ISSUE 74 • £5.50ALSO!ZOOT MONEY | MORTIMER | FOLK-HORRORMAXAYN | THE EASYBEATS | ROBERT WYATT

THE MOODY BLUES THE POPPY FAMILYBack to the future Out of the darkness

STRANGE DAYSARE HERE AGAININSIDE THE MAKING OF THEIRLEGENDARY STUDIO ALBUMS WITH PRODUCER BRUCE BOTNICK

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THE

OURBEST OF2017

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welcome contents

Howdy Shindiggers,

Whilst things in the “Real World” are undoubtedly going from bad to worse, 2017 has been great for Shindig! It really does feel like we have hit our stride and maintained pace. Risky topics now feel less ominous, and quite often pieces on artists less associated with what was once viewed as the magazine’s forte have actually gone down best of all. It is, however, no surprise to discover readers like all manner of interesting things. Taste is always considered.

As it’s that feel good time of year I’d like to acknowledge all who’ve written in, come to our events and tuned into the radio show. An even bigger thank you goes out to those who buy the magazine on a regular basis. Without you Shindig! wouldn’t exist. We appreciate your valued and continued custom.

There’s no Xmas silliness in this issue as we’ve done that quite enough over the past couple of years. So, without suggesting some suitably fun sounds to get you through last minute shopping and wrapping, we’d just like to wish you a most cool Yule. Of course, we do offer our annual best of the year which may help you decide on suitable gifts for the Shindigger in your life. And hey, why not treat that special someone to a year’s subscription? What better gift is there for a music lover?

To close our 12 month celebration of 1967’s 50th anniversary we look back at two key, and perhaps somewhat known yet now overlooked albums. When was the last time you listened to either The Doors’ Strange Days or The Moody Blues’ Days Of Future Passed? Some time I suspect, yet both stand the test of time and are certainly worth revisiting with fresh ears, especially when considering remastered editions of each record are now available.

Enjoy the rest of the magazine and all of your festivities, whatever you’ll be doing. We’ll be back in the New Year with a rather special celebratory issue. In the meantime, do please get in touch. We love to see your highlights of the year, views and thoughts on how you’d like the mag to evolve.

Stay warm, merry and happy.

Happy Xmas,

Jon ‘Mojo’ Mills Editor-In-Chief

Issue 74 December 2017

FeaturesBest Of 2017 21Shindig!’s best of the year

Seeburg 1000 28The post war non-selective “industrial jukebox” system minus rock ‘n’ roll

Maxayn 32Near forgotten psychedelic funk from the early ‘70s

The Moody Blues 38How November 1967’s Days Of Future Passed opened the door for a legion of ambitious and progressive acts

Mortimer 44New York’s unfortunate sons journey from The Teddy Boys to Apple

Horror Folk 50Late ’60s/early ’70s horror cinema’s classical and folk motifs

The Poppy Family 54Vancouver’s husband and wife’s darkly beautiful semi psychedelic concoctions appreciated

The Doors 60In the studio with producer Bruce Botnick

RegularsShindiggin’ 4 What’s hot on the Shindig! turntable

Thoughts & Words 6Your letters and emails

It’s A Happening Thing 8The Easybeats, Sharon Jones, Serpent Power, Electric Eye, Julian Maeso, Martha High, The Hanging Stars

Happening Right Now 24The hottest new bands

Song Book 26Robert Wyatt’s 1972 lyrical paean to a relationship break up

20 Questions 34South coast soul legend, psychedelic saviour, rocker, actor: the long and varied career of Zoot Money

Reviews 71 The best in reissues, new releases, books and live shows

Vinyl Art 96 Dutch pranksters’ The Fool’s art project becomes music

Prize Crossword 97 Win a copy of Numero Group’s new Acid Nightmares comp

Shindig! listen to all music using the Teufel Kombo 62 and use Tidal and Roon. For more information go to

teufel.co.uk, tidal.com and roonlabs.com

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BRUCELATITUDES

To close our 1967 celebrations, we finally spotlight, the seminal love year’s most

revolutionary band who also reflected the darknessand socio-political carnage of the rest of the decade.

