Absolutely Live
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Album Summary
Absolutely Live came roaring out of the night in 1970 on Elektra Records, a double live album that caught The Doors at their most untamed and unfiltered — culled from performances across 1969 and 1970, with recording dates spanning the Aquarius Theatre in Los Angeles and dates from the Felt Forum in New York. Produced by the band themselves alongside Paul Rothchild, this was the record that peeled back the studio curtain and let the world hear Jim Morrison in his full serpentine glory, stalking the stage like a poet possessed, while Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore locked in behind him with a ferocity that no overdub could ever manufacture.
Reception
- Absolutely Live reached number 8 on the Billboard 200 chart upon its release, proving that the Doors still commanded serious commercial attention even as the rock landscape was shifting beneath everyone's feet.
- Critical reception was a mixed but passionate affair — some reviewers felt the rawness was the whole point, a document of a band living dangerously on the edge of every performance, while others wished the production captured more of the room's electricity.
- The album was generally embraced by fans as an honest and powerful portrait of the band in concert, and it stands as one of the few live documents released during Morrison's lifetime.
Significance
- Absolutely Live preserves one of rock and roll's most mythologized front men at a crucial and turbulent moment in his life, making it an irreplaceable historical document of late 1960s and early 1970s counterculture performance.
- The inclusion of the full 'Celebration of the Lizard' — a sprawling, spoken-word-meets-psychedelic-rock suite — gave listeners their first proper recorded experience of that piece, cementing Morrison's vision of the rock stage as a theater of the unconscious.
- The medley stretching from 'Alabama Song' through 'Five to One' showcases the band's remarkable ability to weave Brechtian cabaret, Chicago blues, and hard rock into a single unbroken live statement, a testament to their range and improvisational courage.
Tracklist
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A1 Who Do You Love —
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A2 Medley: —
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A2a Alabama Song —
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A2b Backdoor Man —
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A2c Love Hides —
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A2d Five To One 89
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B1 Build Me A Woman —
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B2 When The Music's Over 98
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C1 Close To You —
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C2 Universal Mind —
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C3 Break On Thru #2 —
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D1 The Celebration Of The Lizard —
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D2 Soul Kitchen 115
Artist Details
The Doors were a blazing, hypnotic rock outfit that rose out of Los Angeles, California in 1965, weaving together blues, psychedelia, and a dark poetic soul unlike anything else coming out of that era. Led by the magnetic and unpredictable Jim Morrison alongside keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger, and drummer John Densmore, they conjured a sound that felt like midnight on the Sunset Strip — mysterious, dangerous, and deeply alive. Their records, from "Light My Fire" to the epic sprawl of "The End," didn't just shape the counterculture of the late '60s; they permanently etched themselves into the DNA of rock and roll, making The Doors one of the most influential and enduring bands this world has ever known.
