The Doors unhinged..Soft Parade cause & effect

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The Doors unhinged.....The Soft Parade cause and effect
…..the consequences of Buick for Miami and beyond......


The Doors recent documentary effort has created a lot of controversy among fans as it sets out to firmly establish that Jim Morrison was the primary cause of The Doors downfall.
The drugged up drunken Morrison prevalent throughout the movie, which for me is nothing short of a cruel betrayal by Densmore/Manzarek/Krieger.
The cruellest jibe of the whole alleged documentary comes with the ‘elephant in the room’ comment that surrounds the Soft Parade sessions of 1968/1969.

'but no one talks about the elephant in the room'

So lets examine that period and see if we cannot come to an alternative conclusion as to who were the elephants in that room.

It’s a common conception that Miami was caused by excessive drinking on the part of Jim Morrison. The catalyst for this testimonial in Miami was the performances of the Living Theatre which took place at the Bovard Hall at the University of Southern California from February 24th to 28th 1969 and were attended by Jim Morrison.

Jim weird hippies and drink equalled chaos in Miami. QED!

But what is interesting about Miami and the period of time just before it and just after it is that if examined it manages to reveal that all is not what it seems here and perhaps causality rears it’s head with a large dollop of synchronicity.

The rehearsal period for The Soft Parade album began in October of 1968 just after a successful European tour and everything in the Doors garden was lovely.
Except of course it was far from this.

Morrison had remained in Europe when the rest of the band flew home and during this period the opportunity to endorse Buick cars came the bands way with the chance to allow LMF to appear in a car commercial.
The three musical Doors embraced the opportunity clearly thinking that the singer would fall in line once he resurfaced.

According to Jac Holzman a TV commercial using the phrase ‘come on Buick Light My Fire’ was actually aired but once the singer discovered what had been done behind his back he made it clear he wanted this deal stopped in it’s tracks.
Even going as far as threatening to destroy Buicks with a sledge hammer on stage. Buick quietly dropped The Doors campaign and the waters settled around the whole affair.

Except of course it did not as this had enlightened Morrison as to just the kind of people he was working with.


Feast Of Friends Page 82
Bill Siddons: One of the few times I saw Jim angry was when he found out about, 'come on Buick, Light My Fire.'
Out of control. He felt betrayed. His partners had betrayed him, they had sold out to corporate America without asking him.

I was there when he told them. "How could you do this to me? This is my band too. How could you make that decision without me?"

One of them said, "Well, man, you didn't tell us where you were going and the offer would have expired."

"So, what?"
He just didn't get it. Whether he was gone for a day or a month, it didn't matter, but you don't sell out to the establishment. Postpone it or cancel but don't give my soul away.

That was the end of the dream. That was the end of that era of Jim's relationship with the other members of the band; from then on it was business. That was the day Jim said,
"I don't have partners anymore, I have associates."

The band had already endured a difficult period of what was commonly known as ‘third album syndrome’ which was common during the 60s and 70s. A band usually had enough material harvested from rehearsals and gigging before signing to a label to produce two albums.
Then the expectation to be out there touring made it difficult to accumulate new material as the pressures to tour and promote albums made it hard to work up material and as a consequence the band would not have the time to evolve new songs into workable material.
This is exactly what happened to The Doors after Strange Days.
The Doors were not noted as a band that rehearse much so their songs evolved in a live environment but with the pressure of the hits and promoting Strange Days the band could no longer rely on the rehearsal time that the Whisky and Fog gigs had accorded them.
Now they were famous it was expected that they would tour and perform the hits.
The band did gig pretty solidly after the release of Strange Days until the end of 1967.
Add to that the distractions of New Haven, Jim annoyance of his birthday audience in Troy the night before, his arrest for his plane antics, and some poor performances due indeed to Jim’s excessive drinking like the Ann Arbor gig in October and it was clear that it was a hectic few months for the band before they went back into the studio for the WFTS sessions in February 1968.

The band was searching for a new direction and Morrison obviously favoured poetry as the centrepiece of the album was due to be his 20/30 minute epic Celebration Of The Lizard which was a piece Jim Morrison certainly had high hopes for.
The disappointment Jim must have felt at the failure of COTL is simply conjecture but the genuine desire to move The Doors into the poetry/drama arena and it’s failure must have had a profound effect on a man who wanted to be known as a poet rather than The Lizard King.
By March 68 the pressure is on to fill an album as COTL seems to be unworkable and the band fall back on their original demo and look to Jim’s notebooks for inspiration.

The result that July is a solid if slightly fragmented third album which yields an unlikely hit in Jim’s 1965 song Hello I Love You which is far from what he would have envisaged the new album to have been with his COTL piece.
The album makes an impact outside of the States and the pressure is now on to take advantage of that and the band embark on their first tour outside of the Americas which is a success and establishes the band in Europe with a minor hit single and album and a fair amount of media attention.

The band return home leaving Morrison to spend some time in London resulting in the Buick offer and the consequences on Morrison’s return to LA.

Now Morrison’s sees his band mates in a different light and perhaps this festers within him into 1969 as the band enter the studio for The Soft Parade sessions and their 4th album.

It is interesting to compare the Doors live prior to Buick and after Buick.
The first show after Morrison’s return from England was the Louisville Freedom Hall on October 31st and this description comes from the local paper. ‘A more subdued Morrison enables one to put the rest of the group in perspective.’
Jim apparently ‘sauntered onstage in baggy white jeans, a cigarette clenched between his teeth, while rolling up the sleeves of a crumpled blue shirt.’

Hardly scientific but perhaps a portent of things not being right within the group.
Morrison still includes poetical segments in his songs but to quote him there seems ‘something wrong something not quite right’ about the Doors shows towards the end of 1968.
Chicago in early November is described as a restrained Doors performance.
A few nights later in Phoenix Morrison encourages the audience to clap along to LMF and after the show the local police captain present states that Morrison was on the verge of arrest for his behaviour in winding up the crowd and his language and the band is permanently barred from playing the venue again. They never perform in Arizona again.
The next night in Madison Wisconsin he is described as in an irritable mood and the next night in St Louis it is noted that both Morrison and Krieger do not have their hearts in the show and Morrison is described as uncharacteristically shy during that show avoiding any dialogue with his audience and quaffing a large quantity of onstage beer.
The month concludes with a gig in Minneapolis with Tony Glover guesting on harp, which goes quite well and is a more bluesy Doors show than usual.

By the end of November the rehearsal phase of TSP is over and the band enter Elektra Sound studio for the recording phase and the point in Tom DiCillo’s film that poses the ‘elephant in the room’ theory which does not consider the events before December 1968 and fails to take into account the obvious wedge that Buick placed between the musical and vocal segments of The Doors.

As part of the early promotion for TSP the new single Touch Me is featured during the bands spot on The Smother’s Brothers Comedy Hour in early December followed 10 days later on the 14th by an LA Forum show with a small orchestra in which several TSP songs receive a showcase.
As with all new material the audience are unfamiliar with the songs and keep crying out for LMF during the set. During Touch Me the cries for LMF intensify and the band cave in and do the song.
At the conclusion of LMF Morrison confronts the audience by sitting cross legged on the stage and asking them just why they came here tonight. Suggesting they came to see ‘something different, something more’.
The band then begin a complete version of Celebration Of The Lizard.
Many in the audience show boredom with the poem/song even booing and shouting obscenity whilst some do seem interested in it.
As COTL concludes each Door leaves the stage quietly one at a time leaving Morrison to complete the final verse alone.
A muffled smattering of applause from over 18,000 people finishes the concert and the audience wander out of the hall in near silence.

Cash Box described the performance.
‘A feeling of indescribable tension filled the Forum as the music stopped and the poetry began. The crowd squirmed, fidgeted and shouted obscenities. They wanted Morrison to sing not to recite. He realized what they were waiting for and in a mocking voice still wallowing in his own glow proceeded to recite more poetry’.

For me one of the most interesting moments in this phase of The Doors story.
Morrison realising that his band mates were prepared to sell out the art of The Doors and his audience wanted a greatest hits show decides to rebel against the lot of them by showcasing COTL at a show that was designed to promote the forthcoming new album..
He had wanted poetry on the WFTS LP not hits like 'Hello I Love You' going as far as recording snippets of his poems to play in between the tracks after COTL had failed to show viability as one side of the album.
Brass and strings was not his idea it seems of Doors art and it’s interesting that his main contributions to TSP were brass/string free.
Also interesting is that Robby’s material was seen by Elektra as the more radio friendly as after HILY in June 1968 it would be nearly 2 years before a Doors single would feature a Morrison song as an A Side.

