John Densmore - 28 November 2016 - Odyssey

TITLE: AN EVENING WITH JOHN DENSMORE AND HADYN REISS

AUTHOR: ODYSSEY

PUBLISHED: 28 NOVEMBER 2016

AVAILABLE: Odyssey

Thursday, November 17th, I was invited to a screening of a short film called: Robert Bly, A Thousand Years of Joy. Robert Bly is an American poet and political activist. His poetry is centered around challenging gender roles and stereotypes placed on men.

I really admire Bly's work because it sheds light on the awful truth that men have been taught to hide their emotions. Men think that they have to be tough and show no feelings of weakness while women, are taught to be emotional beings.

In this film, I got to listen to readings of some of his best poems and see how his work has impacted creative people such as John Densmore. Densmore is best known for his role as the drummer for The Doors, but he is also a writer, actor, and poetry enthusiast.

After the screening, I had the opportunity to interview the director of this film, Haydn Reiss, alongside John Densmore who gave insightful commentary on Robert Bly's work. I only had a short time to ask questions but I am really pleased with the outcome of the interview.

Odyssey: How long did this film take to finish and what was the process like?

Reiss: You could say it took 5 years, but it actually took 20 years, because 20 years ago I made my first film about Robert. It took 5 years to compile this film with the one I made 20 years ago.

Odyssey: Was it a stressful process?

Reiss: It's always stressful. Be careful if you become a filmmaker because you're going to find yourself doing a lot of odd things. You have to be tough.

John Densmore: Any art is stressful but if you feel deep down, "Oh god, this is something I love and I gotta do it"...then there you go.

Odyssey: You're a multi instrumentalist, author, an advocate for civil rights and a poetry fan. So what does it all mean to you and what encourages you to make sure you take part in all of this?

John Densmore: I stay active because it feeds me. In my early days I saw John Coltrane all the time. Elvin Jones, his drummer was my idol and mentor, all these jazz musicians...they fed me. So in my mid life I started getting interested in writing and WOW, Robert Bly, he fed me and I got real involved. In fact, I remember one time he said: "You need a massage? Your back's aching? Don't got to a masseuse, write the poem first!

Odyssey: For both of you, what inspires you in life and motivates you to engage in these creative projects?

Reiss: Well like John just said, trying to pursue things that make a difference in my own life and be of some help to others and my children. At the end of the day, I try to be on the right side of the equation about bringing good or not.

Odyssey: John?

John Densmore: You guys. You guys inspire me. The youth have the passion and they have the dream to bring it forward, and we gotta stop shitting on the youth god dammit!

Odyssey: What are your views on the country's elected president?

Reiss: There was an election?

We will get through this. And I think that out of this election, a lot of creativity is going to be born. I think we're being forced to be creative.

Odyssey: John, you think so?

John Densmore: Yeah. There is a cloud over us. It's similar to my era which was the Vietnam war and there was a cloud over the country 24/7 for years. Now I see another one coming along here. But if we keep together and coalesce and feed each other with art and go out on the streets when we have to, we will hold his feet to the fire when bullshit comes down. We'll make it.

Reiss: You know, MLK JR had this famous line: The arc of the moral universe is long and bends towards justice. And by long I think he means time. It's going to take time. It's taking time, but we are moving towards justice.

John Densmore: I really aspire to stay alive until we have a fucking woman as president. Amen!

And with that memorable commentary, the interview came to an end. Thanks, Hadyn and John!

John Densmore - 11 November 2014 - billboard

TITLE: THE DOORS' JOHN DENSMORE TO RECALL "MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MUSICIANS" IN NEW BOOK

AUTHOR: STEVE BALTIN

PUBLISHED: 11 NOVEMBER 2014

AVAILABLE: billboard

'Writing is getting me off,' drummer says.

At the recent Classic Rock Honours in Los Angeles, Doors drummer John Densmore was presented with the Inspiration Award by Henry Rollins. After the ceremony, he stood outside the Avalon mere feet from ELO mastermind Jeff Lynne. It was a very fitting setting for Densmore, who is looking to share his most memorable meetings with musicians in a new book.

