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Rating: You know I can't stand multi-reviews... I make exceptions to this rule ONLY for the Doors and James Douglas Morrison.
“I want to tell you a story. It just happened a few minutes ago, right here in New Haven, Connecticut.“ Very precise in the details, he explains that he went to dinner, met a girl who wanted his autograph, and went with her to the shower to get to "know" each other. When he starts talking about the arrival of the police officer, Jim divides the story into two characters: himself and a clumsy, rude, and somewhat slow police officer. The officers surrounding the stage are visibly offended by this description, which is probably the cause of Jim's arrest a few minutes later. After recounting the events that happened backstage, Jim heightens the song's crescendo by shouting “We want the whole fucking world and we want it... NOW!” - Saturday, December 9, 1967, from the Bible “Jim Morrison & The Doors On The Road” by Greg Shaw (reviewed here on DeBaser with the noble introduction of the Maestro)
Because without context, we can't make sense of it all.
How's it going, Jim?!
Like hell, Count
What do you mean like hell, Jim?! You're on top right now!
I don't give a damn, in fact, that's what disgusts me
Tell me, Jim...
Simple, Count, power from above only wants you framed and obedient, while among the people there is total ignorance. People get fooled and enslaved... I thought I could do something, but it's all useless...
James Douglas was in such a state eight months before the album's release.
To be honest, the magic had been gone for months. It took just one year for the boy to understand what success meant. The Whisky a Go Go, the first album, the electrifying atmosphere of the Sunset Strip, the vital and spontaneous energy of those moments appeared and vanished in a flash.
John, Ray, and Robby, on the other hand, were delighted, the dream had come true. Just two years earlier, they were roaming around with a demo nobody cared about, and now they were the Doors at the height of success. For them, everything was going well, for a "normal" musician, it was just right and logical for it to be so...
So what do we do, Jim?!
I don't know, Count, I really don't know...
I'm not a musician, music was the vehicle to go beyond, to try to shake consciences... it was a brief and fleeting illusion in my mind; this world will never change, in fact, it will only get worse.
And the guys, the band... Pamela?!
I don't know, Count, I really don't know... we'll see...
The "famous" acid trips were already over because, in reality, James Douglas was never a big consumer of trips. Acid was supposed to open the mind and/or other "doors".
It wasn't a high just to get wasted. He never liked weed because it sedated the human being beyond limits, even worse the heroin, a true weapon of power to stifle and annihilate youth movements.
That's why Jim was never close to or attracted by the hippie/pacifist movements.
He shared their values but quickly realized the lack of unity, strength, and will to go beyond a song or a sit-in. The excessive offer of music even became, along with drugs, something that dampened ardor and dulled minds.
He went so far as to label the flower children movement as "a petty bourgeois phenomenon" and to shout "you are a bunch of fucking idiots" at the audience who allowed themselves to be beaten by the police.
The beloved alcohol was just what was needed because it made him think less about the disgust around him and at the same time deluded him into being able to handle everything as best as possible.
It was tough, but there were no alternatives... either that or run away far away...
Because without context, we can’t make sense of it all.
“Celebration Of The Lizard,” one of the so-called great albums never born.
After the back-to-back from the previous year, the audience impatiently awaited the band’s third album, and Elektra pushed hard to capitalize on the moment (speaking of power). The genesis was completely different. While the first two albums had all the songs already created, tried, and perfected during live performances, the new album didn’t have the necessary time. The Celebration of the Lizard that was to be the album’s apotheosis holding an entire side failed to emerge and... James Douglas, or Jim, or Jimbo - depending on the moments - was often out of sync with the rest of the band and with the producers/managers.
This resulted in laborious and disastrous trials.
For those who love the band, WFTS is still a great album because it represents the moment of transition from an emerging band to a recognized and successful one.
(The album was the group’s greatest commercial success).
Inferior to the first two in average quality but primarily for the lack of harmony between the pieces written at different times and some hastily arranged. But the songs are beautiful, in my personal taste “Five To One” and “Unknown Soldier” are among the best tracks in the entire discography. And the evocative “Love Street” completes my triplet of favorite pieces from the album.
“Five To One” kills and unsettles me every time.
“The rage expressed by the song scared even the longest-standing Doors fans”
(that is, two years earlier, note how in those years two years and two albums seemed like twenty!). And it seems that we owe this song precisely to Morrison’s anger. When Jim told John during a trial pause to sit at the drums and throw down a hard, heavy, and primitive rhythm (damn it!) as he was fed up. The alcohol (and anger) are the synthesis of the rabid and slobbery singing. What then does 5 against 1 mean?!
Because of all the answers sought after... perhaps the truth lay with the three companions plus Rotchild and Botnick “against” him?!
“Unknown Soldier” is the true anti-war manifesto. More than freak necklaces, a guitar around the campfire, or peaceful marijuana protest marches. “Are you aware of what happens in war?! That sordid massacre they show us on television every day?!”, Jim retorted to those who asked him about it. The single was not aired on the radio, too direct and “politicized.” But the video, unique at the time, and especially the theatricality of its live performance will become legendary (how much Jim loved the Living Theatre!)
“Love Street” is the love for Pamela, their house (never truly enjoyed), halfway between “Crystal Ship” and “People Are Strange.” It was located on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, just above the Sunset Strip, right there where everything was happening. “Many of us lived there - and names go from Zappa to Byrds - Everyone came in and out of this or that house and everyone shared different treats. On weekends, everyone left their doors open, and you could hear all this amazing music spreading in the air,” Jimmy Greenspoon - Three Dog Night.
Probably no one really knows the Doors and what happened in those wonderfully fascinating and delirious years with them and among them. A band as unique as the sound they produced. There is often talk of seminal bands... well, then the Doors are of a sound that is impossible to reproduce or even come close to. A sound you cannot define or categorize because you would surely be wrong. And the atmosphere inside and around the Band is another of those stories... very much the sixties.
The vile exploitation after the death, the hallucinatory petty and slimy scavenging of James Douglas Morrison’s persona represent exactly what the boy thought. Power uses you, doesn’t let you roam free, oppresses you, and, in his case, if you have the bad luck/fortune to die, they definitively destroy you when you’re dead like true cowards.
But even this, at the end of the day, is just Rock’n’Roll.
As I always say, for any noble young DeBaserians who will come and who will have the good fortune to love this unique band... be dazzled by the debut but don't forget these albums... they have much to give you.
For proper reviews, there are already a couple of very nice ones on DeBaser. This is simply a "homage" due.
Noble regards.
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