Early S.F. Doors show breaks on through to CD
Joel Selvin, Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic
Monday, November 17, 2008
Only a few tables of curious spectators showed up at the club each night, so the musicians pretty much played for themselves. In between two weekend engagements at the Avalon Ballroom, a little-known rock group from Los Angeles called the Doors played Tuesday through Friday at a 100-seat Marina district club called the Matrix. Even the musicians might have forgotten all about the gig if the club manager hadn't decided to tape the shows.
The Doors were making their second trip to the thriving San Francisco ballroom scene in March 1967. It was an unseasonably chilly end of winter before the Summer of Love and just three months after the little-noted release of the band's now-historic debut album.
"We were on the lip of great success and we didn't know it," drummer John Densmore says. "Neither did the audience, which was very cool."
"Light My Fire" wouldn't break the group on radio for another three months, so the Doors were playing that weekend second-billed to Country Joe and the Fish at the Avalon, and almost no one showed up at their midweek Matrix engagement.
Matrix co-owner Peter Abrams had only recently installed a tape recorder in the sound booth, but it would be his custom over the next five years to record every show at the club. His tapes have been made into albums before; his live recording of the Velvet Underground is one of the few records of that landmark band's stage show. The Doors' tapes have been passed around in the underground world of bootleg recordings for years, including a set of "horrible, horrible sounding" Italian CDs that Doors producer Bruce Botnick heard.
Botnick, who has engineered and produced virtually every Doors recording in the band's history, finally dusted off the tape copies in the band's vault, cleaned them up and put together a two-CD set, "Live at the Matrix," complete with a cover by '60s San Francisco poster artist Stanley Mouse, to be released Tuesday on Rhino Records. Botnick says he thinks the Matrix tapes contain "one of their best recorded performances."
"They were young, enthusiastic, out to have fun," he says. "They experimented a lot, changed arrangements around and played things they never did before."
"We looked at it as a paid rehearsal," says guitarist Robbie Krieger. "There were five to 10 people in the club. We did it for ourselves."
The Doors first came to San Francisco in January 1967 to open for the Young Rascals and Sopwith Camel at the Fillmore Auditorium. It was the same weekend that more than 25,000 hippies filled Golden Gate Park for the Human Be-In, and the Doors were there, too.
'Changing the world'
"We thought you guys were changing the world," Densmore says.
They stayed at the Swiss American Hotel on Broadway and ate po'boy sandwiches across the street at Mike's Pool Hall. "We were baby beatniks," organist Ray Manzarek says.
Along with the San Francisco rock bands of the day, such as Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service, LSD evangelist Tim Leary urged the gathering of the tribes in the park to "turn on, tune in and drop out." There were also readings by the beat poets Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure and Gary Snyder.
"Holy cow - these are the beat icons," says Manzarek. "(Jim) Morrison and I idolized the beats."
When the band appeared that night in the scheduled engagement at the Fillmore, the musicians sensed a certain reluctance by the crowd to embrace the band, introduced as a rock group from Los Angeles - "grumble, rumble, murmur, spatter of applause, sigh of disrespect," Manzarek remembers - but Morrison insisted the band plunge right ahead, opening with the 10-minute-plus opus "When the Music's Over," and winning the crowd right from the start. Promoter Bill Graham gave the band a $100 bonus.
Three months later, the Doors returned to San Francisco for the Avalon Ballroom and the midweek Matrix engagement, checking into a Lombard Street motel.
Airplane led the way
The Matrix opened in August 1965, with the first public performance by the Jefferson Airplane - in many ways, the birth of the San Francisco scene. The band held an ownership interest in the enterprise - the surviving Doors semi-accurately remembered the club as belonging to Airplane vocalist Marty Balin - and the Airplane performed as house band during the brief, early days.
"Then the Fillmore opened and we got semi-famous," says Airplane founding member Paul Kantner, who helped paint the club.
All the San Francisco bands of the day played the former Fillmore Street pizza parlor. Artist Victor Moscoso did some of his most famous posters, highly prized by collectors, for the club. The Airplane played the band's last Matrix show in September 1966, the first night Grace Slick sang with the band. Her previous group, the Great Society, is largely remembered today through two live albums recorded by Abrams at the Matrix.
The current whereabouts of Abrams is not known to his former associates or the Doors, who tried to locate him for years. He is rumored to have sold copies of his Matrix tapes through classified ads in the back of Rolling Stone magazine during the '80s. Some 40 years ago, he gave the Doors four edited reels of the recordings - Botnick says he believes the tapes come from only two different nights - and the CD set was made from these first-generation dub copies.
A roar through the repertoire
On the earliest known live recording of the Doors, the band surges with power ("Robby was exceptionally good," says Botnick), roaring through the repertoire from the band's classic debut album with the certainty of a thousand previous performances at Sunset Strip niteries. Vocalist Morrison doesn't sound on the tapes like he thinks it's a paid rehearsal.
"The ante is upped anytime you have people there," drummer Densmore says, "even if it's only a couple. You can tell - Jim wants to say something, even to two people: 'I don't care - it will be like a pebble dropped in the water and make big circles.' "
The band played a lot of blues at the Matrix, including Allen Toussaint's "Get Out of My Life Woman" and Slim Harpo's "I'm a King Bee" that rarely turned up again in the repertoire. They did an instrumental version of "Summertime," a piece Botnick never heard the band play again. The group introduced new material that would eventually find its way to the second album - "People Are Strange," "Moonlight Drive" - while Morrison expanded and elaborated the ending of the already epic "The End" as recorded on the first album. The shadowy, echoey recording sounds like being in the dingy, rundown nightclub. The tiny room and handful of strangers in the crowd give off a palpable presence on the tape. All 10 people applaud madly.
Site's come full circle
In 2001, new owners reclaimed the bar's name - it now goes by MatrixFillmore - and some of its history. A enlargement of one of Moscoso's iridescent psychedelic posters dominates the entranceway of this sleek, upscale bar, operated by the ritzy PlumpJack restaurant firm. The entire front wall is glass now, and a modern fireplace burns away in the middle of the floor.
On a recent Wednesday night, a desultory DJ spun bluesy instrumentals from the stage in the corner to a crowd about the size the Doors drew in '67. Fewer than a dozen patrons nursed their drinks and made small talk. The dance floor was empty.
New owners have done over the floors and ceiling. The backstage where Jerry Garcia once smoked joints has been converted into an upholstered lounge. The place is not just empty of customers; something else is missing. It's squeaky clean, well-appointed, illuminated carefully. Despite the echo of the psychedelic posters on the drinks menu and the matchbooks, there isn't a trace of rock 'n' roll funk anywhere.
Outside a chilly wind whips though the foggy streets. At least the weather hasn't changed.
E-mail Joel Selvin at jselvin@sfchronicle.com.
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