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From
U.K.’s magazine “Classic Rock” - August 2002 - page 106 -
Hendrix cover
"YOU’RE A
BIG MAN, BUT YOU’RE OUT OF SHAPE"
The dark,
seductive psychodrama of The Doors was built around the myth of singer
Jim Morrison. But by 1969 he was the counter-culture’s Elvis: fat, mad,
but weirdly watchable.
THE DOORS ‘Live In Hollywood’
Few
fallen rock martyrs are perceived as being quite so intriguingly
enigmatic as the late, and occasionally great, Jim Morrison. And it is
perhaps for this very reason that – unlike such lauded icons as, say,
Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain – both the precise nature and retrospective
import of The Doors’ unpredictable lead vocalist’s enduring legend have
never been truly set in stone.
The
listening public’s attitudes toward Morrison’s mercurial personality and
artistic legacy have always been irregular to say the very least. Even
before his mysterious, lonely demise – in the bath in a Paris hotel room
on July 3, 1971 – the self-proclaimed Lizard King of Los Angeles had
found himself in and out of favour with the burgeoning counter-culture
of the late 60s.
Doors
keyboard player Ray Manzarek may have been immediately impressed by
Morrison’s poetic pretensions upon their first fateful meeting, but
potential sidemen were far harder to convince. And by the time guitarist
Robbie Krieger and drummer John Densmore finally completed The Doors
line-up in 1966, the band’s singular, art-rock bohemianisation of the
blues-based, garage band form was seen as the very antithesis of LA pop
cool by the Sunset Strip in-crowd.
Morrison soon managed to turn the tide, however. Newly whippet-lean from
cavalier narcotic ingestion, he preened like a leather-clad Adonis and,
using media manipulation skills he’d previously picked up at UCLA film
school, carefully crafted his live performances into dark, seductive
psychodramas as yet unseen on the contemporary rock stage.
There
was nothing underground about The Doors – ‘Light My Fire’ and ‘Hello, I
Love you’ both hit US No. 1 – but Morrison constantly craved
subterranean credibility. Consequently he set about courting
controversy. With an ego disfigured by titanic drug and alcohol abuse,
he incited audiences to riot, became increasingly handy with his fists,
and when all else failed whipped out his celebrated dong in Miami.
America was outraged. All Doors gigs were immediately cancelled. Jim,
summarily demoted from pop star to pariah, sulked, drank, got fat and
grew a beard. And this is where we come in.
The
Doors were in a creative slump I July ’69, and a time-marking live album
was called for. And so, following an enforced, three-month performance
lay-off, they decamped to a relatively small, hometown theatre in the
shape of the Hollywood Aquarius to celebrate their lizard once more.
The
audience, somewhat shocked by Jim’s surprisingly bloated and bearded
appearance (notice that the marketing mob have used a much earlier shot
of a svelte, clean-shaven Jimbo on the cover), were uncharacteristically
subdued, but The Doors play for their very lives – and in this album
lies the aural evidence.
Morrison’s naïve, self-aggrandising, sixth-form poetry and mock-heroic
vocal theatrics allied to The Doors’ extensively overblown, organ-led
cinematic soundscapes may seem, in essence, intrinsically twee to 21st-century
ears, but ‘Back Door Man’, ‘Break On Through’, ‘When The Music’s Over’
and ‘Light My Fire’ retain an undeniable abundance of seismic, elemental
power and brooding, lascivious sexuality.
The
Doors perform with workmanlike reliability, but it’s essentially
Morrison’s show. Though deemed ultimately unworthy for stand-alone
release at the time (its highlights were latterly cherry-picked for
1970’s ‘Absolutely Live’ collection), ‘Live In Hollywood’ is a
fascinating, warts-and-all snapshot of Mr Mojo Risin’ in electrifying
flagrante delicto.
by
Ian Fortnum
IN A
NUTSHELL:
60s
legends live and not musically at their best, but with their iconic
frontman in smouldering, lascivious full flow.
3 stars out of 5 = good
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