As the New Year settled in another showcase for TSP was arranged at the prestigious Madison Square Garden, to a sell out crowd 20,000, once again incorporating a small orchestra and with the rare inclusion of an on stage bass player Harvey Brooks.
The show is seen outwardly as a success but poor acoustics and the vastness of the hall seem to have worked against The Doors as New York Times writer and first Doors biographer Mike Jahn noticed.
‘It was hard to hear the lyrics and a large measure of The Doors value is based on those lyrics. To many in the audience the performers were a speck in the distance and this was unfortunate since much of the groups popularity is based on the onstage theatrics of Jim Morrison. Few groups can match their ability to make rock music sound eerie and magical. Few lyricists can match Morrison’s ability to create effective often terrifying images. As it turns out The Doors were good despite the shortcomings of the arena.’
We will never know what Morrison thought about this turn of events as he seemed now to be in a band more interested in record sales than creating art that had to appease rabid audiences with hit material rather than enthral them as in the bands early days with poetry and despair. The Doors now reduced to playing with orchestras and huge audiences in aircraft hanger type venues.

The TSP recording sessions continued throughout January and February with producer Paul Rothchild seemingly obsessed with producing the perfect Doors album which resulted in endless takes and endless time spent in the studio for little return.
It is interesting that The Doors album reflected individual writing credits for the first time as Morrison did not want to be associated with Krieger songs like Tell All The People and Touch Me. Surely another sign of the rift started by Buick a few months earlier becoming wider.

After one particular TSP session the band shared a Mexican meal in the Blue Boar near the studios and after becoming slightly inebriated returned to the studio and placed on tape Morrison’s dissatisfaction with his lot during what would become the infamous Rock Is Dead session on 25th February 1969.

Also at exactly the same time Morrison is attending the performances of Julian Beck’s Living Theatre troupe at the USC Bovard Hall which ran from February 24th to the 28th.
The final performance Paradise Now highlighted the social stigma of nudity in public and encouraged the audience to disrobe.

The Doors next show in March was at The Dinner Key stadium in Miami.

After Miami Jim Morrison seemed to pretty much give up and Doors concerts after the band was allowed to perform again until the final gig in New Orleans seemed to be more pedestrian and contrived rather than the spontaneous poetical concerts of 1966/67 and the early part of 1968. The blues easier to sing with alcohol than acid rock.

Something changed after Buick and it affected the bands relationship and The Doors as a concert band. Jim Morrison seemed to find his audience repulsive and his attitude to band and audience changed dramatically.
Of course there were exceptions during the late 68/69/70 period but many examples of Jim’s frustration exist as bootleg material. The record company seemed to change as well and the band were seen more as a hit machine rather than the something special Jac Holzman observed in the summer of 1966.

So was the 'elephant in the room' Jim Morrison or was it the band, the obsessive producer, Elektra and it's expectations, was it the audience that no longer cared about anything but the hits.

A long way to go with this exploration of the time period so lets hear from you guys and feel free to add any contemporary sources and any opinions you may have as to who was to blame and what was to blame for what became the final days of America’s greatest band and arguably the most innovative rock group of all time.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Some Buick background ......dates are not always correct but I quote exactly as they were presented.

1970 Buick GSX
The GSX looked like a riot on wheels, entirely appropriate since Buick's ad agency had licensed The Doors' 1967 hit song "Light My Fire" for its 1970 advertising theme. The Doors were known to start some some riots of their own. Extroverted buyers much preferred the GTO Judge, and bought 3797 of them in 1970. Buick bravely brought the GSX package back for 1971, but sold just 124.
from Popular Mechanics

Whilst Jim was in London after The Doors European Tour of 1968 another incident had occurred which served to damage relations with Jim and the rest of the band. An advertising agency had offered The Doors $100,000 for permission to use ‘Light My Fire’ for a Buick commercial. The agency were on a tight schedule and needed a quick answer.
Since Jim couldn't be contacted in London Bill had to discuss the matter with the other three members. The song had been written by Robby and although there was usually a group decision on these matters on this occasion Bill thought it prudent to let Robby decide and they voted to give Buick the go ahead.
When Jim arrived back a few days later and heard about 'Come On Buick Light My Fire' he went totally beserk finally contacting Jac Holzman who still controlled the publishing to try and block the deal. The song was never sold but Jim felt betrayed that the others would consider making such a decision without him and the rift that had already begun to divide them grew bigger.
Cheri Siddons (wife of Bill) remembered how angry Jim got.
'He was an artist and I think the angriest I ever saw him was when The Doors decided to let Buick use ‘Light My Fire’. I just remember this real unhappiness. I think if he was ever going to yell he would have yelled that day. He did not yell but it was as if a light switched off. That was the last straw somehow. I'm not sure if he really liked Robby, John & Ray after that. I think he could sense they had different purposes. They were more into the money and the business and would sacrifice some of the 'art' for that.
Jim was not willing to sacrifice the art for anything"
From The Doors Dance On Fire. (p125)

Some powerful stuff there....Cheri's account differs from Ray's more melodramatic account but I would say she was a much more reliable witness to the events. Even if she was not there in person (which she may well have been) her second hand account would have come from hubby Bill who was there as Doors manager. By contrast Ray's account on p305-307 of his book seems like part of the script for Stone's movie and is probably just one of the usual Manzarek fantasies.
Both Cheri and Kathy Lisciandro (who was also probably present in the Doors office when these events occurred as she was Doors secretary) give a taste of the way Jim interacted with his bandmates in Frank Lisciandros book 'Feast Of Friends' and Kathy states that Jim was never rude or yelled at his fellow Doors in the times she was there. Manzarek has Jim screaming and shouting in reaction to the Buick fiasco whilst the other account is a more composed response.
Lisciandros books certainly give us a far better insight from his friends into the character of Jim Morrison than those given by those who regard him as a meal ticket.

Many argue that the band and adverts would be a good thing and that Jim would 40 years on be agreeable to The Doors selling their collective souls to some car firm or to advertise toilet role.....Jim is dead so we can put any words we like into his mouth but his actions show how disreputable the arguments of the more commercially minded among The Doors world are......he stood up for a song he had little to do with...that's how much the art meant to that bloke....he would have defended it with his last breath....a lesson Ray with his New Age Of Aquarius forgot a long time ago.....

"The General Motors TV commercial may have been the flashpoint for some of Jim's antics. GM asked to use ‘Light My Fire’ as the theme for a new model car. They were offering good money $80,000 in 1969 dollars which would be split Doors $60,000/Elektra $20,000. During the negotiations Jim was off and nowhere to be found but the remaining Doors OK'd it and so did Max Fink who was Jim's lawyer. Personally I didn't care one way or the other.
When Jim rematerialized...he freaked. He was sure we had all taken advantage of his absence. The other Doors supposedly laid it on my doorstep. Jim phoned me in New York. I set out the sequence of events in typical Jaconian detail and he seemed mollified....or at least no longer blaming me! I said 'Jim, as far as Elektra is concerned its not a matter of money. Elektra will contribute its full share to a film scholarship fund at UCLA......an interest of his and Ray's....if The Doors will match it. That still leaves $40,000....$10,000 each for the Doors. I was urging him to take the money and then turn around and do some real good with it. Jim thought it was a notion to consider but after that conversation the subject never again came up.
A commercial was shot and aired but very sparesly. Jim may have hoped to create such a furore that GM would be reluctant to use the tune. He once threatened to take his quarter share, buy a bunch of Buicks and smash them up on Santa Monica Boulevard"
Jac Holzman Follow The Music (p283)

One of the most amazing things about the Light My Fire/Buick affair is how deeply grained the Myth is in Doors History. We will never really know what actually happened as what various people like to think happened has taken over completely. Oliver Stone was criticised for alluding to the fact that a TV ad was aired in his film....yet here we have the President of Elektra actually confirming that an advert was made and indeed shown on TV. Many sources say the deal was quietly forgotten about by Buick. The Light My Fire/Buick fiasco a perfect example at the level some players in the story will go to to promote an agenda.
Was 'Light My Fire' bought by Buick? Did Buick use 'Light My Fire' to sell a car?
Will we ever know the real truth about that incident?
Like much in The Doors world its a matter of perspective and depends on whether the History of The Doors is more important than the selling of The Myth of The Doors.


"It all started in 1967, when Buick proffered $75,000 to use "Light My Fire" to hawk its new hot little offering--the Opel. As the story goes--which everyone knows who's read my autobiography or seen Oliver Stone's movie--Ray, Robby and John (that's me) OK'd it, while Jim was out of town. He came back and went nuts. And it wasn't even his song (Robby primarily having penned "LMF")! In retrospect, his calling up Buick and saying that if they aired the ad, he'd smash an Opel on television with a sledgehammer was fantastic! I guess that's one of the reasons I miss the guy"
John Densmore Riders on the Storm article for The Nation

The famous Ray Manzarek take on Buick.
Ray Manzareks' Light My Fire...
p.305-309
"Europe and The Soft Parade"
Start Page 305
So to be asked to use a rock song over a commerical for a new, sharp
little machine ws at once lucrative and subversive. We could
get "Light My Fire" played again on national television. We could
get rock and roll on a medium that had very little to do with rock
music. We could make a few inroads in the changeover of
consiousness. Or so I thought. Back then. Back when I was a naif.

