tape of Morrison recounting the childhood experience that gave him the inspiration for the words. Nevertheless, I wish the snippets of old songs were credited on the otherwise copious liner information.
There are also laments for his cock, a lively, raucous version of 'Roadhouse Blues', and a plethora of precise, sharp images from Morrison, arguably the only real poet that rock 'n' roll ever threw up. Genius, bullshit artist, human being, crowd manipulator.
Finally, the record is a success. I'd like to have heard the blues song included (Morrison's blues are, somehow...different) separately from the poem that goes 'We could plan a murder/ Or start a religion', instead of having them intercut (I don't see any real connection), but after all these years I'm so pleased to have this record in my hands that such things are mere details. Jim Morrison is the only rock 'n' roll star whose death genuinely affected me. If you never saw him live, never heard a Doors record before, this is as good a place to start as any. If you're a fan, I don't need to say any more. Strange days have found us.
Sandy Robertson,
Sounds,
2nd December 1978
A book could be written (and has been), about James Douglas Morrison, sometime sex symbol, filmmaker, poet, drunk and rock 'n' roll star, so I won't try for any potted biography tactics here.
Suffice to say that The Doors (the group of which Jimbo was undisputed leader, for our younger readers), were in their time just about all things to all men. Some saw them as a hype from Sunset Strip, others viewed the rebel child and his sidekicks as the only truly American rock group of the 60s, the antidote to Haight-Ashbury and flower-power.
Jim, poet of L.A., death and the city, killers in the desert. The little girls worshipped, there were hit singles, all the albums went gold. Every kind of drug/ perversion imaginable, or what? Nik Cohn wrote a book on rock and dismissed them in a few lines. Their song 'Light My Fire' became a nightclub standard. Jim died. Some say not.
Morrison spawned Iggy Stooge and Patti Smith (ask them). The Doors, excellent musicians, made two post-Jim respectable albums but the magic, the secret beauty was gone. Keyboarist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore have waxed a few failed records between them since then, but Morrison's ghost still haunts them.
This album has been talked about as being 'set for imminent release' for the past three years, comprising as it does extracts from Jim's unfinished poetry album and live outtakes. Live, Morrison flashed cock, raised hell and got arrested. Erotic politicians – "just a catch-phrase for journalists". The album shifts scene constantly; waking dream or movie.
Beautifully packaged, with photos, lyrics and drawings, 'An American Prayer' sounds utterly contemporary. If, as Pete Silverton suggested to me, the newly-recorded backing which the other Doors have added to Morrison's words sounds like "disco", I think that's because The Doors (out of Huxley and Blake, the name) have always sounded jazzy and bluesy rather than rocky: they were ahead of the time.
The title track, the last thing on the record, is both marvellous and sad, because it illustrates that Krieger's blue, lyrical guitar only sounds right when working with Morrison's expressive, sensual intonations. Krieger was always more flamenco than punko, while Jim was more Lautreamont than Presley.
It's a minor quibble, but the only thing some may dislike about the album is the way that segments of previously issued material have been woven into the tapestry. It may be appropriate (and extremely effective) to cue 'Riders On The Storm', with its line about "a killer on the road", as backing to a Morrison monologue where he's supposedly on the telephone telling how he murdered someone in the desert, but those of us who have all the group's old records might find that it gives us the feeling of listening to a promotional crash-course 'History Of The Doors' LP. On the other hand, given the undoubtedly fragmentary nature of the material available for use on 'An American Prayer', it's interesting to hear a short piece of 'Queen Of The Highway' with the lines about 'Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding/ Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind', in conjunction with a cleaned-up, low-fi tape of Morrison recounting the childhood experience that gave him the inspiration for the words. Nevertheless, I wish the snippets of old songs were credited on the otherwise copious liner information.
There are also laments for his cock, a lively, raucous version of 'Roadhouse Blues', and a plethora of precise, sharp images from Morrison, arguably the only real poet that rock 'n' roll ever threw up. Genius, bullshit artist, human being, crowd manipulator.
Finally, the record is a success. I'd like to have heard the blues song included (Morrison's blues are, somehow...different) separately from the poem that goes 'We could plan a murder/ Or start a religion', instead of having them intercut (I don't see any real connection), but after all these years I'm so pleased to have this record in my hands that such things are mere details. Jim Morrison is the only rock 'n' roll star whose death genuinely affected me. If you never saw him live, never heard a Doors record before, this is as good a place to start as any. If you're a fan, I don't need to say any more. Strange days have found us.
Sandy Robertson,
Sounds,
2nd December 1978