"I'm playing around with Meetings With Remarkable Musicians. Each chapter is someone I met -- George Harrison, Ravi Shankar, Patti Smith. I'm playing around with that and writing is getting me off," Densmore told Billboard of the book he is just beginning to work on and hopes to have out within a "year or two."

Densmore, who's previously authored Riders on the Storm: My Life With Jim Morrison And The Doors and The Doors Unhinged: Jim Morrison's Legacy Goes On Trial, was inspired by Meetings With Remarkable Men, by Greek-Armenian mystic George Ivanovich Gurdijeff. The 1963 book spawned a 1979 movie of the same name.

While Densmore has been around so many luminaries of rock -- and fans have to be excited about the prospect of hearing of his encounters with rock icons like Harrison and Smith -- this collection will celebrate eclecticism. "One chapter is on Elvin Jones, [John] Coltrane's drummer, he was my mentor. I was terrified to meet him, then I finally wrote my first autobiography and gave it to him. I said to him, 'You gave me my hands,' in this book."

Recalling some of his other favorite meetings with musicians he talks of being on stage with Shankar. "Ravi Shankar was an incredible teacher. I sat on stage with Robby Krieger and studied at his school of Indian music here in L.A., so at Royce Hall we were sitting next to him watching his hands bleed while he got possessed," Densmore says. "This is the highest level you can get."

Another standout musician for him is Gustavo Dudamel, the conductor of the L.A. Philharmonic. "We're buds, so I'm watching Dudamel conduct Mahler. I go backstage and he says, 'Juan, Mahler is heavy metal,'" Densmore recalls. "That particular symphony kind of had a line like a lead guitar line from heavy metal, I'm not kidding. This guy is so hip he knows about jazz and salsa, all this stuff, rather than those rigid classical folks who only know their world. That's why he's a f---ing genius."

Densmore was on hand at Avalon representing the Doors to collect the Inspiration honor. With so many artists over the years citing the Doors as an influence, we asked Densmore for one story that stood out to him.

"I love that line that Bono was mouthing off wonderfully about whatever cause he was into and he could tell someone was getting a little ruffled," Densmore recalled. "He said, 'Well, Jim Morrison said we're supposed to be erotic politicians.'"

Fittingly for "erotic politicians," the ceremony took place on Election Day. Staying true to his '60s roots, Densmore had two issues on his mind on this night. "There's a really good criminal justice [bill] that hopefully will help minorities not get so beat up," he said. "Somebody said it's great pot is legal now, but it's interesting how people of color go to prison, thousands, and now some white guys figured out they can make money off it and now it's gonna be legal. I'm one of those white guys who's for it to be legal and get the freaking crime out of it."

John Densmore - 23 October 2014 - MusicRadar

TITLE: JOHN DENSMORE ON THE DOORS DOCUMENTARY FEAST OF FRIENDS

AUTHOR: JOE BOSSO

PUBLISHED: 23 OCTOBER 2014

AVAILABLE: MusicRadar

"Marrying music and visuals – that really appealed to us"

“People always ask me, ‘If Jim Morrison were live today, what would you be doing now?’ says Doors drummer John Densmore. "And I think we’d be doing films. Jim and Ray were both way into film, so I think we would have moved in that direction, incorporating film with music, maybe even doing soundtracks to big Hollywood movies. I know we would have gone that way had Jim lived.”

In the summer of 1968, The Doors were already making their first foray into film by self-financing a documentary directed by Paul Ferrara called Feast Of Friends. The project was never finished and was ultimately shelved when the financing ran out due to Jim Morrison's legal problems following his arrest for allegedly exposing himself to a concert audience in Miami. Since that time, the film has acquired mythic status among Doors fans, who have for years circulated poor-quality bootlegs on just about every format imaginable. 

