Page 29 - Classic Rock (February 2020)

Down and (almost) out:
exhibition at the London
Arts Gallery, after being
told by a local magistrate
that the exhibition
includes nude sketches
depicting the Beatle
and new wife Yoko Ono
on honeymoon.
“Many toilet walls depict Laughs, his former bandmates perform
works of similar merit,” notes Detective
Inspector Frederick Luff. “It is perhaps
charitable to suggest that they are the
work of a sick mind.” (billed as The Amazing Pudding).
Morrison with The Doors
in Frankfurt, Germany.
“[The rest of the band] wanted Jim
to be part of the group, but
they couldn’t take the trouble
that Jim was causing.”
Former Doors tour manager Vince Treanor
previous year’s Monterey Pop Festival”, a decision they came to regret – had
turned into the nightmare of the Rolling Stones’ free outdoor show at
Altamont Racetrack in December, where 18-year-old Meredith Hunter was
stabbed and clubbed to death by Hells Angels.
In the same period, the Charles Manson murders and subsequent arrests
had transformed LA from fun-loving and free into a city of paranoia. People
– affluent music and movie people especially – now carried guns in their cars.
With cocaine and heroin replacing weed and acid as the drugs du jour, the
new ‘heavy manners’ under which America in general and LA in particular
operated made Morrison’s antics before and after Miami seem suddenly,
weirdly in tune with the times. As he sang on a new thing he’d written: ‘Blood
on the streets of fantastic LA…’
uch was the backdrop to the recording of the fifth Doors album,
originally titled Hard Rock Café, before being changed to the more
Senigmatic Morrison Hotel (Side One would still be billed on the sleeve as
Hard Rock Café, Side Two as Morrison Hotel). The story of which really began
when Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman stepped in with a plan to
MAIN: HENRY DILTZ/GETTY; INSET: GETTY Holzman tells me now. “John [Densmore] was disgusted. They didn’t know
rehabilitate the public image of The Doors.
“It was not over before Miami, but it could have been over after Miami,”
what to do. They were being blacklisted in large auditoria around the country,
and they said: ‘What are we gonna do?’ I said: ‘Time to make another record.
Go into the studio. Work out your demons in the studio.’ And Morrison Hotel
came out of that. Not the easiest record, but it was stuff that Jim was
comfortable with and there was some really fabulous material. So that was
JANUARY 23 FEBRUARY 14 FEBRUARY 22
PINK FLOYD RISE, “It was packed THE WHO RECORD LIVE AT LEEDS DAVID BOWIE RAIDS THE
SYD BARRETT FALLS Winding down the Tommy world tour, DRESSING-UP BOX
In the same month that to the rafters The Who record a career-best show in Looking to shake off Space Oddity, and
estranged Floyd frontman and then the university’s student refectory (Roger flood the scene’s “denim hell” with
Syd Barrett crawls to UK Daltrey: “It was packed to the rafters and colour, David Bowie’s new band The
No.40 with his debut some. I heard then some. I heard there were a thousand Hype debut at London’s
solo album The Madcap there were a fans on the roof”). On Roundhouse. The line-up
a good day for seminal – Bowie, guitarist Mick
their forthcoming and future-sound- thousand fans live albums, the Grateful Ronson, drummer John
defining album Atom Heart Mother at Dead also record Dick’s Cambridge and producer
the Theatre Des Champs Élysées in Paris on the roof.” Picks Volume Four at the Tony Visconti on bass –
Fillmore East. adopt superhero personas
CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 29