Toronto Rock and Roll Revival, Varsity Stadium, Toronto, Canada, 9-13-1969, Part 8: The Doors

This is the eighth and final album from the 1969 Toronto Rock and Roll Revival. This one stars the Doors.

I've already discussed some thing about the Doors and their role in this festival in my write-ups for previous albums. For instance, I've mentioned how the festival's main promoter John Brower got desperate when he saw that the 1950s stars he'd booked for the festival weren't selling many tickets. In desperation, he decided to spend $25,000 to hire the Doors to be the headlining act. In order to do this, he resorted to borrowing the $25,000 from a man named Edjo, who was the leader of a biker gang. If the festival was a failure, he would be in fear of injury or even death.

Unfortunately, Brower made a big mistake in hiring the Doors, in terms of filling seats for the festival. In March 1969, the Doors' lead singer Jim Morrison was arrested in Miami, Florida for public indecency. Supposedly, he exposed his privates on stage. The other band members denied that, and it seems he only teased doing that. But there was a big backlash just the same. Many of their concerts were cancelled, and some of those that took place were poorly attended. 

Luckily for Brower, the last minute surprise of John Lennon performing at the festival saved his hide. He had at least $110,000 in expenses, mainly paying the other acts (with the Doors costing the most), but he made about $150,000 in ticket sales. So he was able to pay Edjo back. In fact, Edjo and his biker gang, the Vagabonds, were delighted by what happened. About 100 bikers rode their motorcycles with the Doors from the airport to the stadium where the festival took place. Then, when Lennon arrived a few hours later, they did a motorcade for him as well. 

As I mentioned in my write-up for Lennon's set, the emcee Kim Fowley had the brilliant idea of having everyone in the audience of 20,000 to hold up candles or lighters at the start of the set. This was apparently the first time this happened at a rock concert.

Brower later explained, "The only problem was that the bikers figured, 'Well that shit is okay for John Lennon, but we need to welcome the Doors with something real.' The next thing we knew, they had broken open a broom closet, took out all the sweeping brooms, took the fuel out of their Zippo lighters, torched them, and came out in front of the stage. You have to realize, Jim Morrison had a very powerful male personality and presence, so the bikers related to the Doors. They certainly weren't Beatles fans. It was absolutely nuts." 

As I also mentioned in a previous write-up, the Doors got to the festival several hours before they were due to perform, so they spent most of that time watching the other musical acts from the side of the stage. Many of these acts were the 1950s rock stars that the members of the Doors idolized when they were kids, and they were very impressed by what they saw and heard.  

As a result of all that, Morrison made a unique speech for him during the early part of "The End." He very rarely bantered between songs, but he wanted to say something about the festival. Here are his comments: "I can remember when rock and roll first came on the scene, and for me, it was a very liberating experience because it burst open whole new strange catacombs of wisdom that I couldn't remember and I didn't know about, and I couldn't see any equivalent for in my surroundings. And that's why, for me, this evening has been really a great honor to perform on the same stage with so many illustrious musical geniuses." 

D.A. Pennebaker was making a documentary about the festival, which was later released as the movie "Sweet Toronto." But Morrison refused to allow Pennebaker's film crew to record the Doors' set. In all likelihood, he was very cautious about recordings in the wake of the Miami incident earlier in the year. Already, he was looking to spend six months in prison. (He died in 1971 before the legal dispute could be resolved.) If some disaster happened on stage and it got recorded, he could have been in even more trouble. 

Unfortunately, it seems most of the excellent audio recordings of the concert were due to the recording work of Pennebaker's film crew. Since they didn't film the Doors, there's no soundboard-level audio recording of it either. Instead, all we have is an audience bootleg. But luckily, it's a pretty decent one, as audience bootlegs go. Furthermore, I used some of my usual tricks to improve the sound. I used the MVSEP program to get rid of all the crowd noise during the songs, while keeping the cheering at the ends of songs. I also used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost the vocals relative to the instruments, since that needed help. I think it sounds a lot better now.

