Happy Anniversary: The Doors, THE SOFT PARADE + Details About The New Deluxe Edition

50 years ago today, The Doors released their fourth album, an effort which found the foursome stepping a bit outside the box from their sounds of their previous LPs and embracing brass and string arrangements.

“It was to be a sonic extravaganza, with horns and strings augmenting our basic guitar, keyboards, and drums sound,” Ray Manzarek wrote of THE SOFT PARADE in his autobiography, Light My Fire: My Life with The Doors. “We were going to bring in jazz cats, country-and-western pickers, and classical pickers.”

Like the majority of the band’s catalog, THE SOFT PARADE was produced by Paul A. Rothchild, but Manzarek took advantage of the opportunity to be very hands-on in the process. “I enjoyed the hell out of the production of the album,” wrote Manzarek. “I especially enjoyed working with Paul Harris on the arrangements for the tunes that were going to get a sonic wash of horns and strings.”

While it may not have gone down in history as the easiest album to record (Manzarek described it as having taken “an ungodly long time to complete”) , it nonetheless proved to be a commercially successful one: it provided The Doors with another top-10 album – it hit #6 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart – and gave the band another top-5 single with “Touch Me,” with three other tracks (“Wishful Sinful,” “Tell All the People,” and “Runnin’ Blue”) all climbing into the Hot 100.

Oh, hey, and here’s something else about the album: Rhino will be reissuing THE SOFT PARADE on October 18 as a 50th Anniversary Edition

THE SOFT PARADE: 50TH ANNIVRERSARY DELUXE EDITION, which was be released as a limited-edition, individually-numbered set of only 15,000 copies, will include the original studio album and the B-side “Who Scared You” in newly remastered form – thank you, Bruce Botnick! – along with more than a dozen unreleased songs. There are five tracks called “Doors Only” which have been stripped of their horns and strings: “Tell All the People,” “Touch Me,” “Wishful Sinful,” “Runnin’ Blue,” and “Who Scared You,” three of which (“Touch Me,” “Wishful Sinful,” and “Runnin’ Blue”) feature new guitar parts by Robby Krieger. There are also three songs from studio rehearsals that feature the late Ray Manzarek on vocals, including an early version of “Roadhouse Blues,” and feature newly recorded bass parts by Robby DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots. Also on this set: the hour-long jam “Rock Is Dead,” which appears in its entirety (what survives of it) for the first time ever. And if that isn’t enough, the set also includes liner notes by David Fricke!

Oh, and one more thing: if you hurry over to Rhino.com and/or TheDoors.com, you can get one of the even more limited edition sets – we’re talking only 500 copies – that includes a hand-numbered 36”x18” lithograph of the interior vinyl gatefold artwork.

How’s that for awesome?

Here’s the full track listing, so you can drool to your heart’s content...

 

THE SOFT PARADE: 50TH ANNIVERSARY DELUXE EDITION

Track Listing:

Disc One

1.      “Tell All The People”

2.      “Touch Me”

3.      “Shaman’s Blues”

4.      “Do It”

5.      “Easy Ride”

6.      “Wild Child”

7.      “Runnin’ Blue”

8.      “Wishful Sinful”

9.      “The Soft Parade”

Bonus Track

10.  “Who Scared You” – B-side

 

Disc Two

1.      “Tell All The People” (Doors only mix)*

2.      “Touch Me” (Doors only mix w/new Robby Krieger guitar overdub)*

3.      “Runnin’ Blue” (Doors only mix w/new Robby Krieger guitar overdub)*

4.      “Wishful Sinful” (Doors only mix w/new Robby Krieger guitar overdub)*

5.      “Who Scared You” (Doors only mix)*

6.       “Roadhouse Blues” – Screamin’ Ray Daniels (a.k.a. Ray Manzarek) on vocal*

7.      “(You Need Meat) Don’t Go No Further” – Screamin’ Ray Daniels (a.k.a. Ray Manzarek) on vocal*

8.      “I’m Your Doctor” – Screamin’ Ray Daniels (a.k.a. Ray Manzarek) on vocal*

9.      “Touch Me” (Doors only mix)*

10.  “Runnin’ Blue” (Doors only mix) *

11.  “Wishful Sinful” (Doors only mix)*

 

Disc Three

1.      “I Am Troubled”

2.      “Seminary School” (aka “Petition The Lord With Prayer”) *

3.      “Rock Is Dead” – Complete Version *

4.      “Chaos” *

* previously unreleased