Absolutely Live by The Doors: Original Dye-Transfer Production Photograph

Los Angeles: Elektra Records, 1970. first edition. Very Good. STUNNING ORIGINAL DYE-TRANSFER PRODUCTION PHOTOGRAPH used in the preparation of the cover for the band’s first—and only—live album issued during Jim Morrison’s lifetime. With important provenance. Original vintage color dye-transfer print, 12 x 23 inches, dry-mounted to Bainbridge Bristol Board, with visible period blue art-department retouching along the upper and lower edges; accompanied a backing board signed and inscribed in 1975 by Bob Heimall, the art director/designer for the album, to music-industry executive Stephen Dessau: “To: Stephan [sic] P. Dessau (as in Nassau) / Happy Holiday Diamond Studs! / Remember – your [sic] in over your head! / Bob Heimall ’75”.

Issued by Elektra on July 20, 1970, Absolutely Live was the Doors’ first live album and the only one released during Jim Morrison’s lifetime; Morrison would be dead in Paris less than a year later, on July 3, 1971. As such, the album occupies a singular place in the group’s history: the sole contemporaneous live statement through which audiences could hear the Doors officially present themselves as a concert act while Morrison was still alive. Compiled by producer Paul A. Rothchild from performances recorded in 1969 and 1970, including material from the Aquarius Theatre and Felt Forum, the album captured the band in the form for which many admirers considered them most powerful—improvisatory, theatrical, blues-driven, and unstable in the best sense. It also contained the first full official release of “Celebration of the Lizard,” among the most mythic and elusive works in the Doors canon.

The present dye-transfer print (with extremely rich color) preserves the underlying live image taken by photographer Frank Lisciandro used in the preparation of the cover, prior to the addition of typography and logo design. Morrison – in a superimposed image taken at an earlier date – appears at right, isolated at the microphone, with the remaining members of the band receding into a saturated blue stage space behind him. The image possesses the nocturnal theatricality appropriate to the band at this moment, while the object itself retains the physical traces of period record-cover manufacture: board mount, hand retouching, and signs of studio handling.

Contemporary and later accounts held that Elektra initially favored a grainy, bluish rear-view stage image from the Aquarius Theatre performances, but judged it insufficiently exciting for commercial use. A different, earlier, more conventionally iconic image of Morrison was then incorporated into the final design. Morrison is said to have hated the final version. By 1969–70 his appearance had changed markedly: heavier, bearded, and far removed from the lean black-leather rock-star persona through which he had first entered the popular imagination. The dispute reflected a deep struggle over who would determine Morrison’s public image at the end of the Doors’ great period: Morrison himself, or the commercial machinery that preferred the older myth.

Provenance: From the art director for the album Bob Heimall, to music-executive Stephen P. Dessau. With an additional CBS memorandum dated 1979 identifying Dessau as Director of Product Management, East Coast, Epic/Portrait/CBS Associated Labels, and a copy of the album.

Los Angeles: Elektra Records, 1970. Original vintage color dye-transfer print, 12 x 23 inches. Only the most trivial wear with absolutely no fading - the colors are superbly rich. A remarkable survival.