- Format: MP3
low gen audience
Original files with their 'original mistakes' are also attached for the enthusiasts.
"Jim, refreshed and roaring to go, incites a riot this night escaping through the backstage door while the crowd of 4,000 destroys the stage. During the 8:30 p.m. show one teen gets so excited he does a swan dive off the balcony. Jim is now pushing every button, raising every level as far as they will go, both personally and professionally, just to see what will happen. Also performing: The Shady Daze; The One-Eyed Jacks"
AN excerpt taken from Stephen Davis' book on Jim Morrison p. 256-257:
May 1968. The Doors played their first Chicago gig at the Coliseum on May 10, trailed by the film crew. They opened with "Soul Kitchen," interrupted by Jim's insertion of lines from what later became the song "Runnin' Blue." Then he paused "Break On Through" to insert his "There You Sit" poem before charging back into the song like a marauding lion. Then he winked at the film guys and tried to get something going. He gestured the crowd toward the stage, and seemed mesmerized as the crew filmed the cops trying to control the surging crowd. He was trying out audience dynamics, getting ten thousand kids to be pin-drop silent during "Crystal Ship," then whipping them up to frenzy on hardcore numbers "Back Door Man" and "Five To One."
When he shouted "Wake up!" and recited the stanza from "Lizard," there was an electricity in the silent air. They finished with "Light My Fire" and encored with the "Unknown Soldier" - a performance that communicated all the howling anguish of the song and again caused screams in the crowd when Jim fell to the stage like he'd been assassinated. He lay there for a long time, and girls up front started to cry. Was he dead? But then he was erect again, and a few minutes later, the Doors left the stage to a roaring ovation. The crowd rushed the stage, trying to get close to the vanished aura of the great band, but somehow the police line held.
The next night, Saturday, the James Cotton Blues Band opened for the Doors at Cobo Arena in Detorit. Earth Opera opened in Toronto, where Jim's microphone (and the film crew's lights) failed to work properly.
Paul Rothchild met with the Doors that week, while they were working on early versions of "Orange County Suite" and "Who Scared You?" and trying to finish their record. Densmore had asked Rothchild what he thought they should do about Jim, who was coming to the studio looking unshaven and dissolute, his long hair dirty and stringy, his eyes horribly bloddshot, his clothes slept-in for three days. The mood in the studio was sullen, the usual vibe when the Doors got together around then. Rothchild decided to try to talk it over with the whole band present.
"Jim," Paul began, "we don't get the feeling you want to work on this record anymore. I gotta ask you, man - what are you doing? You're not into it. You don't look like yourself anymore. Can you tell us, like, what's happening with you?"
Densmore: "Jim brushed back his greasy hair and stroked his stubble. He didn't respond verbally, and the usual quiet tension in the room intensified." Jim walked out to the lobby alone, Densmore threw up his hands, and the two others just shook their hands.
The next evening Jim astounded them all by appearing totally cleaned up, shaven, with fresh clothes and a drastic haircut he'd done himself by grabbing his locks in a ponytail and chopping them off with slashes of the scissors. The result looked so absurd that they had to take Jim to Jay Sebring's salon to have the damage fixed before the weekends big show in San Jose. Immediately all the groupies negan calling each other, coast to coast: "What? He did? All of it? How short?"