Jim Morrison: The Lizard King — White Vinyl

Jim Morrison: The Lizard King, catalog number LILLP 1968 on the Guilty label (with Round LP-1968 printed on the cover), is the French pressing of this well-documented 1973 bootleg, issued on white vinyl. This variant is distinct from the more frequently encountered black vinyl German pressing under catalog number LIZLP 1968, and the Discogs data confirms the French origin. With only 11 collectors currently logging ownership and 23 holding it on their want list, this white vinyl copy sits in a noticeably tighter supply position than its German counterpart, making it the scarcer of the two primary variants.

The cover design is identical in concept to the black vinyl edition: a fully monochrome front featuring four cropped, high-contrast black and white portraits of Jim Morrison arranged in a horizontal row, each frame slightly offset from the last, giving the layout something of a contact-sheet or photo-strip quality. Above the portraits, the text reads Live, never before released in quotation marks, followed by JIM MORRISON in bold capitals and leader of the DOORS in a smaller typeface below that. The title THE LIZARD KING runs bold along the lower portion, with the designation Round LP-1968 printed at the lower right of the front cover. No color appears anywhere on the front; the aesthetic is rough and deliberate in the way early 1970s bootleg packaging often was, printed cheaply and distributed without pretense.

The back cover carries a close-up photograph of Morrison, heavily shadowed and slightly unfocused, which suits the underground character of the release. A track listing is printed down the left side, and here a well-known anomaly surfaces: the sleeve track listing is incorrect. The Discogs community notes confirm this. The labels themselves present a further wrinkle specific to this French pressing: Side A is labeled as Side 5 and Side B as Side 6, suggesting this may have originally circulated as part of a larger multi-disc set, or that the label printing was simply sourced from another configuration. The labels carry no further information beyond those designations, a notable contrast to the German pressing whose labels include the catalog number, stereo notation, and the NOT FOR COMMERCIAL USE disclaimer. On the white vinyl copy, the labels are essentially bare. The cover credits Guilty as the label on the labels themselves, while the cover uses Round LP. No inserts, printed inner sleeves, or supplementary materials accompany the record.

The recording documents The Doors' performance at the New Roundhouse in London during September 1968, one of the more heavily documented shows from the band's autumn European run. The actual playing order on this pressing runs: Side A, Break on Through, When The Music's Over; Side B, Five To One, Light My Fire, The End. Extended readings of Light My Fire and The End anchor Side B, as they do across most configurations of this material. Collectors building a complete picture of the Roundhouse recordings will want to cross-reference Live At The Roundhouse and Roundhouse London UK 07.09.1968 (Early Show), both of which draw from the same or closely related tapes with differing completeness and audio presentation. The Lizard King Plays London and its green insert variant cover similar territory and are worth a direct comparison on sound quality and track selection. For broader context on the European leg itself, The Live Doors: Live In Europe September 1968 provides useful framing. The standard black vinyl pressing of this same title is the more commonly traded copy and should not be confused with this French white vinyl issue.

The white vinyl French pressing of Jim Morrison: The Lizard King, catalog LILLP 1968 on Guilty, is the harder variant to locate of the two primary configurations of this title. The bare labels, the Side 5 and Side 6 numbering anomaly, and the lower Discogs ownership count all point to a copy that surfaces less frequently than the German black vinyl edition. It belongs in any serious collection focused on The Doors' 1968 European performances, and the white vinyl alone gives it a physical distinction that the standard pressing simply does not carry. Source tape quality reflects the bootleg origins, as expected, but the pressing itself on white vinyl has a visual presence that makes it worth pursuing when it appears.