Rock School; Tribute To The Doors--Rock School's B-Day

SCOOLS SCOOLS I fall in love I've got a fan, so pay I'm up for teacher It's time for school Rock School With your hosts, Dr. Joe Burns I'm smacking it, I'm smacking Jim Morrison in the face right now And Chad B We have a listener in Montana One listener One listener in Montana We may have other ones Class is in Rock School Good afternoon, this is Rock School And a very special Rock School At least to us, you know, Chad and me here My name is Joe Burns, I am a professor in the communication department Southeast

in Louisiana University I already said your name, but go ahead, say it again Chad P Chad P This is the one year anniversary of Rock School Happy anniversary, Doc! Thank you very much, one year old That's a paper Wouldn't it the one year anniversary? Don't you get paper for the one year anniversary? If you read Emily Post, then that is the proper thing to do One year, I don't have anything for you You didn't get me anything either? No Yeah, we're gonna have to get it divorced Okay We decided, Chad and I Instead of doing a giant one year pat on the back for each other How can we tell each other how wonderful we are and bore the audience to death We decided to take our one year anniversary Start it with a quick stump and then do something for the audience So Chad, you're always stumping me Wait, what quick stump? I didn't run that past you No, this wasn't in the notes We're gonna do it anyway What was the very first song played on Rock School? Oh, okay, wait a minute I went back and got Rock School number one and played it Oh, I could tell you the

first song on Rock School number two But I can't do number one Detroit Rock City It sure was, wasn't it? By Kiss Now we move to today's topic That's it Celebration of the one year over Thank you, congratulations Now you get me for a whole another year Yeah Okay We have a listener in Montana One listener One listener in Montana We may have other ones But this one we know about Thank goodness for the internet Yeah Renee Valley is her name Yeah, Renee Renee Valley writes us lots of emails she gave money to us on the KSU Fun drive Yeah, KSU, you fun drive Sorry, my tongue decided to walk off to another strange part of my mouth Renee Valley wrote me an email one day and she said I really love the show Have you guys done a show on the doors yet? No, we haven't done a show on the doors yet So I figured rather than take this one year anniversary and do something for us Let's do the first request show Why not? Renee, I went to my giant book collection and I have it here I'm smacking it I'm smacking Jim Morrison in the face right now Which is a pretty spooky portrait of him It really is He kind of looks

like Biblical if you will The name of the book is called Moonlight Drive The story is behind every door's song and it's really well researched Every single door's song ever written and the story behind what it means How it was recorded Where the topic came from And what I decided to do was go through each one of the doors albums with Morrison Because they kept recording after Morrison passed away And pick a few tunes Tell you what the story behind the song is And then play the tune Cool Alright? Break on through to the other side from the album The Doors A set of certified five times multi platinum by the RIAA Where did it come from? Morrison wrote the lyrics while walking across a Venice canal He said, quote, it's about a girl A girl I knew one time That's it? The guy was a poet had no idea where the concept came from Just the fact that it's about a girl he knew one time But listen, late in the song as the bossa nova beat

is going around He says she get She get She get what? The original lyric was she get high She get high The problem was at the time when the song came out in 1967 The word high was illegal So they chopped it out Do you remember when he was on the Ed Sullivan show? The Doors were on the Ed Sullivan show Jim Morrison was not allowed to say girl we couldn't get much higher And he did it anyway Oh really? Same problem she get high So when you're listening to it and he goes she get Everybody scream at their radio Hi So the bossa nova beat begins Renee This one's for you Doors Rock School Rock School Rock School Rock School Rock School

Rock School Rock School Rock School Rock School Rock School Rock School Rock School Rock School Rock School Rock School Rock School Rock School Rock School Rock School Rock School Rock School Rock School Rock School At Jim Morrison Rayman Derek John Densmore and Robbie Kriger That's the Doors as we move through nothing but Doors music here for an hour on rock school. We're still on the album The Doors, released January 4th 1967, and I had you queue up 20th Century Fox, and you expected to hear, of course, the opening to The Wizard of Oz. Now they did those weird things The Doors did, but not this one. What does 20th Century Fox mean? It's a play on the concept of the opening of movies,

