Review of The Doors' The Doors

Released 1967

"There's danger on the edge of town.
Ride the King's highway, baby.
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby."

Confronted with several thousand options and equipped with hard earned cash from my summer job, entering HMV on Oxford Street in London set my head spinning. I was probably driven in the direction of The Doors due to their credibility amongst my wider circle of friends at college. Their logo was frequently doodled in the margins of many pieces of psychology course work.

Of course I was familiar with Light My Fire and Riders On The Storm, but I viewed them, by all accounts, as a very primarily popular pop orientated American band with a charismatic, now long dead, lead singer. I was though unconsciously assimilating a broader understanding of The Doors place in late sixties culture, simply by being around like minded college students. So by the time I purchased their eponymous first album, I was quietly respectful of it's status and more than intrigued as to what the fuss was all about.

I bought the album during a trip to London, travelling up from High Wycombe, where my girlfriend and I were staying in a caravan belonging to friends of hers. I spent an unhealthy amount of time that week looking at the front cover with no means to play it's contents. The disembodied head idea wasn't new; at least two albums by The Beatles had a very similar design. The menacing, serious, and no doubt stoned gazes of the four members of The Doors was a world away from the universal commercialism of The Beatles posturings. Jim Morrison's pose was more 'artistic' I suppose: demonstrating both defiance and sensuality, which (not that I've tried it) is no mean feat. I thought that it was a simple cover concept, which owed as much to the photographer's skill as it did to the magnetism of Mr Mojo.

Safely back home a week or so later, I was off to a bad start, as I hated my other purchase; Led Zeppelin's In Through The Out Door. Thinking about it now, being in a negative frame of mind when listening to your first album by The Doors was no bad thing. Despite the explosive pace of the opening track - Break On Through - it was evident from the off that the listener was being beckoned into a dark and mysterious, and subsequently not very comfortable netherworld. It wasn't difficult to understand how teenagers plummeted head long into the counter culture when hearing this in 1967. The 'other side' represented all of the unsavoury, and therefore appealing aspects of 'dropping out': drugs and free love, free thinking spirits and revolutionary stances were all wrapped up in a three minute invitation to dare to confront the norm.

Jim Morrison's personality oozed from the speakers. His strident yelping in harmony with Robby Krieger's fuzzy lead guitar must have terrified teenager's parents in the sixties who were merrily enjoying Peter, Paul and Mary. If the Rolling Stones had parents putting their daughters on the pill, then Jim Morrison must have caused many a parent to dispose of their medicine cabinets and flush away long overdue prescription drugs.

I adored Ray Manzerak's keyboard sound immediately. Soul Kitchen for example, is lent a sense of serenity and grandeur as his contribution sets the scene for the doomed poet. This was another album which was difficult not to love from the outset. Even the poppier moments, of which I had initially though there would be more, on songs like Twentieth Century Fox (very clever title and lyric) rise above the standard sixties fodder due to the unique interplay between the band. Even Alabama Song, Brechtian in origin, which comes at you from left field, doesn't appear incongruous; it's all about the passion of the delivery.

The album version of Light My Fire was a revelation. Previously I had seen it as a classic pop song, immediately identifiable and synonymous with the era, but the unexpected extended keyboard and guitar sections triggered the thought that maybe this could be reasonably thought of as a prog album. I was unsure how many of the necessary boxes it ticked though? Excellent levels of musicianship? check; eccentric invention? check; extended instrumental passages? check; eclectic influences? check. However, there was no doubting that, in the main, the album consisted a lot of three minute distinctly pop-like tracks, with - dare I say it - a trace of filler here and there, especially on the second side. But then, I was unprepared for the denouement.

Having seen Apocalypse Now already, and knowing The End, at least in part from it's use twice in the film, I wasn't expecting to be that impressed. For what ever reason, it was as this final track started that I put on my headphones.

I'm sure that there are a multitude of teenage boys who can identify with the shock, delight, horror and absolute joy at being exposed to The End for the first time. I use 'exposed' deliberately, as this track, above all else on the album (and probably their entire output), strikes at the core of The Doors success: the feeling that the listener is being welcomed into a sordid inner circle, driven by primal desires, the need to push boundaries and test authority and which parents and 'straights' could never possibly understand. As Jim Morrison rants his oedipal obscenity and the instrumentation mirrors the breakdown of order, the listener feels as though a rite of passage has been undertaken, where seeking meaningful artistic expression becomes a vital part of your life. As the song slowed, and Morrison panted in simulated post-coital slumber, I was eternally grateful that I was wearing my headphones.

Many prog purists might still baulk at the thought that The Doors is a prog album. In terms of invention and the desire to push boundaries, I would say that it qualifies in spades.