The music here is unreleased. As I said above, the sound is pretty good, but not great. 

As far as the quality of the band's performance, here's what band member John Densmore later had to say about that. "I mean, you know, John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band walked out on stage and it was the biggest roar of the century and we're supposed to follow this group? Kim Fowley introduced us and we played the best we could. In my opinion, we were fine. We weren't great. We weren't lousy. We were fine. But everyone was so in awe of the Mop Top [Lennon]. It was great."

The band mostly played their concert staples. However there was one surprise in the fact that while they were in the middle of playing "Back Door Man," Morrison sang some of the lyrics to the song "Roadhouse Blues." He even sang a little bit of another song, "Maggie M'Gill." Both those songs would be released on the band's next album, "Morrison Hotel," released in 1970. In a couple other 1969 concerts they played little snippets of those songs, but they wouldn't be played in full until early 1970. 

As far as the festival as a whole, promoter John Brewer's original idea was to highlight 1950s rock stars like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and so on, who had largely been forgotten. He believes the festival was a success in that respect, saying, "Word went out about how great their performances were, which helped them enormously." Indeed, this was the start of a wave of nostalgia for 1950s rock and roll that would peak in the 1970s with retro bands like Sha Na Na and retro movies like "American Graffiti."

This album is 56 minutes long.

01 When the Music's Over (Doors)
02 Break On Through [To the Other Side] (Doors)
03 Back Door Man - Roadhouse Blues - Back Door Man (Doors)
04 The Crystal Ship (Doors)
05 Wake Up (Doors)
06 Light My Fire (Doors)
07 The End (Doors) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/imKzThdW

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/JX22YmRUOxzI4m2/file

As mentioned above, this performance by the Doors wasn't filmed. But surprisingly, it seems there are next to no photos from it either. I only found one, and that was blurry and generally bad. However, there is some photo and video of the band members back stage. I found a photo of Morrison watching the festival stage from the side and decided to use that as the closest decent thing I could find. Unfortunately, the photo was taken while the sun was still out and the band played when it was dark. So I used Photoshop to darken the image, and especially darken the sky in the background. So at least this gives you a good idea of what Morrison was looking like (he'd recently shaved his beard off) and a bit of what he was wearing.

The Doors and Friends - VH-1 Storytellers, Hollywood Center Studios, Los Angeles, CA, 11-22-2000

This is possibly the strangest episode of the "VH-1 Storytellers" TV series, because it highlights the music of the band the Doors, despite the fact that that band's career effectively ended when its charismatic lead singer Jim Morrison died way back in 1971. 

The band's three surviving members Ray Manzarek, Robbie Krieger, and John Densmore continued for a year or two, but it wasn't the same without Morrison and they broke up. Every now and then, they reunited for some tribute or another. For instance, in 1993, the Doors were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the three of them played a few songs with Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam serving as the lead singer. But these occasions were rare.

Then, in 2000, the tribute album "Stoned Immaculate: The Music of the Doors" was released. But this was different than almost all tribute albums, because members of the Doors played on the songs, with a variety of lead singers. There even were some songs incorporating unreleased recordings of Jim Morrison's voice before he died. Unfortunately, it wasn't well received by critics, and didn't sell well. 

There was no tour to support it... except for this one Storytellers episode. Again, the three surviving members of the Doors reunited to perform on all the songs, as well as do most of the talking and reminiscing between songs. Many (though not all) of the lead singers from the "Stoned Immaculate" album participated: Scott Weiland of the band Stone Temple Pilots, Ian Astbury of the band the Cult, Travis Meeks of the band Days of the New, Scott Stamp of the band Creed, and Perry Ferrell of the band Jane's Addiction.

I believe this was the last time the three surviving members of the Doors performed together in concert. Ray Manzarek died in 2013, so there could be no further reunions.

