The Doors Live

There are those Doors fans that would not give live performances of The Doors iPod room. I can understand this. I never used to like Absolutely Live when I listened to it in the 70s. The studio albums are beautifully crafted – while many tracks recorded in a single sitting, others are heavily produced. Paul Rothschild (producer) and Bruce Botnick, (sound engineer) both deserve great credit.

The Doors live is different. Absolutely Live, the album, was the best bits. It gave a flavor for what a Doors concert was like - but it was a lie. The whole point about live is the performance. The noise of the crowd; the anticipation before the band comes on; the roar for an encore; the adlibs; the mistakes; seeing that it really is these people, really playing and singing these songs. Absolutely live took out the drunken antics and mistakes. They even spiced together songs from different performances. Technically impressive but just about the worse compromise you can get. If you want recording and performing perfection use a studio and do many takes. If you want a live performance, lets have it, warts and all.

And this is why I’ve been so pleased to see the more recent releases of Live performances. I loved “Boot Yer Butt” (the audience recordings) and I’m loving the New York gigs.

Rediscovering The Doors

I stopped listening to The Doors when I was in my early twenties. I got a job, got married a few years later and by my late twenties was a dad.

From 1988, in my universe, there was no music. Well very little anyway. That’s because there was very little time. It may sound sad but when you have young children you find that there are some things even more important than music.

Then, in 2003, I found myself spending lots of time in the car. I made an impulsive purchase of Van Morrison’s Moondance album. I’d played that to death years before but hadn’t listened to it for years. It’s a great album but I’m sorry to say, it hadn’t stood the test of time. It felt over-played even though it had been "digitally remastered".

At the supermarket checkout I made a couple more impulsive buys. Together with a couple of jazz compilations I got The Doors by The Doors which was selling for next to nothing. Unlike Van Morrison, this did stand the test of time. It stood the test of time for two reasons. First because it just does and second because  the digital remastering of The Doors really was a remastering with new bits revealed that I’d not heard before. “She gets high” instead of “She gets” in "Break On Through". Jim Morrison’s mantra “Fuck, kill. Fuck, kill” in the climactic section of "The End". It wasn’t long after that I bought all of the studio albums on CD. I’d play them all in chronological order on long journies.

If you were a Doors fan in the 60s, 70s or 80s, then grew up and never revisited them, then do so. It’s a magical rediscovery. I was lucky. I rediscovered them just in time. Just in time to see them live. Well almost. But almost was fantastic. And there were more discoveries too.

Interpreting The Doors Lyrics

Inscrutable at best - at worst complete nonsense. Poetic perhaps or simply pretentious. As a poet, Jim Morrison wasn’t one of the greats. As a lyricist, as well as performer and all-round-rock-and-roll-sex-God, there are not many that come close. His lyrics hit some high spots but they also hit a few lows and interpreting The Doors songs, while at times can feel like an interesting and a valid intellectual pursuit, at other times seems futile.

I once read a series of interpretations of the song “The Weight” by The Band. It was very amusing. It was teenagers and young adults overlaying their life experiences on someone else’s to try to make sense of it. I won’t describe what one person thought “take a load off Fanny meant”.  And this was always my problem when as a young man, I tried to interpret Doors lyrics. I didn’t really understand Jim Morrison’s life experiences from which he was drawing inspiration. Nor did I appreciate fully the social turmoil that was underway in the United States in the sixties. The post-war economic boom; Vietnam; the civil rights movement.

Some of The Doors lyrics defy interpretation. “Remember when we were in Africa”? - We can do WHAT to the horses eyes?! - And it’s such a shame that the line “His brain is squirming like a toad” is so prominent in one of The Doors most well known tracks, “Riders On The Storm”. It’s hardly surprising that there are those that mock Morrison’s lyrics. But this is to select the weakest lyrics only and nobody should be judged by their weakest performance alone. There are passages of great poetry in The Doors lyrics, some quite accessible others require a fuller understanding of the context within which they were written.

Here’s a simple example. The phrase “An actor out alone” in “Riders On The Storm”. First off, the line is actually “An actor out on loan”. When a Hollywood actor is signed to a studio but has no work, another studio can take them on. This is known as being out on loan. This is a metaphor for being out in the wilderness (or something like that). But unless you know Hollywood studio lingo, you’re not going to get this. (Jim lived and worked in LA having studied film at UCLA. The phrase wouldn’t have been alien to him.)

So you need to understand context to understand the literal meaning of the lyrics. But you also must not interpret them literally. This might seem like a contradiction but it isn’t. Morrison uses word to evoke imagery. There are many interpretations to the words – the meaning depends on the image that is evoked and that is entirely subjective. If “Five To One” evokes images of youth revolution for you but for me it evokes images and ideas of the horrors of war – we’re both right. What I hear is what I hear. Morrison, like all poets, would never give interpretations of his own work. In answer to the question “what does it mean” he’d say “What ever you think it means. That’s what it means”