The Doors Live At The Fillmore November 16, 1967

Right on its anniversary, here's something really precious from the Doors' vicious fall US tour '67 the camp should release and at the same time strengthen the band's legacy furthermore. Although the recording has its flaws to deal with, the sample shows a remarkable way to restore it as it is undoubtedly a highly important document of the Doors in their prime. It captures the band at the top of their game both musically and in terms of their career offering an extraordinary setlist, including a fierce 20th Century Fox and the first ever live debut of The Unknown Soldier. Hopefully Bruce Botnick take notice of this and realize in case it's been forgotten what a spectacular thing they are sitting on instead leaving it unreleased.



Notes:
Reconstructed audio from an incomplete 4-track live recording of The Doors at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, CA on November 16, 1967. The surviving master tape includes Jim Morrison's vocals, Robby Krieger's guitar, and Ray Manzarek's organ on three separate tracks but is missing John Densmore's drums and Manzarek's bass, both of which shared a lost fourth track. This proof-of-concept was created by incorporating the three existing live tracks with the drum and bass tracks from the studio recording of "Love Me Two Times" in an effort to demonstrate the feasibility of reconstructing the original live performance. Note: This recording may actually date from one of their two following nights at the Winterland.

Soul Kitchen
20th Century Fox
Crawling King Snake
Break On Through >
There You Sit
People Are Strange
When The Music's Over
Rock Me
Unknown Soldier
Love Me Two Times
Back Door Man >
Five To One*
Who Scared You
I See A Rider
I'll Show You A Place
She Feel Like Dyin'
I Believe That You're Real
> Back Door Man

-4 track live recording on two 45 minute reels with drum track missing (in addition with Ray's piano bass).
-Sound quality is close to excellent.
-The audience was not recorded but it bleeds through faintly.
-Probably taped by the instructions of Bill Graham.
-Prior presented to Danny Sugerman, the reels were found by a representative of the Jimi Hendrix estate in box of live Hendrix reels.
-"When The Music's Over" is incomplete, missing the first three minutes and the first part of "Back Door Man" is also missing. The rest of the songs are complete.
-"Five To One" is set to the beat of "Back Door Man", similarly as it was performed later in Boston on March 17, 1968.

source: THE DOORS FORUM at THE FREEDOM MAN . COM - Index page

 

Whoa...this is actually from the Fillmore tapes with work done? Doors '67, very exciting and sounds great. I hope this gets the wheels turning to do something about this recording.

 

Very impressive!

I've heard about this recording what seems like forever. Great to finally get an idea of the sound quality/what can be done to repair the missing drum track.

 

After the audio manipulation applied to the Hollywood Bowl and Isle of Wight releases, why not use this approach to fill in the missing drum tracks? Granted, it will not work in every instance due song-length and songs with no studio counterparts, and will sound awkward at times, but it is a more appealing option than having Densmore re-record his drum tracks in a contemporary fashion. Frankly, I would rather just hear the reel in its present state, sans the drums.

 

I wonder what else Graham taped back then. Pink Floyd was there the week before.

 

This should be an official release!

wonderful

 

Something similar was done for The Who Live At Hull 1970, where Entwistle's bass track was missing or damaged on a few tracks. The missing track was filled from the previous night's recording at Leeds. An existing recording can be stretched or squeezed to fit the missing part acceptably. They could use either live or studio tapes that are close. For just bass and drums, those can be extracted now from recordings which may not have those on isolated tracks.

 

Indeed. Wolfgang's Vault are very tight-lipped about what's in their tape archive. Dinky Dawson told me the Peter Green Fleetwood Mac tapes he sold them included at least one more show (I think it was recorded in Scotland) which he said featured a stunning Black Magic Woman. His website used to include sound clips from tracks not included in the shows that were eventually put up by the Vault which is disappointing.
I'd also be keen to know if they have any Buffalo Springfield or more Great Society. I'm not sure they've put up much new stuff 1965 -70 for a while and I wish they'd bring back the FLAC option.

Going back to The Doors. This particular tape has a lot of potential. The sample provided is by no means perfect sync-wise but I suspect that this could be done relatively easily with available technology although improvised sections could pose a problem.
Maybe they should let John live with the tape for a few weeks drumming practice on his old kit or one of a similar vintage.
Theoretically, could they set John's drums up on or near the old Fillmore stage with one overhead and a kick mic, play the multi track through a PA and get him to play a few "private concerts" for Bruce Botnik ? As long as they go for a vintage sound and John's up to it could that work ?

