A HUGE campaign has been launched to celebrate The Doors' 60th Anniversary ...
From Shore Fire Media ...
The Doors Celebrate 60th Anniversary In 2025
The Doors 1967-1971 6-LP Set - Latest
Installment in Label’s Acclaimed High Fidelity Audiophile Vinyl
Series
The Doors - Live in Detroit - Arrives On
4-LP Vinyl For the First Time Ever For Record Store Day’s Black
Friday
The Doors Anthology Book Night Divides The
Day Available Now For Pre-Order
RIAA Officially Certifies 12 of The Doors’
Singles Multi-Platinum, Platinum & Gold
Much More to Come as The Doors Break On
Through To 2025
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Tuesday, October 8th 2024 - In the Summer
of 1965, Ray Manzarek had a chance encounter on Venice Beach
with Jim Morrison, a young poet whom he knew when they were
both students at UCLA’s film school. Jim told Ray he had been living
on a friend’s rooftop writing songs. Though Morrison had never
intended to be a singer, he sat down on the beach and sang the new
songs to Ray, including “Moonlight Drive.” Manzarek thought they were
the best rock and roll lyrics he ever heard. At that moment, they
both agreed to start a rock band and call it The Doors, taking
their name from Aldous Huxley’s psychotropic monograph The Doors
of Perception and William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and
Hell. Guitar player Robby Krieger and drummer John
Densmore, who’d played together in the Psychedelic Rangers, were
recruited soon thereafter. After months of rehearsals, they landed a
gig as the house band at a small Sunset Strip club called the London
Fog. By May 1966, they had graduated to their dream gig – house band
at the Whisky a Go Go. Soon after, Elektra Records president Jac
Holzman and producer Paul A. Rothchild saw the band performing at the
Whisky and signed The Doors to the label. Over the course of a week,
The Doors recorded their debut album at Sunset Sound Recording
Studios in Hollywood, putting on tape the songs they had been playing
night after night at the Whisky. With an intoxicating,
boundary-pushing sound, provocative and uncompromising lyrics, and
mesmerizing stage presence, The Doors would go on to have a
transformative impact on both music and culture.
Beginning next month, The Doors will kick off the 2025
60th Anniversary with a new anniversary logo, a series of
physical releases, an extraordinary anthology book, and much more to
come.
The Doors 1967-1971 6-LP set
will arrive as the latest installment in Rhino’s acclaimed High
Fidelity audiophile vinyl series on November 22nd, featuring
all six of the band’s original studio albums cut from the original
analog master tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearant Audio. The vinyl was
pressed at Optimal Media and the box includes a heavyweight gatefold
jacket featuring rare photos and liner notes by Doors archivist David
Dutkowski. Only 3,000 copies of the limited-edition set will be
available exclusively at thedoors.com and rhino.com.
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Additionally, for Record Store Day’s Black
Friday on November 29th, The Doors will release The
Doors – Live in Detroit, featuring the band’s
performance from the Cobo Arena in Detroit, Michigan on May 8, 1970.
This 4-LP set will be available on vinyl for the first time. Captured on tape during the band's 1970 US tour,
it was one of the band's longest performances. In fact, the band
played for an hour past curfew and were then banned from the Cobo
Arena on future tours. The fiery set includes a number of Blues
covers, including "Back Door Man," Junior Parker's
"Mystery Train," and "Crossroads" by Robert
Johnson. The Doors also tear through a 17-minute-plus version of
"The End," as well as an over 19-minute version of
"Light My Fire" and other rare tracks such as "Love
Hides." This collection captures the band at their absolute
zenith. |
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The Doors’ eponymous debut album - which the BBC
and Rolling Stone have each hailed as one of the greatest
debuts of all time - released in January 1967 and features the
chart-topping smash-hit “Light My Fire,” the bluesy, growling “Back
Door Man” and seminal live-set showstopper “The End,” with its
legendary Oedipal spoken word section. | |
Having cemented their place in the rock pantheon
and the psychedelic rock revolution, The Doors returned to the studio
resulting in the anticipated follow-up, Strange Days, which
went to number three on the US Billboard 200 and featured “Love Me
Two Times” and “People Are Strange.”
In 1968, the band released Waiting for the Sun,
their first number one album featuring the chart-topping single
“Hello, I Love You,” along with “Love Street” and “Five to
One.”
The Doors then dove further into uncharted
psychedelic territory with 1969’s string and horn-laden album The
Soft Parade, which included the Krieger-penned hit “Touch Me.”