I approved the request posthaste. So did Robby and John. Jim was
nowhere to be found. He was on one of his now more frequent
disappearing trips. Probably off cavorting with Jimbo. Or perhaps
locked in battle with Jimbo. Wrestling for control. Fighting for the
destiny of the entity christened James Douglas Morrison.

When he finally did show up a few days later, the Buick commerical
was a fait accompli. They needed a yes or no immediately. We said
yes and signed paper. Jim freaked.

"You can't have signed without me!" he yelled.

"Well, we did," I said.

"Why, man? We do everything together. Why'd you do this without me?"

"Because you weren't here," said Robby.

"So what? Couldn't you have waited for me?"

"Who knew when you were coming back?" added John.

"They needed an answer right away," I said. "So we signed."

"It's not like it's typical Buick road hog or something." said
Robby. It's a cool little car."

"Get's real good milage," said John.

"Four cylinders," I added. A sports car. Two-seater."

"Fuck You!" shouted Jim.

A silence filled the rehearsal room. Jim had never screamed like
that before. He was enraged. And he looked wasted. He looked as if
his nerve ends were frazzled. He looked as if he had been doing
things he shouldn't have. And he looked shattered. He was clearly
not in control of himself...or his emotions. He stomped around the
room, agitated, hyper, angered.

"Fuck You guys!" he said again. "I thought it was supposed to be all
for one and one for all. I thought we were suppose to be brothers!"

"Jiiim. we are, man" I said in feeble response to his strange and
terrible outburst. Nothing has changed."

"You weren't here," said Robby.

"Everything has fucking changed, Ray! Jim said. "Everything!"
"Why? I don't understand. Just because we signed a contract for a
fucking song...why has everything changed?" I asked him.

And then he came back with a line that really hurt me. Hurt John and
Robby, too. Stabbed the Doors in their collective heart.

"Because I can't trust you anymore," he snarled.

"But it's good little car, man" protested John.

"It's fucking industry! It's corporate! It's the devil, you
asshole." Jim glared. "You guys just made a pact with the devil."

"The hell we did," said Robby.

"Oh yes you did, Robby. He seduced you with cute little gas efficent
cars. He shows you what you want and then he puts a little twist in
it. Makes you say yes to him when you know you shouldn't..." He
paced the room, manic. "But you go along with it because the deal's
just too good. It tastes too good." And then he looked at me, "It's
too much money, isn't it Ray?"

"Fuck You, Jim." I was getting pissed too.

Another knife in the heart. Was this actually Jim saying these
things? Did he really believe what he was saying?

"Well, I'm not in it for the fucking lifestyle, man." I snarled
back. "I just wanna make music. And if we can make some money at
it...that's cool with me."

"Lots of money," Jim sarcastically said under his breath.

"What'd you say?"

"You heard me."

He was really pushing it.

Robby jumped into the fray. "Why weren't you here, man? A big
decision had to be made and you weren't here, again!"

"Where do you go all the time" asked John.

"Wherever I want!" Jim shot back. "And it's none of your fucking
business. You understand?"

John turned away from Jim's penetrating glare. Unable to confront
him. Unable to say what was really on his mind. Hell, none of us
could confront him. None of us had the psychic strength to call him
on the carpet and read the riot act to him. It was probably just
what he needed. Maybe even what he wanted.

"No one tells me what to do, John. You got that?"

I jumped in. "Nobodys telling you what to do, man. We just want to
know how come you're never around when you're needed. Where the fuck
were you?"

"We called everywhere," added Robby.

"You weren't home, you weren't at the Alta Cienga," I said. "We
called Barneys, the Palms, the Garden District...you weren't at the
Whisky, Mario hadn't seen you in a couple of weeks." "Even Babe
didn't know where you were," said Robby.

Jim eruoted again. "Hey! This isn't about where I go." Then pointing
an accusatory finger. "This is about you guys signing a contract
without me." A silence filled the room again. Jim had broken out in
a sweat. I felt cold and clammy. The evil green thing began wrapping
its tenacles around my stomach, probing for weakness. I didn't like
this. I didn't like this at all.

I felt bad, hurt, misunderstood. Here I was trying to hold the whole
damn thing together. Trying to be the adult. Jim had abandoned ship.
He was over the top, gone. The Ray and Jim show from Venice do
longer existed. I was the oldest. I had to try and maintain the
dream, hoping he would snap out of this phase he was in. Hoping that
it was a phase. An aberration, a momentary aberration. Hoping that
he would come to his senses and we could resume our grail qust
together. The four of us. The Doors. Brothers in the void.
Supporting and nurturing one another. Hell, keeping one another
alive! And we had so much more work to do. More music and poetry.
Theater - Jim and I had talked of a multimedia theater project with
actors and dancers and rear-screen projections and recitations and
Doors' music - the "Magic Theater" of Hermann Hesse. Films, directed
by me, starring Jim, music by Robby Krieger and John Densmore. And
finally politics. The takeover of America by the lovers! He had to
snap out of it. He had to come back to his old self. His real self.

"Well, it's too late," said Robby.


Jim wheeled on him. "Oh, yeah? We'll see about that. I'm gonna smash
a fucking Buick to dust on stage."

He was perspiring more profusely
now.

"It's gonna be part of my new act. 'Smash a Buick to
Smithereens.' We'll see how they like that. And then I'm gonna get
Abe to sue their asses. For big bucks, Ray. For a lot more than
their shitty little contract. Then let's see if they still want to
use a Doors song to sell a sports car."

He was pacing and sweating and clearly out of control. He stormed
out of the rehearsal room and rushed up to the offices, barged into
Siddons room and told Bill to get our new, young hotshot lawyer -
Abe Sommers - on the phone. When he did, Jim got on the line and
hollered at Abe to do whatever he could to stop the contract.

"Threaten' them with a lawsuit," he shouted into the phone. "Tell
them I'm gonna smash a Buick with a sledgehammer onstage! Tell them
anything! But stop the fucking contract!"

And in three days, Buick backed out. They simply decided they didn't
want to go with a rock ad campaign after all. Nothing against the
Doors or their music, you understand. They simply shifted
demographic focus. It was done, finished. And Jim grinned from ear
to ear. He had exercised his will against the corporate
establishment and he was a contented man. He made them back down.
Hell, he made them back all the way out. It felt good. And he wanted
more.

And that was called...Miami.

END page 309

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Some Soft Parade background. It has to be noted that much of this this tends to support the usual Jim drink and general naughtiness scenario that has flavoured the last 30 odd years and is the story of those who may well be trying to deflect any criticism that might come their way by simply blaming the dead guy for everything.
The other side of the coin comes from the work of the likes of Frank Lisciandro who gathered the tales of Jim's friends and not those who worked with him as part of The Doors and this tends to give a more balanced insight into Morrison's demeanour.

Recording the Soft Parade
Page 319 Break On Through
The cooped up feeling that being in the studio gave Morrison had been relieved on Waiting for the Sun by gigging between sessions, but after Miami there were no gigs. The ban was also creating great financial pressure making completeing the album even more important. As usual, pressure only made Morrison’s problem worse.

Paul Rothchild: “It was like pulling teeth to get Jim into it. It was bizarre…it was the hardest I ever worked as a producer. It was nearly impossible to get Jim to sing well and have the band play well on a whole take. It was hell. By this time, they’d run out of all of their material and what they came in with was raw, very green stuff. As the talent fades the producer has to become more active.”

With the legal turmoil continuing and the blow that Miami had dealt his public and self images, Morrison’s mind was clearly on other things during the making of this record. His creative energy was pulling away from the rock medium which had stung him so badly and redirecting itself into poetry and films.

Paul Rothchild: “I think he was trying to show the band that they weren’t shit without him. Ninety precent of the time he was drunk, he was impossible to deal with. The other ten percent he transcended himself and was totally brillant. The ten percent is on his records. The other ninety percent is total garbage. Off-key singing. Mush-mouth. Bratty stuff. Fooling around. It’s not great stuff. It stinks. You can’t put out an album of Doors’ outtakes because they’re embarrassing.”

Manzarek, Krieger and Densmore were irrevocably bonded to a guiding force who could no longer even be counted on for any creative inspiration, much less any real direction. Only a few scant months befire, they had been the number one group in America and now they found themselves at both a creative and popular low. In desperation they turned more to the confident voice of Paul Rothchild: “I was always encouraging them to expand musically, and Ray and Robby were always interested in expanding the band’s instrumental concept.”

For the first time Morrison and Krieger shared the writing equally, each writing four songs on the album and collaborating on one. But unlike Kriegers’ efforts on previous albums these new songs were clearly separate from those of Jim Morrison. None of Morrison’s songs had strings, horns or orchestral arrangements, while all of Robby’s did. But if Morrison protested the arrangements, he was too caught up in his own problems to fight against them. His comments about the Soft Parade sound more defensive than anything else.

Jim Morrison: “One thing about the fourth album that I’m really proud of is that ‘Touch Me,’ which is also a single, was the first rock hit to have a jazz solo in it, by Curtis Amy on tenor saxophone. I guess ‘Tell All The People’ was a dumb song, but everyone wanted me to do it, so I did it.”