We have a lot more than the typical 45 minute long episode in this case because a DVD performance was released. However, even that wasn't the full show. And weirdly, a couple of songs were only included as "bonus tracks," so they were tacked on at the end instead of fitting into the concert with all the others. I moved one of those to fit with other songs sung by the same lead singer. But moving the other one wasn't so easy, so I left it at the end.

Unfortunately, for some bizarre reason, the DVD kept to the TV show's weird habit of including only part of the first song. This was frustrating because it appears that this concert was the one and only time the lead singer Perry Farrell sang this song, "L.A. Woman," with the surviving Doors members. He did do the some in concert some with his band Jane's Addiction, but that had been about a decade earlier, and the versions were fairly different. On the "Stoned Immaculate" album he sang one song, but it was a different song "Children of the Night" (which by the way wasn't an original Doors song, though it used some of Jim Morrison's poetry and his voice). So I had to leave this song incomplete. It's especially frustrating because it's only about a minute out of what is at least an eight minute long song.

All in all, this episode is a bit strange, but I think it works. The lead singers all sang well, and the banter between songs by the surviving members of the Doors was interesting. It seems this actually was much more successful than the "Stoned Immaculate" album, which had a lot of misguided efforts to use Morrison's voice and/or modern music styles that didn't fit the Doors.

This album is an hour and 15 minutes long.

01 L.A. Woman [Incomplete] (Doors & Friends with Perry Farrell)
02 talk (Doors & Friends)
03 Love Me Two Times (Doors & Friends with Pat Monahan)
04 talk (Doors & Friends)
05 Alabama Song [Whisky Bar] - Backdoor Man (Doors & Friends with Ian Astbury)
06 talk (Doors & Friends)
07 The End (Doors & Friends with Travis Meeks)
08 talk (Doors & Friends)
09 Break on Through [To the Other Side] (Doors & Friends with Scott Weiland)
10 talk (Doors & Friends)
11 Five to One (Doors & Friends with Scott Weiland)
12 talk (Doors & Friends)
13 Light My Fire (Doors & Friends with Scott Stapp)
14 talk (Doors & Friends)
15 Roadhouse Blues (Doors & Friends with Scott Stapp)
16 talk (Doors & Friends)
17 Riders on the Storm (Doors & Friends with Scott Stapp)
18 talk (Doors & Friends)
19 Wild Child (Doors & Friends with Ian Astbury)
20 talk (Doors & Friends)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17167417/TDORSNFRENDS2000StrytllrsHllywodCntrStdosLsAnglesCA__11-22-2000_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/GzXzNRN5

The cover photo is of Scott Stapp, taken from this exact concert.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-29-1970: Part 6: The Doors

The next musical act on August 30, 1970 of the Isle of Wight Festival were the Doors.

It's fairly remarkable the Doors were able to play this festival. At the time, lead singer Jim Morrison was in the middle of a trial in the US, for allegedly exposing himself on stage in Miami. But apparently, they had booked this concert appearance before those troubles began, so they were granted permission to leave the US briefly to perform at the festival.

Murray Lerner, who directed "Message to Love," a music documentary about the festival, later recalled: “Jim Morrison said to me: 'I don’t think you’re going to get an image, because our lights are low. We’re not going to change it.' But in fact I got some beautiful images by looking into the light and making it look surrealistic and abstract. ... The Doors were hypnotic, but they had to leave right after their performance – they were on trial in Miami. They were let out just for that performance. So they had to leave right away."

The band's most recent album was "Morrison Hotel," released in February 1970. But they only played two songs from it, "Ship of Fools" and "Roadhouse Blues." Instead, they generally leaned on classic songs dating back to 1967. It was pretty late at night by the time the band took the stage, and Morrison later complained about how cold and windy it was. So perhaps they relied on the songs they knew best to get their through a tough situation.

The sound quality is excellent, because the whole performance has been officially released on album and DVD as "Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970." However, I felt the lead vocals were rather low, so I boosted them in the mix using the UVR5 audio editing program.