1970’s Morrison Hotel, which boasts
fan favorites “Roadhouse Blues” and “Peace Frog,” took the band back
to its bluesy roots. 1971’s L.A.Woman, the band’s final album
with Morrison and recorded in the band’s rehearsal space, features
“Riders on the Storm,” “Love Her Madly” and the title track.
During their brief time together, The Doors
delivered six studio albums before Morrison’s untimely death in Paris
in 1971. Their electrifying achievements in the studio and onstage
remain unmatched in the annals of rock, and today they remain as one
of the best-selling bands of all time with over 100 million records
sold worldwide.
In 1993 the band was inducted into the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame. Several years later, the songs “Light My Fire” and
“Riders on the Storm” along with The Doors’ debut album were inducted
into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The Library of Congress also recognized
the band, selecting their self-titled album for inclusion in the
National Recording Registry in 2014. The Doors also received a Grammy
Lifetime Achievement Award and a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
in 2007.
Created to commemorate the upcoming 60th
anniversary, The Doors’ first-ever complete anthology book Night
Divides the Day will illuminate the band’s archives like
never before with rare photography, intimate interviews with Robby
Krieger and John Densmore, and meticulously sourced archival text
from Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek. With unlimited access granted by
the band, Night Divides the Day includes a unique collection
of historical ephemera – including childhood photos, song lyrics,
poster artwork, movie stills, and much more – which adds context to
the wealth of rare photography that documents the band’s musical
odyssey.
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Joining Robby and John are a host of contributors,
with a foreword by Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic, and afterword by
maestro Gustavo Dudamel. The anthology is presented in a
limited-edition of only 2,000 numbered box sets, each hand-signed by
Densmore and Krieger. Each set includes the 344-page signed edition,
a 7” vinyl record with rare demos of “Hello, I Love You” and
“Moonlight Drive,” and other assorted historical memorabilia.
Available for pre-order now and shipping early 2025.
Stay tuned for more news coming soon from The
Doors and Rhino this year, and as the 60th Anniversary kicks off in
the new year.
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kk:
During July, 1995, in East Hollywood at the MET Theatre on
Oxford Avenue, I produced and co-curated with director Darrell Larson and
associate producer Daniel Weizmann a month-long Rock and Roll in
Literature series.
Ray Manzarek, John Densmore and Robby Krieger reunited and
played “Peace Frog,” “Love Me Two Times” and “Little Red Rooster” on July 8th.
Kirk Silsbee read from Art Pepper’s Straight Life, John
Densmore did an entry from his new novel, and Michael Ontkean recited Ode
to L.A. by Jim Morrison.
At the time I told Weizmann, now an acclaimed novelist, we
will be talking about the Doors in 30 years.
In 2024, he emailed me about the Doors and their enduring
and endearing legacy.
“In ‘79, on a rare broadcast series called Album Greats,
Ray Manzarek told L.A. radio station KLOS-FM that ‘Once you see where you stand
in relation to eternity, making pop songs for AM radio seems a little
inconsequential.
“The Doors at the Hollywood Bowl went down only 35 months
after the Beatles August, ‘65 appearance, but it represents a complete passage
from innocence to experience. That the Dionysian Princes of Experience also
happened to be local dudes just makes it that much more thrilling. I mean, who
drove them home after the show? Did they hitch a ride after they recaptured the
High Temple of Electric Sound? Or did they get into their own cars and reenter
the river of motel neon, traffic, and the throbbing AM radio with its songs
about lollipops and peppermints?
“Hollywood psychedelia was always a strange Janus-faced
animal -- part freak out, part show biz, part burlesque, part teenybopper a go
go -- but even by these anti-standards the Doors stood apart ... from their
peers, their audience, even from each other as they jammed choppy organ jazz
and broken poetry in the shadows. They weren’t folkies. They weren’t loveniks.
They weren’t even blues fanatics, not really.
“Onstage at the Hollywood Bowl, with all the power in the
world to move the crowd, they refuse play to a single trope of ‘the performing
artist,’ not even good will. At one point, Jim asks them for requests
half-heartedly, then ignores them, and chides ‘No -- you do something,’ as if
the pop star game is wearing on him. Then they burrow down into the swirling
music and reach for pitch darkness, precisely where another performer would hog
the spotlight -- they literally beg to cut the lights. They were ready for
eternity.”
HK
Photo of Jim Morrison by Henry Diltz, Courtesy of Gary
Strobl at the Diltz Archive.
Photo of Harvey Kubernik and Ray Manzarek by Heather
Harris.
All other images courtesy of Rhino.
NOTE: A longer, much more in depth profile of The Doors, written by Harvey Kubernik, is also available by email by request ... let me know if you'd like me to send you a copy. (kk)
