‘Celebration of the Lizard’: The Doors’ performance piece that nearly completed ‘Waiting for the Sun’
“Is everybody in? Is everybody in?” Jim Morrison asks on ‘Celebration of the Lizard’, “The ceremony is about to begin,” before a scream of “Wake up!” jolts the listener from their trance.
During their short-lived reign of the psychedelic rock tradition of the late 1960s and early 1970s, The Doors’ concerts often preceded their reputation. From the beginning, Morrison perpetuated the ‘rock star’ persona not just with his looks, dominated by leather trousers and wild curls, but with his behaviours, increasingly erratic while maintaining an enticing level of mystery. Attending a Doors gig, you never knew which of Morrison’s wild stage antics you would be subjected to, both thrilling and exhaustive.
Before he considered himself a musician, Morrison was a poet, writing in the tradition of his subversive favourites in the literary world, from the Beat and Romantics, to philosophers like Nietzsche, shamanic teachings and ancient mythologies. In high school, he was questioned by his senior year English teacher for writing book reports on 16th- and 17th-century demonology. “Jim read as much and probably more than any student in the class, but everything he read was so offbeat I had another teacher…check to see if the books Jim was reporting on actually existed,” the teacher claimed.
Taking The Doors’ name from the work of Aldous Huxley, 1954’s The Doors of Perception, which itself refers to a poem by William Blake, Morrison grounded his identity in the written word. His music, then, was a conduit for his poetry, above all else, and the eccentricity with which his bandmates, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore, would fashion their unique sound to amplify his message.
During their live performances, The Doors were known for performing long-winded ‘jams’, performance pieces that gave Morrison the chance to do a spoken-word, rock ‘n’ roll hybrid, of sorts, one that the likes of Patti Smith would later adopt, in his likeness. One piece in particular, ‘Celebration of the Lizard’, was performed in its entirety at several of their shows and eventually recorded, appearing on their 1970 live album, Absolutely Live. In Morrison’s words, ‘Celebration of the Lizard’ was a compilation of its own kind, brought together over time, “pieced together on different occasions out of already existing elements rather than having any generative core from which it grew,” as he told Rolling Stone in 1969. As quoted in The Doors FAQ, he claimed, “That piece… was kind of an invitation to the dark forces”.
‘Celebration of the Lizard’ is divided into seven sections, each a poetic passage that feeds into the surrealism that often dominated the frontman’s psyche. He conjures rabid animals, corpses and unidentifiable creatures, haunting images that subvert reality; snakes come into play, as they frequently did in Morrison’s lyricism, this time circling as a sort of imposing presence: “The smooth hissing snakes of rain,” he warns, with each passage coming to life like a cinematic vision, communicated with a feverish voice.
One passage, ‘Not to Touch the Earth’, would later be recorded separately and released on The Doors’ third studio album, 1968’s Waiting for the Sun. The remaining lyrics from ‘Celebration of the Lizard’ were printed inside the gatefold jacket of the original vinyl LP with the credit, “Lyrics to a theatre composition by The Doors”. Initially, Morrison wanted to record the entire piece, just over 17 minutes in length, and release it as a full-side on Waiting for the Sun, but was dissuaded by his bandmates and their producer, Paul A Rothchild.
The subsequent live version, however, preserves his enthusiasm for the piece, though in 1970, he qualified, “I think it’s not a great version of that piece, but I’m glad we went ahead and put it out, because I doubt if we would have ever done it on a record otherwise.” In later concerts, the immortal cry of “Wake up!” was the only one performed, an ode to Morrison’s chaos.
