In keeping with a couple of recent posts on the Doors (okay, so I started the first one), here's something.
March 1, 1969, inside a decrepit converted seaplane hanger in Coconut Grove, Miami. This is the show that was perhaps the pivotal beginning of the end for Jim Morrison and had him facing serious charges related to his alleged exposure of Little Jim. Jim showed up at the gig more drunk than usual and was totally out of it for the entire concert. The results are wince-producing, at best, and not much short of a full-on tragedy.
What a train wreck. Just listened to a tape of the show. Here's what I heard.
The tape starts with what sounds like the band tuning up, though they may have already done a jam that Jim failed to engage with."I'm not talking about no revolution. And I'm not talking about no demonstration. I'm talking about having a good time. I'm talking about having a good time this summer. Now y'all come to L.A. Y'all get out there. We're going to lie down there in the sand and rub our toes in the ocean and we're going to have a good time. Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready?" Repeating the last until it terminates in a series of screams.
The music starts and he shouts at the band to make it louder. He sings a bit of "Backdoor Man" and goes all freaky when the guitar solo is over with. Sounds like he's having fun, but I'm not sure who else was. He then improvises (as far as I know) some words"Hey, listen. I'm lonely. I need some love, you all. C'mon. " and so on, getting a laugh with "ain't nobody gonna love my ass?" He then calls for the 50 or 60 people way in the back, "who I didn't even notice," to come to the stage and "love my ass." Most of the song is taken up with him singing (sometimes even in tune) variations on "yeah." He expresses his disappointment in nobody coming up to love him and the band switches into "Five To One" ("nobody here gets out alive"), quite possibly to snap him out of it, hoping that the drum beats wake him up.
Jim sings "Five To One" pretty savagely and lasts until Robby Krieger comes in with a nice guitar solo. Jim follows with a high-pitched scream and then (maybe he's hurt that nobody came to love his ass) gets mean and yells out, angrily, "You're all a bunch of f***in' idiots." The audience certainly reacts to that one. "Let people tell you what you're gonna do. Let people push you around. How long do you think its gonna last? How long are you gonna let it go on? How long are you gonna let 'em push you around? How long? Maybe you like it. Maybe you like being pushed around. Maybe you love it. Maybe you love getting your face stuck in the sh**. C'mon." The drummer is going nuts now and I can just imagine what the band is thinking. "Maybe you love being pushed around. You love it, doncha. You love it. You're all a bunch of slaves. Bunch of slaves. You're all a bunch of slaves. Letting everybody push you around. What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it?" Again, he repeats that last sentence over and over. Lots of chatter in the audience by now. Jim's lost it.
Back to the song, and a nice guitar solo (thank goodness the rest of the band had it together that night). At some point in the show, Jim went to his knees in front of Robby Krieger as he played a guitar solo, a moment caught on film that would be part of the case against Jim -- Jim was supposedly just focusing on the playing but, of course, other possibilities occurred to some.
The song ends abruptly, to no discernible applause, and again Jim goes into another variant his recurring "I ain't talking about no revolution" sermon, that ended with "grab your f***in' friend and love him. C'mon"
The straight into "Touch Me," starting out off key and only getting a line and half into the song before yelling "Hey, wait a minute! Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Hey, wait a minute! This is all f***ed up! No, wait a minute! Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You blew it! You blew it! You blew it! Oh, c'mon! Wait a minute!
I'm not gonna go on!! Wait a...I'm not gonna take this sh**! I comin' out!" (or something like that...he's screaming like a deranged maniac by now and pretty hard to hear...if you recall Chef's blathering after meeting the tiger in
Apocalypse Now, fittingly enough, that's pretty much exactly what Jim sounded like by now) " "Now, wait a minute! Bullsh**!" The band bravely tries to keep the tune going in the background but finally end it in a flurry of frustrated drums. The tape's cut here, but at some point they go into the next song.
At least he finishes "Love Me Two Times," though he sounds disturbingly like a slightly less atonal version of Bob Dylan on it. Still, he does make it through with minimal silliness.