There have been endless documents focusing ontheir charismatic doomed singer over the

supernatural sounds The Doors produced together. explores the band’s untouchable

musical legacy with BRUCE BOTNICK, the studiogenius who captured their wild muse on record, withsome help from guitarist ROBBY KRIEGER and late

keyboard magus RAY MANZAREK

aking rock ’n’ roll to previously unchartered planes of mystery andimagination, The Doors were the first US band to capture the seismic

social changes happening in America and the volatile mood on the streets.While worshipped as cool pop stars, they became a microcosm and

embodiment of young America’s rising underground resistance,providing a glorious soundtrack for when “the whole shithouse goesup in flames”, while becoming a prime target for the establishment’s

paranoid retaliations. Even from where the 12-year-old me was sitting in late 1966, there was somethingdarkly seductive about that first photo that appeared in the British music papersbefore a note of music had been heard. Released inJanuary before any coming psychedelic milestones, TheDoors set new benchmarks for evocative lyrics, multi-hued intelligence and studio-combusted sonic expression.Mysterious, evocative and screamingly dramatic, no bandhad sounded like this (or ever would), even if theirmoody shimmer seemed birthed in the dark heart of theblues at its blackest. The garage-rock organ tattoo of‘Louie Louie’ had sprouted wings, jazz liberation was inthe picture and the singer was a brooding shaman. That was only the start.

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Those were the days. RobbyKrieger, Ray Manzarek, JimMorrison and John Densmorein LA, late 1967

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When we spoke in 2007, RayManzarek beautifully summedup The Doors after I made athrowaway remark aboutthem seeming to fall from the

sky 40 years earlier. “Maybe it did, man,”mused this most affable man, whoseenthusiasm and energy all but melted thetransatlantic phone lines even whenrepeating stories he’d told hundreds oftimes. “It’s possible it did just fall out ofthe sky! Robby Krieger plays flamencoguitar with his fingers as he’s playing rock’n’ roll. He’s also playing that wonderfulbottleneck guitar that comes out of hisjugband days. Here’s the keyboard playerwho’s out of Chicago with blues roots butalso studied classical music and was a jazzlover. You add that dark, Slavic soul toRobby Krieger’s snaky, crystallinebottleneck guitar and underneath you putJohn Densmore, this jazz drummer, whoalso played in a marching band. On top ofthat you float a Beat-French symbolist,Southern Gothic poet singing some very,very interesting lyrics. Maybe it did justfall together. How does that sound getmade? Y’know, sometimes magic doeshappen.”

As The Doors played Hollywood’sclubs, notably a dive called London Fog,that magic was coaxed into an alieninferno as they wrought their own songsto nudge out the blues covers (heard on

last year’s London Fog 1966), and woulddominate their first two albums. The bandeven signed to Columbia before beingswiftly dropped. At that time their onlyambition was to be as a big as Love, whoruled the Strip’s happening scene.

“We had to play sometimes five sets anight at the London Fog,” Manzarek toldme. “Night after night for virtuallynobody. We got the opportunity to doanything we wanted to fill up four or fivehours. So every night we would play ‘TheEnd’, ‘When The Music’s Over’, ‘LightMy Fire’ and expand those things. ‘TheEnd’ had originally started off as a two orthree-minute love song and we just keptplaying it while Jim started adding lyricsto it.”

As the counterculture revolutionballooned in LA, The Doors’ reputationand crowds grew during their nextresidency at The Whisky A Go Go. Now,as Ray said, “There were hundreds ofpeople virtually every night because it wasthe Mecca of rock ’n’ roll so we’re playingfor a packed audience and our songs aretogether now. It was ’66, the Los Angelessummer of love. All the long hairs hadcome to the Sunset Strip from all over LA.The freaks. We weren’t even called hippiesthen. All the freaks had come together. Toplay for an audience like that aroused allthe passion that we possibly had in ourbodies.”

‘The End’ gained its Oedipalmonologue one August night after (it’sbeen said) Jim ingested 40 times the usualdose of Owsley acid. It slaughtered thecrowd and got The Doors fired, butconvinced Jac Holzman, there at therecommendation of Love’s Arthur Lee, tosign them to Elektra, America’s coolestrecord label.

Enter Bruce Botnick, resident engineerat Sunset Sound Recorders, where TheDoors recorded their first two albums.Botnick was the vital studio catalyst thatso magnificently bottled the band’sinfernal psychedelic magic. While PaulRothchild brought his producer’sdisciplines and direction to the sessions,Bruce rolled the tape, created any effectsand mixed it together as the band playedlive in the studio, in essence like a fifthmember.

