…prelude to this evening’s concert… “It may have been in pieces, but I gave you the best of me.”
~ Jim Morrison ~
You know, I’ve been doing this gig now on and off for some twenty-five years, and with the current band for ten years. It’s no easy job stepping into someone’s shoes and filling their space, especially someone like Jim Morrison. I try my best to slip into the spirit of his better performances, which due to the nature of the beast, were sometimes rather sporadic, and recreate that sense of danger and mystery and the ass kicking music that were the magic of Doors concerts in the late 1960’s.
When I first walk out on stage there is always the feeling that, along with my fellow musicians, there is another presence behind me on the stage, something watching in the shadows, and waiting. Waiting to throw a cloak of pent up energy over me. And when I open my mouth to sing, it’s almost as if another voice surges out, a voice that pulls me along on a wild roller coaster ride through a repertoire of sound and feeling that leaves me exhausted and drained by concert’s end. And as the applause after the last encore fades and the curtain falls I feel that I have shared a certain communion with whatever it is that recedes back into the shadows until conjured up again at the next venue. There’s not much money to be made in music these days, but the reward here is something so much more than monetary. It is a feeling of satisfaction, of having once again felt a bond that goes back something just shy of 50 years, when I first brought home the Doors’ debut album and let their music into my life. And I think to myself as I head to the dressing room, we pulled it off again Jim, thanks. Now, let’s see, I need another beer and where have all those teenage groupies gone…?
Photo taken sometime in the early 1990’s at a concert in the Cafe Cicero in Wiesbaden, Germany.
Tonight’s concert, a double bill: Henderson Plays Hendrix and The Changeling present The Doors Absolutely Live!
Hendrix and Morrison. Jimi and Jim. It doesn’t get better than that. If you’re in the area , drop on by…
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