Forty-six years after it was shot, Feast Of Friends, which offers Doors fans a fascinating, behind-the-scenes cinéma vérité look at the band both off stage and in the studio, is getting a proper release on Blu-ray and DVD thru Eagle Rock Entertainment on November 11. Boasting remastered audio and video, the package also includes a spruced-up version of the 1968 British documentary The Doors Are Open, which focuses on the band's concert at London's Roundhouse theatre. Additionally, the set also features the The End, which captures the band performing their iconic song in Toronto, Canada, in August 1967, as well as interviews with Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek, Densmore and longtime Doors manager Danny Sugerman.

The Doors' Feast Of Friends can be pre-ordered at The Doors' official website or on Amazon. In the following interview, Densmore discusses the band's interest in cinema, their subdued backstage routines and what he considers to be the group's finest performance on film.

MusicRadar: What was the idea going in to Feast Of Friends? In one part of the film, Jim calls it a "fictional documentary." Was that a term you guys actually threw around?

John Densmore: I don’t know what Jim meant by that, actually. [Laughs] Ray and Jim went to film school, and we had some friends who were filmmakers – guys like Paul Ferrara. We just thought, "We should document what we’re doing here. It’ll be fun and maybe be good for the future." That was really the thought going into it: "Let’s fool around making films with our friends."

John Densmore - 22 February 2013 - billboard

TITLE: THE DOORS' JOHN DENSMORE HOPES BOOK SPURS "DIALOGUE" WITH BANDMATES

AUTHOR: GARY GRAFF

PUBLISHED: 22 FEBRUARY 2013

AVAILABLE: billboard

Drummer chats exclusively with Billboard about "The Doors: Unhinged" ... says he won't play with a "Jimitator," but a singer like Eddie Vedder? "I'm open to it"

While his new book may light some fires with his cohorts from the Doors, John Densmore is hoping it will also help fix the fractured state the iconic group's alumni are currently in.

In "The Doors: Unhinged (Jim Morrison's Legacy Goes on Trial)" -- due out April 17 online with a print-on-demand version available -- drummer Densmore writes about the lawsuit he and the late Morrison's family filed against keyboardist Ray Manzarek and guitarist Robbie Krieger when the two launched their Doors of the 21st Century in 2002, claiming use of the group's name and logo violated established band agreements. Densmore and his allies won a permanent injunction in 2005, and Manzarek and Krieger continued as D21C and Riders on the Storm before settling into the current Manzarek-Krieger moniker. The book also discusses Densmore's steadfast resistance to using the Doors' music in ads, including a $15 million offer from Cadillac to license "Break on Through (To the Other Side)" for the same campaign that used Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll," as well as Manzarek and Krieger's $40 million countersuit.

All of this has, of course, caused some splintering between the individual Doors, but Densmore tells Billboard he wrote "The Doors: Unhinged" to help repair some of the wounds.

"My relationship with Ray and Robbie has been rather strained, of course," acknowledges Densmore, whose previous Doors book, "Riders on the Storm," was published in 1990. "But at the end (of the book) I write about how I can't not love them for what we created together. It's bigger than all of us, so hopefully (the book) is a bit of an olive branch and we can head towards healing. They weren't there (in court). They were on tour. When we started out, my litigator said, 'This'll be a week' or whatever; it was three months, and they were there once or twice and I was there every day and a lot went on, and (the book) might illuminate them about what folks were saying on their behalf, ridiculous things, and I don't know whether they were aware of that.

"So I'm sending them the book and hoping to start a dialogue."

Densmore -- who was supported during the trial by Neil Young, Bonnie Raitt, short-term Doors of the 21st Century drummer and Police alumnus Stewart Copeland and others -- says that a silver lining during the ordeal was a chance to get to know the Morrison family and particularly the singer's father, retired U.S. Navy Admiral Steve Morrison.

"That was such a gift," Densmore says. "First of all, (Jim Morrison) said they were dead in his (press) bio -- the ultimate cutting of the 60s umbilical cord with the parents, right? But they stepped up to the plate with me, which really pleased me because they were rather estranged from their son... and here comes the admiral and he's going to support his son's legacy, and it was really sweet. We were standing together and it was touching, and I was thrilled to hear his testimony that he really got that we were four equal parts. Jim was the one who said we should all have an equal say and an equal split, and Steve talked about that and how special that was and how, 'Well, wait a minute, two of them are going to call themselves the Doors? No, that's not right,' and I was very pleased about that."