and the concept of a beautiful woman being called a fox. It's a pun that Jim Morrison put together on the LA lifestyle. Now we're going to talk about this as the songs go on that Jim Morrison enjoyed the LA lifestyle, but on the same aspects kind of shunned it. We're going to talk about the Morrison Hotel LP and how he and his girlfriend attempted to get away from it, but he needed to be in the spotlight, and he considered himself a poet, but he wanted to be, you know, in where the glitz is. 20th Century Fox is a play on what he called, and I'm doing finger quotes here, fresh meat, he called it. Girls coming out to the west coast with stars in their eyes, and seeing the beautiful facade, if you will, of Hollywood and glamour and hoping to be a star. Dreamers. Dreamers. And when they get there and they sort of peel back the guild that's on the

outside, it's not quite pretty underneath there. It was supposed to be the follow -up to break on through, but light my fire was chosen and obviously did very, very well. What you need to listen to within there with the with the actual production, the structure of the beat where there's a tromping in there. The band all came in in army boots, and they put down a series of boards, and the band's going, you'll hear it especially during the musical breaks and the guitar solos. So take a listen to it. She's a 20th Century Fox. Doors. It's fall for you, Renee, because we like you. We like Montana too. Yes we do. Rock School. Well, she's passionably lame. And she's passionably lame. She'll never break a scene. She'll never break a day.

Wow, it's so cool, but I shoot. You have like a 14 and a half huge 20th Century Fox. That's a doors moving along. Album number two from the doors. Strange days, released September 25, 1967, certified platinum by the RIAA. People are strange. When you're a stranger, people are strange. When you're alone, released before the album was done, which often happens that what they do is you'll finish the single first. You'll throw out the single and then the album will get finished and follow afterwards. People will anticipate it because they like the single. The first single comes out and oh man, I can't wait to get the album. Where did it come from? Robbie Krieger owned a home. You see Jim Morrison never owned a home. Really? His girlfriend owned a home. I didn't know. We'll get into his girlfriend here in just a little bit. But Jim Morrison never owned a home. Okay. He

stayed at different places, hotels, his girlfriend's house, which he bought for her by the way. When he would go over to Krieger's house and just sit down and talk openly about his feelings and he kept saying again and again, oh here man, people are strange, it's weird, people are strange. And what apparently Krieger thought he was doing was fighting off this depression that he felt inside. Being in a strange new place where people were uninviting in callous, you're out in Los Angeles where if you're not here to help me, you're hindering me. And Krieger said, all these emotions that you're feeling, want you write them down. Jim said, yeah, I'll do that. And it became people are strange right here. Rock school. Right.

When you're strange. No one remembers your name. When you're strange. When you're strange. When you're strange. People are strange. When you're a stranger. Faces look ugly when you're alone. Women seem wicked. When you're unwanted. Streets are uneven when you're down. You know, I've been to his grave. I have, I've been to Paris and I went, I can't remember the name of the cemetery off the top of my head, but I've been to Jim Morrison's grave. I have a picture of it in my office there. I am standing behind Jim Morrison's grave. We're going to cover a lot of material today

because as you pointed out, these songs don't exceed two minutes. Not very many. We have a three minute or next. Moonlight Drive. This is Moonlight Drive and you'll notice the book. I am holding it here in my hands. It's called Moonlight Drive of all of the songs of all the doors songs to choose a title from. Why Moonlight Drive? Those who are big fans of the doors look to the song Moonlight Drive as quite possibly the most important doors song of all. Here goes the story. Ray Manzeric had changed his major from something like business or accounting, some obtuse topic, over to filmmaking, which is how he ran into Jim Morrison. Manzeric is sitting out watching the sun go down. Morrison is on the same beach and walks up and sits down and says, Jim, how you doing? What's going on? What have you been doing? He said, well, I'm writing song lyrics. He said, wow, that's interesting. Sing something to me. Apparently,

Morrison's, I don't sing, I don't play an instrument. By the way, till his death, never played an instrument. It couldn't even court a guitar. It took him a while, and finally, Manzeric talked Jim Morrison into singing a little bit. The song that he sang to him was Moonlight Drive. It really was. It took till the second album for the song to get on. It's one of those where the first album, you were in the hands of the record company because, look, it's our money, kids. We'll take care of it. Then they became the doors, and they had much more of a choice in the decisions on what songs would get on. Moonlight Drive made its way to it. Moonlight Drive may have been the tune that got Robbie Krieger to say, okay, I'll join. May have gotten Densmore to say this is worth doing, but it certainly made Ray Manzeric stop and say, we will become a rock band. Listen to the slide guitar. It's what sets the song

apart. Moonlight Drive, doors, rock school. Let's sway out to the moon. Uh -huh. Let's climb through the tide. Moonlight Drive from the second album, Strange Days, right here on rock school, may be the most, well, indoors fans eyes at least. Many people would say break on through the big one. That's the one that hit