In May, ‘Tell All The People’ was the third single released from the forthcoming album. While Morrison was unmoved by ‘Touch Me,’ he hated ‘Tell All The People.’ It was the exact kind of overtly idealistic political rock god mush that he always feared the press would saddle him with. At first during the sessions Morrison refused to sing the line ‘can’t you see me growing, get your guns.’

Jim Morrison: I’m not singing those lines. That’s not where I’m at.”

Although he relented and sang the song, he felt so strongly about it that he insisted on separate writing credits for the album and The Soft Parade was the first Doors album to list the individual writers of each song.


BAM Interview with Paul Rothchild
PAUL: There had been a couple of peaks, but basically, things had been sliding since Miami. Jim was really not interested after about the third album. He wanted to do other things. He wanted to write. Wanted to be an actor. Being lead singer of The Doors was really not his idea of a good time. It became very difficult to get him involved with the records. When we made The Soft Parade it was like pulling teeth to get Jim into it.

BAM: The song The Soft Parade sounds heavily
fragmented to me, as if it wasn't even designed as one song.

PAUL: It wasn't. Whenever we got stuck in the studio
with a bridge section, I'd ask Jim to get out his
notebooks of poetry and we'd go through them and find a piece that fit rhythmically and conceptually. Alot of the fragments there were just bits of poetry we put together. That song came out kind of interesting. I thought.

BAM: But in general the sessions were very difficult.

PAUL: Very difficult. You see, Jim decided around this
time that he was going to be really rebellious. I
think he was trying to show the band that they weren't
shit without him. Jim was always testing. He tested us
all every minute of every day. He tested people's
limits to see where their level of infuriation was.


Musician Magazine 1981
Musician: Ray talked disparagingly about “Touch Me”, or at least said it never worked when they played it live; even implied he didn’t want to play it. Did they feel this kind of thing was a compromise of their art?

Rothschild: Well, it was a compromise that they were very, very delighted to participate in. “Touch Me” sold a couple million records – their second most successful single. It lost them part of their original audience, while at the same time gaining them an enormous number of new fans.

Musician: If Jim thought “Light My Fire” was lightweight, how did he justify “Touch Me”?

Rothschild: At that point Jim was pretty bereft of ideas, and, as I mentioned, he was losing interest in the music in general. Also, when we did that album, the concept was to go all the way back to home base on the next album and really surprise everybody. Which is exactly what we did on Morrison Hotel.

Re: LA Woman:

Musician: When you say the band was in its death throes, was this a result of Jim’s degeneration or external factors? Or a bit of both?

Rothschild: It was definitely because of Jim. The others were almost totally demoralized; there was almost open warfare between the band and Jim at that point. They’d survived Miami as a unit, stiff upper lipping it and all that, even though it cost the band a fortune. But no, it was Jim’s attitude that demoralized them after that. He just didn’t really want to put out.

Musician: That brings us to the theory, that some people including Ray Manzarek, have put forth that Jim may have become so disillusioned that he finally decided to disappear, to remove himself as an image…

Rothschild: …not as an image. At that point he was speaking almost daily with is good friend Francis Ford Coppola, who wanted to make films with him. That’s where Jim was headed.

Feast Of Friends Book Page 155
After Miami Jim flew to Jamaica for a planned vaction with The Doors. he had intended to stay with Pam but an argument before had put paid to that so he found himself in a large mansion all on his own and isolated from the rest of the band.

Eva Gardoni:
One day he was telling us how frightened he was in Jamaica and Pamela sat up sort of indignant saying how come I've never known about these things before and he just smiled you know and he said, 'Well I don't talk about everything all the time.'

He told us they took him down there, down to apparently a palazzo, a mansion and there were like black servants and everything and he said he was very much afraid of these black people at that point because they looked so foreign and alien to him and everything. And apparently the rest of the group got into other households. They just left him alone. And then this guy, this butler or whatever he was, this black guy pulled out a bunch of dope and he offered to roll him a joint. Jim said it was like a cigar and he started smoking it a little bit and he didn't like smoking, or didn't smoke that much or whatever, but it affected him in the weirdest way 'cause he started like hallucinating that people are going to kill him and this guy's after him and everything.

He said it was almost like visions. You know when you have had a bad trip you know you just see negative and scary in everything. And since the circumstances were such that he found himself alone in this huge mansion with a couple of rasta guys hanging around, he just didn't know how to read it and he felt it was somewhat of a conspiracy or something.

And he would call Robby and, I don't know, John to come and like fetch him and those guys didn't want anything to do with him. They were pissed off, they were mad from what happened in Miami and everything and so they really isolated him. He said he had the worst time on that island. Riddled with like fear and disappointment and loneliness and everything.

He wrote a poem about his experiences there.
Jamaica

The hour of the wolf
has now ended. Cocks
crow. The world is built
up again, struggling in
darkness.

The child gives in to night-
Mare, while the grown
Man fears his fear.

I must leave this island,
Struggling to be born
from blackness.

Fear the good deep dark
American Night.
Blessed is Night.

The flood has subsided
The movie panic & the
chauffeured drive
Thru the suburbs

Wild folks in weird dress
by the side of the hiway

Some of the men wear
Tunics or short skirts.
The women posture on
Their porches in mock-
classical pose.

The driver aims the car
& it guides itself. Tunnels
click by overhead.

Love the deep green gloom
of American Night.

Love frightened corners,
Thrill to the wood-vine.

So much of it good
& so much quantity.

The Major's boots are where
he left them.

Pseudo-plantation.

Period prints - white
& black boxing match.

A Negro Dance

___________


The principal of the school holds his nose.
"A dead cow is in there. I wonder
why they haven't sent someone to
remove it?"

A vulture streams by,
& another. The white tip
of his claw-like red beak
looks white, like meat.
Swift sad languorous
shadows.

The cat drinks little cat
laps from a sick
Turquoise swimming pool.

(Insane couplings out in the night.)

America, I am hook'd to your
Cold white neon bosom, & suck
snake-like thru the dawn, I
am drawn back home
your son in exile
in the land of Awakening
What dreams possessed you
To merge in the morning?

"I been in a daze"

A spot, a reef, behind
the nursery door, off
the main bedroom-
"Those are the major's."

The bed looms like a white
funeral butterfly barge
at one end of the room,
hung w/ nets & sails.

"We're outlaws."

"What church is that?"
:Church of God."
while bandana, white tambourine

-Walking on the Water-

"In traditional style, we'll
give them a good political
back-siding" - (laughter)

"Victimization"

a frog in the road
children in church
drums
Sun-Sun
lying like death
on the back seat
Revival.

A whore-house.
Lord John & Lady Anne's.
Red-blooded Blue-blooded.
Queen's bosom.Is it The Princess?

Golden-blood, like me, he said,
folding the bill again neatly,
the Queen's ear - a naked
cock stuck in her ass.

Ha Ha Ha Ha.

You're no more innocent
than a turkey vulture

A cannon.

The Negro slaves & the English
killed the Indians, & mixed
w/ the Spanish, who were soon
forced out.

Yes, big battles

Boom Boom

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The possibility that COTL was dropped to make way for more commercial material has been raised on the Densmore forum by one of it's members and this too needs to be taken into account.
This would have had an impact on Morrison's demeanour and would have set him on a collision course with those that had a different view of what The Doors were meant to be than their singers.

COTL was recorded in a version of 23 minutes and 36 minutes according to the LA Times in March 1968.
We heard a 17 minute version as a bootleg which was released by The Doors and deceitfully dressed up as a take from thier archive.
So as yet no official version has been released so it's not known if a version of COTL exists in the band archive. I agree that it could have worked if the will had been there. It worked OK on stage so they must have had enough desire to knock it into shape for concerts.....so why not an album?

Ray said this in 1997.
Ray Manzarek says "Celebration of the Lizard. We never did get that great studio take. But we played the hell out of it live!
Studio life: focusing on the music. You're in the studio to make music.
Partying, you can do anywhere. I think bands that party too much in the studio are ridiculous."

Which is a fair point! And one obviously directed at Morrison once again. But as is the point of this thread perhaps there are other causes that culminate in the effects of Miami and The Soft Parade sessions.
The elephant in the room perhaps not as clear cut as first thought.
Let's hope this thread moves the debate on a bit and we get a lot more views from members here.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The Waiting For The Sun songbook from 1969 contained the very interesting Richard Goldstein article 'The Shaman As Superstar' which gave us an insight into the studio version of The Celebration of The Lizard and its downfall and Jim Morrison's dissapointed reaction to the failure of the poetry epic.

