Disc Two - Live In New York

RECORDED LIVE AT MADISON SQUAKE GARDEN, NEW YORK, 1970

Roadhouse Blues 4:19

Written by The Doors. Published by Doors Music, Inc. (ASCAP)

Ray: Madison Square Garden. A monster venue in our favorite city. No audience on earth is more insane than New York City. Nor more enthusiastic, nor more intuitive, nor more intellectual. I love the people of that city. When we played NY we were home. You can hear how revved up and inventive we were on those four performances on that very exciting weekend.

Robby: There was a bar near The Doors' workshop on Santa Monica Boulevard that Jim and his friends would hang out at called The Roadhouse. One little known fact is that Lonnie Mack played bass on the studio version of 'Roadhouse'.

John: The groove on the two bridge sections ("Let it roll") is so deep, that the mud splattered half-way up our pant legs.

Ship Of Fools 5:20

Written by The Doors. Published by Doors Music, Inc. (ASCAP)

Ray: A rarely performed piece in person. I particularly love the bridge section - "Mr. Good Trips" - when we sit on the B chord and just ride that sucker. Then we repeat the jazz-like progression for solos; and a fine one here by Robby.. our genius guitar player. It's a walking bass line, vaguely Miles Davis' 'So What' progression - at least for my solo. I love Jim's "Thank you" at the end. Does he sound like Elvis, or what?

Robby: The first example of ecology rock. One more first for The Doors! Jim used book titles quite often for his songs.

John: Ecology rock before its time!

Peace Frog 3:15

Written by The Doors. Published by Doors Music, Inc. (ASCAP)

John: Most ridiculous title ever. What does it mean, Robby? Robby had an irresistible lick, Ray and I couldn't wait any longer for some words from Jim, so we cut it as an instrumental, and then Paul Rothchild performed a miracle by looking in Jim's notebooks and suggesting the lyrics.

Robby: An early attempt at dance music. When I play with my band around the USA, the most requested song is 'Peace Frog'.

Ray: Another rare treat, rarely performed, but when you're in New York, hell, anything goes. We were in the energy. And if you surrender to the energy it will support you and nourish you and heal you and enhance your creativity. All you have to do is step into it. It's always there just waiting for us to join it, because it is us. We are the energy and the energy is God and we are all one! That's L.S.D. talk. The oneness. That's what I discovered on acid.

Blue Sunday 2:27

Written by The Doors. Published by Doors Music, Inc. (ASCAP)

Ray: A real Frank Sinatra ballad. Jim wrote this one for Pam, his true love. They were like Romeo and Juliet, star-crossed, tragic and deeply in love. My God, they were volatile. They were a burning flame, too hot to touch, too incendiary to last, but what a brilliant light they created together. Jim is in especially personal voice here. You can hear him singing to Pam and Pam alone even though he was in front of thousands of people.

John: Frank Sinatra meets Carlos Castenada.

The Celebration Of The Lizard 17:18

Written by The Doors. Published by Doors Music, Inc. (ASCAP)

John: Another Doors long cut. It felt great to break the three-minute radio barrier with 'Light My Fire'. 'The End' was also on the first album, 'When The Music's Over', our third "epic", was on the second record- The Stones put out 'Goin' Home' (a ten minute cut), when we were writing our epics in rehearsal. The synchronicity made my eyebrows rise. Love followed our first album with 'Da Capo', another long cut, and we felt the high of influencing our peers.

I love coming down the rivers and highways to Carson and Springfield. Something touching, melancholy and nostalgic about this space. Ritualistic

Ray: A real Doors epic. Jim's intro shows his rapport with the audience. He always spoke to them like friends. He knew them. And we were all there, in Madison Square Garden, for the same reason. Fun! If you couldn't have fun at a Doors concert... well, there just wasn't any hope at all. But as you can hear, Jim would allow any "uncouth" remarks to be shouted out. In fact, he welcomed them. The band is especially hot on this version. We played our asses off. And Jim is in top form.

Robby: An excellent version of 'The Lizard'. Jim got an awful lot of shit for proclaiming himself the "Lizard King". But lie really loved lizards and snakes. He was serious about this. Many of his acid trips were very lizard-laden.

Gloria 7:14

Written by Van Morrison. Published by Unichappel Music.

Ray: Sensuous teen love. I see it as two high school seniors with a free afternoon in late April on a day that feels like the first rising of the heat. The Dionysian powers. Spring is lush and heavy in the air. Flowers in bloom. Warmth, sunlight. Love is in the atmosphere. Flesh. Passion. Sex. Lust. Rock and Roll.

John: All I can think of is playing this song with the author on stage at the Whiskey in '67. Two Morrisons, two guitars, two drums, two keyboards. The Doors meet Them.

Robby: John gut it.

Crawling King Snake 6:12

Written by John Lee Hooker. Published by Modern Music Publishing Co. Inc. (BMI)

Ray: The John Lee Hooker classic. Jim loved the blues - as we all did - and would have been happy to be a bar singer in a New Orleans crawfish, oyster and gumbo blues bar back in the mid-Fifties. The fates had another destiny in store for him, however. And that was Dionysian, with the crawling king snake as his scepter. Now, Dionysian does not mean drunken debauchery or a license to party. That's too simplistic. Too naive. That's Bacchus. Dionysos is the god of the dark and green and fecund and regenerative powers of the earth. He's the god of ovum and semen. The god of the richness of nature. The cycles, the dark cycles of life coming into and going out of existence. The renewal and regeneration of alt life.

John: I am proud that we were the first popular group to expose John Lee Hooker to the rest of the world. Robby's guitar is so snake-like, you can hear it hiss,

Robby: A reptile song custom made for Jim. He didn't even have to write a line.

Money 2:49

Written by John Lee Hooker. Published by Boogie One Music (BMI) (adm. By Bug)

Ray: We sound like a juke joint band on this very up tempo version of 'Money'. It's at a roadhouse and some of the people have gone back into the bungalows for a more private and intimate time. But the band just keeps on rockin' and smokin' and jumpin'.

Poontang Blues / Build Me A Woman / Sunday Trucker 3:35

Written by The Doors. Published by Doors Music, Inc. (ASCAP)

Ray: Poontang is a euphemism for... well... you know what part of the female anatomy. And Jim has poon blues. But then all of us men do. We love the other half of the human species too well. Girls, men are suckers for women. We'll do anything for you. We worship you, we adore you, we love you. Jim gets away with some overt obscenities here. He actually did it on PBS TV, too. Our home video The Soft Parade contains the same song - minus the poon - but virtually the same performance. Why we didn't get busted for that show and this show I'll never know. I guess the fates were saving up their wrath for Miami.

The End 18:01

Written by The Doors. Published by Doors Music, Inc. (ASCAP)

Ray: I love this performance. It's mesmerizing. Everyone is so into it, including the audience. The climax after the double-time is explosive. It sounds like the end of the world. It sounds like "guns, thunder". And then it becomes soft and delicate again. A good-bye- A farewell to a lost lover. 'The End' was originally a short three minute love song but it became over 11 minutes long as we improvised on it at the London Fog on the Sunset Strip in March and April of 1966. Here it is - the culmination of all that early, improvisation.

Robby: "Bring out your dead" was a call for dead bodies during the plague. A guy would drive a wagon down the street, ringing a bell and calling, "Bring out your dead!" Great energy in this track. I've always lamented the fact that 'The End' was never properly recorded live, but this comes real close.

John: At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in '93, Bruce Springsteen came up to me and said my drumming was unique on 'The End' - bombs blasting in out of sheer silence. That felt good.