This album is an hour and seven minutes long.

087 talk (Doors)
088 Back Door Man (Doors)
089 Break On Through [To the Other Side] (Doors)
090 When the Music's Over (Doors)
091 Ship of Fools (Doors)
092 Roadhouse Blues (Doors)
093 Light My Fire (Doors)
094 The End (Doors)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15911899/IsleofWghtFestivlAftnDwnIsleofWghtBrtain__8-29-1970_Pt6_TDors.zip.html

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. Most of the pictures I found were very dark and just featured Morrison, but this one had more light and showed the whole band.

The Doors - The Matrix, San Francisco, CA, 3-10-1967

There are two Doors concerts from the same venue, the Matrix, only three days apart. These concerts have excellent sound quality and performances. They're a unique view into the Doors playing a half-empty small club right before they hit it big a couple of months later. I just posted the first one, from March 7th, 1967, so I might as well post this one too. It's definitely worth getting both if you're a Doors fan, even though the set lists are similar.

I said most of what I want to say about this in my write up for the March 7th show. But I'll mention that much, though not all, of this was officially released on the 2008 official album "Live at the Matrix 1967." Unfortunately, that mixed both shows together with no apparent logic, and left out many songs. That album also used the same bootleg source I'm using here instead of the master tapes, which still exist. The master tape versions of some song from the March 7th show have been released, but none from the March 10th show have made it to the public yet. 

When I looked into this, I found a few comments that the March 10th show has a slightly better sound than the March 7th one. But it so, it's very, very close. Both are soundboards recorded with multiple microphones. These blow away all other of the very few recordings of the band from around that time period. 

Note that the March 9th Matrix concert was also recorded by the same person, who was the owner of the venue. But that was recorded over with the March 10th recording, unfortunately. The only thing that survived from March 9th were the last few minutes of "The End." I haven't included that, since it's incomplete.

This concert took place two months after the release of the band's debut album, "The Doors," but before the sales of that album took off. But it's notable how varied their song list already was. They played most of the songs from their debut album, but also most of the songs from their second album "Strange Days," which hadn't even been recorded yet. They also played more cover songs than they would later. Some of those here - "Money (That's What I Want)," "I'm a King Bee," "Gloria," "and "Summertime" - were not played in the March 7th show. That show appears to be complete, while this one is not, so some key songs are missing here, like "Light My Fire" and "The End." Both both are definitely worth hearing.

As I did with the March 7th show, I cut out a lot of dead air between songs. It seems the band did virtually no talking to the audience whatsoever, so you're not missing anything other than some guitar tuning and instrumental noodling. I also boosted the volume of the tepid applause from the small audience.

This album is an hour and 18 minutes long.

01 My Eyes Have Seen You (Doors)
02 Soul Kitchen (Doors)
03 I Can't See Your Face in My Mind (Doors)
04 People Are Strange (Doors)
05 When the Music's Over (Doors)
06 Money [That's What I Want] (Doors)
07 Who Do You Love (Doors)
08 Moonlight Drive (Doors)
09 Summer's Almost Gone (Doors)
10 I'm a King Bee (Doors)
11 Gloria (Doors)
12 Break On Through [To the Other Side] (Doors)
13 Summertime [Instrumental] (Doors)
14 Back Door Man (Doors)
15 Alabama Song [Whisky Bar] (Doors)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15127452/TDoor_1967c_TheMatrxSnFranciscoCA__3-10-1967_atse.zip.html

I don't know when or where the cover photo of Doors lead singer Jim Morrison is from. But it looks like it was in a small venue during the band's early era. So I think it fits this pretty well.

The Doors - The Matrix, San Francisco, CA, 3-7-1967

I haven't posted much music by the Doors largely because so much has been officially released, including dozens of live albums. But I'm posting this one both because it's an extraordinary concert and because the official release has been badly botched.

