http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,14936-2526351.html
January 02, 2007
The sound and technical skill of the performance was doubtless streets ahead of anything the original Doors could have mustered How much has changed since the Doors played their only indoor British concerts — four shows over two nights — at the Roundhouse in September 1968. And yet how little. As the reconvened remnants of the Los Angeles group, now forced to trade, for legal reasons, under the name Riders on the Storm, returned for the first of two nights at the recently reopened venue, the weight of history was overwhelming.
“What a treat to be back at the Roundhouse again,” said the keyboard player Ray Manzarek, as if it was just one of those things that happen from time to time.
Both venue and group have undergone dramatic changes in the intervening years. The Roundhouse, which is nowadays dry, warm and tastefully decorated, was also fitted out for this show with comfortable seating. With only two original members remaining — Manzarek, 67, and the guitarist Robbie Krieger, 60 — the group now included the crack rhythm section of the drummer Ty Dennis and bass player Phil Chenn, with Ian Astbury following in the sizeable footsteps of Jim Morrison.
Morrison died in Paris at the age of 27, so there is no way of knowing what he would have looked like in middle age. But Astbury, 44, formerly of the British retro-rockers the Cult, is as good a guess as any. With his thick mop of curly hair and deep bark of a voice, he has grown steadily into the role since joining the band four years ago. Eyes concealed behind midnight-black shades, he tore into the opening number, Roadhouse Blues, and for a moment it was as if the ghost of Morrison had returned to haunt the stage. The band, meanwhile, locked on to the groove with the assurance of the seasoned professionals that they are. Krieger, one of the least demonstrative “guitar heroes” of the 1960s, supplied his strangely dissonant, jazz-influenced solos and an acoustic “flamenco” showpiece with an absolute minimum of fuss. Manzarek, looking like a college professor, conjured his classic, cheesy keyboard sound, injecting the occasional flourish, as when he played with his foot during Break on Through.
He dedicated the martial stomp of Five to One to George Bush, Tony Blair and “all the warmongers” on both sides of the Atlantic. The sound and technical skill of the performance was doubtless streets ahead of anything the original Doors could have mustered. But, inevitably, little remained of the untamed and unpredictable spirit of the group in its pomp. Without those ingredients, the dynamics of a number such as When The Music’s Over — with its long, meandering instrumental sections peppered with sudden bombastic outbursts — seemed dense and not a little anachronistic.
And they tried to finish without playing Light My Fire. The audience refused to budge until they relented.
The tour continues at Wolverhampton Civic Hall, tonight; Manchester Apollo, tomorrow
(thanks, Matt)
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