The recent Singles box set and StrangeDays reissue, which Botnick remastered instereo and mono, are two more reasonswhy Shindig! is here today celebrating TheDoors’ music rather than milking thelizard king mythos. It’s also time to swingthe spotlight on the backroom man whobrought their unique latent alchemy toeternal life in songs now branded intomusic’s very DNA. Bruce is the overseerof The Doors’ recorded legacy, althoughhis CV also lists a spangled array ofElektra greats, including Love, David

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Sittin’ on the dock of thebay around the time oftheir ’67 debut

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10,000 dollars a year, which in those daysmight as well have been a hundredthousand dollars.

“With studio musicians recording live,you’ve got to have it going at the firstdrop of a baton. I’d been working inStudio 1 for over three years; and I knewwhat it could do and where to put thedrums, what EQ to put on them andthings like that. The same with vocalmics. I was basically ready to roll, but Ihad to tweak as the session got going. As Igot more and more into their music andstarted to understand where they werecoming from, the sound would evolve,but not drastically. You’ve got tounderstand, that when they came into thestudio everything was locked. The onlything that wasn’t locked was creativity.The songs were there. They’d alreadyrehearsed them. They and we knew whatthey were gonna do and they played mostof the songs for the first album live in thestudio.”

Even heard now, The Doors seemsbathed in a lysergic sheen that turnsRobby Kreiger’s liquid guitar intoluminescent glow-worms and coats thewhole band in supernatural ambience. Iburble this to Bruce, who fires back,“Because it wassupernatural!”before creditingSunset Sound’secho chamberand hand-builttube recordingconsole.

Bruce’s growing reputation reached JacHolzman, then looking for a suitablestudio for Love to make their first album.His first Elektra assignment was Love inJanuary ’66, followed by Da Capo andTim Buckley’s debut. “It was great, awonderful time. We made those albums inthree or four days maximum.”

In August he met The Doors, whoHolzman had just signed after witnessingthe weird scenes at the Whisky. “I did notknow The Doors from Shinola! Jac calledto book the sessions and said PaulRothchild’s going to produce this act TheDoors. Paul had produced the first TimBuckley album and by that time we werefriendly. The booking came as drums,piano-bass, guitar, organ and vocal, withthe organist playing bass. I thought, ‘Thisis gonna be interesting.’ They walked inthe door, set up and just started recording.I’m a very reactive person. I don’t like toput myself in front of what the music is. Ilike to have music tell me what to do.That was the case with The Doors.

“The first thing we recorded was onAugust 19th and I believe it was‘Moonlight Drive’. Then we did a couplemore songs and really went to town. Iknew they were something magical fromthe first note and totally different fromanything that was on the radio. Weimmediately hit it off on a one to onelevel. I related to the music and they wereall basically my age, although Ray wasolder. In those days they didn’t have a potto pee in, so I took them out to dinnerand things like that. I was making close to

Ackles and Tim Buckley. (His next projectis re-mastering Forever Changes, which heproduced, for its own anniversary reissue.)

Speaking over Skype from his office inOjai, near Santa Barbara, California,Bruce has obviously been asked tocomment on the deeply-trodden Doorsmyths too many times but warms upbeautifully when Shindig!’s missionbecomes clear and I ask for his own story.Hollywood born, Bruce benefitted byhaving parents who were both musicians.His dad played viola and violin for moviestudios like 20th Century Fox andColumbia, and mum was a music copyistfor singers signed to Capitol, includingFrank Sinatra and Nat ‘King’ Cole. “Iwould go to sessions when I was a littlekid and was always more excited aboutwhat was going on in the control roomthan the studio,” he recalls. “At around sixor eight years old I remember going to asession and they let me push the littleblack button and say ‘Take one!’ Thepower of pushing that button wasoverwhelming; I felt the call of the muse.I can’t even remember who was doing thesession because the excitement of pushingthe button overpowered everything.”

At school, Bruce borrowed a taperecorder and started taping everything.His future career path was cemented whena friend got drafted and left Bruce to lookafter his Berlant Concertone reel-to-reelmachine and two Telefunken U47microphones. Through dad’s connections,Bruce learned the ropes at LibertyRecords Recording Studio alongsidefuture Warners A&R supremo LennyWaronker, son of Liberty Recordsfounder Simon Waronker. He then serveda two year apprenticeship working withthe likes of Jackie DeShannon, LeonRussell, David Gates, The Crickets andmany more (“Being that I was such a nerd,the equipment was a natural.”)

