57 replies to this topic

[hardrockcafe]

Hi Jeff & Familiar Freak

Rhino Handmade just announced (see quoted text below) they will be releasing a 2CD set of previously unreleased live recordings of Iron Butterfly at Fillmore East, April 26-27, 1968.  The thing that caught my attention was that the original engineer Lee Osborne is mentioned in the Rhino product description.  It states he recorded the Fillmore East shows on a 1/2" four-track machine at 15 ips.

The Doors played the same venue a month earlier March 22-23, 1968.

Question: is Lee Osborne still around and is the Doors archivist in contact with him?  Is it possible Lee was the Bill Graham "in house" Fillmore East sound engineer in 1968?  And might he have been the one who recorded The Doors there March 22-23?  If so, might he know what became of the tapes?  Didn't Vince Treanor confirm that Graham's in house staff recorded The Doors during the March 22-23 Fillmore East 1968 gigs?

Source: http://www.rhino.com...ndmade?cmpid=ga

Quote

Rhino web site:

Iron Butterfly made its New York City debut at the Fillmore East in the spring of 1968, recording all four shows from April 26 and 27. The tapes reveal the Los Angeles quartet – singer/organist Doug Ingle, bassist Lee Dorman, guitarist Erik Brann (just 17 at the time) and drummer Ron Bushy – on the verge of its defining success, mixing tracks from its first album Heavy, with songs that would appear two months later on the band’s multi-platinum magnum opus, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.
The well-defined sound heard on these previously unreleased recordings is the result of the quality of the original tapes and the meticulous restoration used to prepare them for this project. Original recording engineer Lee Osborne recorded all the shows using a ½” four-track recorder running at 15 ips. Unfortunately, audio signal issues made the first two songs from the second set on April 26 unusable.
What remains, as veteran music journalist David Fricke writes in set’s the liner notes, “is the sound of hard-rock immortality in the making…”

Edited by hardrockcafe, 01 September 2011 - 02:01 AM.

[ChrisN]

I always wondered how Greg Shaw has setlists for all 4 March '68 shows in his book "On the Road."  I know a lot has been written about these shows, especially in Mike Jahn's book about the Doors, but 4 setlists?   Since a Londog Fog show has surfaced I'm thinking anything is possible now.

Edited by ChrisN, 01 September 2011 - 11:35 PM.

[hardrockcafe]

Can you post Shaw's setlists?

Here are the incomplete setlists from Mild Equator:

http://mildequator.c...968/680322.html

March 22, 1968

Early Show

When The Music's Over
Break On Through
Alabama Song >
Back Door Man >
Five To One
You're Lost Little Girl
Love Me Two Times
The Unknown Soldier
Light My Fire

Late Show

When The Music's Over
Back Door Man
Five To One
Break On Through
Light My Fire
The Unknown Soldier
The End
(Incomplete)

Recordings / Film:
Unavailable

Reviews / Info:
-8:00pm & 11:30pm scheduled start times.
-The Doors screen 'The Unknown Soldier' during the early and late shows and perform the song afterward.

March 23, 1968

http://mildequator.c...68/680323.html#

Setlist:

Early Show

When The Music's Over
Back Door Man
Break On Through
Light My Fire
The Unknown Soldier
(Incomplete)


Late Show

Five To One
When The Music's Over
Back Door Man
Break On Through
Money
Moonlight Drive
      -Horse Latitudes
Light My Fire
The Unknown Soldier
House Announcer (Bill Graham)
The End
(Incomplete)

[Doorsmanagement]

hardrockcafe, on 01 September 2011 - 01:56 AM, said:

Hi Jeff & Familiar Freak

Rhino Handmade just announced (see quoted text below) they will be releasing a 2CD set of previously unreleased live recordings of Iron Butterfly at Fillmore East, April 26-27, 1968.  The thing that caught my attention was that the original engineer Lee Osborne is mentioned in the Rhino product description.  It states he recorded the Fillmore East shows on a 1/2" four-track machine at 15 ips.

The Doors played the same venue a month earlier March 22-23, 1968.

Question: is Lee Osborne still around and is the Doors archivist in contact with him?  Is it possible Lee was the Bill Graham "in house" Fillmore East sound engineer in 1968?  And might he have been the one who recorded The Doors there March 22-23?  If so, might he know what became of the tapes?  Didn't Vince Treanor confirm that Graham's in house staff recorded The Doors during the March 22-23 Fillmore East 1968 gigs?

