Absolutely Live

Absolutely Live is the first live album released by American rock band The Doors in July 1970. Many shows were recorded during the 1970 tour to create the Absolutely Live album. The Doors' producer and longtime collaborator Paul Rothchild painstakingly edited the album from many different shows to create one cohesive concert. For example, the best part of a song from the Detroit show may have been spliced together with another part of the same song from the Boston show, trying to create "the ultimate concert." Rothchild has said, "I couldn't get complete takes of a lot of songs, so sometimes I'd cut from Detroit to Philadelphia in midsong. There must be 2,000 edits on that album." Despite this, Paul A. Rothchild has proven to be wrong since 1999, when Bright Midnight record company (Rhino/Elektra/Warner group) started to publish all the uncut masters of all the shows recorded for Absolutely live tour (July 1969 – June 1970: Aquarius theatre 1969, 8 CDs; Live in New York 1970, 6 CDs; Boston 1970, 3 CDs; Philadelphia 1970, 2 CDs, Pittsburgh 1970, 1 CD, Detroit 1970, 2 CDs); of a total of 20 songs of the original Absolutely Live album, only two have cuts: on Backdoor Man (from Felt Forum, 18th January 1970, second show) a cut of Love Hides comes from Philadelphia, 1st May 1970 (no other recorded professionally recorded version of Love Hides was available, for this reason Rothchild decided to include it) and on Five to One (from Felt Forum, 17-18th January 1970) only a cut of one of Jim’s screams was added from the other show of the same Felt Forum venue (18th January 1970, first show). Official audio proofs show that less than 5 major cuts are on Absolutely Live album. These recorded audio proofs, from officially available CDs, allow to track back each single song of Absolutely Live album to each recorded concert, showing that Rothchild’s claims about Absolutely Live have to be considered as utter exaggerations to create a myth. The album marks the first release of the complete Celebration of the Lizard sequence, albeit in a live version.

In 1991, Absolutely Live and 1983's Alive, She Cried were repackaged and released as a two-disc set entitled In Concert, with the addition of one track from 1978's An American Prayer and 1987's Live at the Hollywood Bowl. Absolutely Live was subsequently issued by itself as a single disc set by Elektra in 1996, with all tracks in their original sequence, but with new artwork, different from the original LP.