In ’62, when the Liberty studiosuddenly closed, Bruce walked downSunset Boulevard and into Sunset SoundRecorders, where he met its founder‘Tutti’ Camarata, who in ’58 hadconverted an old auto repair shop intoWalt Disney Records recording arm. “Ibullshitted my way through some stuffabout recording big bands and he hiredme on the spot. I built my career there,which would lead to the Doors.” By ’65,Bruce was working with Jack Nitzsche,then involved with the Stones and PhilSpector, along with recording backingtracks for Motown in Detroit, includingalbums by The Supremes and MarvinGaye (“It was a wonderful experience. Iloved doing Motown.”). He also workedwith Brian Wilson on Pet Sounds and ‘GoodVibrations’. “At that time, Brian wasbasically using The Wrecking Crew, so theyplayed everything. That was great, becauseBrian would come in with his chord sheetsand work out the charts, have them playwhat he wanted them to play and then we’ddo takes. We recorded everything live onfour track, except for vocals.”

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“The booking came as drums, piano-bass,guitar, organ and vocal, with the organistplaying bass. I thought,

. They walked in thedoor, set up and just started recording”

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The decades have eroded most specificmemories of tracks being recorded, apartfrom, maybe unsurprisingly, ‘The End’.“It was two takes and Jim was chemicallyenhanced,” recalls Bruce before dispellinga popular myth. “You’ve heard the storyabout the TV set that Jim supposedly hadthrown through the control roomwindow? It never happened. There was alittle tiny TV that I was watching as theLA Dodgers were playing. We wererecording and the song was so envelopingmusically I had my eyes closed. I was justgoing with what was happening becauseI’m mixing live on the four-track; drumsand bass on one track, guitar on one, theorgan on one and Jim on one. That’s it, soI had to mix to get it all. Jim came outduring the Oedipus section, dancingaround and whirling, bumped into thestool and knocked over the TV. The setwas fine as I saw the end of the Dodgergame but later Ray, who was terrific atconfabulation, said Jim threw it throughthe window. That couldn’t have happenedbecause it’s two pieces of ¾-inch thickglass. You’d have needed a canon to getthrough that! It was two takes and weedited it together. One of them, Ray hadhis amplifier on for the bass and the otherone he didn’t so when we cut it together Ihad to do some adjustment in the mix tomake it sound like one entire piece.”

With the parlous state of our own BBCthen, it’s hard to grasp the day-to-dayimportance of AM radio in the US. That’swhere The Doors broke first, initiallywith the local AM Radio pop stationKFWB. “In those days people and otherbands would just come down to thestudio. The Byrds were there a lot, justhanging out because they were all friends.

B MitchelReed, the maindisc jockey atKFWB whowas an iconhere in LA,had comedown to oneof thesessions. Wewere talkingand I asked,‘Hey, if I gaveyou an acetatereference diskof a song isthere anychance youcould play it

on the air and we could listen to it?’ Hesaid, ‘Yeah, send it up, I’ll play it comingout of the noon news then I’ll go right tothe next song and nobody’s gonna knowwhat happened.’ This happened manytimes; we’d all pile into a car and turn upthe radio real loud and there it would be.We’d always be in shock because whenyou heard things over the radio it soundedradically different. I did that a lot, notonly with The Doors.”

‘Break On Through’ was the first singlefrom the album before ‘Light My Fire’joined ‘White Rabbit’ and Sgt Pepper asthe predominant sounds of summer ’67,soundtracking riots, catalysing sexualrevolutions and breaking radio traditionswith its long version. The time to hesitatewas through.

The song was Robby Krieger’s firstcomposition for The Doors, as he told mein 2007. “At first Jim was writingeverything then one day we said, ‘Hey,we haven’t got enough originals.’ Jim says,‘Why don’t you guys write some too?’That’s when I went and wrote ‘Light MyFire’. I’m glad he said that! Up until thenThe Doors were doing three-chord typesongs that were pretty simple, like ‘ILooked At You’ or ‘End Of The Night’. Iwanted to write something moreadventurous. I decided I was going to putevery chord I knew into this song anddid! There’s about 14 different chords inthere. We said, ‘Let’s do it like Coltrane’;A minor to B minor like on ‘My FavouriteThings’. As we played it over the nextyear the solos got longer and longer. Itwas very organic. I wish I could say weplanned it that way, but it just came out.”

