ERC Cut "The Doors" Mono Using the Same Tape Elektra Used in 1967 So Why the "Controversy"?
the "LEDO" controversy explained
Recorded in 1966 and released in January of 1967 The Doors' debut album, powered by the edited single "Light My Fire" reached #2 on the Billboard charts, while the single was the "summer of love"'s #1 hit. If you were alive then you heard the single that summer wherever you went—blaring from jukeboxes and car radios. When you bought the album you heard a long extended "Light My Fire" that for many listeners was as uncomfortably close to jazz as they'd ever come. Relief only came when the organ hook returned.
The album was mixed to mono and stereo (not a "fold down") but the mono version was quickly withdrawn, though before it was, various mono iterations were released, pressed at Monarch, at Columbia's Pitman, New Jersey pressing plant and at Allentown pressing in Pennsylvania. That's the copy I own, bought at a garage sale for $1.00 in unplayed, mint. condition. The cover photo is from that original pressing, not The Electric Recording Company's meticulous album jacket reproduction!
When The Electric Recording Company announced its mono reissue of the first Doors album, cut from the tape marked "LEDO" the usual skeptics, clowns and carnival barkers began their disinformation campaign and now that it's released they continue. Consider LEDO as a SPARS code. There were claims that "LEDO" was an acronym for "leadered, equalized, Dolby" and that therefore ERC's claim that this was cut from "the master tape" was a fraud, especially since the master was not a Dolby tape.
A livid correspondent insisted to me that no master tapes leave America and that all ERCs were therefore cut from copies. He's wrong. Later he insisted I issue an apology because he read something on a forum confirming his error. From where does all of this hysteria eminate?
ERC was straightforward about its source: the original LEDO tape also used to master the original 1967 pressing, confirmed by Bruce Botnick. The recording was to a 4 track tape, with most takes recorded live and only a few tracks featuring overdubs of additional bass, vocal doubling and a few other parts. LEDO was a Jac Holzman coined term (Holzman founded Elektra Records) that stands for "Leadered, Edited, Duplicate of the Original". That requires further clarification: "Leadered Master" means the mastered mix takes leadered". "Edited" meant all of the master mixes sequenced and edited together as is required to cut a lacquer side. Now here's the tricky one: "Duplicate of the Original". "Duplicate" meant "A Mono or Stereo Mix Master from a multitrack, in this case a 4 track". "Original" meant "Multitrack or Mono or Stereo session master".
In other words, the "LEDO" tape is the original master mix down tape. Period, end of story (or at least that part). The original mono edition was withdrawn at least in part because it suffers from a variety of defects in certain places including gross distortion on "Break on Through". On the other hand, given that this was originally a 4 track recording for which the original "stereo mix" was also inherently defective because it's "stereo" in name only with much of the live band recording stuffed into one channel, there's not a version out there that's not defective in one way or another.
In fact, the original stereo mix has been lost and so the excellent all-analogue box from Analogue Productions is all from original master tapes except for the first album, which is from the best available source.
The ERC is from the master tape, flaws and all, and for those who want that, ERC gives it to those who ordered it. And the ERC is cut "true mono" using a monophonic cutter head and chain. Unlike the original mono, which clearly is bass-attenuated, the ERC is unequalized and there's plenty of decent bass on the tape and on the record.
Steve Hoffman is of the opinion that since many of these defects can be remedied in the digital domain, that's how this record should have been reissued. But that's for someone else to do, not ERC. ERC's mission is clear. its customers are clear about what they want since everything they press (in small numbers) sells out. They want all-analog documents and they want ERC's "hot lead" printing and attention to jacket detail.
There's a retailer out there who apparently claims (according to comments on Discogs I just read while researching all of the mono variants) that because the tape has defects, the ERC reissue is inherently "defective". On that basis, close to 100% of the records he sells are "defective" in one way or another—wow and/or flutter, scrape flutter, dynamic compression, bass attenuation, whatever. It's absurd, irresponsible rhetoric.
This was the same issue faced by SuperSense when it asked for a copy of the original A Love Supreme tape, rather than the copy Rudy Van Gelder originally sent to the U.K., retrieved and deemed to sound better. SuperSense's goal was to give lacquer buyers the original document, flaws and all and that's what it released to the great satisfaction of most who bought (probably all but I don't really know for sure).
The distortion on "Break on Through" is considerable, yet behind that is a far superior overall mono mix compared to the incoherent stereo one. Fans will surely enjoy this mono presentation despite the distortion. Fortunately much of the rest of the record does not suffer such obvious distortion and when true Doors fanatics hear for the first time "Twentieth Century Fox" and "Alabama Song" for instance in mono with bass on the tape delivered, they are more likely than not to consider the purchase money well spent. "The End" is especially remarkable on this edition. The mix's sense of depth is intense.
You will not more clearly hear Jim Morrison's vocals than on this mix. The true mono cut played back on a true mono cartridge will surely give serious Doors fans an emotional charge as they can really hear the band playing live and not mired in the muck of the "stereo" release's excess reverb and spatial artificiality.
