Paul says: This is the eighth and final album from the 1969 Toronto Rock and Roll Revival. This one stars the Doors.I've already discussed some thing about the Doors and their role in this festival in my write-ups for previous albums. For instance, I've mentioned how the festival's main promoter John Brower got desperate when he saw that the 1950s stars he'd booked for the festival weren't selling many tickets. In desperation, he decided to spend $25,000 to hire the Doors to be the headlining act. In order to do this, he resorted to borrowing the $25,000 from a man named Edjo, who was the leader of a biker gang. If the festival was a failure, he would be in fear of injury or even death.
Unfortunately, Brower made a big mistake in hiring the Doors, in terms of filling seats for the festival. In March 1969, the Doors' lead singer Jim Morrison was arrested in Miami, Florida for public indecency. Supposedly, he exposed his privates on stage. The other band members denied that, and it seems he only teased doing that. But there was a big backlash just the same. Many of their concerts were cancelled, and some of those that took place were poorly attended.
Luckily for Brower, the last minute surprise of John Lennon performing at the festival saved his hide. He had at least $110,000 in expenses, mainly paying the other acts (with the Doors costing the most), but he made about $150,000 in ticket sales. So he was able to pay Edjo back. In fact, Edjo and his biker gang, the Vagabonds, were delighted by what happened. About 100 bikers rode their motorcycles with the Doors from the airport to the stadium where the festival took place. Then, when Lennon arrived a few hours later, they did a motorcade for him as well.
As I mentioned in my write-up for Lennon's set, the emcee Kim Fowley had the brilliant idea of having everyone in the audience of 20,000 to hold up candles or lighters at the start of the set. This was apparently the first time this happened at a rock concert.
Brower later explained, "The only problem was that the bikers figured, 'Well that shit is okay for John Lennon, but we need to welcome the Doors with something real.' The next thing we knew, they had broken open a broom closet, took out all the sweeping brooms, took the fuel out of their Zippo lighters, torched them, and came out in front of the stage. You have to realize, Jim Morrison had a very powerful male personality and presence, so the bikers related to the Doors. They certainly weren't Beatles fans. It was absolutely nuts."
As I also mentioned in a previous write-up, the Doors got to the festival several hours before they were due to perform, so they spent most of that time watching the other musical acts from the side of the stage. Many of these acts were the 1950s rock stars that the members of the Doors idolized when they were kids, and they were very impressed by what they saw and heard.
As a result of all that, Morrison made a unique speech for him during the early part of "The End." He very rarely bantered between songs, but he wanted to say something about the festival. Here are his comments: "I can remember when rock and roll first came on the scene, and for me, it was a very liberating experience because it burst open whole new strange catacombs of wisdom that I couldn't remember and I didn't know about, and I couldn't see any equivalent for in my surroundings. And that's why, for me, this evening has been really a great honor to perform on the same stage with so many illustrious musical geniuses."
D.A. Pennebaker was making a documentary about the festival, which was later released as the movie "Sweet Toronto." But Morrison refused to allow Pennebaker's film crew to record the Doors' set. In all likelihood, he was very cautious about recordings in the wake of the Miami incident earlier in the year. Already, he was looking to spend six months in prison. (He died in 1971 before the legal dispute could be resolved.) If some disaster happened on stage and it got recorded, he could have been in even more trouble.
Unfortunately, it seems most of the excellent audio recordings of the concert were due to the recording work of Pennebaker's film crew. Since they didn't film the Doors, there's no soundboard-level audio recording of it either. Instead, all we have is an audience bootleg. But luckily, it's a pretty decent one, as audience bootlegs go. Furthermore, I used some of my usual tricks to improve the sound. I used the MVSEP program to get rid of all the crowd noise during the songs, while keeping the cheering at the ends of songs. I also used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost the vocals relative to the instruments, since that needed help. I think it sounds a lot better now.
The music here is unreleased. As I said above, the sound is pretty good, but not great.
As far as the quality of the band's performance, here's what band member John Densmore later had to say about that. "I mean, you know, John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band walked out on stage and it was the biggest roar of the century and we're supposed to follow this group? Kim Fowley introduced us and we played the best we could. In my opinion, we were fine. We weren't great. We weren't lousy. We were fine. But everyone was so in awe of the Mop Top [Lennon]. It was great."
The band mostly played their concert staples. However there was one surprise in the fact that while they were in the middle of playing "Back Door Man," Morrison sang some of the lyrics to the song "Roadhouse Blues." He even sang a little bit of another song, "Maggie M'Gill." Both those songs would be released on the band's next album, "Morrison Hotel," released in 1970. In a couple other 1969 concerts they played little snippets of those songs, but they wouldn't be played in full until early 1970.
As far as the festival as a whole, promoter John Brewer's original idea was to highlight 1950s rock stars like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and so on, who had largely been forgotten. He believes the festival was a success in that respect, saying, "Word went out about how great their performances were, which helped them enormously." Indeed, this was the start of a wave of nostalgia for 1950s rock and roll that would peak in the 1970s with retro bands like Sha Na Na and retro movies like "American Graffiti."
This album is 56 minutes long.
01 When the Music's Over (Doors)
02 Break On Through [To the Other Side] (Doors)
03 Back Door Man - Roadhouse Blues - Back Door Man (Doors)
04 The Crystal Ship (Doors)
05 Wake Up (Doors)
06 Light My Fire (Doors)
07 The End (Doors)
The Cover art:
Paul adds:
As mentioned above, this performance by the Doors wasn't filmed. But surprisingly, it seems there are next to no photos from it either. I only found one, and that was blurry and generally bad. However, there is some photo and video of the band members back stage. I found a photo of Morrison watching the festival stage from the side and decided to use that as the closest decent thing I could find. Unfortunately, the photo was taken while the sun was still out and the band played when it was dark. So I used Photoshop to darken the image, and especially darken the sky in the background. So at least this gives you a good idea of what Morrison was looking like (he'd recently shaved his beard off) and a bit of what he was wearing.