In its 45rpm form, ‘Light My Fire’ lostRobby and Ray’s solos to make therequisite radio length. When DJs startedspinning the full version, it broke the set-in-stone barrier for long songs. Brucerecalls how thrilled he was; “You have tounderstand that, when you’ve donesomething and it comes on the radio it’s abig deal to hear it bracketed by TheSupremes or Elvis Presley. Everything wedid, we were very conscious thatcommercial radio didn’t like anything overtwo minutes and 30 seconds so they couldget more music and advertisements intheir playlist. That’s why ‘Light My Fire’was edited down. Then some brilliant discjockey in the Midwest started playing thelong version, the phones at the stationsstarted ringing off the hook, and thatbroke the mould in the US for long songversions with no editing.”

Released that September,Strange Days caught TheDoors after breaking onthrough to the other side ofany summer of love

optimism and into the cold real worldwhere people look ugly when you’realone. Musically, their whirling dervishmuses had coerced and alighted on a soundthat indeed expanded on The Doors, coatedin eerie hallucinogenic radiance and darkcarnival weirdness drawn from LA’s city ofnight underbelly (as beautifully embodiedin Joel Brodsky’s street freaks cover shot).This time the closing epic was sign-of-the-times clarion call ‘When The Music’sOver’, boasting a torrential guitar snakebombardment from Krieger.

Now using a revolutionary eight-track3M tape recorder that Bruce hadpurloined from Wally Heider’sestablishment, the band could experimentand stretch out. Another ethos wasinstilled by Sgt Pepper. “In those days,most acts did two albums a year, even TheBeatles,” says Bruce. “We could workfaster because we recorded live in thestudio. I’d been working with The Turtleson ‘Happy Together’. One day theyhanded me a monaural acetate of SgtPepper, before it came out. I listened to itand it blew my mind from the standpointthat they had allowed themselves to betotally creative. They weren’t worriedabout reproducing live in the studio. Iplayed it for the guys and Paul Rothchildand we said, ‘Hey, this gives us a lot offreedom, maybe we can experiment?We’re not gonna do Sgt Pepper but we cando The Doors and dramatically expandour horizons’. We already had these songsthat were part of the original 24 Jim hadwritten way back.”

Bruce now scatters the myth basedaround The Doors recreating their live seton their first two albums then the reservesdrying up. Doors historians may squeakup but this is the first I’ve heard of Jimhaving 24 songs in his book; he’s usuallyrecalled singing ‘Moonlight Drive’ to Rayon Venice Beach that summer ’65afternoon.

“Both Jim and Ray told me so,” assertsBruce. “They sat on the beach togetherand Jim sang all 24 songs, which wereenough for the first three albums and intothe fourth. One of the great things PaulRothchild did was think forward and saywe don’t want to just pack the first albumwith the best. As it turned out, everythingwas the best, but he was very smart whenit came to making sure that, if we’regonna do another album in two monthswe better have something to record.”

The trippy cascade of the title trackmarks the only time The Doors used thenew Moog synthesiser, thanks to pioneerPaul Beaver arriving fresh from makingThe Zodiac: Cosmic Sounds. “I knew PaulBeaver from recording with him early onand mentioned him to Paul Rothchildthat he had this really interesting machinethat was out of this world, so he broughtz z

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“Jim was writing everything then one day wesaid, ‘Hey, we haven’t got enough originals.Why don’t you guys write some too?’ That’s

when I went and wrote ’LIGHT MY FIRE‘. I’mglad he said that!”

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Strange days indeed. Ray andRobby chat to a journalist outsideSunset Sound Recorders, LA;Bruce Botnick at the controls;producer Paul Rothchild and Jim;John and Jim and another door;Jim ponders the future

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it down. We had already filled up theeight-track, and couldn’t print that effecton the vocal on ‘Strange Days’. So I putJim’s vocal into the Moog then mixed itback against his vocal and added reverband a bit of delay. Jim would push the keyand it produced that effect. When it cametime to mix Strange Days for surround, Iwas shocked that I hadn’t printed that,even on a mono tape machine! You neverthought you’d be going back after thealbum was out. I had to use plug-ins andthink I got pretty close to matching whatwe did back then. It’s the only time weused the synthesiser and, after that PaulBeaver went up to Mount McKinley:20,320 feet, the tallest mountain in TheUnited States, to commune with extra-terrestrials while they refuelled their spacecrafts. At least, that’s what he told me andI still believe him. We bought an entireMoog when we moved to Elektra Studios.George Harrison came and visited. Hewasn’t really interested in what we weredoing musically but he was interested inthe Moog, so I spent an hour showinghim you can make cool noises with it.”