Source: http://www.rhino.com...ndmade?cmpid=ga

Spoke to the archivists at WMG and Rhino. Here's what they tell me:

"We don't have too much info on the tapes, but from what we were able to tell the show was recorded by Atlantic and not Graham's people, and that Lee either worked for Atlantic or was hired by them to record it.  We didn't get in touch with him for the Butterfly release, but I'll see if I can dig anything up on him.
The tapes were in our vault, so somehow they were not lost in the fire.  From time to time we find things like this that were in somebody's office or at Atlantic HQ, but it's sadly a rarity."

[ChrisN]

Wow, thanks for sharing that correspondence with us Jeff.  I still have hopes that something from  these shows will someday surface in one form or another.

Hardrock,  the Mildequator setlists look like they were taken right from Shaw's book.  I guess they're incomplete but there's enough songs there to make me think someone either has a recording, detailed notes, an excellent memory or all three.

[hardrockcafe]

Doorsmanagement, on 02 September 2011 - 12:59 AM, said:

Spoke to the archivists at WMG and Rhino. Here's what they tell me:

"We don't have too much info on the tapes, but from what we were able to tell the show was recorded by Atlantic and not Graham's people, and that Lee either worked for Atlantic or was hired by them to record it.  We didn't get in touch with him for the Butterfly release, but I'll see if I can dig anything up on him.
The tapes were in our vault, so somehow they were not lost in the fire.  From time to time we find things like this that were in somebody's office or at Atlantic HQ, but it's sadly a rarity."

Thanks Jeff.  Pretty cool that the Butterfly tapes survived the 1978 Atlantic Records warehouse fire in New Jersey. That fire destroyed a lot of priceless tapes including John Coltrane session reels.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong: but didn't Vince Treanor (Doors concert sound engineer) state that although he rarely let any 3rd parties record The Doors via his soundboard in concert as a matter of policy, he did say somewhere that he does remember that he DID allow Bill Graham's people to tap feeds from his concert PA mixing console and record the Doors' March 1968 Fillmore East gigs?  If so, these four 1968 Fillmore East sets would potentially be one of the very few Doors shows where Vince has confirmed a pro-recorded multitrack recording was authorized by him and taped by a 3rd party (i.e. not Elektra).  If this is correct, these unaccounted for Bill Graham Fillmore East multitracks surely become one of the holy grails of Doorsdom.

Edited by hardrockcafe, 02 September 2011 - 01:55 AM.

[hardrockcafe]

Update.  Found this quote from jim4371 which indicates Vince told him that Graham's people did record the March 1968 Fillmore East Doors sets:

Quote

jim4371:

Vince told me that at the very least the Winterland and Fillmore East performances were taped. That's good enough for me. Do I think he taped every show they did for him? Who knows. But those at least, were.

Edited by hardrockcafe, 02 September 2011 - 02:05 AM.

[hardrockcafe]

From Billboard Oct. 26, 1968:

Perhaps this article explains the reason Graham made multitrack professional recordings at his venues -- he wanted to sell his recording services to the bands themselves?  Check out this 1968 Billboard article!

Quote

Billboard Oct. 26, 1968


"Both the Fillmore and Avalon have recording equipment available and there are indeed groups cutting albums in these huge places...

Graham's talent budget for the Fillmore with its 2,300 dance floor capacity runs from $5000 to $9000 for three nights.  The Winterland Arena can hold up to 3,500 people and allows Graham to go as high as $15,000 for "heavy acts" like Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane and the old Cream."

[hardrockcafe]

Hi Jeff and Familiar Freak,

Here are a few more leads.  These engineers and mixers appear to have worked for Bill Graham back in the day.  They are credited in the 1972 vinyl release "Fillmore: The Last Days."

Maybe someone at WMG or Rhino knows some of these guys?  If so, maybe one of these Graham sound engineers can provide some leads on what happened to the multitracks of the Doors 1968 Fillmore east shows:

Glen Kolotkin (Engineer)
Jeremy Zatkin (Engineer)
Nigel Noble (Engineer)
Fred Catero (Mixing)
Mike Larner (Mixing)
John "Sly" Wilson (Mixing)
Steve Barnard (Mixing)

http://www.answers.c...s#ixzz1E7xdss6G

[hardrockcafe]

Life Magazine photos of the March 1968 Fillmore East shows:

[DoorsFanPeter]

hardrockcafe, on 02 September 2011 - 01:53 AM, said:

Someone correct me if I'm wrong: but didn't Vince Treanor (Doors concert sound engineer) state that although he rarely let any 3rd parties record The Doors via his soundboard in concert as a matter of policy, he did say somewhere that he does remember that he DID allow Bill Graham's people to tap feeds from his concert PA mixing console and record the Doors' March 1968 Fillmore East gigs?  If so, these four 1968 Fillmore East sets would potentially be one of the very few Doors shows where Vince has confirmed a pro-recorded multitrack recording was authorized by him and taped by a 3rd party (i.e. not Elektra).  If this is correct, these unaccounted for Bill Graham Fillmore East multitracks surely become one of the holy grails of Doorsdom.

