THE DOORS AND THEM: A MUSICAL ENCOUNTER FROM 1966 TO '70

 

In the period leading up to the recording of The Doors' first LP in August 1966, the band built its repertoire around a series of Blues and Rhythm and Blues covers.

Gradually, a few original songs were added, and by the time the quartet arrived at the Whisky A Go Go in the summer of '66, the majority of the material was their own.

At the famous Los Angeles venue, the group, hired as the house band, finalized the dazzling rock tunes that would appear on "The Doors" album.

At the same time, the four young musicians had the opportunity to meet personally and artistically with a number of more famous and established ensembles (such as Love) that played the main show each night.

Prominent among these groups was Them, an Irish quintet that became known from 1964 to mid-'66 for a series of convincing Rhythm and Blues hits and albums with garage rock overtones.

The musical relationship developed between The Doors and Them, culminated in a pair of songs (including an extended version of Them's own "Gloria") that the two bands performed together onstage at the Whisky A Go Go in August 1966.

There are also several great photos of Jim Morrison and Van Morrison singing together, documenting this very moving moment.

Prior to this amazing night of music, Them's scratchy and swift style had already captured the Doors' imagination, becoming part of the array of covers that, as mentioned above, were part of their shows in the early stages of their career.

This is confirmed by the fact that the only available concerts from this period, the one at the London Fog (May 1966) and the one at the Matrix (March 1967), include two of Them's most famous and appealing songs, "Baby Please Don't Go" and "Gloria".

The release of these two tunes by Van Morrison & Co. had occurred simultaneously, dating back to the single (kept outside the albums) of November 1964: "Baby Please Don't Go" was its A-side (link here), while "Gloria" was the B-side (link here). It reached #10 in the UK and #122 in the US charts and was one of Them's biggest commercial successes.

At the London Fog in the spring of '66, The Doors played a version of "Baby Please Don't Go" (link here) that was very close to Them's version, which in turn was taken from Big Joe Williams' charming 1935 Country Blues (link to original composition here).

In the beginning, Jim Morrison's voice, not quite mature yet, urges the audience to dance ("C'come and dance somebody, let's go!"). In the background, the opening guitar riff of the song is outlined. That motive became distinctive thanks to Them's version and it is built playing the vocal line sung by Big Joe Williams in the 1935 song on the guitar.

The most notable element of this The Doors’ performance are the short solos that Krieger hatches by interspersing them between the various verse-chourus sequences.

Here, the guitar pushes outside the Rhythm and Blues canon to become vaguely psychedelic, influenced by what George Harrison of The Beatles (in "Norwegian Wood", October 1965) and Roger McGuinn of The Byrds (in "Eight Miles High", January 1966) had experimented with the sitar and 12-string electric guitar respectively.

Fast forward just under a year, to March 1967, and we find the first available version of "Gloria" which is played at The Matrix. By this time, The Doors had released the first single and LP in their discography, but without any significant commercial success.

Again, the cover we can hear (link here) mirrors Them's pretty closely, except for one notable detail.

In fact, Jim Morrison, whose voice has since improved considerably in depth and expressiveness, intones some verses, probably improvised, supported by the background rhythm of the composition (listen from min. 2.03 to min. 2.50).

In this way, the first live recorded example of this splendid feature of the singer's nonconformist creativity takes on a suggestive form: poetry penetrates rock by covering itself with a mantle of sound at once lyrical and transgressive. A combination as unprecedented as it was revolutionary in the history of music.

The Doors would keep these two songs in their concert setlists until almost the end of their musical journey, with a nearly total hiatus that began in the summer of '67 and ended in 1969.

This interlude is due to the accumulation of outstanding songs written by the band that audiences wanted to hear live, while its end is due to a return to a less elaborate sound starting in the second half of '69.

So, after about two years, the band played both "Gloria" and "Baby Please Don't Go" again, mostly, but not only, as segments of extended medleys.

For example, the July '69 concert in Los Angeles features "Gloria" (link here) in a long version that represents the evolution of the song played in The Doors' '66 and early '67 concerts.

While we suffer from not being able to hear the August 1966 duet between the two Morrisons, fortunately there remain several recorded proofs of The Doors' appreciation for Van Morrisons’s Them and their punchy Rhythm and Blues.

P.S.: My book "The Doors Through Strange Days"- The most comprehensive journey ever made through The Doors' second LP, is out and available on Amazon.com, uk, mx, ca, etc.

Here’s the link:

Amazon – “The Doors Through Strange Days”