‘Horse Latitudes’ saw Jim howl andshout his poem about oceanic equestrianmurder over Bruce’s nightmare musiqueconcrete. When I first played the album 50years ago I really had never heard suchsounds in my life.

“That was all all done on analogue tapemachine by hand,” he explains. “I hadprinted some tape hiss on tape and playedit into the echo chamber. By manually

running fast and slow it became theatmosphere from something I visualised.That’s how most stuff was done in thosedays. Hand it to Paul Rothchild; herefused to allow Robby to use a fuzztone,wah-wah pedal or any of that stuff, so wehad to organically create what we weredoing. Strange Days had three importantthings; the Moog, manual tapemanipulation and Robbie’s guitar solo on‘When The Music’s Over’. Since we didn’thave a fuzztone and he was playingthrough a small amp, I took themicrophone into its pre-amp, out of thatand into another mic pre-amp, so I wasoverdriving it. I got the tubes to glowbetween purple and orange so wasprobably close to blowing them up, butthat’s how I got that sound. Thenrecorded it. It’s basically just overdrivingtube electronics.”

Incredibly, Bruce went from recordingStrange Days to Buffalo Springfield Againthen found himself producing Love’sForever Changes. All this in a few weeks’work! “They were great times with all themusic I was doing. I was in bliss. I wasn’tmarried at that time. My studio was mywoman. I’d sleep there. Luckily, they hada shower! At the same time I was doingThe Doors, Beach Boys and Love, I wasrecording every kind of music for Muzak– Mexican, Chinese, you name it – plusjazz for Pacific Jazz and children’s albums,because Sunset Sound’s owner TuttiCamarata was head of A&R for DisneyRecords. All the other music had to fit in

around children’salbums in theafternoon andcommercials inthe earlymorning.”

By late ’67, The Doors werebecoming America’s biggestband with Jim finding himselfboth counterculture icon andteen idol. The bigger they

became, the more he rebelled andretreated into the bottle, sparkingincidents like being arrested onstage forpublic disorder in Newhaven,Connecticut that December. As Ray soanimatedly explained in 2007, “We had toreceive Jimbo. Out of the bottle ofalcohol and occupying the personality ofJim was a besotted lout known as Jim-bo.It was like, what the fuck? Jim? Just howdrunk do you intend on getting? Jim? Areyou there? Oh my God, it’s not Jim at all!it’s Jim-bo. That was weird, man. Strangedays had indeed found us at that point.”

Ray says he nailed the Jimbo personawhen writing his autobiography at the ageof 50. “I began to realise there was apsychotic break here but, interestingly,Jim Morrison always thought of himselfas a shaman. He talked about the shaman(adopting uncanny Morrison drawl), ‘Youknow the Shaman’s got a crack, Ray. He’san unusual individual in the tribe but he’skind of cracked, and out of that crackcomes his abilities to say things. As we say

Robby and trustyGibson SG in thestudio; ‘PeopleAre Strange’ 45

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about a crazy person, he’s a little cracked.’I never thought Jim as insane but it wasthere. That’s what made him so great.That’s what made his poetry and publicperformances so great. But pour alcoholinto that crack and you don’t wanna seewhat’s gonna come out.”

Almost riding shotgun to ’68’s crawlingsocio-political chaos, third Doors albumWaiting For The Sun reflected both theanti-Vietnam defiance on the streets andrising against establishment oppression on‘The Unknown Soldier’ and ‘Five ToOne’, although recording was shiftingfrom spontaneous live combustion togetting the best out of Jim when possible.The set also boasted the masterful ‘SpanishCaravan’ and ‘Hello I Love You’, theresurrected early demo that became theirfirst UK hit single at the time of their firstUK visit to play The Roundhouse thatSeptember (and a Top Of The Popsappearance I remember as curiouslysubdued. Far better was when GranadaTV screened The Doors Are Opendocumentary).

Inside the gatefold was Jim’s‘Celebration Of The Lizard’ poem,originally intended as the new epic butonly the ‘Not To Touch The Earth’section made the album. Although it laterappeared on Absolutely Live, the existenceof a studio original was something I hadto ask Bruce.