you. That's the one that exploded you. But if you want to look back and say which one created the doors might be Moonlight Drive, we have to take a break. But when you sit there and you think to yourself, Jim Morrison, you certainly wouldn't do anything by any other member of the group. You would expect that only Jim Morrison would write the songs, right? Of course, only Jim Morrison. Nah, some of the biggest hits were written by somebody else in the band. I'll play one of those for you when we get back in one minute. Rock school. Robby Krieger or Robert Allen Krieger started playing guitar as a classical guitarist, a flamenco guitarist to be absolutely specific. As a matter of fact, we're going to play a song a little bit later on called Spanish Caravan, where you're going to hear how good a classical guitarist he was had the most beautiful classical guitar and then he heard Chuck Berry went and sold his classical guitar and bought a Gibson SG and it was pretty much over from there. He wrote the song Love Me Two Times. Not Jim Morrison. In fact, Morrison had nothing to do with it. It was

all Robby Krieger. Robby Krieger also has the moniker of having the band's first band single. Now, two singles beforehand, break on through and parts from the end were actually edited, but this is the first one that was actually banned because what Robby was talking about in the song was as they were on tour, they only got to see groupies once. And he wanted to meet a girl that he would want to love me two times. Get it? Yeah. And back then, that was just a little too suggestive. So, this one's by Robby Krieger. And as we get a little later on, you're going to notice that, hey, Robby Krieger seems to be writing a lot more of these tunes. So, Love Me Two Times, Rock School. Love

Me Two Times, girl. One, four, two, three. Oh, man. Could he go from Krooner to absolute scream fest in like two seconds? Yes, indeed. Man, was he a good front man? It's too bad that he just kept putting that stuff in his body. Honest to goodness. We move along to the next album, Waiting for the Sun. Release July 11, 1968, Certified Platinum by the RIAA. Remember when I said on the first album, the record company was in charge, but on the second album, the doors had a little bit more leeway and what they wanted to do with it. Well, the third album's coming up and the doors are absolute certified stars, but well, the record company still has a little bit of say. The band probably Jim Morrison, but I'm going to say the band because that's the way it was written in the book. The band wanted to create a single 24 -minute song titled Celebration of the Lizard to fill one entire side

of the album. The record execs said, uh, no, no, no. We need something we can put on a 45 and sell and they didn't have hits. This is the album that didn't have as many hits as the other one and it just basically sent them scurrying so they ran back to Morrison's Venice notebook. Remember I told you I told you that break on through came from a time when he was in Venice. They went back to the Venice notebook and they began looking and looking and looking and they found something called Hello, I love you. Apparently where it came from is Morris was sitting there and he saw a woman walking towards him. The Sun was behind her so she was backlit like a movie and she was statue -esque and beautiful and it's what came into his head. Hello, I love you. It took him about two hours to punch it up. It's only about a two -minute song. Punched it up, put a few little blips and blips and lips behind it. Bingo. Number one song. Now you like that.

Listen closely though. Bit of a problem. What? The chordal progression is almost exactly the kinks all day and all of the night. If you if you hear it in that situation you kind of go, oh that might be stolen. No lawsuits though. Waiting for the Sun. That's a third album, first single. Hello, I love you on rock school. Won't you tell me your name? Hello, I love you. Let me jump in your game. She's walking down the street. Oh

man, listen to that guitar by Krieger. He's got a running through an overly amplified box of guitar amplifier plus he's got it going through a distortion pedal so it's just really gnarly. Sounds good. Right at the end. Absolutely wonderful. Doors here on rock school for the entire hour. Why? It is our one year anniversary and instead of some kind of pat on the back to each of us for entire hour, we decided to make it our first request show and one of our listeners in Montana. Thank goodness for the internet. Renee Valley called or actually wrote me an email and said, have you guys done a show on the doors yet? No, we hadn't. So here you go, Renee. It you, however, you the local listener would like a show done by all means. Let us know. And by the way, we have received from numerous people when you're going to do a show on New Orleans. The playlist has been put together and I just have to now download the music and get all of that kind of stuff. And I'm just going to say it right up front. May a culpa, may a culpa, may a culpa. I'd have

