Listen to Jim Morrison's Isolated Vocal on the Doors' 'Roadhouse Blues'
- by Tyler Golsen
It would be hard to argue that alcohol contributed to the performances of Jim Morrison. A hardened alcoholic, Morrison only truly began to spin out of control in the final years of the 1960s. His once-sleek and svelt image was now slovenly, and the man himself was bearded and pudgy.
While his antagonism towards his own audience grew to new heights, it all came to a literal head when Morrison was arrested for indecent exposure on stage at a Miami concert in March of 1969.
From that point on, Morrison was a lost soul. He arrived at recording sessions already wasted, and his abilities to conjure up the mystical ‘Lizard King’ were now long gone. Morrison pushed the band towards a harder-edged blues sound during this period as well, kicking back at the overt psychedelia of the group’s first four albums. Morrison wanted drinking-man’s music, and that was found in the blues.
On November 4th, 1969, The Doors entered Elektra’s Los Angeles studio for the first recording sessions of what would eventually become Morrison Hotel. Morrison, as usual, was drunk and raving about commercialism. Frequently repeating the phrase “money beats soul," Morrison couldn’t manage to hold it together, and the sessions broke without anything but a nebulous blues jam.