“In between Strange Days and WaitingFor The Sun, at the request of PaulRothchild, I took the guys into the oldLiberty Records studio where I got mystart. We recorded a bunch of stuff so wewould have a better handle on what torecord for the third album. ‘TheCelebration Of The Lizard’ was recordedas a demo but, for some reason when wewere recording for real, Paul rightfully

felt that we couldn’t get another operaticlive performance because Jim wasinebriated most of the time. He reallydidn’t enjoy the stardom and hid behindthe alcohol.”

His reaction to fame?“How many people that have made it

did like stardom? None of them! The( July ’68) Hollywood Bowl is one of thevery best Doors concerts ever and it’smainly a lot of poetry. That was Jim’sthing. He really would rather have done ashow with some songs, a bit of poetry,more songs then poetry, and the bandwanted to do that too. Instead, Jimbecame the monkey for the organ grinder;crank and the monkey’s got to jumparound, scream and freak out. That stuffcame naturally because of his earlyexperiments with LSD on stage and hisinsecurity about performing. For thelongest time he performed with his backto the audience. After a while he had toperform. Bob Dylan said to me somethingthat other artists had said, ‘I don’t knowwho they’re coming to hear; me or thisguy who, in Jim’s case, is freaking outonstage?’ In Jim’s case, the only place tohide was in the bottle.”

Jim got so bad during the gruellingmonths it took to record The Soft Parade,combatting personal demons with

escalating booze, Paul Rothchildbrought in brass and strings. Robbywrote several tracks as the band hadbasically recorded most of the original24 songs and the well was runningdry. They were still recording inMarch ’69 when Jim got busted forallegedly flashing in Miami, castingyet another shadow over the band.“They couldn’t tour so we basicallywent in the studio and struggled withthat album,” recalls Bruce. “It was avery rough experience for all of us.”

Despite ‘Touch Me’ hitting andJim’s epic poem title track, The SoftParade derailed The Doors’momentum as the obscenity trialhung over them for 18 monthsbefore Jim got convicted for publicprofanity and indecent exposure.(The appeal never heard).

The band still went into thestudio and, reacting against thestrings and brass, returned to basicrock ‘n’ blues and their originalsound for February ‘70’s MorrisonHotel. “After Miami happened, Paulfelt it necessary to controleverything to keep everything on a

steady track and it became a bitdictatorial. That’s the best way to put it.But I understood where he was comingfrom. We tried to come out of it withMorrison Hotel and if you hear the out-takes of ‘Roadhouse Blues’, there areseveral different versions from first take tofinal, so you can see the full arc. Eventhough Jim was drunk as a skunk you canhear in the first take it was more rawand… roadhouse. That’s an approachwhere you get a bunch of beers and justrave. That’s my favourite, because the finalone is very regimented and straight. Theguys knew that too but it led to usmaking LA Woman together.”

During the trial period, Jim wasallowed to make The Doors’ only otherUK appearance, in September ’70 at TheIsle Of Wight Festival. Now he just stoodand sang. The Doors started recordingagain that December, emerging with late-period masterpiece LA Woman.

Rothchild famously handed theproduction to Botnick and this is howBruce remembers it. “It’s well publishedthat we had gone into Sunset SoundRecorders to try and rekindle the flame.Paul had just finished producing JanisJoplin’s album Pearl and was on a high.During rehearsals for LA Woman, the guyswere lackadaisical and didn’t want to bedirected and told what to do; they neededa collaborated experience. About an hourinto the session, Paul put his head in hishands and said to me, ‘I can’t do this. It’snot gonna work. You can do it, you knowthem, you’re close to them. I’m outtahere. I love everybody but I’ll probably domore harm than good.’ He recognisedthat. So we all went out to dinner at MuLing, a Chinese restaurant about half ablock away from the studio. After dinnerwe came back to the studio without Paul,a bit stunned. They said, ‘What’ll we do?’I said ‘You guys like your rehearsal hall?’‘We love it there!’ ‘Great I’ll get somegear, we’ll set it up and record the albumthere.’ They loved it.”

