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The Doors - Winterland 1967 December 26 (1967)

Track listing:
  1. Back Door Man 5:44
  2. Break On Through 5:36
  3. When The Music's Over 14:46
  4. Close To You 3:21
  5. Mannish Boy 2:12
  6. Mannish Boy (Part 2) 6:09
  7. Light My Fire 9:26
  8. Light My Fire (Fades) 1:44
  9. Light My Fire 9:33

Notes

San Francisco

2nd generation audience recording
MASTER CASS. - Metal cass.


NOTES taken from Stephen Davis' book on Jim Morrison p.219-220:
The Doors finished 1967 at Winterland, in San Francisco, where Jim Morrison seemed to come live again. Otis Redding whom Jim had idolized, had been booked to headline, but he'd died in a plane crash on December 10, and Chuck Berry subbed instead when The Doors were bumped by Bill Graham to the top of the bill. January Jansen made Jim a new black velvet shirt with grey cobras twining up the left sleeve. Backstage Jim asked Jansen to get him a dozen red roses. - "Not romance red. Blood red" - for a tribute he wanted to make to Redding. (Jansen also says he intercepted megadoses of LSD and STP intended for Jom from Owsley Stanley, so that Jim could perform straight.) That night Jim appeared with a dozen long stem roses and handed them out to the youngest girls in the front row. Then he sang: "Poor Otis, dead and gone, left me here to sing this song, pretty little girl with the red dress on, poor Otis, dead and gone," and the band slid into "When The Music's Over."
The first show on December 26 was filled with poetry and ad-libs, due in part to the presence of Michael McClure in the audience. The new and hideous demonic peal of laughter began "Back Door Man." "Break On Through" was intercut with Jim riffing, "Come on baby, be myman, be my man, you understand - yeahhhh." He put his whole body into a suggestive posture during Muddy Water's "I'm A Man" and seemed to gaze longingly at a handsome guy in the crowd.
The next night at Winterland (December 27, 1967), a TV set was wheeled onstage during the Doors set so the band could see themselves on the Jonathan Winters Show. They stopped playing Back Door Man when their song came on (there are no home VCRs as yet). The audience wathced the Doors wathcing themselves on TV. They finished the song when their bit was done, and Ray walked over and turned the TV off. The next night was their last ever in Winterland. All the girls were cried at a stunning, beautifully sung version of "You're Lost, Little Girl." "Love Me Two Times" was killer hard rock, played with discipline and real heat. As a prelude to "Light My Fire" Jim deployed an anguished variation on his recitation "Wake Up."
The encore was "Unknown Soldier," and with this Jim Morrison blew them away. The execution scene was now a skit where Densmore rolled the drums, Jim stood at attention with his arms behind his back, Robby pointed his guitar like a rifle, and Ray raised his arm in a quasifascist salute. whe he brought it down, Densmore hit a shattering rim and shot and Jim dropped to the stage like he'd been kicked in the scrotum or gut-shot, point blank. It was the Doors' last great bit of rock theater and it brought the house down, and would for the next year.