There may have been some tension between both bands as The Who had apparently refused to use the same equipment as The Doors. The concert was running late as it was and to make things worse, a third act called Kangaroo was placed on the bill at the last minute and opened up the show. The disasters didn’t stop here as the revolving stage had stalled during The Who’s performance. The repair men couldn’t get the stalled stage fixed and the stage was stuck for good. This meant that 1/4 of the audience couldn’t see the remaining concert.
After The Who had played a fairly bad set and smashed up their equipment at the end of a their performance, The Doors had come on stage about half an hour later and started to play but without Jim. Finally after five minutes, Jim made it to the mike as he purposefully took his time to go on stage and was escorted by an entourage of security personnel.
The Doors started off with their medley, "Back Door Man/Five To One" but things were not settling down as the audience had difficulty seeing The Doors perform. As heard on the audience recording of this show, the crowd yelled out:
"Sit down ! Sit down ! Sit down !"
"Sit down you whore!", some one else offensively remarked.
"Sit down before I knock you down !", as one guy screamed to some one else.
"Yeah, anything you want" replied the other person.
"Come on you cunt !" the first guy took up his challenge and a scuffle broke out between the two.
The Doors played "Break On Through" and "When The Music’s Over". Jim recited some of his poems during "When The Music’s Over":
"Vast radiant beach
and a cool jewelled moon
couples naked
race down by its quiet side
and we laughed
like soft mad children
smug in the woolly cotton brains of infancy.
Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding
Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind
We leap the wall, dog and I
to hang choking on fence collar chain
Dogs lick shit
Mexican girl whore sucks my prick.
Open windows on the town
Open pores on foreign air.
The car rasps quiet.
Motor destroys itself on rotten fuel
The pump is ill.
The hose has a steel nozzle.
We . . . we want
Oh keeper of the royal sperm
Please feed the king
or the king will die"
After completing "When The Music’s Over", Jim then spoke.
"You got it ?"; whilst Robbie tuned in his guitar for the next song.
Jim then announced to the crowd:
"Never.. Never, performed before on public stage."
"Yeah", Jim added as he reasserted his statement to the crowd. The group then played "Wild Child" for the first time in front of a live audience.
Jim made it real difficult for the audience to see him perform on stage as he purposefully threw himself on the stage as he writhed and jerked around the floor like a man possessed - as seen on the video "A Feast Of Friends" and "Soft Parade - A Retrospective".
According to Elektra’s publicist, Danny Fields; "This was when he started to self-destruct. And he did it in public, turning the audience against him".
Reviews for this concert certainly did not receive any appraisals to say the least, particularly Robert Somms of the New York Free Press;
"I would characterize their current act as wearisome, exaggerated, repitious and puerile. To some that would indicate a lack of effort on my part. But Morrison (and he is the reason the Doors can walk off the stage of the singer Bowl after a casual set $25,000 richer) is basically bad theater and worse theatrics.
Beyond the grade-school prurience, the nauseating politicizing, the grotesque strut, the absurd ponts, the deliberate gestures, the unimaginative offering of himself, Morrison and the Doors aren’t just playing some songs or constructing a sound exciting or innovative in itself. They are victimized by the success of a pose they assumed."
The last song on the audience recording of the 1st source is "Wake Up/Light My Fire" - however according to Riordan & Prochnicky (1991), The Doors had finished off the concert with their last song, "The End". Obviously "The End" did make it’s way on to the 2nd source audience recording and only that song made it to the surface to this day. The riot really erupted when supposedly Jim had grabbed his crotch with both hands as he thrusted his body towards a girl in the front row and then made an obscene comment to her. It just so happened that the girl’s boyfriend was sitting next to her and he threw a chair at Jim and the crowd went berserk. Just after midnight when the Doors had finished playing "The End", Jim gave his final scream and fell onto the stage when 200 teenagers rushed onto the stage, throwing chair legs & chairs around and smashed up the equipment. Fifteen private police men couldn’t hold back the crowd and some even made it backstage and started bashing on the dressing room door. Jim was in the dressing room and trying to comfort a girl who had a cut on her face as a chair had been thrown at her. The riot lasted for about an hour and by the end of it all 3 people were hospitalised for minor injuries and 2 arrests were made.
Unfortunately, the recording of this concert, the 1st source, starts to flutter during the last song, unlike the 2nd source audience recording which is of great quality. But none the less we are fairly lucky that these recordings of this concert survived the chaos that occurred there that night.