For Bruce and The Doors it felt like afresh new buzz though reminiscent of thefirst album sessions. “The only thing I cancompare it too is when I got out of schoolfor summer vacation; ‘Yay, I’m free!’ Itwas one of those moments.” This was theband’s wholehearted immersion in theblues that originally fuelled them and acommunal way of working that producedimmortal epics ‘Riders On The Storm’and the monumental title track. Bothsounded like freeway driving anthems, I

z z

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“At the same time I was doing The Doors,Beach Boys and Love. I was in bliss. I wasn’tmarried at that time. MY STUDIO WAS MY

WOMAN. I‘D SLEEP THERE. Luckily, they had a shower!”

Robby, Ray and Jim recording Strange Days

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ventured toRay Manzarek– and heagreed! “Yeah,it was kind of

like driving music. It’s funny you shouldmention those two songs because theywere like a new way of writing. We alljust played in the studio and those songsjust happened. We were just foolingaround playing ‘Ghost Riders In The Sky’and suddenly Jim starts coming up with‘Riders On The Storm’. It just kind ofhappened spontaneously.”

“‘Riders On The Storm’ was created atthe studio,” illuminates Bruce. “Theyalways used to mess with ‘Ghost Riders InThe Sky’ and that became the influence.Jim basically had his lyrics and melody.It’s the way all The Doors’ songs cametogether; he came in with lyrics andwould hum a song and they would workout an arrangement. The four of themtogether – womp, a song. That song hadbeen fiddled with for a year or two butnever really became anything until wewere in the studio.

“We were recording ‘Riders’ and all ofa sudden Jim goes ‘Hey, we should haverain and thunder on this, it’ll be great!’ Itkind went over everybody’s head but,come time to mix, I grabbed the Elektrasound effects album that Jac Holzman hadrecorded of rain and thunder in NewYork City, put it on a tape machine, hitrecord and just played it wild. Thethunder came at the appropriate points,without me planning it. When the song

finished, I stopped the mix, rewound therain and thunder and music and, notknowing where things were gonna come,they all came in at the right place. Then Iedited the mix together. LA Womanallowed The Doors to get back to thatpoint of being reactive and not pre-meditated; the old adage: don’t think, it’sdangerous; and it’s true.”

Jim now made that last trip to Paris inFebruary ’71 and died mysteriously in theearly hours of July 3rd. Ray still soundedpuzzled and saddened 36 years later.“When he said, ‘I’m going to Paris’, Ithought, excellent, an American in Paris.Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, HenryMiller, Jim Morrison. Carry on theAmerican tradition. Leave the groupies,leave the drinking buddies, go to Paris,refresh yourself and start writing. Jim waswriting as fast as he could, working upsome strong ideas. I have a lot of the stuff.Some of it’s very, very good. But there’s asense of despair in there too. It’s like, Jim?What the fuck man? This is my buddyfrom film school. When we put a bandtogether on the beach in Venice he sangthe songs to me and I said, ‘That’s brilliant,let’s get a rock ’n’ roll band together. We’regoing all the way with this thing. TheBeatles, the Stones, in between are goingto be The Doors!’ We got to MadisonSquare Garden and had the #1 song inAmerica. Yet in the writings in Paris therewas this note of despair. It was like, ‘Whatdo you have to despair over?’ And I don’tknow the answer. There was somethingeating at Jim. Some problem on the inside

that was unresolved. It caused him todrink, I’m sure, and God knows what hewas into in Paris.”

At 68 in 2007, Ray still felt passionatelythat The Doors had a place in the 21stcentury and was playing that immortalmusic with Robby for a new generation.“Just the young people walking the streetthinking, ‘Where did I come from? Whyam I here? What am I doing with my life?I know some day I’m gonna die, where doI go after I die?’ Hopefully we can helpyou along with those questions; the ideaof freedom and that you can find afreedom for yourself in The Doors’ lyricsand music.”

In 2013, Ray left us and joined his oldfriend Jim, leaving Krieger and Densmoreeventually reconciling old differences andBruce Botnick to uphold The Doors’towering legacy. He’s just finished re-mastering the 1970 IOW show with alegendary Copenhagen concert andsecond Matrix set to come.

Listening to The Doors’ astonishingsupernatural flights and talking to theirtelepathic earthly studio emissary half acentury after they first manifested, Ray’simpassioned “Y’know, sometimes magicdoes happen” resonates louder than ever,as does his later musing about meeting Jimon the beach; “Maybe there were someangels pulling it all together that day.”

Strange Days: 50thAnniversary Expanded Edition

and The Doors: The Singles are outnow on Rhino

The Doors with a young rider onthe storm, ’69; the ’71 single;their last with Jim Morrison

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