Notes

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Minneapolis Concert Hall

- Last show of the 1968 US Midwest tour -

A good audience recording.
complete show.
very low gen

4. Back Door Man (8:19)*
5. Little Red Rooster (6:43)*
6. Wild Child (3:17)*
7. Money (4:55)*
8. Love Me Two Times (12:23)*

*featuring Tony Glover on harmonica

After getting back from the relatively short European tour in September, the Doors were rehearsing their forthcoming album 'Soft Parade' and get back on the road only by Oct 31st, for an eight date long tour in the Midwest.

The final night of the Doors' midwest tour in Minneapolis finds the band giving great performances despite Jim's drunken and tired state and features local harp player Tony Glover onstage for the most part of the show. His contribution is evident and adds a lot to the performances. He joins the band onstage during 'Back Door Man' and plays with the band for rest of the show - except during the closing 'Light My Fire.'
'Break On Through' is another powerful rendition along with Robby's stunning guitar licks and Jim's approach who seemingly begins to get into the mood of the show despite his weariness.
The following 14 minutes long 'When The Music's Over' gets better minute by minute and while Jim's performance is uninspired in the beginning, - Robby contemplates the performance with a hard-rocking guitar solo - he eventually gets into the mood and gives his usual, unpredictable motions: moans, laughs, groans and howls which the audience greets with applause. Ray also pulls out a unique way of playing the tune at the end before Jim joins in again at the end of the song.

'Back Door Man' is also great and inspiring. After Tony's lenghty harmonica solo, Jim inserts some obscene improvisations (before the "You eat your dinner, eat your pork and beans" part):
"Little girl you looking fine
Make me wanna draw the line
Little girl yeah, yeah, lookin' fine, yeah!
FUCK me babe
Fuck me girl
Suck my COCK, honey
Around the world yeah!
Ahhhahhahaahhaa!"
After the song some attendants shouting in requests for 'Unknown Solder' and 'The End,' while Jim introduces the next song:
"This is an old blues song. Howlin Wolf wrote it and thank you.
Well I think he wrote it so thank you." The following 'Little Red Rooster' appearently works well and fits to Jim's current mood and features a great bluesy approach from him singing with full throat. Tony plays harmonica on this tune as well cultivating the already matchless performance with his playing stlye that reminds the great predecessors of blues.
After the performance, some members of the crowd began to shout requests again, which makes Jim commenting on that:
"This is democracy, you first. Democratic sex. We did it to each other." Crowd roars in agreement. "Yeah."
Then a decent performance of "Wild Child' countinues the show with Jim singing and adlibbing forcefully.
Tony's playing is a significant addition and comes out great during the 13 minutes long 'Love Me Two Times' where he plays spectacular improvisations from which Jim earns great inspiration, giving again love-making raps:
"Throw hands around my cock.
Throw legs around my neck!
Gonna love that girl, all night long. All right!
I hate to end my song
I love you all night long
I hate to end my song, love you all night long"
Then leading the band into the jam of 'Mystery Train' which later will be a regular piece in their medleys.
By the last song, 'Light My Fire,' it's appearent that Jim's enthusiasm is over and he's somewhat fed up performing the song and sings the lyrics with only minimal care leaving his mates giving their best.
Tonight's show may not be their most quoted one but it's definetly another memorable night.
Buda


NOTES #2

Taken from Stephen Davis' recent book on the Doors/Jim Morrison:
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p. 292-295

Jim Morrison and the Doors went back on the road in the first half of November, touring Midwestern cities on the weekends. Six linebaker-sized black bodyguards from Philadelphia's Sullivan Detective Agency protected the band from their fans and the local cops. The Doors badly needed the cash, and "Touch Me" was about to be released as the next Doors single. But the tour was hastily organized, promotion was inadequate, and many of the shows didn't sell out. (Jim Morrison hated playing to empty seats.)
In Milwaukee on November 1, the band came back for an encore after a good, workmanlike show. "OK, OK, OK, baby," Jim yelled to a raving crowd. "This one's gonna bring the house down." Robby tore into "Gloria" chords and the Doors attacked the song with pure abandon. Two nights later in Chicago, where their last appearance had been raucous, Jim led the band through a mesmeric, almost sinister performance. They played Robby's new song, "Tell All The People" and an almost complete "Celebration Of The Lizard." The encore was "Light My Fire" in a breezy, radiolike version that sent everyone home happy.
Richard Nixon was elected president of the United States on Tuesday, November 5, an event that would have consequences for Jim Morrison. The following Thursday, the Doors played the Arizona State Fair and Jim let fly with multiple curses and crotch-grabs, inviting the crowd to leave their seats as if he was trying to provoke the uniformed highway patrol cops guarding the stage. Between "Tell All The People" and "When The Music's Over," Jim Morrison walked to the edge of the stage and in a bitter tone announced:
"Well, we have a new president...(booing, catcalls)...That's right...He hasn't made any mistakes...yet!...But if he goes, we're gonna get him...(applause, shouts, general concurrence)...That's right! Right on! Right on! Right on! WE'RE NOT GONNA STAND FOR FOUR MORE YEARS OF THIS BULLSHIT!"

