The Soft Parade

Liner Notes

This historic music video features as it’s centerpiece The Doors’ last televised appearance, aired on PBS in 1969 in the wake of the notorious Miami concert which resulted not only in Jim Morrison’s arrest, but the cancellation of an entire tour. Public Television provided the only alternative for The Doors to present themselves in an uncensored environment, and the result in an arresting display of a mature band at the peak of its musical powers. Additional material is drawn from The Doors’ private archives, including footage from the riotous 1968 tour of America and never-before-seen interviews. On and offstage, spirits up and guards down, here is a true and fascinating portrait of Jim Morrison and The Doors, as artists, musicians, performers and people.

Track Listing

The Changeling	Doors archival footage and audio to the studio version of Changeling
Wishful Sinful	Live on PBS and archival footage
Wild Child	Wild Child studio footage
Interview #1	PBS Interview with Richard Goldstein
Build Me A Woman	Live on PBS and archival footage
Interview #2	PBS Interview with Richard Goldstein
Unknown Soldier	Edit of Original Unknown Soldier film, Danish TV and Hollywood Bowl
The Soft Parade	Live on PBS and archival footage
Hello I Love You	4-3-2-1 Hot & Sweet TV show

Credits

Directed By	Ray Manzarek
Producer	Rick Schmidlin
Executive Producer	Danny Sugerman
Editor	Phillip Terrance
Camera Man	Paul Ferrara
Director of Critique	Jack Ofield

Archivist Notes

According to Ray Manzarek, this release is The Doors’ response to Oliver Stone’s movie “The Doors”. The real Jim. The real Doors. As many already know, Ray wasn’t happy with Oliver Stone’s portrayal of Jim Morrison. This video was his answer, showing the true Jim in music, poetry and words. Click here to see Ray discussing the video. Although this video only clocks in at 50 minutes, it’s 50 minutes of amazing music. The centerpiece of this release is the PBS footage and interviews. If you ever wondered what The Soft Parade album would sound like without the strings and horns, this is it. The Doors at their bluesy best. The interviews included are from the same PBS show where Jim and the band talk politics, poetry, performing and the blues. This is the famous interview where Jim discusses the future of music, which ended up being right on the money.

Random notes:

The Changeling	This video was created for this release using archival footage on top of the studio version of The Changeling. Some footage was previously used in the Gloria video, which at the time of this release was out of print. One of the highlights of this video to me is the footage (with sound) of Jim talking to artist John Frazier about the Doors poster he had drawn by hand. At one point of the video, there is a small piece of footage of Howlin’ Wolf recorded at a concert that the Doors attended. For the best available copy of this, check out the 2014 release, “R-Evolution” which included a fresh transfer from the original elements.
Wishful Sinful	The song itself is the PBS footage combined with archival footage of The Doors and their spouses/girlfriends in various locations (Robby’s beach house, backstage Saratoga Springs, Swimming at the Kern river, at a Renaissance faire, Rick Manczarek’s wedding, and a vacation to Hawaii).
Wild Child	A new video created for this release replacing the version of “Wild Child” released on “Dance on Fire”. That previous version used some of the Wild Child studio footage combined with Native American Indian stock footage, and newly shot footage of a Native American boy finding Indian artifacts in a shack. After the release of “Dance on Fire” they found all the remaining studio footage along with some Nagra audio from the recording. Using all of that they created this new version which gives you the feeling of being in the recording studio with The Doors. For the best version of this, see the 2014 release “R-Evolution“.
Unknown Soldier	A new edit made for this release, it combines performances of the song from the Danish TV, Hollywood Bowl, London Roundhouse as well as the original “Unknown Soldier” promo film from 1968.. The audio used in this version comes from the live Hollywood Bowl performance. Of all the versions of Unknown Soldier, I would rate this as the best.
The Soft Parade	This is the PBS Critique version of this song with archival footage of a Renaissance Faire that The Doors attended used in a a few spots. The “When I was Back There In Seminary School” intro on PBS was not captured on tape, so they had to use part of the studio version at the beginning of the song.
Hello I Love You	Beneath the closing credits you will see this 1968 lip synced performance of “Hello I Love You” from the German television sho” 4-3-2-1 Hot & Sweet” recorded in Frankfurt’s Romer Square. A clean version of this would later be released on R-Evolution.
Archival Footage	Sprinkled throughout this release, in between songs, are a few archival gems including Robby messing around on his guitar backstage at Saratoga Springs, footage of Jim interacting with fans and almost buying a “Who program” at the 1968 Singer Bowl concert, the footage of Ray and Jim playing the piano backstage at Saratoga Springs and the famous footage of Jim’s conversation with Pastor Fred L. Stegmeyer: Minister At Large. After the credits, the video ends with archival audio of Jim saying, “Well, that was an easy 10 thou(sand)”.