The Doors are the stars of our latest free CD, The Other Side, available with the June 2025 issue of Uncut.
The Doors are the stars of our latest free CD, The Other Side, available with the June 2025 issue of Uncut.
The nine-track album includes rarities, alternate takes and live cuts, including a blistering performance from their final show outside America.
“In 1965, I hoped this band might pay my rent for a decade or so,” John Densmore tells Uncut, “but it’s 60 years and we are still talking about The Doors. I am very grateful and very proud. It’s so kind of Uncut to make this CD.”
It’s very much our pleasure to present this journey through an alternate history of the stellar LA band. Across nine songs and 44 minutes, we take a trip with Densmore, Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek and Jim Morrison from an alternate take of “Love Me Two Times”, right up to their stunning performance at 1970’s Isle Of Wight Festival.
Along the way, there are outtakes from LA Woman, a demo from Waiting For The Sun, a raw Soft Parade track stripped of its orchestration to reveal the raging group beneath, and many more.
“It’s very cool that your readers will be getting these nine Doors songs,” says Robby Krieger. “It’s a great mix of live and studio from across our career. In fact, I wish I could get this CD – can I get one too?”
See below for more on the tracklisting…
1 Love Me Two Times (Take 3)
We begin with an alternate take of this hard-grooving swinger, originally released as the third track on their second album, 1967’s Strange Days. On the original, Ray Manzarek is on baroque harpsichord, which certainly gives the track a unique feel; here, however, he’s on his customary organ, giving Take 3 a perhaps superior, and definitely more coherent, feel. Morrison’s vocals begin with a more laidback vibe, but by the end he’s really letting it rip.
2 Peace Frog (Take 12)
A charming alternate version of this track, appearing in its original studio version on 1970’s stripped-back Morrison Hotel. The Doors perhaps never sounded so downright filthy, with Krieger’s guitar slashing and dirty, and the solos some of his finest. The group concocted the music first, with Morrison then adding apocalyptic imagery from a selection of his poems. A fine take, only ruined by… well, we’ll let you discover that at the end of the track.
3 Hello I Love You (Demo)
Always an anomaly in the Doors catalogue, in this demo version one of the group’s best-known songs sounds even more out of kilter with the rest of their work. With its hazy sound quality, vocal reverb and piano, it resembles a peppy single by a British Invasion group from the mid-’60s. Fascinating stuff, and a testament to the unique spell woven by The Doors’ unique instrumentation and Paul Rothchild’s production on the original.
4 Riders On The Storm (Alternate Take)
This Doors lodestone showcases two sides of the group here: there’s a stunning, solemn and hypnotic version of the song, of course, but there’s also two minutes of playful messing about at the beginning, including Morrison’s rendition of the theme tune to obscure New Mexico TV show K Circle B Ranch: “Riding on the trail to Albuquerque/Saddlebags all filled with beans and jerky…”
5 Touch Me (Without Horns & Strings)
This cut from 1969’s divisive The Soft Parade found The Doors incorporating soul, lounge and jazz into their sound, the result lifted by Morrison’s crooniest vocals and horns, strings and a saxophone solo. Here it is stripped back to just the group (plus bassist Harvey Brooks), with Manzarek overdubbing harpsichord over a primitive Gibson Kalamazoo organ. It all ends with a nod to an Ajax commercial: “Stronger than dirt…”
6 Five To One (Rough Mix)
One of their swampiest blues tracks, “Five To One” creeps and crawls over one chord and a dark bass riff that lays bare their influence on The Stooges. The final track on 1968’s Waiting For The Sun, it was created in the studio, and as such is thrillingly raw: no time for chord changes, complicated keyboard solos or anything but the drone, the relentless pulse and the Lizard King’s eldritch verse.
7 Roadhouse Blues (Live At Madison Square Garden)
Taken from their 1970 performance at Madison Square Garden (actually the venue’s smaller Felt Forum), this raging version of “Roadhouse Blues” was the concert’s opener. Jim Morrison’s on fine form on harmonica, teasing the crowd with a blast of it before greeting the crowd. “Everything is fucked up as usual,” he says, before an unholy scream heralds the rolling blues riff.
8 LA Woman (Alternate Version)
Another alternate version from their last (and arguably greatest) album, this is the title track and Side One closer, a hymn to Los Angeles in all its beauty, weirdness and temptation. To portray this “city of night” – a term borrowed from John Rechy’s novel of the same name – they begin with power-driving blues before slowing down for the apocalyptic “Mr Mojo Risin’” break, then a return to the speedy first section.
9 Break On Through (To The Other Side) (Live At The Isle Of Wight Festival)
Appearing halfway through The Doors’ final ever concert outside the US, this performance of their debut single is as fiery and invigorating as the group ever got: Morrison almost manifesting transformation through his blown-out vocals, Manzarek’s organ distorted and vital, and Krieger and Densmore savagely tearing at the final chorus. The applause from the Isle Of Wight crowd is unsurprisingly ecstatic.
