Jim Morrison was never a car guy. In fact, a famous story that we discussed a while back demonstrated that he really didn’t give a rat’s ass about cars or driving. Morrison’s notorious abandoned Mustang isn’t the group’s only FoMoCo connection however, as prior to making it big they made some fast cash adding incidental music to this 1966 Ford dealer training film. No, it doesn’t feature Morrison’s poetry about Falcons and Fairlanes—are they really fair?—but it does portend certain sounds that would appear on future Doors albums.
The film, Love Thy Customer, lacks the etherial acid-trip psychedelia that is generally associated with The Doors’ music, but according to Rolling Stone the band wasn’t at a point where its members could afford such luxuries, or even proper recording facilities:
The Doors piled into a cramped screening room at Los Angeles’ Rampart Studios, where they viewed the 25-minute clip on a small monitor. They composed a soundtrack largely on the spot, jamming live as the scenes flickered past. Fragments of what later became “I Looked at You,” “Build Me a Woman,” and “The Soft Parade” can be heard in the finished product. Though they played only instrumental passages, Morrison is said to have contributed percussion and additional sound effects. The day of work earned them $200.
Their music starts to show up at about 1:30 into the film, actually as part of a movie-within-a-movie as one of the white coated “service employees” starts daydreaming when he should be concentrating on “Total Selling.” Ha! Typical Doors fan.
Source: Rolling Stone
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