to do four shows to hit everybody. I'm going to upset somebody. It's not even a question. No matter how many songs I play, somebody's going to go, why didn't you play? Oh, we got email from the Cleveland show last week. Hey, what about this? What about this? I had an hour. I had to play something. Go to the website. If you would like to see one full year of rock school, they're all up there. 52 shows. This will be number 53 and they're all there for you. Just put them on the iPod, put them on your computer. Have a nice time. Learn more than the next guy sound like a genius. KSLU .org. Look for the chalkboard on the right. Says rock school. You want your own show? Tell us what you want. Here's the email address. KSLU Rock School at gmail .com. KSLU Rock School at gmail .com. All you got to do is send us an email and put in a suggestion. Who knows? Next year, we may be doing our two year anniversary show from you. Yeah, by all means. Tell us you want another Van Halen show. No, that was a two for right there. Well, Chad's going to get his

wish too. Since I got my Van Halen show, you want an Arosmith show. I do. I want an Arosmith show and it's coming. It will be sometime over the summer. It's coming. It's time over the show. All right. I first up. I got a brand new, by the way. I got a brand new book that's nothing but rock trivia and it has just sent me off on four or five new shows and I'm just I'm looking forward to them. I'm putting them together. Excited about them. Good stuff. Ready for a stump on the doors. All right. Oh, it's on the doors. You better be. I'm going to do shows on the doors. I'm going to do it on lane. Stay away from all of you. Shucks. I thought I had a chance on this plane. All right. Okay. Here's a question. Very, very simple. Where was the doors last public performance? New Orleans. No, that one. It was back. It was at the warehouse. It was. It was. New Orleans. And it never finished. The show never finished. That's right. Do you know what happened? Morrison had had enough from what I understand because he had been arrested for indecent exposure. I think it was in Florida where he sang the song Love Me Two Times and they arrested him for obscenity because the song was supposedly obscene. There's a very famous piece of piece of film where

he's singing and the cops come up from either side of him and you see him kind of make this weird look on his face and he puts his hands together and he kind of goes, what did I do when he drops the microphone? He was singing Love Me Two Times and it was considered obscene at the time and they arrest him. And he's just had enough of all of this and apparently what he kept doing is finishing a song and throwing the microphone down on the stage. And then after about four songs, he just sort of sat down, you know, cross -legged style. Yeah. And nothing. And if I'm not mistaken, Denz Moore quit performing after that. I mean, it was an absolute destruction of the band right then and there. Morrison, within a month, if I'm not mistaken, went to Paris and that was it. Oh yeah, that was it after you went to Paris. Yeah, the whole thing collapsed in New Orleans. So at least something nice. Remember I told you earlier that Robbie Krieger started as a classical guitarist? Yes. This is what it sounded like from the album Waiting for the Son

Spanish Caravan on Rock School. Wait, it always sounded to me like it should have been part of Jesus Christ Superstar. You know, I like it. I like that same sound there at the end. I like it. Beautiful guitar work, absolutely beautiful guitar work. Rayman's Eric, just to come out of guitar and go somewhere else, what's that sound? How does he get that sound out of the keyboard? It's a Fender Rhodes piano. Now, you may know this. Some people will get this little fact out of the doors.

They never performed with a bass guitarist. Really? Now, they recorded with a bass guitarist and you can look at the album and see the names of the people that performed. It's never a secret who it is. They bring in session people and they play. But how do they get the bass live and what does that strange sound? Watch Rayman's Eric playing on YouTube and get lots of videos of them playing. Rayman's Eric takes his left hand and he's got a keyboard in front of him. That's the Fender Rhodes piano. Pardon me, that's the Vox Continental organ. That's what gives that pretty high sound. And then on his left hand sitting on top of the keyboard, he's got a Fender Rhodes piano bass. So he's playing two keyboards at the same time, all the time. His left hand is playing what the bass guitar would play and his right hand is playing an organ. So at all points in time, Rayman's Eric is playing two instruments. The Fender Rhodes piano bass and the Vox Continental organ. That's how they get that sound and how when you hear them, it's them. You can't miss that. It's them. Next album, The Soft Parade brought out June