Wouldn't this Vince quote apply only to non-multitrack soundboards captured by BGP?

The Billboard article says recording equipment is "available" rather than "in-house".  I think you still needed the recording truck.

Plus BGP would likely need approval from Elektra on multitracking The Doors.

[hardrockcafe]

DoorsFanPeter, on 02 September 2011 - 04:08 AM, said:

Wouldn't this Vince quote apply only to non-multitrack soundboards captured by BGP?

The Billboard article says recording equipment is "available" rather than "in-house".  I think you still needed the recording truck.

Plus BGP would likely need approval from Elektra on multitracking The Doors.

Vince's observation that both Winterland 67 and Fillmore 68 were recorded by Bill Graham's sound people is corroborated by the fact that The Doors came into possession of a 1967 4-track Graham tape reel, which appears to be Winterland.  The 2nd reel of the show is missing.  And Graham's engineer experienced a technical issue and didn't capture the drums and bass.  This is why The Doors haven't released it.  It's incomplete and Densmore and Manzarek would need to overdub drums and bass, respectively.

Given as much taping as Graham did, I think he had a 4 track machine at Fillmore and offered recording services to bands.  

Graham recorded tons of acts that were under contract with record labels.  That didn't stop him from taping and stockpiling recordings.  Just listen to the stuff on Wolfgang's Vault.

Edited by hardrockcafe, 02 September 2011 - 04:19 AM.

[DoorsFanPeter]

hardrockcafe, on 02 September 2011 - 04:17 AM, said:

Vince's observation that both Winterland 67 and Fillmore 68 were recorded by Bill Graham's sound people is corroborated by the fact that The Doors came into possession of a 1967 4-track Graham tape reel, which appears to be Winterland.  The 2nd reel of the show is missing.  And Graham's engineer experienced a technical issue and didn't capture the drums and bass.  This is why The Doors haven't released it.  It's incomplete and Densmore and Manzarek would need to overdub drums and bass, respectively.

Given as much taping as Graham did, I think he had a 4 track machine at Fillmore and offered recording services to bands.  

Graham recorded tons of acts that were under contract with record labels.  That didn't stop him from taping and stockpiling recordings.  Just listen to the stuff on Wolfgang's Vault.

Mono soundboards and multitracking are very different things.

BGP would have contract info saying they'd tape show for "promotional" use by the promoter, but I doubt they could legally multitrack without written permission from the label.  BGP recorded lots of stuff, but I can't think of much evidence of them doing multitracking on their own dime minus a couple TV project BG attempted to sell for TV use like Tanglewood 1970 summer series.  Mono soundboards had extremely little commercial value at the time.

The Gram Parsons multitrack was recorded as an opener for the Dead on the bands dime as a informal favour or simply testing the equipment, it was in the DEAD tape archive before official cd release.  I think it was a similar story with the Byrds Feb 69 multitrack that came out on official cd(opening for Bloomfield?).  This is why those multitracke dtapes are outside the BGP/WV archive.  I'm guessing it's the same for the Doors late 67 multitrack(Procol Harum or Chuck Berry opening and taping?).

[Hamlet]

Doorsmanagement, on 02 September 2011 - 12:59 AM, said:

Spoke to the archivists at WMG and Rhino. Here's what they tell me:

"We don't have too much info on the tapes, but from what we were able to tell the show was recorded by Atlantic and not Graham's people, and that Lee either worked for Atlantic or was hired by them to record it.  We didn't get in touch with him for the Butterfly release, but I'll see if I can dig anything up on him.
The tapes were in our vault, so somehow they were not lost in the fire.  From time to time we find things like this that were in somebody's office or at Atlantic HQ, but it's sadly a rarity."

Thanks for the info.

Seems a bit strange that Atlantic would be allowed to record The Doors, when they were under exclusive contract to Elektra?!

[hardrockcafe]

DoorsFanPeter, on 02 September 2011 - 06:54 AM, said:

Mono soundboards and multitracking are very different things.

BGP would have contract info saying they'd tape show for "promotional" use by the promoter, but I doubt they could legally multitrack without written permission from the label.  BGP recorded lots of stuff, but I can't think of much evidence of them doing multitracking on their own dime minus a couple TV project BG attempted to sell for TV use like Tanglewood 1970 summer series.  Mono soundboards had extremely little commercial value at the time.