Despite the bad blood, Densmore -- who did join his bandmates for the "Breakin' a Sweat" collaboration with Skrillex -- says he won't rule out playing with Manzarek and Krieger again in some form.

"They've been asking me for years, 'Please come out and play...,' " he says. "It can't be the Doors; that's like the Police without Sting, the Stones without Mick, so come on! I wouldn't go on tour with them and a Jimitator, but if there was some benefit, some Live Aid or whatever, like Pink Floyd came together a few years ago (for Live 8) or something like that and we got some great singer like Eddie Vedder or whoever, that would be kind of cool. So I'm open to it."

Densmore launches an author tour of mostly independent music stores for "The Doors: Unhinged" with an April 20 Record Store Day appearance at Bull Moose in Portland, Maine. Other dates on the tour include:

April
21 -- TBA, Boston, Mass.
22 -- Record Archive, Rochester, N.Y.
23 -- Vintage Vinyl, Fords, N.J.

May
2 -- The Sound Garden, Baltimore, Md.
6 -- Criminal Records, Atlanta, Ga.
7 -- Waterloo Records, Austin, Tx.
15 -- Independent, Denver, Colo.
16 -- Dimple Records, Sacramento, Calif.
17 -- Rasputin, San Francisco, Calif.
18 --Silver Platters and Elliot Bay Books (tentative), Seattle, Wash.
19 -- Music Millennium, Portland, Ore.
25 -- Fingerprints, Longbeach, Calif.

John Densmore - 21 January 2012 - The New Zealand Herald

TITLE: REKINDLING THE FIRE

AUTHOR: GRAHAM REID

PUBLISHED: 21 JANUARY 2012

AVAILABLE: The New Zealand Herald

The Doors' final album L.A. Woman gets a 40th anniversary make-over. Graham Reid talks to their drummer John Densmore

The Doors' final tour at the end of 1970 lasted just two shows. At the second, in New Orleans, the once-charismatic Jim Morrison - increasing a booze addict and unpredictable - smashed his microphone repeatedly on the stage, collapsed and then refused to carry on.

Backstage afterwards, drummer John Densmore, keyboard player Ray Manzarek and guitarist Robby Krieger had a meeting - the air would have been blue - and decided that as a live act the Doors were done.

The previous two years had been chaotic: There was the notorious Miami concert in 1969 where Morrison allegedly exposed himself and the court case and appeal dragged on, he was drinking constantly (and rarely washing by most accounts) and audiences were coming just to see him screw up. Often he would oblige. The albums got worse.

Yet before and after what would become that final concert, Morrison was in the studio with the band recording L.A. Woman, widely regarded as the Doors' return to form. And he was only having, as sportspeople say, "a few beers".

Drummer Densmore - now a 67-year-old grandfather - recalls the sessions as among his favourite, in part because their longtime producer, the perfectionist Paul S. Rothchild, quit at the start so the band and engineer Bruce Botnick took control.

"I knew Jim was going down," says Densmore, "but was very pleased that somehow, despite his self-destruction, when we rehearsed, wrote songs and recorded, he showed up. He pulled it together. When people ask me what are my favourite [Doors] albums are I always say L.A. Woman and [second album] Strange Days. Strange Days because we got more relaxed in the studio and began experimenting and having fun."

But L.A. Woman we did in our rehearsal garage like the original garage of Ray's parents, and we got back to our essence. [Jim] was empowered by the idea we were co-producing with Bruce. We were thinking we were the bosses and stepping up to the plate."

L.A. Woman - now given a 40th anniversary remaster/reissue with out-takes and unreleased tracks including their jam on the blues standard Rock Me - was mostly blues-based. But it has some of the band's most enduring work including Love Her Madly, Riders on the Storm, the groove-riding title track and Morrison's most successful spoken word piece The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat).

As in the past, the band called in additional musicians, this time bassist Jerry Scheff (from Elvis Presley's touring band) and rhythm guitarist Marc Benno (from Leon Russell's Asylum Choir) to fatten the sound.