Here's a little history to put this in context. The Doors were formed in 1965. In 1966, they slowly grew in popularity in Los Angeles, but they remained unknown elsewhere. Their debut album, "The Doors," was released in January 1967, but to little notice at the time."Light My Fire" was released as a single in April 1967 and started to climb the charts, hitting Number One in the US a few months later. But this concert took place in San Francisco, before their big success. So even though the Matrix was a small club, it was half empty, and the audience generally didn't know their music.

There's very little in the way of live recordings of the band from this early in their career. But luckily, two nights out of several at the Matrix were recorded (by the club owner) as soundboards and survived. In my opinion, these are the most interesting live recordings by the band, back when they were hungry and full of fire. But also, the sound quality is probably the best of all their live recordings. Because the audience was so small and quiet, these are almost like studio recordings.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, the official release of this material has been botched so far. In 2008, there was the release "Live at the Matrix 1967." But instead of including the recordings of all of both nights that survived, this one and March 10th, only selected songs were included. Furthermore, instead of using the master tapes, which the owner still had, a copy of a bootleg was used. Then, in 2017, a 50th anniversary version of the debut album "The Doors" was released. This included a bonus disc that used the superior master tape versions. But only the versions of nine songs from the debut album were included, all from this show on March 7th.

So I've put together what I consider the best version of the March 7th show currently available to the public. I've used the 50th anniversary master tape versions wherever possible. I've used the widely available bootleg versions for the rest, which actually are a bit better than the "Live at the Matrix 1967" versions. To be honest, the bootleg version sounds so good that the master tape versions are only slightly better.

I also made some changes. It's apparent that, at this point in their career, lead singer Jim Morrison didn't want to say anything between songs. There was a lot of dead air, mostly filled with organ noodling and guitar tuning, but virtually no words whatsoever. (Morrison does say one sentence at one point, announcing the band is taking a short break.) So I cut that dead air way down. The other thing was I boosted what little audience applause there was. I didn't change that much, but I increased the volume enough to make the cheering more noticeable.

This is a must-have for any serious Doors fan. I think it's likely that, someday, the whole thing will be released properly, from the master tapes. But until then, this will have to do.

This album is an hour and 46 minutes long.

01 Back Door Man (Doors)
02 My Eyes Have Seen You (Doors)
03 Soul Kitchen (Doors)
04 Get Out of My Life, Woman (Doors)
05 When the Music's Over (Doors)
06 Close to You (Doors)
07 Crawling King Snake (Doors)
08 I Can't See Your Face in My Mind (Doors)
09 People Are Strange (Doors)
10 Who Do You Love (Doors)
11 Alabama Song [Whisky Bar] (Doors)
12 The Crystal Ship (Doors)
13 Twentieth Century Fox (Doors)
14 Moonlight Drive (Doors)
15 Summer's Almost Gone (Doors)
16 Unhappy Girl (Doors)
17 The Devil Is a Woman - Sittin' Around Thinkin' - Rock Me (Doors)
18 Break on Through [To the Other Side] (Doors)
19 Light My Fire (Doors)
20 The End (Doors) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ucWUCsKA

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/yxCWuXpk20enmQl/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/gbX4Y

The cover photo was actually taken at the Matrix. But they played there a bunch of nights in a row, and this photo is from March 3rd or 4th instead of the 7th. The original version I used, from the "Live at the Matrix 1967" artwork, was in black and white. But I used the program Palette to colorize it. I took the band name at the top from a concert poster advertising a show at a different San Francisco venue around this time period, the Avalon Ballroom.

The Doors - Konserthuset, Stockholm, Sweden, 9-20-1968

Although I've been doing this blog for over two years, there are some major artists I like that I haven't touched or have only barely touched yet (with the Beatles being a prime example). One important band I've avoided so far is the Doors. I plan on posting stray tracks albums and some other things from them at a different time, but for now here's a great concert they did.

