This was a tough call for me - I bought the first Doors album in 1967 after I heard a school friend's copy and that was it, life was never again quite the same. Sadly, my plans to see the band at the Isle of Wight were dashed when I went down with glandular fever and a year later, it was all over. I never imagined that forty-five years on I would go to see a bunch of guys not yet born perform their music. But my wife bought us two tickets as a birthday present and we duly drove up from Cornwall to Bristol.
I cannot imagine a more fit setting for a 'Doors' concert - on a dark, wet, late autumn evening in the cavernous hold of an old freighter moored in Bristol docks. The band itself was just perfect - not in the sense of playing clinically by numbers but in capturing a distilled essence of all that was best about the Doors and using it to fuel an energetic, moving, and convincing performance. In fact, let's face it, a lot of the original's live performances were pretty ropy and to that extent, I suspect this was musically better than the real thing.
The set list was inspired; it would have been so easy to trot out a 'best of' compilation of crowd pleasers but right from the start they delivered many of the lesser-known songs and made them feel fresh and original - in fact it caused me to listen again and to re-evaluate 'The Soft Parade' which I haven't played for probably twenty years or so.
Only one thing marred it for me and that was the irritating behaviour of some of the audience, in particular a bunch of kids who seemed to feel they and not the band should be the centre of attention and tried several times to get on the stage, at one point forcing the band to stop playing. Having been admonished spectacularly by 'Ray', they calmed down but then a drunken idiot decided he was going to shout along his own version of 'The End'; now for people like me, this is something of a sacred text and one to which 'Jim' was doing full justice - he really is a superb vocalist, but you can read about that elsewhere - so I felt I'd been cheated out of probably the best moments of the show. I'm glad that the Thekla doesn't feel the need to keep a bunch of intimidating bouncers in attendance but it would have been nice if there had been someone on hand to keep some order.
But no matter - we're going to see them again later in the tour and whether you've been in there since the beginning or someone who's more recently discovered the extraordinary phenomenon that was the Doors, I would strongly recommend you to go and see these guys - you certainly won't regret it.