Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Feb 10, 2005 17:06:31 GMT
Mojo talks to Ray Manzarek about the 1997 re-release of Absolutely Live.
THOUGH IT EMERGED to mixed reviews in July 1970 – not least from the band, who thought the set middling – Absolutely Live is an absolutely invaluable document.
Why? Because everything that set The Doors apart from their '60s contemporaries wasn't to be found on their records. Jim Morrison was a singer and a songwriter, true – but he was also one of pop's very first performance artists. I should know: when I was 15, I sat in the audience at Miami's Dinner Key Auditorium and – with some bemusement – watched the man take out his lizard and celebrate it in as public a manner as possible.
Absolutely Live was recorded shortly after. Listen and you'll hear the man inspired by Great Poets descending to pure shtick: "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know if you realise it but tonight you're in for a special treat." Delighted whoops from audience. "No, no, no, not... that, not that ...you only get that treat on full moons." Et cetera.
But between the stage patter and the unexpected "SHUT UP!" – which leaps out of ‘When The Music's Over’ and begs for exploitation via sampling – you also get a remarkable band's typical gig. That it was pieced together from a multitude of concerts (producer Paul Rothchild once remarked, "There must be 2,000 edits on that album") barely matters; that we get run-throughs of ‘Who Do You Love’ and the Willie Dixon-penned ‘Close To You’ does. While Manzarek competently bellows the latter Jimbo's take on the former is surprising. A bluesman he ain't; fascinating, though, that the spin he puts on such lines as "down the alley the icewagon flew" isn't so far afield from Scream-Of-The-Butterfly territory.
Finally, if the man and the band had balls enough to perform ‘Celebration Of The Lizard’ in public, good manners alone dictate that we hear it. At least once.
Harvey Kubernik talks to Ray Manzarek
How did you construct Absolutely Live?
We had a small tour of about seven or eight cities and decided to record five: New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Detroit. The original reason for the recording was so that the people could hear The Doors improvise; get the sense of stepping into the psychic unknown.
Jim didn't want to use the part telling the wisecrackers to shut up. "I'm being rude to my audience. I don't want to be known as being rude to my audience." (Laughs) So we said, 'Come on, Jim!"
How did you manage to play bass and keyboards at the same time?
I played a Fender Rhodes keyboard bass as well as the organ. A Vox Continental and a Gibson Kalamazoo organ with my right hand and my left playing the bass. Given my boogie woogie and classical background, I'd developed a left hand. And I used to play a lot of basketball – a left-handed hook shot and a left-handed jump shot – so I was virtually ambidextrous. We tried adding a fifth member when we first started. But we started to sound like The Rolling Stones or The Animals, since we had the same Vox organ. Using piano bass allowed Robbie Krieger a whole area of space that he would never have had with a bass player.
Were you involved in remastering the album?
Absolutely. Paul Rothchild and Bruce Botnick were both involved. It was the last thing we did with Paul before he died. This was a re-EQing rather than a remix. This music may have been made in 1969 but the sound is absolutely 1997.
Dave DiMartino & Harvey Kubernik:
Mojo Magazine , January 1997
THOUGH IT EMERGED to mixed reviews in July 1970 – not least from the band, who thought the set middling – Absolutely Live is an absolutely invaluable document.
Why? Because everything that set The Doors apart from their '60s contemporaries wasn't to be found on their records. Jim Morrison was a singer and a songwriter, true – but he was also one of pop's very first performance artists. I should know: when I was 15, I sat in the audience at Miami's Dinner Key Auditorium and – with some bemusement – watched the man take out his lizard and celebrate it in as public a manner as possible.
Absolutely Live was recorded shortly after. Listen and you'll hear the man inspired by Great Poets descending to pure shtick: "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know if you realise it but tonight you're in for a special treat." Delighted whoops from audience. "No, no, no, not... that, not that ...you only get that treat on full moons." Et cetera.
But between the stage patter and the unexpected "SHUT UP!" – which leaps out of ‘When The Music's Over’ and begs for exploitation via sampling – you also get a remarkable band's typical gig. That it was pieced together from a multitude of concerts (producer Paul Rothchild once remarked, "There must be 2,000 edits on that album") barely matters; that we get run-throughs of ‘Who Do You Love’ and the Willie Dixon-penned ‘Close To You’ does. While Manzarek competently bellows the latter Jimbo's take on the former is surprising. A bluesman he ain't; fascinating, though, that the spin he puts on such lines as "down the alley the icewagon flew" isn't so far afield from Scream-Of-The-Butterfly territory.
Finally, if the man and the band had balls enough to perform ‘Celebration Of The Lizard’ in public, good manners alone dictate that we hear it. At least once.
Harvey Kubernik talks to Ray Manzarek
How did you construct Absolutely Live?
We had a small tour of about seven or eight cities and decided to record five: New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Detroit. The original reason for the recording was so that the people could hear The Doors improvise; get the sense of stepping into the psychic unknown.
Jim didn't want to use the part telling the wisecrackers to shut up. "I'm being rude to my audience. I don't want to be known as being rude to my audience." (Laughs) So we said, 'Come on, Jim!"
How did you manage to play bass and keyboards at the same time?
I played a Fender Rhodes keyboard bass as well as the organ. A Vox Continental and a Gibson Kalamazoo organ with my right hand and my left playing the bass. Given my boogie woogie and classical background, I'd developed a left hand. And I used to play a lot of basketball – a left-handed hook shot and a left-handed jump shot – so I was virtually ambidextrous. We tried adding a fifth member when we first started. But we started to sound like The Rolling Stones or The Animals, since we had the same Vox organ. Using piano bass allowed Robbie Krieger a whole area of space that he would never have had with a bass player.
Were you involved in remastering the album?
Absolutely. Paul Rothchild and Bruce Botnick were both involved. It was the last thing we did with Paul before he died. This was a re-EQing rather than a remix. This music may have been made in 1969 but the sound is absolutely 1997.
Dave DiMartino & Harvey Kubernik:
Mojo Magazine , January 1997