Morrison, powerful sound impress audience

Rock and roll has come a long way since Ricky Nelson, in the last five minutes of "Ozzie and Harriet," sang "Hello, Mary Lou" to a swaying, swooning crowd of high school girls.  The Doors gave a concert Sunday night in the Minneapolis Auditorium, with lyrics that might have turned Mary Lou off, and a sound that would have turned her on.

That sound is the product of three musicians:  John Densmore on the drums, Robby Krieger on the guitar, and Ray Manzarek on the keyboards.  There is no bass guitar.  Manzarek provides the bass by playing a piano bass with his right hand while he plays the organ with his left hand and his feet.

The sound is complete, and it is powerful.  It is loud, but it is never just noise, and it never drowns out the words.  They were improvising much of the time; they were always together.

The Doors as just three instrumentalists would be fabulous, but they wouldn't have packed out the Auditorium.  They're a four-ring circus, and the main attraction is Jim Morrison, singer and songwriter.  He is sensual, and he is (though the word has gotten old through overuse) satanic.  He walks on the wild side, and during his concerts he manages to bring his listeners with him.  He is a mystery.

He was vulgar Sunday night (he prefers the word "primitive"), and it would be easy to dismiss him as "just an animal," but that doesn't work.  There is a tremendous power in the Doors' songs that an animal could transmit to an audience, but it's not a power that an animal could have put there.

Compare his crudeness of Sunday night with this portion of an essay he wrote for "Eye" magazine:  "Ask anyone what sense he would preserve above all others.  Most would say sight, forfeiting a million eyes in the body for two in the skull.  Blind, we could live and possibly discover wisdom.  Without touch, we would turn into hunks of wood."

Morrison comes off as a contradiction.  The contradiction can best be explained by a statement he once made:  "I think the highest and the lowest points are the important ones; all the points in between are, well, in between.  I want freedom to try everything--I guess I want to experience everything at least once."

He hit both extremes Sunday night.  The low you'll have to get from a good friend who saw the concert.  At the other end was "When the Music's Over," a beautiful piece of theater that took the Doors and their audience on a fifteen-minute high.