"While Jim squats behind the control panel a roughly recorded dub of his 'Celebration Of The Lizard' comes over the loudspeakers.
Gently almost apologetiaclly Ray tells Jim the thing does not work. Too diffuse, too mangy. Jim's face sinks beneath his scaly collar. Right then you can sense 'Celebration Of The Lizard' will never appear on record......certainly not on the new Doors album. There will be eleven driving songs and snatches of poetry read aloud. But no Lizard King. No monarch crowned with lovebeads and holding a phallic sceptre in his hands.
'Hey bring your notebook to my house tomorrow' 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 an anteroom used to record isolated vocal. He turns the lights out fit’s himself with earphones and begins his game.
‘Five to one, one in five, nobody here gets out alive’.
Everyone in the room tries to bury Jim’s presence in conversation but his voice intrudes bigger and blacker over the loudspeaker.
Suddenly he emerges from his Formica cell inflicting his back upon a 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….xept…uh ….my friends"

"I'm the square of the Western hemisphere" You like people? I hate 'em...screw 'em...I don't need 'em....Oh I need 'em...to grow potatoes"!
The Shaman as Superstar by Richard Goldstein
From The Waiting For The Sun songbook 1969.

TH E D O O R S B E G I N R E C O R D I N G W A I T I N G F O R T H E S U N

Mon. Feb. 19th - Tue. 20th: In The Studio
The Doors go into T.T.G. Recording Studios in Hollywood, newly equipped with state of the art 16-track recording capabilities, and begin recordings for their third album Waiting For The Sun.

On the first day...
"The Celebration of the Lizard" and spontaneity are the order of the day and the band, full of high spirits and diligence, tackles production of this crucial arrangement which is to cover one side of the album.

On the 2nd day.......
The Doors again concentrate their energies on "The Celebration of the Lizard" and are again pleased with the results. However, the band pays so much attention to the small details and intricacies of the piece they lose the overall cohesiveness and it lacks the smooth transitions from part to part that is essential to the orchestration of the piece. The Doors are dissatisfied with the overall feel, especially the perfectionist Paul Rothchild, and the piece is in jeopardy of making the cut. Jim however is satisfied with the piece but loses the argument to technical aspects. He and the others like the feel but the song does not seem structured strongly enough to make it on a professional record.

Early March: In the studio
Producer Paul Rothchild is becoming evermore the perfectionist demanding take after take and the sessions are going awry right from the beginning. Jim is very uninterested in the process of recording and with his constant drinking and partying he is becoming very unreliable and quite creatively unproductive.
He has somewhat taken an 'I don't care' attitude and after his masterpiece "The Celebration" is rejected he withdraws and rebels. It takes over 130 attempts to get "The Unknown Soldier" recorded to Paul's high standards. John Densmore gets fed up with everything and quits but returns the next day.

Ray and Robby sense that something needs to be done about Jim. They talk to Paul and decide to hire someone to keep an eye on Jim while out drinking to make sure he gets to the studio and to upcoming gigs on time. Paul suggests they hire Bobby Neuwirth, a former roadie with Bob Dylan's band, who can think and drink on a par with Jim, to pose as a film maker. Elektra pays half of Neuwirth's salary and John, Ray and Robby pitch in on the other half. Jim quickly figures out what is going on but plays along for awhile. Neuwirth soon figures out there is no one that can stop Jim from drinking and joins him in bars all over town drinking and partying while giving Jim a companion to talk film with or to relate and bounce ideas off of while they're out and about. He becomes more of a drinking partner than an overseer and coordinator.

The recording sessions are getting worse and worse. Jim often keeps the others waiting for hours and hours and blows his chance to get his masterpiece "Celebration of The Lizard" on the record.
It was supposed to cover one entire side of the LP but is too disjointed musically and with Jim's attitude in the studio it never comes to fruition.
The Doors do make a version Jim likes but the others disagree with him.
Upset, he leaves for a few hours returns extremely drunk, lowers the lights and goes into the recording booth completely plastered and sings the take of "Five To One". (If you listen closely to the part at the end of the song where he says: "Hey come on honey...(swig)... go along home and wait for me baby and I'll be there in just a little while..." you can hear him take a swig of his bottle of Brandy.)
Jim, feeling the pressures of having to come up with new material, often while in the studio, is drinking more and more. Jim takes off whenever he feels, often frequenting the local taverns, and invites all kinds of party goers and groupies back to the studio.
John can't take it anymore and quits again. Robby after a few days talks him into to coming back and on the road with the band.
Though the album is nowhere near finished it is time to release a single. "The Unknown Soldier"/ "We Could Be So Good Together" single is released. Many radio stations avoid playing the song due to its war anthem. To promote the single, Elektra produces a short film climaxing with Jim getting shot while bound to a pole on the beach.
From Doors Interactive History

It is possibly during this time that Densmore misses a weekend of Doors gigs and is replaced by a local drummer for several concerts. Before coming back to the fold.

Things came to a head during the recording of the third album which Jim had originally wanted to call ‘The Celebration Of The Lizard’ He had intended using one whole side of the album for that poem and as he was in full Lizard King period wanted the sleeve of the album in synthetic snakeskin carrying the title in gold lettering.
Ray in his not unusual role of middle man tried to explain that the album was not going to work. He explained that it was too ‘vague’ and too ‘slight’. Jim’s face dropped. He finally got the band to agree that the album would have short extracts of his poetry which he would recite. Jim even went as far as to record the poetry but the whole idea was eventually dropped. The way Jim described the event to a journalist at about the time of the sessions reflects a calm he was probably far from feeling.
“I was going to add a bit of poetry in the spaces between the songs. But who wants to listen to a guy who is just talking? It’s the music that counts. That’s what they want to hear. Anyone can talk. But how many guys can play music and sing?”
From Stumbling Into Neon

"with one eye on the audience and one on his books of Indian lore Morrison is beginning to sing his long in preperation COTL....The Lizard takes nearly a half hour in concert and The Doors have no intention of attempting it all....though its reputation has spread through the underground. They did it in San Diego and the audience was speechless."
Mike Jahn Jim Morrison & The Doors

Obviously the third album syndrome plays it's part as the pressure to produce material bites with The Doors for the first time and it seems that this pressure reflects on Morrison who does not take well to the studio environment of WFTS.
The failure of COTL which he had high hopes for and the success of HILY which none of the band even wanted to record must have had an effect on someone so committed to poetry as the way forward for The Doors.
The betrayal of the art by his three co conspirators seems to have been a blow to him personally as his attitude to Ray/John/Robby seems to have taken a downward slide.
Rothchild appears to have been oblivious to the obvious in his search for perfection and although the man was a genius in a studio he seems to have had little regard for Morrison's demeanour.
I am not saying he should have mollycoddled the singer during the TSP sessions but endless studio takes searching for a perfection that was never realised especially after the disappointment of COTL during the 3rd album sessions seemed to have a detrimental effect on Morrison.
True hindsight is a great tool but given what Ray says about the period and other contempory accounts it seems bizarre that this was not taken into account during the 4th album and a more relaxed attitude taken to the recording sessions to take into account the state of the lead singers mind at the time.
Much has been made of how difficult Morrison was during these sessions but surely Rothchild seemed as childish as Morrison in his behaviour.
It was obvious surely that something was not working during TSP so the most sensible thing to do would be take a step back and look for a third way compromise. Instead the two seemed to just engage in a pointless war with each other.
My point being that Morrison cannot be lumbered with all the blame for things like the TSP tension as he was not the only person present during these sessions behaving like an arce.

Rothchild seemingly engaged in a game of baiting Morrison by his insistence of many takes rather than a few and of seeking the perfect take rather than the one visited by the muse which was his attitude during the first couple of albums.
An ‘I’m in charge’ attitude rather than we are all in this together.
Hell this would have annoyed someone as laid back as me never mind Jim Morrison.
Perhaps by album #3 Rotchchild was the wrong producer for The Doors?
Controversial, true as the man was an utter genius but perhaps he had become too comfortable in the Producer chair by the end of 1968.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

It is interesting that the normal view of the events of the Soft Parade album sessions is of Morrison being difficult and disrupting recording and Rothchild the calm head keeping the whole thing together but the Elektra story Follow The Music does touch on some interesting inconsistencies to the normal Historical view.

As I said earlier perhaps it was indeed time by the start of 1969 for The Doors to change producer.
Whether guys like David Anderle or Mark Abramson would have cared to take on the task is another story and the other possibility to keep it in house and Elektra could have been Bruce or John Haeny step up from engineering duties to production.
Paul seems to have been becoming a little too full of himself from reading the Elektra story and perhaps was starting to think himself the most important person in the room by the time TSP was moved from rehearsal to recording phase.
The 'elephant in the room' theory always seems to portray Morrison as the villain and Rothchild as the helpless heroine tied to the tracks awaiting the train.
But examining Rothchild closer and we see that there were two diametrically opposed egos at least present during the sessions and it’s hardly fair to tarnish all the blame for the failure of the sessions on one of them.
Here is an interesting segment from Follow The Music.