In the expanded edition some of the out-takes and extra tracks - which include the two bonus songs on the "40th anniversary mixes" edition of 2007 - are excellent (Manzarek energised on Love Her Madly) but the previously unreleased She Smells So Nice could only charitably be called a minor entry in the Doors catalogue. Morrison is poorly recorded and the lyrics fall far short of the poet he claimed to be.

However some of the rehearsals suggest the sessions were loose and improvised - a run-through of Riders on the Storm is initially delivered as a cowboy song where Morrison sings the theme to the range-riding 60s television show Rawhide at the end - but Densmore says otherwise.

"We rehearsed for a month off and on and the whole thing was done in two weeks."

Jim's words would tell us what the mood of the sound should be. So if he's singing about 'a killer on the road whose brain is squirming like a toad' then we have some moodiness right there."

And The WASP?: "He had this poem and we loved it, and we had this riff and recorded the track, then put the poem on top and it fit. That part was improvised."

Unbeknown to Densmore and the others, this is exactly what they would controversially do with some of Morrison's poems seven years later for the album American Prayer.

But that was in their unknown future.

When L.A. Woman was released in April 1971, it was met with critical acclaim ... although Rolling Stone's Richard Meltzer - a seriously bad writer - advanced the line the Doors were comedic and "there isn't one serious cut on this album" only to also note "the Doors have never been more together" and there wasn't "one bummer cut on the entire album - a first for them".

Meltzer concluded it was "the Doors' greatest album" which might have made Morrison happy.

But by then he'd checked himself out of rock and had moved to Paris to become either a serious poet or a much more diligent alcoholic.

He succeeded at the latter. Fewer than six weeks after the Stone review he was dead.

The Doors

L.A. Woman, Expanded Edition

Verdict: The final and most impressive flash of Jim Morrison's brief flame gets the expanded treatment

- TimeOut

John Densmore - 20 January 2012 - thestar.com

TITLE: THE DOORS ARE DEAD, LONG LIVE THE DOORS

AUTHOR: BEN RAYNER

PUBLISHED: 20 JANUARY 2012

AVAILABLE: thestar.com

Don’t take John Densmore’s participation in the publicity campaign for the new 40th-anniversary reissue of The Doors’ L.A. Woman as a sign that he’s reconciled with Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger over that ugly “reunion” business.

Since his former bandmates first attempted to reclaim past glories as The Doors of the 21st Century in 2002 — with The Cult’s Ian Astbury replacing the late Jim Morrison on the microphone and Stewart Copeland of The Police (briefly) replacing Densmore on drums — Densmore’s role in the ongoing saga has primarily involved battling his former bandmates in court. Densmore has prevented Manzarek and Krieger from affixing the Doors name or any Doors-related imagery to their periodic performances of Doors material. In that regard, he has arguably served as the voice of reason, since The Doors without Morrison can’t really be thought of as The Doors in any realistic sense.

His old friends, currently touring with a chap from a Los Angeles Doors cover band called Wild Child on vocals, are now reduced to billing themselves as “Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger of The Doors” or some variation thereof. Densmore, reasonably satisfied, is writing a book about the whole mess called Doors Unhinged.

“I would say our relationship — me and Ray and Robby’s — is strained, but I do extend them an olive branch in this book I’m writing and tell them why I still love them,” he says. “This thing is bigger than all of us, but it’s over. The Doors are Ray and Robbie and John and Jim, not Ray and Robbie and Ian and Fred and John, or whoever.”

The Doors aren’t over, of course, in the sense that their lucrative back catalogue can still be raided and/or revived from time to time.

This past Monday saw the release of a “new” Doors single, a forgotten leftover from the L.A. Woman sessions entitled “She Smells So Nice,” via Facebook, to be followed this coming Tuesday by a double-disc re-release of The Doors’ 1971 swan song. A DVD documentary, Mr. Mojo Risin’: The Story of L.A. Woman, is also on the way. These are, we’re told, just the first volleys in a “Year of The Doors” that will see yet more reissues and live packages added to the already overloaded posthumous-release pile.

