Page 33 - Classic Rock (February 2020)

THE DOORS

“Jim’s attitude was always: ‘Look out,
man, I’m hell-bent on destruction.’

We couldn’t moralise.”

Ray Manzarek

Krieger’s father’s house and sat him by the pool for “a chat”. According
to Manzarek: “We told him: ‘This is seriously affecting us all now as a
group, and you physically.’ Jim says: ‘I know. I drink too much and I’m
trying to quit.’ Which was a rare admission. We told him we’d help. Jim
said: ‘Thanks. Now let’s go get some lunch at the Lucky-U. I want some
funky Mexican food and a drink.’ That was Morrison. The romantic poet
who wrote ‘I woke up this morning, got myself a beer’. A real ‘fuck
you!’ line. Unfortunately that was the reality. Jim’s attitude
was always: ‘Look out, man, I’m hell-bent on
destruction.’ We couldn’t moralise. We figured he
might emerge from the spiral. But working with
Jim in the studio was the only way we knew how
to transcend his problem.”

hat they eventually came out
of the studio with was,
Wparadoxically, the most ‘up’-
sounding Doors album of them all. Opening
with Roadhouse Blues, featuring the wailing
harmonica of an uncredited John Sebastian and the
ass-tight bass of veteran rockabilly star Lonnie
Mack, here was Morrison and the band opening up to
where they were at in a way that is both fun and faintly disturbing.
It would become the band’s new show opener and road anthem
throughout the coming months as The Doors returned fitfully to
full-time concert commitments.
Other new tracks worth the wait included Peace Frog, a funky hunk of LA
shimmy that found Krieger punching out one of his most memorable riffs
as Morrison scatted wildly about ‘Blood on the streets…’ of New Haven, of
Chicago, on a river of sadness, and of fantastic LA, the lyrics for which Paul
Rothchild found in one of the notebooks Morrison had left lying around the
studio – while he disappeared to the nearby bar the Phone Booth for drinks
– in a rough poem headed Abortion Stories.
Other highlights were Blue Sunday, a tremulous love song to Morrison’s
long-time lover Pamela Courson, or maybe Judy Huddleston, or maybe
Eve Babitz, or maybe that chick he’d fucked the other night at the
Whisky A Go Go. It didn’t matter, the song was tender and sweet.
Then there was Queen Of The Highway, one of the last truly great
Morrison/Krieger numbers: electric jazz piano, snake-hipped guitar,
rain-spattered percussion, and Jim’s voice, honeyed again, suddenly,
his lyrics exquisite. It showed just what The Doors were still capable
of, where they might yet go, if only they could keep their singer from
setting himself on fire.
Others were repurposed or older tracks, the most lovely, Indian Summer,
HENRY DILTZ/GETTY a moment of quiet transcendence constructed from the dying embers of
The End, as if Morrison had chosen to love his brothers and sisters instead
of killing his father and fucking his mother; Waiting For The Sun,

Pallenberg is Keith AUGUST tightly wound public schoolboys. They with police officers and in possession of
Richards’s girlfriend, PHIL COLLINS ‘Phil Collins will, they say gravely, ‘let me know’. I later cocaine and barbiturates. At the resulting
the explicit sex scenes JOINS GENESIS learn that Peter knew the moment I sat court appearance, his $1,000 fine is
between her and Jagger After answering a Melody jumps into down that I was the guy.” reduced to a ‘misdemeanour’, and David
are rumoured to be real. Maker small-ad requesting Peter Gabriel’s AUGUST 14 Crosby’s status as CSN’s troublemaker-in-
“Cammell wanted to
a drummer “sensitive to
chief continues unchallenged.
PHIL COLLINS + STEPHEN STILLS: GETTY he [Jagger] had been sprawling family pile in Surrey, and pool “in just IS ARRESTED AUGUST 23
swimming
STEPHEN STILLS
fuck me up, because
acoustic music”, Collins
arrives at Peter Gabriel’s
LOU REED TRIES THE
Having been found
with Anita before,” Keith will write
my greying
NINE-TO-FIVE
crawling along the
decades later in his autobiography,
immediately lowers the tone by jumping
corridor of a San Diego
After his final show with the
into the swimming pool “in just my
Life. “Clearly, he took a delight in the
Y-fronts”.’
Velvet Underground, in New
greying Y-fronts”. Despite the class divide,
motel, the guitarist is
idea that he was screwing things up
York, Reed is collected by his
between us.”
incoherent, aggressive
the drummer impresses. “These are
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