The Lost Interview Tapes Featuring Jim Morrison Volume Two: The Circus Magazine Interview

Bright Midnight Records issued this CD on January 23, 2002, under catalog number RMH2 7909. This is the first edition pressing of The Lost Interview Tapes Featuring Jim Morrison Volume Two: The Circus Magazine Interview, a US release distributed through Rhino Handmade. A second edition exists with a different cover, so the catalog number and cover art together are the key identifiers for this specific variant. The release was previously titled The Doors Lost Interview Tapes Vol. II: The Jim Morrison Circus Magazine Interview before the title was standardized to align with the series branding.

The first edition cover presents a close-cropped, sepia-toned photograph of Jim Morrison, his face filling most of the frame. Morrison appears bearded, his hair long and slightly unkempt, consistent with his look in the final year of his life, around 1970 and 1971. The warm brown tones give the image a period-appropriate, almost archival quality. The Doors logo sits at the top in the band's familiar typeface, rendered in white, with the series title stacked beneath it in smaller white text. The overall layout is clean and understated, letting the photograph carry the visual weight. The second edition cover, by contrast, uses a black-and-white photograph of Morrison seated at what appears to be a table or desk, a glass or cup visible in front of him, with a red background framing the image. That cover also adds the subtitle The Circus Magazine Interview directly to the front, which the first edition omits from the cover face itself. The second edition has a noticeably more graphic, high-contrast design compared to the softer warmth of this first pressing. Collectors chasing the first edition specifically should confirm the absence of that subtitle on the cover and the sepia portrait as the primary visual identifiers. The disc itself is a standard jewel case release with an 8-page booklet. The booklet is modest in scope but provides contextual information about the interview and the archive project. Production quality is consistent with other Bright Midnight titles from this period, the same label behind releases like Live At The Aquarius Theatre: The First Performance and Live At The Aquarius Theatre: The Second Performance.

The source material is a roughly one-hour interview conducted on October 13, 1970, by Circus magazine reporter Salli Stevenson at the Doors Workshop studios in West Hollywood, California. At the time of recording, Morrison was deep in the aftermath of the Miami trial, weighing a potential prison sentence, and the interview reflects that pressure directly. The 41 individually indexed tracks are not songs but discrete question-and-answer segments, each titled after the specific question or Morrison's response. This segmentation makes the disc genuinely useful for research and reference, allowing you to locate specific exchanges without scrubbing through audio. The track list covers a remarkable range of subjects: Morrison's film work at UCLA, his thoughts on theatricality in rock, the Miami incident and trial, the Isle of Wight festival, the deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, his poetry book, his family, and his views on the band's direction at what he calls a critical point. Several tracks carry Morrison's own interjections as titles, such as Jim: A Hero Is Someone Who Rebels Against The Facts Of Existence and Jim: The Group's At A Critical Point, which gives a sense of how candid and discursive the conversation was. The question about how he thought he would die, asked just months before his death in Paris in July 1971, gives the interview an unavoidable historical weight. For collectors interested in how Morrison presented himself publicly during the band's final chapter, this sits alongside Backstage & Dangerous: The Private Rehearsal as essential primary source material from that period. The Absolutely Live references in the opening tracks also connect naturally to the band's live document output, for which context Live In Hollywood: Highlights From The Aquarius Theatre Performances is worth cross-referencing. For biographical background on Morrison, No One Here Gets Out Alive covers much of the same period in depth. On Discogs, 127 collectors report owning this release and 104 have it on their want list, modest numbers that suggest solid but not overwhelming demand. The companion release, The Lost Interview Tapes Featuring Jim Morrison Volume One, is frequently collected alongside this disc.

This first edition pressing of RMH2 7909 is a legitimate archival release from the Doors' own archive, sourced from an unheard 1970 interview and properly indexed across 41 tracks. The two-cover situation means collectors need to be precise about which edition they have or want. The first edition with the sepia Morrison portrait is the one to seek for completeness. The content is genuinely valuable for anyone serious about the Morrison period from 1970 onward, and the Bright Midnight imprint ensures this is an official, authorized release rather than a bootleg. Recommended without hesitation for collectors focused on Jim Morrison spoken word and interview material.