The curmudgeonly Densmore, 67, isn’t the best pitchman for the projects, perhaps, since even he concedes that the well is running a tad dry.“Frankly, I’m a big believer in the outtakes were outtakes because we didn’t choose them. There was something wrong with them,” he says of the alternate takes of “L.A. Woman,” “Riders on the Storm, “Love Her Madly” et al. dug up by producer Bruce Botnick for the L.A. Woman package. “But I was a jazz musician and I love Coltrane’s albums, and I have one of them that has six takes of one song on it … so I can appreciate, from the fan’s point of view, why someone might want to hear why we didn’t choose this or that.”

As to the prospect of future “new” Doors songs coming to light à la “She Smells So Nice” — an iffy blues number with a poorly recorded Morrison vocal that doesn’t have much to offer beyond novelty value — don’t bet on it.

“You’re scraping the bottom of the barrel,” says Densmore, dryly adding that: “The surgeon general will have to put a warning on all future release.”

That said, Densmore will allow that he likes some sections of the alternate version of “L.A. Woman” on the new reissue better than the original. And his cynicism subsides when talk turns to the sessions that birthed the album.

“We were really having a lot of fun making this record,” he says.

After more or less killing The Doors as a live act the year before with his unpredictable behaviour on a tour that lasted two dates, Morrison showed up in generally workable shape to the band’s Los Angeles rehearsal studio and the quartet was able to knock the tracks out more or less in the form in which they appear “because it was a band that had played together for many years, and knew what it was doing and got really tight.”

Morrison left for Paris before mixing started and, sadly, never returned. Less than three months after L.A. Woman’s release, he was found dead of a suspected overdose at 27.

“He was never around for mixing much, anyway. It was too tedious for him. So he said he was going to Paris and it was sort of open-ended when he was coming back,” recalls Densmore. “He did promise to return. But then he didn’t, so that was it.”

And that was it, as far as he’s concerned now. The Doors were “a wonderful psychedelic dream I had,” he says, but he has no interest in playing those songs anymore. The Doors are dead.

“What can I say? It took a lot of wind out of my sails, all the legal stuff. But I don’t regret it,” says Densmore. “It’s better to be in The Doors than not. I have ‘of The Doors’ permanently etched in my forehead. But I’m turned on by new ideas, by the sense of whether I’m learning something new. That’s why I play with African musicians. That’s why I’m out on the street and in the clubs.

“If Jim shows up, I’ll be in The Doors.”

John Densmore - June 2010 - ModernDrumer.com

TITLE: JOHN DENSMORE: EXCLUSIVE MODERNDRUMMER.COM INTERVIEW

AUTHOR: MICHAEL PARILLO

PUBLISHED: JUNE 2010
AVAILABLE: ModernDrummer.com

...

...
The Doors are the subject of a fascinating new documentary film, When You’re Strange, which premiered last month on PBS’s American Masters after a theatrical run in the spring. The movie was directed by Tom DiCillo (Living In Oblivion) and features plenty of never-before-seen shots of the band and drummer John Densmore. All of the footage stems from the Doors’ active period of 1965–71, save some photos and film from the band members’ earlier days, and includes studio and live scenes plus brief interview segments.

“You get to see me a little more, huh?” Densmore says in a phone interview with moderndrummer.com. Indeed, though this is not strictly a concert film, it includes priceless images of all four members of the Doors—Densmore, singer Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, and guitarist Robby Krieger. In one brief but indelible shot, Densmore pummels his ride cymbal as Morrison dances mesmerized behind him, egging him on.

When You’re Strange is being released on DVD and Blu-ray on June 29. To view extras from the movie, visit www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters. And read on for our chat with Densmore, where we talk about the film, John’s melting-pot drumming style, and the Doors’ getting back to being a garage band for L.A. Woman.

Modern Drummer: The movie really reveals the Doors as an improvising unit, as does the new Live In New York CD box set recorded in 1970. Was improvising part of the plan from the outset, or did it just turn out that way?