Bruce Botnick Follow The Music p290.
“Paul would get into a protective mode with The Doors because as Morrison got more out of control Paul became The Doors in some respect.
You have to understand that we made six albums in a two and a half year period. Very prodigious. And during this time with The Doors Paul became the ringmaster of the circus. Everybody was getting high everyone was juiced it was a circus all the time. When I look back on it it’s amazing we made any records at all and the only thing I can say is that I wasn’t wrecked and Paul wasn’t wrecked. Paul could stand aside from it but he knew without him there would be no records.
Soft parade was a very, very tough album. We were going through hell. Jim was all over the place and until the court thing in Miami was settled there was a real pall, a real lack of focus.
Paul was doing his best to keep the whole thing from drowning. We didn’t have all the material we wanted and Paul, trying to make a better album, decided it was time to add horns and strings. I disagreed with the tack he was taking. I didn’t feel it was true to The Doors. I had pretty heavy arguments with him.
And I remember on one of Jac’s visits to LA he and Paul got into a huge battle about concept.”

Jac Holzman Follow The Music p290.
“ I wanted to stick with the clean Doors sound as much as possible.”

Bruce Botnick Follow The Music p290.
“Paul’s position was ‘this is all I have, and so I have to do something to make these songs work and this is what I am going to do. You don’t like it? That’s tough. You want a record? You’ve got to let me finish it my way. If not no record’
I’ve never seen Jac lose his cool before but they got into a screaming argument. Nobody won."

Jac Holzman Follow The Music p290.
“ Soft Parade is released in July 1969 goes gold and the single Touch Me with it’s horns blaring shoots to the top of the charts”

Not long afterwards in 1969 Jac Holzman ‘fired’ Rothchild as an Elektra producer as it seems that he was becoming rather too big for his boots to contain and Jac took the decision to let him go.
Chapter 20 of FTM gives a great insight into the Holzman/Rothchild relationship.
He was of course retained as producer of The Doors but now as an independent producer rather than a staff one and Holzman noted that he and Paul remained friends after the incident.
But it is still an interesting piece of Doors/Elektra History and one, which casts a doubt upon the usual story of this time period.
Morrison was not the only person in the studio for the TSP sessions behaving like a complete arce.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The month of June/July in 1969 is an interesting period.
The album sessions had been completed and The Doors had returned to the stage.
The album The Soft Parade is finally released in July and the audience is split between those that prefer the old style Doors and those that like the new brass oriented sound. Critics too are split.

Concerts are back on the agenda now and the bands first foray into the concert arena is on June 14th in Ray's home town Chicago in which they play what is described as an exceptional show which included a rare outing for The Soft Parade title track.

Around this time Feast Of Friends the short concert film the band produced is doing the rounds of film festivals and promotion events and receives a bit of interest. Critique the PBS session The Doors did in New York is broadcast and Morrison sits in with a band whilst spending a break in New Orleans after attending the Atlanta Film Festival with his friend Frank Lisciandro.
June ends with a triumphant stint at the Forum in Mexico City which was moved from the larger stadium venue amid fears The Doors would cause a revolution and a change of government.

Cancellations still plague the band and shows are lost such as Honolulu HIC Arena, which state rather pompously that a Doors show would not be in the best interest of the people of Hawaii.
On July 21st Elektra include The Doors as part of their Monday showcases at The Aquarius Theatre and these concerts are considered the bands comeback concerts and are well received as well as recorded for what was to be a live album.
An additional evening is added the next night as an encore performance and once again recorded.
Producer Paul Rothchild was not satisfied with the performances and attempted to manipulate the recordings by recording an audience free session on the 22nd to augment the recording.
This became known as Backstage and Dangerous and was not a success for Rothchild so he continued to record concerts and eventually cobbled together what would become Absolutely Live.
Which considering the editing involved became the definitive Doors live experience and arguably still is today.
Listening to Backstage and Dangerous the tensions between Morrison and Rothchild seem apparent as Morrison does his best to not comply with his producer’s idea of short changing the paying public with a fraudulent live album.

The weekend following the Aquarius shows the band do spots at a couple of open air events with differencing results.
In Eugene Oregon on the 26th they help out the organisers by extending their set to offset the non arrival of The Byrds and play a good set to an appreciative audience but the next night in Seattle at the Seattle Pop Festival Morrison is at odds with his audience and swaps contempt with them throughout the show.
Robert Plant who was appearing with an up-and-coming band called Led Zeppelin noted that Morrison seemed 'screwed up and was just above everyone's head'.

So a mixed bag summer with some highs and some lows but the set list had begun to change to a bluesier core of Mystery train Crossroads and songs like Maggie McGill and Little Red Rooster.
It seemed as if Morrison had given up to an extent on his poetic Doors vision and the mix of blues and alcohol had replaced the acid rock of the 66/67/68 era.
His frustration with the Light My Fire crowd would boil over several times in the next 12 months or so and tensions would continue between Rothchild and The Doors singer.

If Buick did happen when the band got back to LA as most of the accounts seem to point to......
Then Jim was certainly not off with Jimbo and easily contacted whether in Bayswater or Chelsea.
As I said we have no independent corroboration of what was done by The Doors to contact Jim.
According to Jac Holzman this was a Doors affair and he took little part in events.
So Elektra would not seem to have been searching for Jim but surely would have been able to pass on a message.
All we get is Jimbo, drink and blame shunted off on Morrison.
But what exactly did these three do to find him and where exactly did they think he was.
Blaming the guy years after his death without anything to back up thier flowery story does not make what they
say true.
Like Jim's date of departure to Paris in 1971 this period of time is also shrouded in mystery.
And considering the importance of what transpired and the impact it had for the next 2 years or more it seems a tad strange.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Going back to the Buick saga when we look at the established story of Buick and the search for Jim do we have any period accounts that have not been embellished to sell books and gain attention?

All we seem to have is this tight schedule from Buick, which has never been corroborated by anyone from the company, as far as I can see, and some over flowered rhetoric from the likes of Manzarek, which would grace any TV soap.

All of this seemingly after the event and after Morrison died.
Holzman hinted that the other three Doors dumped the blame on him when Morrison got back from England and went ballistic with them which suggests that their accounts after he was dead would be adjusted to exonerate them from any blame and pile everything upon the one who could not contradict their story.
If Morrison was staying at the Belgravia Hotel then it is likely that Elektra London was aware of this and if not has anyone confirmed this from Clive Selwood’s end.

Therefore what steps did Manzarek/Krieger/Densmore actually take to find Jim as looking in Barneys or The Phone Booth when they knew he was in England would hardly constitute a search.
From the Historical data it seems obvious that he stayed in the Belgravia Hotel for several weeks and it seems inconceivable that the record company did not know where he was. It’s not as if he and Pam were camping in Cornwall.

He was in a well-known Hotel in the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world, which also had a branch of his employers.
The telephone was invented at that time so it would not seem inconceivable that The Doors would be able to get a message to Jim’s hotel.

So the story of The Three Amigos wilts a bit when you examine what is known.
Exactly what did these three actually do to find him in London?
And is there anyone not biased who corroborates this supposed search?

All these things add to the paucity of the bands story and it reeks of an ass covering exercise, which relies on the fact nobody can be bothered to contradict them.
Which seems to have been the norm for over 30 years now since Jim became such a licence to print money.

“When Jim got into public life and realised his imagination was being tapped into for all the wrong reasons, a disenchantment became very marked in him”
Michael Ford: poet and friend of The Doors who was asked to play bass with the band in their early days but turned them down to explore poetry. FTM p284

Disenchantment, disappointment, disillusionment, dissatisfaction, distrust, despair, despondency, dejection, desolation, doubt, disbelief, depression, all the Ds could have led to a world weariness and cynicism about being a Door that was brought to a head during the Soft Parade sessions.
Things seemed so bright before Buick reared it’s ugly head.
OK WFTS was a setback but if Rothchild had taken a different stance with TSP and had not been so obsessed with making the perfect album perhaps The Doors would have produced something exceptional instead of a the fractured splintered directionless album that they ended up with.
It’s a good album and my sixth favourite Doors album and contains some outstanding music and lyric from both Jim and Robby.

But it seems as if the band is looking for a path and seemingly unsure which way to go.
It’s even odder that by 1970 they had found that path and it was not the more obvious of those on display during TSP. The blues the way forward and a change in producer.
There is little doubt that The Doors changed with the trauma of Buick and the effect that had on the band is tangible even 40 years on.

The concerts changed, Jim’s attitude to his former friends and band mates changed and his attitude to his audience changed.
He became more belligerent and confrontational and many would argue that drink was the cause. But drink was there from the beginning of The Doors and had caused disruption but nothing like Miami and TSP.

What caused the change in the way drink affected the singer?
That’s where it becomes interesting if we look beyond the tales of the last 30 years and examine the evidence that lies in the cracks between.
The Doors have a good reason to present drink as being the primary cause of the downfall of The Doors.
It’s called money.

The Buick episode and it’s effect on The Doors as a four sided diamond barely touched on except for a few histrionic pages in a band members bio and brief anecdotes to magazines and such.
Nobody seems to examine the background too closely or ask the right questions about Buick.
There is much evidence to suggest that Buick has a cataclysmic consequence for The Doors and the second part of The Doors short History is littered with those consequences. Miami, Seattle, TSP, LAW, New Orleans and much in between.
By 1970 The Doors were indeed Unhinged and during their last days of 1971 just before the death of their singer they seemed fractured beyond repair.
To the degree that they did not trust Morrison….the contract amendment….and Morrison had seemingly had enough of them….his meeting that resulted in him leaving the group.
The seeds for all of this have to be traced back to the latter part of 1968 and the bands courting of Buick.
Drink a demon perhaps but not quite as destructive as distrust!