25, 1969, certified platinum. And by the way, Jim Morrison just isn't in the room. The hits were all Robbie Krieger. Pretty much the whole album was Robbie Krieger. When you hear the song, come on, come on, come on. Now touch me, baby. Originally, it was hit me, baby. Come on, come on. Now hit me, baby. And the record reps went, no, that's probably not the best way to go about it. So they changed it to touch me, baby. And there it shot up the charts. The problem was while touch me, baby was in the top 10, Jim Morrison was fighting, indecent exposure charges in a Miami court room. Can somebody say irony? This is touch me on Rock School. What she

said, what was that promise that you made? Oh, I'm gonna love you till the heavens stop the rain. Okay, there you go, doors here on Rock School. We got to move along to the next album because we're slowly but surely running out of time and I want to play something from each one of the albums, but we got to take a break. We got to take a break back in one minute on Rock School. This is Rock School as we devote the entire hour to the doors. And I've put most of it from this album, or from this book that I have here, Moonlight Drive, the stories behind every door's song. And by the way, there are many of these kind of books. If you're a fan of Pink Floyd, there are books devoted to the story behind every song, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen. And all you have to do is basically

hit Amazon and begin looking for them because people have gone in and researched the stories and the recording and such. The one for the doors just happens to be called Moonlight Drive. Morrison Hotel, February 1st, 1970, Certified Platinum by the RIAA. This song is called PeaceFrog. Don't want to offend anybody, but the original title of the song was Abortion Stories. It was Robbie Krieger that stepped up that said, look, this is a really good tune. You can't release a single called Abortion Stories. Let's call it something else. And Morrison said, what do you want to call it? PeaceFrog? So that's what they went with. That's where the really odd title came from. It has absolutely nothing to do with what's inside of it. It's this cutesy real neat music, but he's talking about blood in the streets up to your knees and blood over here and blood over there. It's a commentary on the 1968 Democratic Convention, but it also has lyrics from a poem that Jim wrote about a car wreck that he saw

as a child involving Native Americans. The entire poem can be found on Jim's album, American Prayer. He had an album of just his poetry. So the entire album can be found on there. It is a cute song. It's fun to listen to. Listen to the lyrics while it's sort of bouncing along. It's really odd lyrics to such a cutesy piece of music. So here's PeaceFrog written by Morrison and Krieger. Krieger basically said, Jim, you can't rely on me. You're going to have to start putting out more lyrics and did. So from Morrison Hotel, PeaceFrog, Rock School. Yeah, you hear it.

It's not, you hear that, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you think, that's a cute little puppy tune. He stops in the middle and he does those couple lines of poetry and it's about a death and you can hear why he wanted to call it the title that he did. Well, I'm glad they changed it. Yeah, me too. Robbie Krieger came up with the PeaceFrog. Here's the concern about the doors. What? Either the song is two minutes or three minutes or it's seven, nine, 10, 12, 20 minutes long. No happy mediums there. No, we have time for, believe it or not, one more song. We got 10 minutes left. So we moved to L .A. woman. Their last album, April 1971, certified two times, multi -platinum by the RIAA writers on the storm. That's the one we're going to finish with. Album wise, it's Morrison's last track with the doors. The title comes from one of Morrison's favorite poets. His name is Hearts Crane. Morrison may have identified with him. The line about there is a killer on this, you

know, it comes from again some more of the poetry that ends up on Morrison's American poetry album. And again, a lot of it may have come from that death that he witnessed as a child, the Native American truck that overturned way saw the death. Either way, it seems like a fitting end. If you are interested, Morrison died July 3rd, 1971 at the age of 27. That's pretty young to put yourself in the grave. There is no official cause of death. He died in a Paris apartment bathtub. His girlfriend, Pam Corson, found him, pursuant to French law though, no autopsy was performed because the medical examiner claimed to have found no evidence of foul play. It probably was exactly what you thought it was. He put enough into his body that his body just finally said one day, that's enough. I've had enough. Corson herself died of a heroin overdose three years later. And like Morrison, she was 27, which is why some people think she committed suicide. She got to the same age as him and said, I wish to be

with Morrison of the same age and called a quits. What happened to the remainder of them? Ray Menzeric, John Densmore, Robbie Krueger, they soldiered on. They put out three more albums, other voices full circle. American prayer came out as well, but that was mostly Morrison. But those are the three albums. They did all right. They now have a band called Riders on the Storm. Densmore will not play with them. He refuses. Believe it or not, Stuart Copeland of the police played with them for a little while. Yeah, sure did. And they have a lot of guest singers that sing with them, including Scott Wyland of STP and also Scott Stapp of Creed. Right. And if I'm not mistaken, the guy from Pearl Jam sang with them when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Eddie Vetter. Eddie Vetter. Yeah, there you go. We will finish our one year anniversary show. Again, congratulations on putting up with me for 365 days. You'll have to do it again. And that's pretty much going to do it. What's the name of our Montana listener again? Renee Valley. Renee Valley. Thank you for the idea. If you have an idea, write to us. Go to the website KSLU .org. My name is Joe Burns. I'm Chad B. Class is dismissed.