The turnout for When You're Strange at SkyCity last night was a sure sign that Jim Morrison, the leonine front man of The Doors is gone but not forgotten.
It's been a while since I lived in houses where Riders On The Storm would rattle the dodgy piles on sunnySaturday afternoons. And it presumably never happened at all for the folks at SkyCity. I accosted an usher just after the lights went down and asked her to ask the projectionist to make sure he turned it up. "Oh, don't worry," she said. "Trust me. He will." She went past me later and gave me an inquiring thumbs-up. I didn't have the heart to tell her the volume reminded me of church socials.
It was good to see Morrison in full cry, though it didn't happen much. A lot of the footage had overlaid sound from other songs - watch the lips - and you just longed for the chance to settle back and enjoy one song, uninterrupted and uncut.
It was good to be reminded of so much stuff that I'd forgotten: that The Doors never had a bassist; that Morrison loved hanging out on Pere Lachaise, the Paris cemetery where he is now interred along with a roll call of other artistic luminaries; and how, when The Doors performed, half a dozen uniformed cops would prowl the stage grabbing punters who tried to reach Morrison and hurling them back into the crowd like sacks of rubbish.
As a film, When You're Strange is something of a disappointment. Johnny Depp's very intrusive voiceover narration is both sententious and banal ("You can't burn out unless you're on fire," indeed). But it was good to see Jim at his best and worst and wonder whether there was any difference.
