The soundtrack album for a forthcoming Doors documentary will feature 12 of the band's classic songs, five rare clips – and 15 tracks of Johnny Depp reading poetry. The actor appears on almost half of the record's cuts, reciting verse written by Jim Morrison.
Depp provides the narration for When You're Strange, a film by Tom DiCillo. The documentary draws on hundreds of hours of footage of the Los Angeles group, from their early beginnings to Morrison's death in 1971. It recently played at the Berlin film festival, where Doors drummer John Densmore said he "got a little teary" when he saw footage of the band's late singer.
"It shows Jim in the beginning, his innocence and shyness and everything, and I love seeing that – that's the Jim I knew," Densmore told Mojo. The film also suggests that the Doors would have reunited, even after Morrison left the US to live in Paris. "[Jim] asked how [Doors album] LA Woman was doing and I said, 'Great,'" Densmore recalled. "I told him that Love Her Madly was the single and that they wanted a second single. He said, 'Well, maybe I'll come back.'"
Morrison published only two volumes of poetry before his death, but more of his books have been issued since then. Recordings of Morrison reading his own work have also appeared on various Doors anthologies.
The soundtrack to When You're Strange will be released by Rhino on 6 April.