 

You mean add dubs??? No, they can’t do that. I love how people who ripped IOW for dubs now want them to release this. You can’t make it up.

 

Release it as is, without overdubs. If nothing else, at least release it online that way. They could please both camps and release a version with overdubs and one without.

 

That's because there was nothing wrong with the original IOW recording. The Fillmore tape on the other hand, is virtually unreleasable unless Densmore records a new drum track, or the drum tracks are flown-in from another live performances.

 

To say you know there was nothing wrong with the original is comical. We don’t know that. Total speculation.

 

Yes, that’s possible but I highly doubt that would happen.

 

Well, the bootleg have been circulating for quite some time, and there have also been plenty of IOW recordings by other artists. The IOW multitrack recording is not perfect, that's for sure: There some weird hum and noises on every IOW release i've ever heard, but sonically The Doors' set sounded a lot better than The Who for instance. (That's most because likely Ray's keyboards were probably DI'd, and Densmore's kit and sound was far easier to record than, say Keith Moon's.) Of course, none of bands had a line check for the recording truck, so the first track is pretty much the engineer trying to get the balance right. That can be heard during Back Door Man.

 

There are bootlegs and a DAT copy of IOW '70 that prove you wrong.

 

Was the IOW missing entire instrumentation? No. End of story. Well, it was missing a motorcycle, so it is good that the band edited that in.

That said, a number of fans would prefer the Fillmore be issued as is, sans drums. Contemporary overdubbing is still frowned upon.

 

Sebastian harmonica's tasteful overdub on Felt Forum was accepted with near unanimous approval. Jampol also uploaded the version without the overdub.

Clearly you are wrong.

Santana for the Woodstock blu-ray also had some tasteful overdubs by an original band member's son.

 

Is this really true for music releases in recent memory? Even Peter Gabriel overdubbing his late career voice on early voice era live releases seem to be generally accepted by fans. The u2 Achtung kindergarten stuff got a tepid reaction.

 

I don't know, I recall Genesis fans being extremely disappointed that he essentially re-recorded his entire vocal performance for "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" on the Genesis box set, and that Springsteen fans generally do not like his contemporary vocal overdubs on vintage 1970's era recordings.

 

Restoration like New York 1970 (John Sebastian), Pittsburgh 1970 (Ray´s solo on Light my Fire) and even Hollywood Bowl 1968 (Music´s/Texas/Hello i love you) are ok for me, nothing to reproach

The IOW is not restoration, isn´t the same, it may be due to multichannel mixing (the ovedubbs)?, i can understand the Roadhouse intro with the motorcycle in the video,works, but in the cd is absolutely ridiculous

I think that the Fillmore Tape can be restored with the absolutely live multitracks plus the Hollywood bowl multitracks and even the Copenhagen TV Special (Love me two times and The Unknown Soldier can be used for example)

 

I saw The Doors at Winterland right after Christmas in 1967, on the show Otis Redding was originally booked for before he died. (Man, what a night that woulda been...). The Doors were moved to the headlining spot and they were stunning the night I saw them. They were at a real high point at the end of 1967.

 

Very true about Bruce, especially since the original multis are likely releasable.

I don't know how true Gabriels claim about his various headgear messing up the recording, though his overdubs on 86/92 concerts videos were done for "perfectionist" reasons.

 

Is that the Archives Box Set? Being a Peter Gabriel Fan, I bought that Box Set to get some of the PG Era of Genesis to explore. I had no idea that his vocals were re-recorded for the Live Version of TLLDOB for that Box Set, but that is now one of my Top 5 Rock Albums from the 1970s.

 

Ummm what am I wrong about? The masses here hated the dubs. Personally, they don’t bother me at all. Next!

 

Well, let's see… You were wrong about the 2nd Fog reel being part of the Fog release and you were wrong about there not being large chunks of footage missing from IOW.

But in this current topic, you are wrong to compare overdubs being done in place of missing elements vs overdubs being done to replace already existing original elements. Not to mention the terribleness of those weird drum samples on IOW. No one is calling for that on Fillmore.