Singer Bowl, Flushing Meadows, Queens, NY 2.8 1968
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1. Backdoor Man |
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2. Five To One |
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3. Break On Through |
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4. When The Music's Over/ |
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5. Vast Radiant Beach / Dawns Highway / The Royal Sperm / When The Music's Over |
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6. Wild Child |
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7. Wake Up/ |
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8. Light My Fire |
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9. The End |
Source: 1st gen. audience recording ("The End" is from another source)
Note's : This is a copy from the show at DCM, that i received some time ago.There are several boots around with this show, but most of them don't have "the end" which is included here.
Additional Information :
Also performing: The Who; The Kangaroo
Filmed for Feast Of Friends
Promotion: Gary Kurfist & Shelley Finkel
Capacity: 17,500
Exerpt from the book "The Doors On The Road"
by Greg Shaw.
Over the years there were numerous accounts of The
Doors provoking riots at their performances.
Some of these reports were clearly elaborate
embellishments perpetrated for the express purpose of interfering
with prospective performances at the venues.
Other bands, such as the Jimi Hendrix Experience,
found themselves engaged in the same controversy which was designed
to obstruct the flourishing enterprise of live concert appearances.
Wherever the truth resided, this issue raised a serious consideration: how to provide adequate security for maintaining a congenial atmosphere for all involved without arousing indignation from the audience or the performers.
At this time, however, Jim Morrison did not share the
concerns surrounding their public appearances.
In fact, he was intrigued by the mob mentality he had
observed at their and other bands' performances.
Aside from the exaggerated portraits of violence
surrounding other concerts, accounts of this performance were
undeniably valid.
From the outset, the concert on this dreadfully hot
and humid New York summer night had been plagued with difficulties.
The opening band was poorly received by an unruly
crowd impatient for the two main acts.
It was a year before The Who's rock opera
"Tommy" was released, and the band had yet to achieve
legendary status in the States.
Nevertheless, they were determined that the stage
set-up specifically accommodate their presentation and were adamant
that none of The Doors' equipment obstruct the stage.
During The Who's performance, the rotating stage had
broken down, leaving a section of the audience unable to adequately
see the band.
The Who put on a good, but not exceptional show, and exited the stage visibly annoyed. After their set, there was an hour-long interim before The Doors took the stage, and the delay further aggravated the already impatient audience.
As soon as The Doors appeared, they were greeted with
a thunderous assault of screaming fans and segments of the crowd
began rushing the stage.
A column of policemen were stationed at the front of
the platform to curtail this onrush of people, while Morrison
fiercely jostled his way through them to face the crowd.
The chaos escalated continuously during the
performance, with fights erupting throughout the Singer Bowl.
Morrison sang with a very precise and articulate
emphasis on the lyrics, and actually appeared to be substantially
more sober than the crowd he was facing.
Ellen Sander commented on the show's build-up in
Trips: "A good portion of the audience still couldn't see and
they were furious.
Crowds stormed the front of the stage and were turned
back by the police.
Some were trying to scale the stage and others cheered
them on.
Morrison spun around and ground the songs out
halfheartedly, ad libbing, improvising, doing an ominous dance.
Hysteria was building.
Morrison shrieked, moaned, gyrated, and minced to the
edge of the stage, hovering. Hands reached out and grabbed him and
the cops had to pry them away.
The camera crew ducked a piece of broken chair which
came flying onto the stage. Morrison caught it and heaved it back
into the crowd.
The Doors were hardly visible from any angle because
there were about twenty cops onstage." (Ellen Sander, Trips, New
York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1973)
By the time The Doors began to perform "The
End," the crowd was in an incredible uproar.
Morrison vainly attempted to "sssshhhh" the
audience, but there was no response and he began appealing to them.
"Hey, this is serious everyone! Get quiet man!
You're going to ruin the whole thing."
Following the opening stanzas of the song, Morrison drifted into a expansive passage of poetry, beginning with "Fall down now; strange Gods are coming." With decidedly steady pacing, he advanced through a series of poems until he unexpectedly burst in a scream of "Don't come here! Don't come in!" Proceeding from this flare-up into "Ensenada," Morrison was continually assailed with clamorous screams of "Morrison is King!" from the crowd.
He calmly began to recite the Oedipal section of the song, but when he paused at one significant part, the audience impatiently roared the delayed lyrics "he walked on down the hallway, baby!" The crowd momentarily became quiet again, until Jim reached the conclusion of the Oedipal section with "Mother, I want to..." and the Singer Bowl burst into pandemonium with the audience finishing the lyrics.
The band accelerated into the musical passage and
Morrison hit the stage, writhing in agony like the death knell of a
hideous serpent while the crowd went wild.
The instrumental passage climaxed with a horrendous
blood-curdling scream from Morrison, followed by Krieger's guitar set
on some wildly unrestrained echo.
By now no one remained seated in the crowd and the
police were forming a barricade in front of the stage.
The audience was defiantly screaming "Sit down,
cop!" as Krieger finished the song with a long trail of feedback.
Just before midnight, as The Doors concluded their performance, a horde of people began demolishing the wooden seating section in front and hurling portions of the the splintered benches at the stage.
The debacle turned into a complete riot when the crowd
charged the police barricade, forcing The Doors to abandon the stage
amidst a torrent of plummeting debris.
As the police struggled to regain control of the
crowd, Vince Treanor and the equipment crew desperately tried to
guard and defend their gear.
Peter Townshend, lead guitar player for The Who, observed the entire disturbance from the side of the stage and was both fascinated and appalled by Morrison's apparent indifference to the situation.
According to Who biographer Dave Marsh, it was Morrison's aloof and mystifying demeanor in the face of intensifying chaos that prompted Townsend to write The Who's composition "Sally Simpson."