Touch Me / Wild Child

The French single for Touch Me / Wild Child, issued on Disques Vogue under catalog number INT.80161, is a 1968 7-inch released as part of the label's Serie Fashion imprint. Pressed in France for the French market, this is a standard commercial single, not a promo variant, and it came housed in the picture sleeve shown here. The Disques Vogue Serie Fashion designation appears printed in the upper right corner of the sleeve, which immediately distinguishes this pressing from the US Elektra original and from other European variants circulating on the market.

The picture sleeve is the clear focal point of this release from a collector's standpoint, and it is genuinely well-designed for the period. The front cover is divided into four roughly equal quadrants, each containing a high-contrast black-and-white portrait photograph of a band member. The photos have been colorized or printed with color washes, giving each quadrant a distinct tinted tone: one appears in a warm amber or gold, another in a cooler green, and the others in shades that shift between grey and olive. The layout is bold and graphic, clearly influenced by the pop-art visual language that was prevalent in European single packaging of the late 1960s. The upper left quadrant shows what appears to be Ray Manzarek, the lower left Robby Krieger, and the lower right Jim Morrison, his face partially shadowed and rendered in a warm reddish-brown tone that makes it the most visually dominant of the four portraits. The upper right quadrant likely features John Densmore. The band name THE DOORS is printed in large block capitals in the upper left area of the sleeve, with TOUCH ME as the primary title printed in slightly larger text near the top. WILD CHILD appears in the lower center of the sleeve in a smaller but clear font. The Serie Fashion label designation and catalog number INT.80161 are printed in the top right corner. The overall design is compact and striking, the kind of sleeve that holds up visually even today. The rear of the sleeve, not shown, typically carries standard Disques Vogue label copy and credits. The disc itself would carry the Disques Vogue label in the standard French format for the period, though no label scan is included with this listing.

Both tracks here originate from The Soft Parade sessions, with Touch Me serving as the lead single from that album and reaching the top of the US Billboard Hot 100 in early 1969, making it one of the band's most commercially successful singles of the later period. Wild Child was a natural B-side choice, a harder blues-driven track that gave the single some edge to offset the orchestrated sweep of Touch Me. The French market received its own distinct product here, and the Serie Fashion imprint was Disques Vogue's vehicle for licensing American rock and pop product during this era. Collectors of French Doors pressings will already know that Disques Vogue handled several key Doors singles for the French market; the earlier Hello, I Love You / Love Street and People Are Strange / Unhappy Girl both came through the same arrangement, and the presentation across that catalog varies enough to make each individual sleeve worth examining on its own terms. Compared to some of the earlier French Doors singles, such as the Light My Fire three-track or the Love Me Two Times / Moonlight Drive single, the INT.80161 sleeve has a more sophisticated photographic design that reflects the band's growing visual profile by the end of 1968. On Discogs, this specific pressing shows 458 collectors marking it as owned and 119 on the want list, figures that indicate a moderately sought European single rather than a scarce rarity. Copies surface with some regularity, though sleeve condition is the primary variable driving price differences in the secondary market, as is common with picture sleeve 45s from this period.

This French Disques Vogue pressing of Touch Me / Wild Child (INT.80161) is a solid addition to any collection focused on European Doors singles or French pressings specifically. The picture sleeve design is one of the more visually interesting in the Disques Vogue Doors catalog, and the combination of tracks is commercially and musically coherent. It is not scarce, but a clean copy with an unfolded, undamaged sleeve is worth acquiring if the price is reasonable.