Some musical artists have officially released almost no archival live material, and others have released tons. The Doors fall into the latter camp. There are about 20 officially released live albums, most of them full concerts. There's even a official compilation called "Boot Yer Butt" that scrapes the bottom of the barrel with selections from rough sounding audience bootlegs. So you'd think that all the best live material has been released already. But you'd be wrong. Strangely, some of the very best sounding live recordings haven't been touched.

This is the prime example. (Though there's at least one other I know of, a PBS show from 1969 that I'll probably post at a different time.) The Doors played two concerts in Stockholm on the same day in 1968. Complete versions of both shows have been bootlegged, in pristine soundboard quality. I believe this is because the shows were recorded for a Swedish radio show.  (I've posted some other concerts from this same show, by the likes of Traffic, the Move, Wilson Pickett, and the Hollies.) In terms of sound quality, these Stockholm shows are better than many of the officially released live Doors albums. The band's performance is very good as well. I have no idea why those other shows have been released and these have not. 

The early and late shows featured many of the same songs. I generally don't like posting the same songs on one album. So I've combined the two shows. I'm including the entire late show, plus the few songs from the early show that are different. There are four songs from the early show: "Love Street," "A Little Game," "The Hill Dwellers," and "The Unknown Soldier." (The second and third songs are sections of the larger opus "The Celebration of the Lizard.") Both shows started with "Five to One." So I put the "Five to One" from the late show first, then the four songs from the early show, then the rest of the late show. The result sounds like one continuous concert that last an hour and 23 minutes.

I made a few other edits. The concert starts with an MC introducing the Doors. After he yelled the Doors' name, there was total silence on the recording. I'm sure it wasn't that way in real life! The problem is that the early show recording is such a pristine soundboard that there's almost no audience noise whatsoever. So I grabbed some cheering from the late show and added that in as a cheer in response to the MC introduction. (I would have preferred to use the MC introduction from the late show with the crowd noise, but that didn't get bootlegged, it seems.) I also added in cheering at the ends of the early show songs when appropriate, again using cheering from late show songs. It would have sounded really weird to have those songs end with total silence.

There's almost no between song banter. I suspect that lead singer Jim Morrison did talk some, because he usually did, but that also didn't get bootlegged for whatever reason. (Perhaps the radio show only wanted to play the songs on the radio and not the banter.) One exception is right before the last song, "The End." In that case, there was too much talking, in my opinion. Morrison asked for some adjustments to the lighting, and there was a minute of back and forth about lighting issues. I found that boring, so I cut it way down. 

After my editing, what you get is the ideal version of this music, with every song played but no duplicates. Of course, if you want the full versions of both the early and late shows, one can easily find that on the Internet. In my opinion, this may well be the best Doors concert recording from 1968, if you take into account both performance and sound quality. (The vast majority of the official live albums are from 1969 and 1970.) That makes it even more baffling to me that this concert hasn't been officially released. Thank our lucky stars for bootlegs. :)

01 talk (Doors)
02 Five to One (Doors)
03 Love Street (Doors)
04 A Little Game (Doors)
05 The Hill Dwellers (Doors)
06 The Unknown Soldier (Doors)
07 Mack the Knife - Alabama Song [Whisky Bar] (Doors)
08 Back Door Man (Doors)
09 You're Lost Little Girl (Doors)
10 Love Me Two Times (Doors)
11 When the Music's Over (Doors)
12 Wild Child (Doors)
13 Money [That's What I Want] (Doors)
14 Wake Up (Doors)
15 Light My Fire (Doors)
16 talk (Doors)
17 The End (Doors)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15111338/TDoor_1968_KonserthustStockholmSweden__9-20-1968_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any photos from this exact concert for the album cover. However, I did find one from the band playing in Copenhagen, Denmark, just two days earlier, so I used that one. The photo has an unusual perspective of looking down at the band from above. So when it came to adding some text, I tried to make it look as if the text was physically there in the room by matching the same perspective.