THE DOORS: LIVE AT THE ISLE OF WIGHT FESTIVAL 1970
Unseen footage of LA’s Freudian bluesmen.
RAY MANZAREK had a good line about The Doors’ show at the 1970 Isle Of Wight Festival. “We played with a controlled fury,” he said. “Jim sang for all he was worth but moved nary a muscle. Dionysus had been shackled.” Manzarek isn’t the only one with a metaphor for the occasion. Drummer John Densmore, reflecting on the show ahead of its imminent DVD release, says the band were “like boiling soup with the lid on”. This is the last Doors concert to have been filmed, but it’s never previously been released. now restored and remixed, it’s accompanied by a short documentary,
This Is The End, featuring archive footage and new interviews conducted by original director Murray Lerner.
The Doors hit the stage at 2am on August 30, 1970, fortified against the cold night by peppermint schnapps thoughtfully provided by Roger Daltrey. There were around 600,000 fans in attendance, and lord knows what some of them made of The Doors’ lighting – a solitary bright red spotlight that bathed the band in a scarlet glow, like something from an Antonioni film. The colour befits the mood. Morrison is bearded and heavy, standing static for much of the show, glued to his microphone. Around him, the band whip up chaos, but all the movement is in the music. At times, the only motion comes from Manzarek’s head, as he bobs over the keyboard like Schroeder, the piano player in Peanuts.
The film begins by placing the concert in a historical context: in March 1969, a drunken Morrison had created a scene at a gig in Miami that ended with him facing charges of indecent exposure and obscenity. Gigs had been cancelled across America. The band arrived at the third Isle Of Wight festival with the court case, and a possible three years inside, still hanging over Morrison’s head. They never recovered their momentum. This isn’t quite their last show, but it’s as good as.
The Isle Of Wight show therefore anticipates the pressure that would end up destroying the band. They start with the straightforward bluesy “Back Door Man”,
but Morrison’s lack of animation is an immediate feature. Songs are largely taken from early albums, as the band seem to be seeking a time before Miami. On “Break On Through”, the band find their groove, while Morrison throws his energy into the vocal, morose but never unengaged.
The set lurches into a different mood with the intense “When The Music’s Over”. The colour palate returns to normal – this was one of two Doors songs to feature in Message To Love, Lerner’s film of the festival – but it’s the content of the lyric (“Music is your only friend/Until the end”) that brings the pathos and sense of impending tragedy, exaggerated by Morrison’s earnest delivery. “What have
they done to our fair sister?” he shouts, followed by complete silence, then a howling scream and Robby Krieger’s jagged guitar exploding out of the blackness. It should be cathartic but the tension remains unbearable, there’s no release, no joy. It’s pain followed by more pain. It’s scintillating, but there’s no solace or redemption.
“Ship Of Fools” offers respite, allowing the band to plug away at a chewy boogie, while the film cuts to scenes from the festival – sweeping shots of tents, fences, ferries and freaks, who sit like refugees on the hills. “Ship Of Fools” segues into “Roadhouse Blues”, before “Light My Fire” brings a cheer of recognition from fans. The long solos through the middle sections show how The Doors balanced their experimental and playful sides. Krieger even picks out the melody from “These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things” during one jam.
Then it’s the inevitable “The End”, which has to sustain a lot of drama over 20 minutes, with Krieger’s raga guitar, the swaying percussion, Morrison’s howls and closed-eyed crooning. It captures the essence of The Doors – the charisma of the frontman and the muscular subtlety of the yogic band, alive and respondent to his whims and fancies. The tension is broken by a midsection burst of “Crossroads”, bringing some groove and probably relief for the crowd, at least until Morrison starts screaming again before breaking into the nightmarish spoken-word rant of “The Celebration Of The Lizard”, with the band locked in a fearsome groove behind their leader.
Within months of Isle Of Wight, Morrison would have another breakdown and the band would stop performing as a live act. Less than a year later, Morrison would be dead.
Extras: 6/10 Featurette This Is The End and archival interview footage of Manzarek from 2002.