The Lost Paris Tapes

The Lost Paris Tapes

Cover of a bootleg album of Jim Morrison's The Lost Paris Tapes.
Studio album by Jim Morrison
Genre Spoken word

The Lost Paris Tapes is the title given to a recorded collection of unedited poems and songs by rock musician and poet Jim Morrison of The Doors. Although Morrison intentionally made the recordings, they are considered bootlegs because they were never officially released to the public in their unedited form by Morrison or his heirs.

The title of the collection is however a misnomer, because most of the recordings were made in Los Angeles in March 1969; long before Morrison traveled to Paris (where he died under mysterious circumstances in 1971). Morrison took these Los Angeles recordings with him to Paris,[1] where they were found among his belongings after his death.
Contents
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* 1 Los Angeles session (March 1969)
* 2 Paris session (17 June 1971)
* 3 Track listing
* 4 Footnotes
* 5 External links

[edit] Los Angeles session (March 1969)

The Los Angeles session features a serious but relaxed Morrison taping spoken-word versions of his own written poetry. Morrison can be heard repeating certain sections of poems for technical or aesthetic reasons, and he can be heard giving occasional production cues, such as when certain sound effects should be added at a later date. Morrison's efforts to obtain clear recordings and his additional verbal directions suggest that he planned to use the recordings in a much more ambitious project that would merge his smoothly edited voiceovers with background sounds and music.[2]

Some of these recordings were later mixed with new music tracks recorded by surviving Doors members Ray Manzarek, Robbie Krieger, and John Densmore, and released as the official Doors album An American Prayer. The March 1969 recording of "Orange County Suite" with Jim on piano was later used and mixed with new music recorded by the surviving Doors members Ray Manzarek, Robbie Krieger, and John Densmore, and released as part of their 1997 4 CD "Box Set". This new Doors version also appears on the 1999 box set compilation CD Essential Rarities.
[edit] Paris session (17 June 1971)

The only recording on the collection that Morrison actually made in Paris is a segment featuring an apparently drunken Morrison playing around in a studio with two equally inebriated American street musicians. Morrison had befriended the street musicians only a short time earlier, when he found them performing Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young tunes on a Paris sidewalk.

Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek has referred to this recording as "drunken gibberish," observing, "If you haven't heard them, you're missing nothing."[3]

However, once Morrison gave up trying to perform with the two street musicians, he broke into a solo performance of "Orange County Suite." A writer for Rolling Stone magazine later called this piece "an astounding version of . . . [an] unfinished, unrealized paean to his old lady (Pamela Courson) that had been rejected from at least two Doors albums. . . . It was a drunken, and mostly ad-libbed, recording. Yet, listening carefully . . . , one hears the authentic last of Jim Morrison, two weeks before he died, as he roars spontaneous verses and imagery about his hard-hearted woman, his anguish and his obsessions, easily deploying a poetic champion's compositional facility for the natural cadence and spontaneous rhyme."[4]

Morrison offhandedly labeled the resulting reel-to-reel tape of the session "Jomo and the Smoothies" (Jomo being a pseudonym for Morrison).
[edit] Track listing

MARCH 1969 POETRY SESSION:

1. Session Start (0:16)
2. In That Year... [False Start] (1:02)
3. In That Year... (3:00)
4. Bird Of Prey (1:55)
5. Tape Noon (2:22)
6. Whiskey, Mystics And Men (3:38)
7. Orange County Suite (5:34)
8. All Hail The American Night (5:57)
9. The American Night (0:34)
10. The Holy Sha (0:37)
11. Hitler Poem (0:44)
12. Can We Resolve The Past (1:55)
13. Always A Playground Instructor (1:32)
14. There's A Belief... (0:25)
15. Indian, Indian... (0:18)
16. Woman In The Window (2:40)
17. She's Selling News... (1:11)
18. Science Of Night (0:24)
19. Tales Of The American Night (0:36)
20. Now Listen To This (0:46)
21. Babylon Fading (0:39)
22. Thank You, O Lord (0:35)

JOMO & THE SMOOTHIES TAPE:

23. Warm Up & Tuning (4:30)
24. "Starting Now!" (1:14)
25. Orange County Suite (8:41)

DECEMBER 8, 1970 POETRY SESSION:

26. Graveyard Poem (0:50)
27. The Politics Of Ecstacy (0:10)

FEAST OF FRIENDS:

28. "Earth, Air, Fire, Water" (0:53)

HWY:

29. Dawn's Highway (3:57)
30. Phone Booth (2:29)