It is a season for anniversary reissues, but Autumn is also the season for Christmas specials. This time around it is a special, expanded 50th-anniversary reissue of Morrison Hotel, the fifth album (1970) by The Doors.
The reissue will be released on October 9, 2020, and it will be a double CD/LP deluxe edition. The original album tracks will be newly remastered by The Doors’ longtime engineer and mixer Bruce Botnick. The release will also feature over 60 minutes of unreleased studio outtakes.
According to Rolling Stone, those unreleased recordings include a series of takes that capture the evolution of Morrison Hotel’s “Queen of the Highway,” “Roadhouse Blues,” and “Peace Frog.”
Botnick said that “there are many takes, different arrangements, false starts, and insightful studio conversations between the band and producer Paul Rothchild who was in the control room. It’s like being a fly on the wall.”
There is yet another feature to this release. It will include a biographical comic book titled Morrison Hotel. Published by Z2 Comics, the graphic novel adaptation will be a collaboration between writer Leah Moore, daughter of comic book legend Alan Moore, and surviving band members guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore.
Here are the already shared, previously unreleased takes of “Peace Frog” and “Blue Sunday.”
