THE DOORS' "MORRISON HOTEL" LP: RECORDING SESSIONS AND JAIL

 

The Doors had just overcome the most difficult year for the band's balance and very existence.

From autumn 1968, when they returned to California after their European tour, until summer 1969, artistic and personal disagreements between Jim Morrison and the other band members had threatened to bring an end to their extraordinary musical journey (which had begun three years earlier).

The more relaxed atmosphere surrounding the quartet in October–November 1969 encouraged a return to the recording studio, marking the end of the recent adversities.

However, some problems persisted and demanded urgent solutions. Chief among these was the lack of sufficient material to complete the group's fifth album.

As the recording studio work progressed, mostly in November 1969, it soon became clear that the available songs needed to be supplemented substantially in order to reach the required length for an LP.

The newly composed tunes, added to those developed during the sessions themselves, would suffice for approximately one side of the record.

These compositions included "Peace Frog", "Blue Sunday", "Ship of Fools", "Land Ho!", "The Spy" and "Maggie M'Gill".

With some tour dates in support of the album already arranged, the tyranny of time and the relentless pace of the record market began to weigh heavily on the four musicians.

Some original tracks that were almost fully arranged were also shelved for inexplicable artistic or commercial reasons, which was particularly disappointing given that "L’America", "Universal Mind" and "Someday Soon" were excluded.

To succeed in finishing what would shortly thereafter become 'Morrison Hotel', the solution chosen was therefore to draw on the past.

The backwards approach taken by The Doors to unearth unused tunes initially yielded two songs that had been rehearsed in spring of that same year, during the recording of The Soft Parade (the band's album released in July 1969, only four months before the Morrison Hotel sessions).

Among the tracks omitted from “The Soft Parade” were "Roadhouse Blues", which had remained at the demo stage with the vocal line temporarily sung by keyboardist Ray Manzarek, and "Queen of the Highway".

The search for suitable songs to fill the remaining minutes continued, delving into spring 1968 and uncovering 'Waiting for the Sun', a composition that, as its title suggests, originated from the The Doors' third LP sessions.

The leap back in time that followed was both the last and the most resounding. The quartet and their producer, Paul Rothchild, considered material produced as far back as 1966, that is before the group's outstanding vinyl debut ("The Doors", released in January 1967).

From this period, the first half of '66, two songs attributable to Jim Morrison were selected: "You Make Me Real" and the splendid "Indian Summer".

This process of sifting through the band's recent past resulted in "Morrison Hotel" becoming a combination of three musical genres: rock, blues and psychedelic rock.

Furthermore, despite its high overall quality, the album's variety of tunes from different years makes it even more heterogeneous.

The market responded relatively positively (4th in the US and 12th in the UK), while critics praised the LP for its numerous episodes of great beauty and rare originality (above all, "Peace Frog", "Ship of Fools" and "Indian Summer").

In addition to the scarcity of new tracks, an insidious and reckless setback involving singer Jim Morrison occurred during the recording sessions for 'Morrison Hotel'.

On 11 November 1969, he decided to take a short break to see the Rolling Stones perform live in Phoenix, Arizona.

It was a tempting trip (who could resist seeing the Stones live in 1969?!), but it was completely disrupted by an impulsive gamble that soon turned into an annoying twist in the singer's personal life.

A two-hour flight separated Los Angeles, where The Doors were based, from Phoenix, where the concert was being held. One hundred and twenty minutes that would prove to be fatally decisive.

After getting badly drunk with friends before boarding, the frontman disturbed other passengers and staff during the flight. He was arrested for public drunkenness and assault once the plane landed in Phoenix. This was all the more problematic given that it was a commercial flight.

This also meant that he was unable to see the Rolling Stones live during one of the best years of their career. By the way, this was the same tour that less than a month later would take the Stones to the tragic Altamont Free Concert in California.

Although Morrison was released on bail immediately after his arrest, the subsequent trial dragged on for months, adding to the legal issues he was already facing after the Miami concert on 1 March 1969.

In spring 1970, the most serious charges were dropped and a fine resolved the Phoenix case.

By that time, the 'Morrison Hotel' LP had been released in February 1970, and The Doors were in the midst of a US tour in support of the album.

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