THE DOORS AND NEW YORK CITY: A DEEP AND EXITING RELATIONSHIP
New York City has played a central role in the history
of modern and contemporary music.
From the earliest forms of recording, which became
available in appreciable quality in the 1910s, it has established itself as a
dazzling backdrop for many musical genres, groups, and artists.
For The Doors too, this chaotic and stimulating city
was highly relevant: the resulting relationship took on the eager, attractive,
and passionate contours of an uninterrupted and intense love affair.
From the first exciting glares of their career, in
1966, to 1970, New York has always been a place for the quartet to take
adventurous artistic steps and expand their sound horizons on the skyline of
America's largest metropolis.
Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John
Densmore made several trips to the Big Apple and the state of which it is the
capital.
For the purposes of this article, we will focus only
on those that took place in the city's metropolitan area, leaving out the many
trips the band made to communities in its immediate vicinity (such as the
infamous New Haven show).
Taking this distinction into account, we can count ten
different occasions (over a period of three years and three months) in which The
Doors participated in the musical life of New York City headlining concerts.
The Doors' visits to this city shaken by bitter
contradictions and evocative consonances mark the evolution of the
California-based band during the second half of the 1960s, as separate but
interconnected episodes of the same narrative.
Let’s take a look, in chronological order, at the
unraveling of The Doors' relationship with New York, an intimate bond which
flows under the gaze of a noisy and restless society.
October 24 - November 27, 1966
The Californian group first encountered the metropolis
in the fall of 1966, shortly after the recording of their first enchanting
album ("The Doors", recorded in August 1966).
The four, still unknown outside California, were hired
for most of November at a small underground venue called "Ondine".
This prolonged immersion in an artistic and human
context quite different from the West Coast would lead to an expansion of the
band's talent, already demonstrated on vinyl but yet to be fully expressed
live.
The first contact with New York City helps The Doors
refine their repertoire in front of a culturally different audience than that
of their hometown Los Angeles, allowing them the invaluable experience of giving
numerous stage performances in a stimulating and cosmopolitan environment.
March 13 - April 2, 1967
The U.S. release of the band's first album and first
single, both landed on the market in January 1967, did not bear the desired
fruit.
So, the residency at the "Ondine" in New
York is repeated, both for promotional purposes and for lack of more
prestigious engagements.
About twenty more days devoted to the dissemination of
an increasingly intellectual and original music, capable of captivating the
listener's senses and deeply affecting his imagination.
The big city that welcomed these guys in its crowded
meanders that spring could not help but pleasantly observe the genius of the
band boldly surfacing among its endless expanse of steel, concrete, dazzling
lights and raging desires.
As soon as they got back to L.A. The Doors began
recording their wonderful second LP: "Strange Days".
June 11 - July 1, 1967
We are now halfway through the sessions that will
produce "Strange Days" when a single from the previous record,
"Light My Fire" (in its abbreviated version), is climbing the U.S.
charts.
The growing sales of the song and the resulting growing
fame rapidly increase the demand for live performances by the band.
The decision is made to stop recording "Strange
Days" in order to accept twenty more days of concerts at various venues on
the East Coast.
These included the Village Theatre (which in 1968
would become the famous Fillmore East) and The Scene, both well-known New York locations
attended by innovative music enthusiasts.
From the underground alleys of the Big Apple, in whose
shadows The Doors' music had moved until a few months earlier, the group now
moved on to more famous stages and larger audiences.
A leap forward that opens the best phase of the
expressiveness that the group lavished on stage and beyond.
August 12, 1967
"Light My Fire" had just topped the US
charts a few days earlier (on July 29). The now hugely popular single took the
quartet on a series of highly attended concerts that coincided with the final
phase of the "Strange Days” recording sessions.
Among them, The Doors play a single, well-received
show at a stadium in the Queens borough of New York City, gaining widespread
notoriety.
The band makes the city the ideal companion for an
intoxicating musical toast: in the glasses raised in the August sun, a more
than deserved success glitters.
September 9, 1967
"Strange Days" is now completed (it will be
released on September 25th) and the group returns to the Village
Theatre, where they performed earlier in the summer.
Greeted with interest by the critics and with wild
euphoria by the boys and girls of New York, The Doors had now fully developed
their psychedelic cocktail of two exciting ingredients: rock and theater.
They served this electrifying drink to a city that was
ready to reciprocate its surprising taste exposing geometric perspectives, on
whose lively streets the sound innovations distilled by the provocative
creativity of the four Californian boys brashly stood out.
November 24, 1967
Two and a half months apart is a lot for two lovers,
and New York beckons The Doors back to renew a feeling that is not only
reciprocal, but generative of new musical possibilities.
The band confidently mastered a beguiling,
unprecedented and revolutionary sound, which during this period’s concerts was
further embellished by Morrison's subversive intemperance.