He then goes into "When The Music's Over," ad-libbing all sorts of weirdness along the way and then -- man, his band must have shuddered every time he began talking -- began going on about how he wanted to change the world and presented his plan for doing so (take over all the schools, "take over all the....." -- well, he sorta ran out of gas after that point). Lots of talking in the audience by now. They were not engaged, by the sound of it. The Doors were known for songs that never end (honestly, it
can get a bit much at times, at least from the perspective of non-druggie me) and this thing goes on, and on, and on, mostly vocal-free, for 22 minutes. I wonder if Jim's laying on the floor, because at some point from amidst the audience chatter comes a "come on, stand up." Of course, it could have been someone telling their friend to stand up so that they could leave, because I kinda doubt that it was for a standing ovation. Thirteen minutes into the song he asks a girl in the audience what she said and keeps asking her what she wanted -- I can imagine -- and then then the song sort of limps to an unspectacular ending that really isn't an ending, as he talks for most oft he rest of the 'song.' The only evidence that he's still on that song is a bass line that continues playing throughout.
"Cat says he no animal. What are you? What's your name, man? Has anybody...has anybody out there got a cigarette? Hey, I'm getting lonely up here -- I need some love." He then encourages those from the "fifty cents section" to get closer so that he can get some love. "You know, I was born here in this state, you know that? Yeah, I was born right here in Melbourne, Florida, 1943. I think they call it Cape..something, now...I don't know what they call it. Yeah, and then I left for a little bit and I came back and I went to a little junior college in St Petersburgh. You know where that is? Then I left there and went to a little college up in Tallahassee called FSU. You know, FSU. Then I got smart. And I went out to a beautiful state called, uh, California. Went out to a little city named
Los Angeles. Now, listen, I'm not talking about no revolution...." (back into the spoken bridge he'd been using since the show began)
"We want the world and we want it...heeeyyyyyy"
Well, that's over with. More --well, frankly, weird -- stuff follows.
The most controversial part, wherein Jim tells the audience he knows what they
really want to see and then does or does not expose himself, is cut from the tape.
Finally, into a pretty rough version of "Light My Fire." Starts out, at least, pretty much like a real song, though. The band's certainly doing their best, and they play a
long time while Jimbo's off doing whatever for at least seven minutes (there's a cut in the tape, so it's hard to tell). Yep, Jimbo's off-mic for almost the whole song. He's finally back and encouraging people to dance, telling them that there are no rules -- "do it." His next utterance is "I'd f*** her, but she's too young." He then encourages people to get up on the stage to dance. Not too long after, Jim remembers that he's a singer and (kind of) finishes the song, sometimes even (accidentally, perhaps) hitting the same key that the band was jamming in. After, he again encourages "action" and people getting up on stage, or doing "anything you want." "No limits, no laws...c'mon!"
The tape's cut again and the next voice we hear is the promoter telling people to settle down "or someone's going to get hurt." Next, Jim, after another tape cut: "All right, now, we're not going to leave until we get our rocks off..." and then the tape ends abruptly. Probably just as well.
Apparently, Jim ended the show by bodysurfing into the crowd, leading some of too-whacked-out-to-be-angry audience members in a conga train, and then adjourning to the balcony to watch the ensuing mayhem below. Not his finest hour (and five minutes).
All accounts indicate that most of the audience was not amused by the self-indulgence of Jim's shoddy performance, and his extreme drunkeness. They laughed (not WITH him, but AT him) at first, but that soon gave way to anger. The band, too, was reportedly fuming and their ire was apparent to all gathered (except, perhaps, to Jim himself).
He later said "I think I was just fed up with the image that had been created around me, which I sometimes consciously, most of the time unconsciously, cooperated with. It was just too much for me to stomach and so I just put an end to it one glorious evening."
He sure did.
Jim Morrison still put on some good shows after this date, but he'd lost the plot well and truly even before the Miami show. He himself said that he started out less physical and less outrageous in his stage presentation but that he had to be more active when he began playing to larger audiences, audiences who expected the full Jim Morrison action. He said that it got to the point of being grotesque. It was, at least on this night, and this was not the only time when Jim tried to incite a riot in preference to singing...to me, it looks like Jim was categorically rejecting his audiences' expectations and doing his best to undermine his own legend and celebrity while it was still fresh. It worked, too, and he actually angered his audiences. This concert, and others something like it, was an overt act of self-sabotage. It worked in the short-term, too, because the Doors couldn't get booked anywhere for a good while thereafter. In the longer term, the 1970 Miami trial ended with Jim facing jail time -- he was out on bail when he died in Paris at the age of 27.
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