There was loud and prolonged cheering. Several hundred kids rushed the stage and were pushed back by the increasingly aggravated cops. The balconies started to empty onto the floor. Firecrackers and sparklers were tossed onstage, and were put out by a fire extinguisher. Someone cut the backline power and the house lights were brought up. Ten thousand kids voiced their anger and the power went back on.
The cops moved in closer, and the band finished with a savage "The Unknown Soldier" as hundreds of clothes were thrown onstage. Jim, laughing, threw back as many as he could before disappearing behind the curtains. Outside the hall afterward, there were a dozen of errests for disorderly contact, and ten kids were taken to hospital with minor injuries.

But this was more than another typical, anarchic Doors concert. Jim Morrison's FBI file contains a report about this show, although it was heavily blacked out with censored deletions. The FBI's unidentified informant, citing eyewitnesses and newspaper clippings, alleges that Jim Morrison made unspecific threats against President-elect Nixon in Phoenix that night.

Jim Morrison's chaotic performance in Arizona - filthy lingo, inflammatory politics, dirty moves - had also angered the locals who had coproduced the show with Rich Linnel, and who may have lost money. Word began to filter out - through booking agencies, concert industry newsletters, and insurance company tip-sheets - that the Doors were dab news - riling the authorities, using obscenities as part of their show, drinkning onstage, playing to empty seats. This was the kiss of death for a touring band.
Some of the Doors' next gigs in the midwest were downsized from classy venues to hockey rinks. This, coupled with a ferocious turn in the weather and vagaries of Jim Morrison's love life, put him into a foul state of mind. Jim was irritable and destroyed his mike stand in Madison, Wisconsin, on Friday, November 8. (An encore of "Celebration" left the college-age crowd stuck to their seats in wonder, according to press accounts, staring at the vacant stage after Jim had walked off.)

The next night in St. Louis an early blizzard had kept most people home. The Doors were supposed to play at prestigious Kiel Auditorium but were quickly downgraded to the grungier St. Louis Arena. Jim was pissed. Appearing onstage to a sparse crowd, with a bottle of whisky in his right hand, Jim denounced what he repeatedly called "this old fuckin' barn" and proceeded to give the audience a drunken show that visibly disgusted the band. Jim either glared at or ignored the vocal, excited audience. He played most of the show with his eyes closed and the microphone pressed close to his face. He seemed unable to finish many of the songs. His white poet's shirt came loose, his beard was thick with new bristles, and he pawed the stage with his boot in one of his off-kilter shaman hops that seemed almost comical.
The kids up front noticed the atmosphere was tense onstage. Robby seemed upset, played with his back to the audience, stared at his amps, sadly shaking his head at Jim's shit-faced yawps. Densmore looked furious. The kids up front would catch Jim's cold, flat stare and have to look away.

Ray was soloing with his head down, playing his ass off on "Light My Fire," sending the message that whatever crap Jim might be pulling, you were just getting what you paid for. Jim kept getting worse, slurring lyrics, embarassing the Missouri teensagers up front by rubbing himself to obvious erection with the microphone stand. A big, biker-looking guy in the front row with his daughters bellowed at Jim to cut it out, and he did. Then Jim left the mike stand, sat down on the edge of the stage while Ray was soloing and put his head in his hands. A seventeen-year-old girl, Poe Sparrow, was about ten rows back, on the aisle. She later recalled:

"A sudden irresistible force was pulling me toward Jimmy. He sat, shoulders slumped, elbows onhis knees, holding his head. My fingers gripped my camera nervously as I stopped three fett in front of him. Perspiration dripped from his hair and trickled across his leather pants. Slowly he raised his head... I was aghast. I was looking into the face of an utterly exhausted, bewildered man/child. I wanted to cradle his weary head, to soothe... The moment his eyes focused on mine is frozen in eternity - soft and vulnerable, etching pain straight through my cortex. Then he changed, undergoing a transmutation so swift it sent me reeling backward, He smiled, mouthing words I couldn't hear, lost in the wall of sound. But it didn't matter, because Jimmy was gone, and in his place was the Lizard King. I remember a wave of shock, of backing up fast, unable to avert my eyes. The rest of the concert is a complete and total blank. I have no memory of returning home."

Sunday night in Minneapolis was the last show of the tour. A cute, extremely excited teenage girl rushed over at the airport and asked Jim an for an autograph. Jim had been sleeping off a drunk on the plane, and slurred, "You'd eat your shit, wouldn't you?" Densmore wanted to kill him, but the chicks boyfriend told Jim, "That's OK, man. Whatever you gotta do to get through." The band vamped on "Soul Kitchen" for five minutes before Jim emerged to roaring acclaim and checked out the audience. "Ok, OK, man - let me get a good look at you." The front rows were full of blonde kids smiling at him, so Jim put on a good show. During "When The Music's Over," he started laughing insanely and doing comedy bits, getting laughter and applause. Jim almost always talked to audienced as his equals,rarely talking down to them. He'd ask the simple questions, and listen to the responses. There was a long delay after this, and the kids got restless, but eventually some issue was settled and local hero (and Elektra artist) Tony Glover came out with his harmonica and stayed with the Doors for the rest of the show. Glover had interviewed the band that afternoon for Circus magazine. He and Jim did several harp-poem jams together on "Back Door Man" and "Love Me Two Times," which turned into Elvis Presley's "Mystery Train," a motif which the band would later adapt for jam sections during shows.