It's always seemed a bit of a mystery why The Doors never released much footage from their 1970 performance at the Isle Of Wight Festival and as it was just 4 months later on December 12th the band played their last performance with Jim Morrison you would have thought that film stock would've been a precious commodity.
Bootlegs of the soundtrack eventually circulated in later years and these days there's some good quality FLAC files sitting around the web, but the film has taken a whole lot longer to surface.
It's probably more likely the whole thing comes down to who owns what, and until some people start dying off or time starts running out that's how it's gonna stay.
Although that still doesn't explain why parts of the footage have shown up, in particular the songs "The End", "When The Music's Over" and now thanks to this December's DVD release of 'The Doors R-evolution' one more track is shown of the IOW footage with 'Break On Through To The Other Side'.
With this release it does rather confirm a possible and very good reason for the missing IOW film. The lighting is nearly non existent. DIm and murky.
It's rumoured one JM wanted lights out for more than this concert over fears he might be shot at from the audience. If true, what ever it was Jim was into or had been taking it had produced a fairly high level of paranoia.
Although at the time it might even be seen as rather a trend of the times for several out of face years in rock stardom you just might just believe "they are out to get me".. conversely at the same time other lesser lights with substantial egos might also be concluding "if not me, then why not". But after all that lets not rule out Jim might have just liked hearing the music and singing in the dark.
No. the plain truth of the IOW footage is for what ever reason lights were dimmed, it rarely flickers above candlelight. The one spotlight that occasionally falls onto Manzerak or Krieger puts them in stark relief as full technicolour, it then makes you realise how monochrome the rest is. So, here was a last chance to see one of the great rock bands of the 60's and it's in the dark. These really were strange days.
Back then to the new DVD. It does make the story of The Doors a lot easier to evaluate than in previous archive footage. For the first time a compilation of appearances through the bands short life, covering about 3 years of film clips from TV appearances and their own films shows the evolution of the group as much visually as aurally, with added bonus material for the dedicated fan.
"The Deluxe Edition is packaged in a 40 page DVD sized hard back book with a scrapbook style presentation on each track including lyrics, background info, trivia & photos."
The price is reasonable as well, at about £12 (UK). It's a compilation that should have been released years ago. Amazon have it along with others.
Here's the Isle Of Wight footage in all it's dimly lit glory. The music's just fine though.