With regard Buick....
“I approved the request post haste. So did Robby and John. Jim was nowhere to be found. He was on one of his now more frequent disappearing trips. Probably off cavorting with Jimbo.
Or perhaps locked in battle with Jimbo.”
Ray Manzarek LMF p 305.
Just before the famous soap episode which has been used as the definitive version of events.

(Jim stays behind after the Euro tour).
"We all went back to London. Robby and John and Siddons and Treanor split for the States. Jim and Pam took a flat in Belgravia for a month. Pam had secured it from an agency. (another premonition of Paris) and stayed there, separate from The Doors tour. Dorothy and I visited them. It was squire Morrison and m’lady Courson."
Ray Manzarek LMF p 298.

Ray says he left London two days after their visit to Jim and Pam but does not make clear when the visit was......

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Going back to just before Buick and the start of the WFTS sessions in February 1968 we see that COTL was embraced from day one and the first two versions are thought good but problems exist within the segments of the piece to give it a less than cohesive feel.

Now we have no idea exactly what Morrison envisaged for the piece other than he wanted a snakeskin LP jacket and the album was due to be called COTL.
Possibly a concept type album but with what additional material we do not know.

The LA Times reported that a 23 and 36-minute version of COTL existed so this would have meant that the COTL album would have been pretty much taken up with one piece.

In March the LA Times said that one of the other songs under consideration was The Doors studio cover of Gloria, which was a stage staple since 1966. Unknown Soldier was from late 1967 and had already been recorded and released as a single B/W We Could Be So Good Together but there is no evidence that the B Side was considered anything else but a B Side at that time. The Times also mentioned that COTL might end up on both sides of their 4th not 3rd LP which seemed to signal that all was not right COTL wise.

Both Unknown Soldier and COTL were showcased during the early part of 1968 but by late March COTL seems doomed and the frantic search for material to fill in begins.

This must have been a seismic blow to the would be poet Morrison and it can only be seen that a sop was made to him with regards COTL might be used for a 4th album at a later date.
Which might well have had an adverse effect on him when the sessions began for TSP and it was apparent that was not to be the case and COTL as a studio cut was dead and buried.
We know that Morrison made an attempt to add a poetic theatrical heart to TSP with the title track and also from the 40 year repackage that poetry was introduced for TSP but not used in the final product.
Instead the TSP album is remembered for a brass/string experiment and Touch Me a song Morrison did not even want to sing in it's first incarnation of Hit Me.

If COTL the album had succeed then it is possible that Morrison would have been more prolific in his song writing and TSP may well have been a different 4th album to that which it was. Krieger may well have not been required to fill the gap left by Morrisons writing drought and we would never have had songs like Tell All The People and Wishful Sinful.
Obviously by the time of TSP The Doors were fractured by Buick but, and it's a big but, if COTL with it's snakeskin LP jacket and it's poetical epic title track had seen the light of day we can only imagine what the Euro tour would have been like and what consequences such a tour and LP would have had on The Doors.
Perhaps Buick may never have occurred at all as Jim may have been around and expressed his opinion and Buick would have been a non event.

Morrison’s demeanour at the time has to be taken into account as fractures may well have been developing before Buick as a consequence of COTL.
As has been raised earlier in this thread could COTL have been achieved had the other Doors and Elektra had more enthusiasm for the ambitious project or did they feel that it was detrimental to carrying on the success of LMF and needed to make way for more commercial material.

Jac was known for being open to different musical expressions but Elektra became a big player because of The Doors success and perhaps they wanted more of it.
HILY and Touch Me contributing a lot more than COTL ever did.
The fact that Morrison was not considered for a Doors A Side for nearly two years a pointer to perhaps this very notion.

It's interesting that the consequences of the failure of COTL paved the way for the horn laden TSP and the seeming disillusionment of The Doors lead singer which allowed Krieger his moment in the sun.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Now this little interesting snippet comes from the book Inside The Fire by Doug cameron who was an assistant to Vince Treanor for a short period and worked for The Doors in 1969 during The Soft parade period which included the Mexico City gigs.

THE COURSONS
Thanks to Dorothy Manzarek’s mother I was able to speak with the parents of the late Pamela Courson, Corky and Penny, on two occasions, both in 1981. I told them I was considering writing a book about my Doors experience and asked if they would mind answering a few questions.
At first they seemed suspicious. Penny wanted to know if I was working on behalf of Ray Manzarek. His album The Golden Scarab had just been released and in the course of discussing the cover Penny remarked “that Goddamn Pollack had to paint his face gold to sell any records. I was genuinely surprised. There was some major enmity there. ‘No, no, no’ I said. We are acquainted but not close friends.

I listened carefully as they told me at first they were quite leery of Jim.
“Jim was no paragon of virtue,” Penny said.
As we got to know him better Pamela brought some of his poetry around” said Corky.
“We had already started to take him seriously as an artist. He was always so quiet.”
“He told Pam they were afraid their little goldfish was going to swim away” Penny said referring to The Doors.


During his conversation with penny and Corky Courson Doug had this amazing exchange with them.

“I know a lot about the Doors” I said “ I consider myself something of a Doorsologist”
“Well you don’t know it all buddy” said Penny “did you ever hear about the car ride in New York? No? Jim tried to strangle Ray! John and Robby had to restrain Jim or he would have killed Ray”
“Holy shit” I said.
“It’s the truth,” said Corky.
“damn sure was a power struggle between them”

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

First observations are that The Golden Scarab had been out since 1974 so had not just been released.
Secondly that the Jim Morrison portrayed by The Doors themselves was never in any way the truth about the guy simply the impressions of his workmates who did not really know the guy that well and only thought of him as a work pal first and meal ticket second.
This has been bourne out by the last 30 odd years as information filters out at a snal pace.

Now lets get to the Courson revalation.
Jim tried to choke Manzarek to death.
Easy to understand I guess as the bloke is a total sleazebag but it's not as if it was a slight altercation over the set list. This seems really serious.
No time frame given but if we take the information contained in the thread we can place the events as perhaps the Madison Square garden concert in January 1969.
Considering Buick was still fresh in the mind and the WFTS sessions had not yielded what Morrison had expected and Ray had coerced Jim into not taking the break he wanted to take we can surmise that this could well be a candidate for the event.

Are the Coursons reliable. depends on your point of view but considering that Doug had asked permission to quote them and they had agreed then they must have expected this to make the cut.

Manzarek was and still is a very manipulative figure. He uses people and leaves them wasted.

The list is long. Danny Sugerman got a taste of Manzo as he lay dying. Left bereft as he was stripped of his duties by Ray Manzarek who did not even have the decency to attend the guys funeral. Before his death danny tried to contact Ray but Manzarek had no use for Danny anymore and ignored a dying man's pleas.

That's the real Ray Manzarek not the jolly jovial buffoon of the interview.

The dark side of The Doors did not all swell from a drunken Jim Morrison.

We can only guess what sparked off Jim's anger but whatever it was it was no trivial matter.
The events of the following years can be added to the list. The distrust The Doors (and for The Doors read manzarek as the other two were always too gutless to ever speak up) had for Jim which caused the infamous march 1971 contract amendment preventing Jim using the Doors name without ray's permission.
The seeming non visit to Pere Lachaise on May 1st 1972 when the Doors were less than two mile from it.
The sudden realisation that these three were suddenly Jim's 'brothers' when the Doors became an icon due to Coppola's movie and Danny getting NOHGOA published.

For a short period The Doors tried to make it on their own but for the last 30 odd years these three have lived off Morrison's bones.

Something really seismic caused a rift between them in 1968 and many factors may well have contributed to it but this new bit of information places Ray Manzarek at the centre as far as I am concerned. John and Robby could barely button their own coats without help so I discount them completely. the two power blocs in The Doors were Jim and Ray.
Sensational stuff. Thoughts anyone?

[casandra]

I believe that if Jim tried to strangle Manzarek is because something very bad had happened. For me, Jim didn’t seem to be a guy that was strangling the people he met, even if he was drunk. Maybe Manzarek upbraided him something, threatened him with something or made something to Jim’s back. Manzarek seems a man with two faces.

Anyway, the fact that this event hasn’t told for Manzarek, and if it is true I think something important had behind.

The struggle between two leaders seems possible and their relationship was worse than we know, too. We only know that they have wanted to tell us.

But why and when are important questions. We move into the realm of speculation.