The Gram Parsons multitrack was recorded as an opener for the Dead on the bands dime as a informal favour or simply testing the equipment, it was in the DEAD tape archive before official cd release.  I think it was a similar story with the Byrds Feb 69 multitrack that came out on official cd(opening for Bloomfield?).  This is why those multitracke dtapes are outside the BGP/WV archive.  I'm guessing it's the same for the Doors late 67 multitrack(Procol Harum or Chuck Berry opening and taping?).

Have you actually seen/read the contract Graham and The Doors entered into when they played Fillmore or Winterland etc? Have you actually seen a clause in any contract The Doors signed with Graham in which they agreed to have their concerts recorded on a mono 1/4" reel to reel, but not on a 1/2" 4 track reel to reel?  And if the Doors were headliners for the Winterland 67 show which is multitrack, are you suggesting the opening acts recorded the Doors later set?  What evidence of this do you have?  It all seems like a lot of unfounded conjecture on your part.

Here's what we know:

Vince Treanor said Winterland 67 and Fillmore 68 were recorded by Graham's people.  Winterland has already surfaced and it's MULTITRACK -- a 4 track, 45 minutes, but the 2nd reel is missing.  Jimi Hendrix's people ended up with this reel years later via a box of some tapes they acquired.  When they saw it was a Doors reel, the Hendrix camp handed it over to Doors camp.

Edited by hardrockcafe, 02 September 2011 - 02:01 PM.

[hardrockcafe]

Hamlet, on 02 September 2011 - 12:16 PM, said:

Thanks for the info.

Seems a bit strange that Atlantic would be allowed to record The Doors, when they were under exclusive contract to Elektra?!

Jeff didn't say Atlantic recorded The Doors.  Iron Butterfly was under contract to Atlantic and Atlantic recorded the Butterfly show.

Graham venues were set up with recording capability.  It would have been one of Grahams people that recorded The Doors.  Vince Treanor has confirmed this.

[giza]

hardrockcafe, on 02 September 2011 - 01:24 PM, said:

were recorded by Graham's people.

any the doors concert video also were taken by them?

[hardrockcafe]

giza, on 02 September 2011 - 01:37 PM, said:

any the doors concert video also were taken by them?

Unknown.  Graham allegedly had a closed circuit TV setup in some of his venue so patrons could see the performance if they ate at Graham's restaurant.  But it's unclear if there are any videotapes of The Doors performing at Fillmore.  However, we do have a confirmation from The Doors concert sound engineer, Vince Treanor (see quote earlier in thread) that their performance was audiotaped by Graham's people.

[Hamlet]

hardrockcafe, on 02 September 2011 - 01:26 PM, said:

Jeff didn't say Atlantic recorded The Doors.  Iron Butterfly was under contract to Atlantic and Atlantic recorded the Butterfly show.

Graham venues were set up with recording capability.  It would have been one of Grahams people that recorded The Doors.  Vince Treanor has confirmed this.

But, why wouldn´t Jeff ask the archivists at WMG and Rhino if The Doors were recorded at the Fillmore?

[DoorsFanPeter]

hardrockcafe, on 02 September 2011 - 01:24 PM, said:

Have you actually seen/read the contract Graham and The Doors entered into when they played Fillmore or Winterland etc? Have you actually seen a clause in any contract The Doors signed with Graham in which they agreed to have their concerts recorded on a mono 1/4" reel to reel, but not on a 1/2" 4 track reel to reel?  And if the Doors were headliners for the Winterland 67 show which is multitrack, are you suggesting the opening acts recorded the Doors later set?  What evidence of this do you have?  It all seems like a lot of unfounded conjecture on your part.

Here's what we know:

Vince Treanor said Winterland 67 and Fillmore 68 were recorded by Graham's people.  Winterland has already surfaced and it's MULTITRACK -- a 4 track, 45 minutes, but the 2nd reel is missing.  Jimi Hendrix's people ended up with this reel years later via a box of some tapes they acquired.  When they saw it was a Doors reel, the Hendrix camp handed it over to Doors camp.

Everything I've read seemed to indicate that BGP went weeks possibly a month or two between multitracked shows.

The original BGP contracts allowed for audio/video taping for PROMOTIONAL purposes.  This is why the first Wolfgang's Vault website stremed audio rather than sold it when they made deals with labels.  I think it was sometimes shown between acts at later shows or shown CCTV live at neighbouring BGP run venues like restaurants.  4 Tracking everything and dealing with all the wiring between all artist changeovers would be an insane logistical nightmare that would cost an arm and leg.  Instead they PA feed was connected to audio recorder to cheaper tape with longer running time.

Don't wonder why the multitracked Doors tape was not in the BGP archive?

I've also got the impression, plus reading all those Vince posting on the other Doors forum, that the band was very particular about not having outsiders getting multitracks even back then.