The Doors: Live in New York

The Doors: Live in New York. (Rhino).
Rhino Records continues their almost decade-long series of archival
Doors concerts by releasing the most scintillating gem of the sonic
quarry, so far. This corpulent six-CD, 55-song box set features four
unabridged concerts the band played on Jan. 17 and 18, 1970, at the
Felt Forum (now known as the WaMu Theater) in New York City’s Madison
Square Garden. (On each day, the band played both an early and late
show.) 

While The Doors’ studio output remains
stoned immaculate, this live series exemplifies how the band became an
entirely different creature in the realm of performance art. The band
was one of the first to introduce a form of theater into rock’n’roll,
much of that owing to lead singer Jim Morrison’s flair for the poetic
and possessed dramatic. The Doors recorded every concert during their
1969-1970 tour with bits and pieces ultimately ending up on Absolutely Live, the only live document the band released before Morrison died of still undetermined causes on July 3, 1971. 

Rhino and The Doors Music Co. joined forces in 2000 to release The Doors: Live in Detroit,
with subsequent CDs culled from gigs performed in Philadelphia, Boston,
Pittsburgh and Hollywood. These collections allow listeners the
quasi-experience of attending one of their concerts, as everything from
the house announcer introducing the band to Morrison’s interaction with
the audience between songs is heard.

It’s no secret Morrison liked his booze.
The most infamous of his intoxicated incidents was when the “Lizard
King” was accused of whipping out his ding-a-ling during a Miami
concert on March 1, 1969, their first tour date in support of the
just-released Soft Parade album. After that flashing
indictment, The Doors were considered too dangerous for the public at
large and every city remaining on the tour banned them from
appearing—including the band’s scheduled appearance at the Onondaga
County War Memorial on April 27, 1969. The Doors never did appear live
in this market.   

But Morrison didn’t seem too worried about getting busted
for obscenity after they began performing live again. At the start of
the second show on the first Felt Forum night, he observes that
“Everything is fucked up as usual,” before the band kicks off into a
spirited performance of “Roadhouse Blues.” The song shows up three more
times on the remaining five discs, yet each version is performed in a
different context and demonstrates how the band could take multiple
approaches to the same number.

Bruce Botnik, The Doors’ original sound
engineer from their Elektra Records days, remastered these discs, all
of which sound like they were recorded yesterday. This is most evident
in tracks like “When the Music’s Over,” a 10-minutes-plus epic that
features a range of dynamics from the soft whispers of a “scream of a
butterfly” to an all-out cacophony of rhythmic insanity. Morrison’s
baritone sounds as strong as ever, although it got quite raspy during
the last half of the fourth concert. But physique-wise, those that
picture the iconic James Dean-like image of Morrison will probably be
surprised by some of the photos in the liner notes. Years of heavy
drinking appeared to have taken their toll on the singer; he looks
quite heavier, much like Elvis in his final years.

Favorites such as “Break on Through,”
“Light My Fire,” “Peace Frog” and “Five to One” are included, but the
band also played top-shelf covers of Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love,”
just as menacing as the original, and a version of Them with Van
Morrison’s “Gloria” to which the singer took his namesake’s song to an
even more insinuatingly vulgar level. They also left their mark on
several tunes from blues legends, including Jimmy Reed’s apropos “Goin’
to New York,” for which the band was joined on stage by the Lovin’
Spoonful’s John Sebastian on harmonica and Crosby, Still and Nash
drummer Dallas Taylor, and the Willie Dixon blues standard “Little Red
Rooster,” which really shows guitarist Robbie Krieger’s idiosyncratic
slide-guitar dexterity. 

To close the second show on the first
night, Morrison repeatedly called over the sound of ringing bells to
“Bring out your dead!,” referencing the “body snatchers” cry for the
deceased during Europe’s Black Death in the Middle Ages, before the
band began another poetic opus, “The End,” which features lyrics
espousing about being “lost in a Roman wilderness of pain” and “weird
scenes inside the gold mine.” Drummer John Densmore accentuated
Morrison’s lyrical improvisations with drumstick exclamation points,
while organist Ray Manzarek, who doubled as bassist playing a Fender
Rhodes Piano Bass, provided the story arc to the songs, creating a
dissonant mood with climax-building melodies. Even for casual fans, The Doors: Live in New York will provide an entirely new insight into a band that is still, if not more relevant 40 years after “the end.”