They were many times in New York. But I think it may happen before 1970 because at that time I believe their relationship was so bad and they traveled separately and they only met the minimum required.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

I posited Madison Square Garden because it was just after the Buick scandal. The band were there as a unit for Elektra business, radio interviews and TV shows so it's hard to be certain.
As you say Jim was not the sort of person to do this unless it was really serious. Manzarek is a weasel who I would not trust with my rubbish bag.
Whatever it was it was something really serious.
Makes a mockery of Manzareks claim to be such a good friend of Jim.
This is the kind of liar he is. Remember he called Danny Sugerman 'like a brother' on the Doors website yet the little rat did not go to his funeral and cut him off just before he died.
Densmore and Krieger will know what it is about but the two of them are too cowardly to ever reveal any truth.

[gizmo]

maybe that's the reason why robbie didn't write a biography yet? as he's waiting for ray to fuck off from this planet, than he can tell the whole story without being afraid for ray's lawsuit

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Krieger is no better than Ray mate a liar who hides behind a spaced out hippy persona.
Why should he fear Ray if what he says is the truth?
I call Ray a liar all the time but have no fear of Ray as I can prove what I say with ease. Krieger is a grown man and has the same resources Ray has but lacks moral courage to really speak out.
The three of them are cut from the same cloth but with different degrees.
John at least realised what he was and tried to atone by defending Jim's legacy to a degree but even he leeches from Jim's bones as it's his only source of income.
The lies they told after Jim's death and the 40 years of deceit after that are now very slowly coming back to haunt them as the information leaks out drip by drip but they will never own up to their lies as they have too much to lose.
I will always love these guys as musicians but they are worthless as people.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Do you think your work has suffered because of this?

Yeah. If we did nothing but record, it probably would be all right. But we do other things, too, so there's not the time to let things happen as they should. Our first album, which a lot of people like, has a certain unity of mood. It has an intensity about it, because it was the first album we'd recorded. And we did it in a couple of weeks. That's all it took to get it down. It came after nearly a year of total performance, every night. We were really fresh and intense and together.
Jim Morrison to Jerry Hopkins July 1969

This is interesting as Jim hints that the togetherness of the debut no longer exists in the summer of 1969.


From the same interview.
In the first three albums, writer credit on every song goes to The Doors, as opposed to individuals. But I understand that in the next album individual writers will be credited. Why?

In the beginning, I wrote most of the songs,the words and music. On each successive album, Robby [Krieger] contributed more songs. Until finally on this album it's almost split between us. A lot of the songs in the beginning.., me or Robby would come in with a basic idea, words and melody. But then the whole arrangement and actual generation of the piece would happen night after night, day after day, either in rehearsal or in clubs. When we became a concert group, and when we were contracted to produce so many albums a year, so many singles every six months, that natural, spontaneous, generative process wasn't given a chance to happen as it had in the beginning. We actually had to create songs in the studio. What started to happen was that Robby or I would just come in with the song or arrangement already completed in our minds, instead of working it out slowly.
This is the third album syndrome exactly as success has stifled the creativity.
Perhaps if Morrison had been given a break to rest and recupetrate he might have been in a better fettle for The Soft Parade but a mixture of Ray's greed and Pauls insane attempt to emulate The Beatles compounded the mistrust Morrison felt after the Buick affair and had a negative effect on Morrison who basically rebelled against what he saw as the tyranny of the studio and the road.
He came in drunk to work and went on stage drunk.
He did not want to perform in 1969 which was evident on that March day in Miami.
But the blame for that always ends up with Morrison and nobody seems to want to examine the rest of The Doors and the producer and record company.
Paul's utterly heartless comment to the other Doors that they had better get as much as they could on tape as Jim might not be around long gives a glimpse of the mentality at work by 1969.
Was this reflected by the record company?
We do not know. Jac seemed to have a great respect for his artists and eventually sacked Paul from Elektra as he was becoming too powerful and thought he could do what he wanted.
He kept Paul on as an independent producer but it shows that around 1969 Paul was becoming a dictator in the studio rather than a 5th Door.
It's little wonder Jim did not take to this kind of regime especially after the work he put into the COTL project only to be dissapointed by it's failure.

What role Elektra had in COTL's failure is again unknown but the obsession with hit singles seemed to have been rife with both The Doors production team and the record company.
Morrison wanted art and they wanted sales.
He suddenly found that his three fellow travellers were lining up with the company and the producer.
The year between WFTS and TSP which was pivotted on the Miami incident was the tipping point of the downfall of The Doors.
The point of no return had been reached by the summer of 1969.
On stage The Doors would never again amaze thier audience with the acid madness of 1966 and 1967.
A fall into the blues as Morrison's vioce faded as his waist expanded and the trust he once had with his three band mates probably gone forever.

The fact they managed to get it together to record Morrison Hotel and LA Woman even more astounded given the relationship and mistrust between the three factions in the studio.
Rothchild bailed out of LAW citing that he felt he had taken the band as far as he could but he had in fact simply sealed their fate.
The fact the band chose to record the fianl album in the more comfortable surroundings of their own office a testimony to the breakdown between Morrison and the producer.
Did Jim associate Sunset Sound and Elektra studio with the tyranny of Rothchild?
We will never know but the change seemed to Morrison as good as a rest because he went on to produce with his untrustworthy band mates a perfect masterpiece of an album which had not one groove that did not exude brilliance.
For all the mistrust and fall from grace when Morrison left for Paris in march/April 1971 he left behind a triumph of a swan song.
The discord conquered for a couple of weeks to produce a canvas to display the art of The Doors different but not unlike their earliest days as they crawled off venice Beach into Sunset Sound to make thier first musical statement that shook America.

The Doors story would end that July and The Doors Myth would begin but through all the disharmony and mistrust of 1969 1970 and the early part of 1971 for a few weeks in December 1970 and January 1971 The Doors were once again together.
Sad that they would never be able to build on that and it all ended once again in mistrust.
Bloody sad.

[gizmo]

sad indeed, but the line Morrison wanted art and they wanted sales is great and says a lot over the relation they had as a band. that´s a terrible marriage

[casandra]

I totally agree with you, Alex.

Feb 14, 2011 7:54:17 GMT TheWallsScreamedPoetry said:

Paul's utterly heartless comment to the other Doors that they had better get as much as they could on tape as Jim might not be around long gives a glimpse of the mentality at work by 1969.

I think Paul Rotschild’s comment is very cruel and insensitive. It only doesn’t show the mentality at work, but they all realized that Jim was discouraged and he wasn't right. It is therefore more puzzling if Jim was their friend and they weren’t allowed him to leave the band and let him rest in 1968. “a special psycological experience” is a metaphorical way of saying that they realized what was happening and they did nothing to understand Jim’s feelings and they didn’t give some relief to what was happening. It’s sad.

“He told Ray, Robby and me that we were witnessing a special psychological experience, and we should get as much tape on Jim as fast as possible because he didn’t think he was going to be around long.”
John Densmore: My Life with Jim Morrison and the Doors

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

True and when you add up all the little bits of information that drip out over the years it paints a very different picture to the one those still alive like us to believe.
Jim just wanted a rest from it all but they were too greedy.
And as Adam points out the workload over the years as well as the clamour to get more material for more albums must have put a strain on Morrison as he was the main writer and focal point of all the press interest.
All we ever hear is Jim got drunk this and Jim did not turn up that.
But we never quite give the singer the benefit of an allowance for all the pressure he was under.
Miami may well have been an attempt to get away from it all but it backfired and the consequences meant that the money was drying up as the band suffered concert and radio bans and a moral backlash.
I don't believe Morrison wanted that to happen but when it did and the Miami DA went after his blood it simply added to the pressure he was under.
What support he got from The Doors we don't know but it does not seem like much from the bits of information available.
They seemed to have shunned him in Jamaica on the planed break after the Miami concert and although they gave evidence on his behalf in court they certainly seem to have held it against him when the gigs were drying up after the tour was cancelled.
For me that was the final rift between him and them.
This Ray and Jim fracas in New York simply another brick in a wall that was building up between them after Buick in 1968.
By the time LA Woman was released the band had nothing but distrust in them against Morrison which resulted in him leaving the band and them ensuring he could not use The Doors name.

But the annoying thing for me is it's always portrayed as Jim's fault or Jimbos fault.
For me it was their greed in 1968 that sowed the seeds for the bands demise. Not Jim's drinking.
He was drinking before he met them and still produced amazing concerts and masterpieces in the studio.
Something made him dive into the bottle and the events of 1968 must be a prime candidate as his band mates sold him out and his poetry tour de force COTL ended up as an out take.

John, Ray and Robby have the luxury of still being alive so can spin any tale they like but we fans are fools to believe these people as the evidence points to something else.

[casandra]

I think I read once that Jim’s lawyers of Miami trial had cost one million dollars and The Doors paid Jim’s lawyers, but I don’t know if it's true. This is very much money today, but it should be astronomical 40 years ago. Then I thought they had been generous. But later, when I have understood how they behaved with Jim in 1968 and after, the payment of lawyers doesn’t seem to me as a disinterested act as I believed. Perhaps 1970 tour was the way they forced to Jim in return for paying the costs of the trial and for this he couldn’t leave the band until 1971. I think that it’s very weird after the six months when he wanted to leave the band he followed in it and he didn’t leave after Miami.

What do you think about this?