On the stage of a city college, a physical and
spiritual attraction that had already been established in 1967 was confirmed.
The band and the city embraced each other in a sensual
and fruitful embrace: on the one hand, the artistic peak of musicians with few
equals; on the other, the unpredictable evolutions of a place that was evolving
at great speed, dragging along with it the part of American society that was
most alert to the warnings of the future.
March 22-23, 1968
In 1968, the aforementioned Village Theatre changes
its name to Fillmore East. A legendary name that welcomed the band with the
atmosphere of poetic cultural revolt typical of this period of the 1960s.
The two unforgettable live performances by The Doors interpreted
the fears and hopes of an entire generation and concentrated their explosive
energy inside the edges of a city undergoing constant and rapid social change.
The rise to fame of the band in the United States is
condensed in this temple of music for a performance that was certainly
resounding, despite the absence of any available recording.
Here we are the most significant moment in the
relationship between New York and The Doors, a moment in which the band's excellent
musical and theatrical expression blends with the turmoil, anxiety, and
enthusiasm of an urban area filled with agitated thrusts, conflict, and
overwhelming modernity.
August 2, 1968
While the fruitful exchange between the city and the
band's art had been the main feature of the days spent in New York, this
concert marked a radical change.
The live show, held in Queens (Flushing Meadows), a
decentralized suburb of the vast New York metropolitan area, was in fact a
celebration of the steady fame The Doors had achieved (shortly after
"Hello I Love You" had reached No. 1 on the U.S. singles charts and
"Waiting For The Sun" had followed the same path on the album
charts).
From a vibrating training ground to be explored and
conquered, the city's skyscrapers became an imposing backdrop for a unrepeatable
gig in front of many thousands of people.
This historic live show, of which a quite eloquent footage
exists, celebrates the group's peak of success in a packed and turbulent
stadium.
An event that from this metropolis becomes a symbol of
the creative transgression propagated towards the American youth by The Doors'
eerie and magnificent musical vibes.
January 24, 1969
Five months after their last performance, many
elements in the life of this rock band had changed. We are at the most critical
point in the personal relationship between Morrison and the rest of the band.
In addition, the emergence of a series of questionable
songs and arrangements intended for the next album ("The Soft
Parade") exacerbated the singer's artistic discomfort.
Against this not ideal backdrop, the group landed in
New York for a very special concert: the majestic circle formed by the Madison
Square Garden.
A setting that did not suit Morrison, who preferred
medium-size venues and audiences, where the frontman found himself in front of
20,000 spectators, most of them at a considerable distance from the stage.
Despite the undeniable charm of this performance, the Madison
Square Garden became the setting of a celebration without any of the magic
woven over the past year and a half by the quartet's electric textures.
The sinuous, dazzling sound ritual enacted by the band
loses some of its incisiveness as it traverses the vast spaces that separate
musicians and audience in this famous facility.
This time, New York, deafened by the sparkling crowd
that had flocked to the concert, failed to communicate deeply with the band,
allowing celebrity to replace spontaneity, just like an animated but
superficial dialogue sometimes replaces what we really want to say to a loved
one.
January 17-18, 1970
Exactly one year after their last contact with the
city, The Doors return for two acclaimed nights at the Felt Forum (the only
live show they played in New York City that was properly recorded).
The musicians enjoy playing two concerts (first and
second show for each of the two dates) stretching themselves with noticeable
pleasure and abundant inventiveness.
The start of the tour in support of the upcoming
release of the "Morrison Hotel" LP thus begins where press and
spotlight can best illuminate the band's return to less elaborate atmospheres.
This is the disruptive and compelling musical farewell
to the city by the group, whose engaging sound paradigm still proves to be
captivating to the vast audience present.
A farewell to New York capable of leaving behind a
vivid and positive memory of the artistic and sentimental history between The
Doors and this frenetic agglomeration of buildings, crowds, fashions and
avant-gardes.
After Morrison
We end this path with a curiosity. After Jim
Morrison's tragic death on July 3, 1971, the band continued as a trio for two
more years.
The two albums released without their historic
frontman were accompanied by as many promotional tours, which also touched New
York: on November 23, 1971 (to promote the LP "Other Voices") and
August 21, 1972 (tour of the album "Full Circle").
The relationship between The Doors and the Big Apple
was, as we have seen, intense and frequent, with episodes of considerable
importance scattered like sparkling diamonds on dark velvet throughout the
artistic journey of this extraordinary group.
With its rough contradictions, its audiences thirsty
for experimentation and the relentless succession of novelties that
characterize it, this city could not but strongly attract the four musicians,
acting as a kaleidoscopic sounding board for the different periods of their musical
history.
Thanks to mildequator.com for the concert dates.
My book "The Doors Through Strange Days"- The most comprehensive journey ever made through The Doors' second LP, is available on Amazon.com, uk, mx, ca, etc.
Here’s the link:
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