Search - Jim Morrison & The Doors :: American Prayer

Don't listen to Rob O'Connor -- the Amazon mouthpiece

California Son | Sonoma Valley | 10/07/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Like others I also give this fours stars instead of five. And I do so as a penalty to the remaining doors, Bruce Botnick (engineer), and most of all world class sycophant - Danny Sugarman. This is Morrison's last recorded piece of significance (there also was a drunk session in Paris with a couple of street musicians.) Sugarman has turned a fortunate position as groupie / sycophant in the doors L.A office answering fan mail into a career of self-promotion, mining a dead man's hard work, and worse ... If you've ever met Sugarman you'll get the idea. Morrison did not write this stuff as a doors project. And, as the late doors producer Paul Rothchild stated, it was never meant to be an opportunity for Sugarman's group to increase their product line. Saddest of all, the original recordings of Morrison have been torn into a million pieces and reassembled in whatever order best fit the noises the rest of the band could make years after Morrison's death. I understand it must be hard for the Robbie, John and Ray not to reach back and have another moment with the lost friend, but this is really over the line of good taste. And that is unusual for these three guys - particularly Robbie and John. If you are a doors fan then you'll surely enjoy this work - just don't play it on the 405 on your way to work. Like much of the doors work, this requires some work from the listener. Their music isn't a soundtack for plodding from work to purchase. Instead, go to the desert, listen, and wait for the sun but be careful about picking up hitchhikers. Finally, could we have a break from the jealousy of wannabe artists (Rob O'Connor) who are stuck in jobs they hate like journalism, copy writing for web sites, or as music critics who can't seem to separate Morrison's work from the life he lived? They seem to know little or nothing about Morrison other than what they've read in their competitor's publications. And their qualifications for making meaning from the Art of others is a mystery never explained or demonstrated. It's bad enough for them that Morrison had an I.Q. of 160 plus, was classically attractive in the extreme, had a Master's from UCLA, often knew more about Literature than his university professors, had a distinctive voice perfectly suited to his work, and worst of all, had all the girls looking for him (Jim) that the wannabe artists (like Amazon's Rob O'Connor) wished were looking for them (show us the green Rob!) It must really crush these guys that Morrison could stumble in to a house drunk, sit on the toilet, listen to Robbie, John and Ray on a rough Jam of L.A. Woman and then, on the spot with no notes or notebooks, simply start creating and singing the lyrics onto the recording tape. Then have another bottle and do it again from scratch with Riders on the Storm. That Morrison's first cut at the lyrics was exactly what was published / used must make these wannabes want to reach for their own bottle. Time generally separates the great works from the lesser stuff. It seems generally agreed that the doors impact on bands since is very significant. And despite the media's infatuation with promoting the Beatles and the Stones, the truth seems to be that each successive generation is voting for the doors."