I can’t quite remember when the Doors first edged into my consciousness, it was either:
- Hearing ‘Riders On The Storm’ driving at night in the rain when I was little.
- Exploring my parents singles and playing ‘Light My Fire’, probably on my dad’s recommendation.
- Seeing that topless photo of a young Jimbo in a book my folks had called The West Coast Scene*.
Over the years that followed I got all Apocalypsed-Nowed to the sound of ‘The End’, read that rather overblown biography of Jimbo, visited his grave in Paris and pumped my parents for every detail of when they saw them at the Roundhouse. I bought into the myth and the music, whilst recognizing that Mr Mojo Risin’s poetry was inherently a bit of a rip-off in leather pants**, before going off them totally when the Oliver Stone movie came out because everybody was starting to get into them then^.
All things told it wasn’t until 1996 that I added The Doors to the collection, a cheapo borderline see-through-thin reissue as that was the way of things back then.
The front cover alone shows what Elektra thought the band’s selling point would be, a gigantic Morrison with three Borrowers-sized bandmates seemingly in thrall to his Byronic charms. Maybe there are other cover variants out there in the world, sleeves replete with Manzarekian beauty, Kriegorian enchantments and Densmoranian promise?
Despite the handicap of harbouring my least favourite Doors song^* I really enjoy The Doors. It’s their most fun LP, it rocks and it thrusts and it grinds, just generally digging its own tumescence and mistaking it for transcendence*^. It is an album that kicks the, umm, doors open and demands to be loved for being a sensitive poetic genius that can rhyme ‘end’ with ‘friend’. Fair enough.
Today my favourite tracks are the portal splintering ‘Break On Through (To The Other Side)’ and the poppy ‘Take It As It Comes’. As statements of intent they are both superb, redolent of all the absolute certainty of youth ‘Time to walk, time to run / Time to aim your arrows at the sun’ indeed.
I am also a real sucker for the bright pop tricks of ‘Soul Kitchen’ and ‘Twentieth Century Fox’ too, they are instantly recognizable and sound like nobody else. I have vivid youthful memories it would not be gentlemanly to regale you with here involving both tunes which make me smile, make me sigh. Although it bothers me that today I learn that I have sung the wrong lyrics to ‘Twentieth Century Fox’ for nigh on 30 years now, apparently she’s not ‘fashionably lean’ and ‘fashionably lame’ at all. Drat.
Of the two side-closing biggies on The Doors ‘Light My Fire’ is pretty much all played out for me, I’ve just heard it too many gazillion times. I know it’s excellent and contains some of the very best Manzareking there ever was, but … maybe ‘Light My Fire’ and I should do some role play, or dress up a bit to try and bring the spark back; sadly for now it’s simply a Wednesday night quickie***.
‘The End’ fares much better for me, whether because or despite Jimbo’s Oedipussy magnet protestations I’m not sure. I saw Apocalypse Now years before I ever heard the song and so it will forever soundtrack Captain Benjamin L. Willard fucking up his hand in a Saigon hotel room to me. The song is grandiose, daft and so desperate to be transgressive that it’s almost sweet.
Funnily enough the song where the Doors sound like they’re having the most fun is ‘Back Door Man’ their Willie Dixon cover. For all the frippery, fuckery and foppery the Doors were I think a simple barroom blues band at heart. They were really good at it too. I recently got hold of L.A Woman: The Workshop Sessions LP and you can hear them leaning back towards that sound again, as well as outwards and upwards.
Stir in the two songs that nobody can remember and you have the whole stew. When I read ‘I Looked At You’ on the back cover I would swear to you that was the first time I had ever heard of the song. Ever.
The Doors is a great album, still. It runs a touch threadbare in places but your eyes get drawn away by the crown jewels on offer. The band’s sound was unique, Morrison was in great voice, the playing was great and let us give secret bassist (on four tracks) Larry Knechtel some props too. Producer Paul Rothchild did an admirable job, the sound of the LP is great, warm and clear.
But that’s enough it’s time for me to stop blogging and aim my arrows at the sun.
I mocked, but The Doors does have a damn fine, eternally striking cover. The best thing about it? the band’s logo. Now as a metalhead and an ex-school desk graffiti artist of some renown (I trust statute of limitations for educational equipment based self-expression has now elapsed) I have a real thing for a good logo and they had it right from the go, ‘O’s looking like pills and all.
Any fellow logo geeks out there read this for more info, on a superb blog.
1005 Down.
*which is where, at too tender an age, I saw a picture of Alice Cooper wearing nothing but a snake.
**marginally better than a rip-off in pants constructed from more traditional materials, admittedly.
^yes I was that snobbish prick, I’m not proud, but I am honest.^^
^^to a degree.
^*’Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)’. yuk! Raymond Weil really should have stuck to making his watches.
*^an easy mistake to make, I did similar in 1989, 1995 and three times that I can recall in 2003.
***’Business Time’, eh FOTC fans?
“It’s their most fun LP”
Agreed.
What 6 words?! you’re slipping from your gnomic pedestal.
Five of them are yours.
Too many things to comment on from your take. Good job. Another band that I discovered from my older brothers pile. So I was listening to them from a tender age. Never have saw the film. I will totally agree with the “a simple barroom blues band at heart”. I just really like their sound man.
Full marks for getting the word ‘Drat” into a review Joe. Also I miss my Uni sound system I used to blast this out on. Garrard turntable (with the perspex lid off) 100w Technics amp and big Kef speakers. God help the residents of 91 Brudenell Road, they became Doors fans by default.
Double drat! Wasn’t your kit a cast off from your old man? I remember it did have a really good sound – loud bugger it was.
I remember you blasting ‘Real Men Don’t Kill Coyotes’ more, that and Urban Dance Squad.
As for The Doors being, at heart, a simple barroom blues band, I guess that is why my favorites from them are actually Morrison Hotel and LA Woman. I guess that’s where they sound the closest to that excellent definition of yours.
Thanks a lot Matt. I think they were that at heart.
By the way do you not write about music anymore? I used to really enjoy it when you did.
Oh, I do, but I have been posting those in another blog. I guess you must have missed it when I announced the change. =D
https://hifiadventures.wordpress.com/
Here’s the new (not so new, actually!) blog. And thanks for asking.
I’m planning to go to Paris next year for my big 6-0 and intend to visit Jim’s grave. I like The End as well, it’s a very bizarre song but good.
You’ll like my next post then – I think the grave is fenced, or screened off a bit now. It was covered in poems and half-smoked joints when we went in ’96.
It’s interesting that this reminds me that I’ve been meaning to re-read Heart of Darkness for a while. How’s that for several degrees of seperation?
I was disappointed with it when I studied it, but my wife loved it and wrote huge essays on it.
I’m a little over halfway through at this point… it’s not quite what I hoped for, but there are a few passages of brilliance.
I think I could become a fan of Manzareking. He was pretty fine on the organs.
It just gives them such a unique sound, you can instantly tell who it is.
I remember having that feeling of ‘I have never heard this song before’ when re-listening to Thriller & Bad. Each was essentially a greatest hits, minus 1 or 2 songs, that’s I’ve since forgotten again.
And you know what they say, two minutes in heaven is better than one minute in heaven!
That latter sounds like the kind of pick-up line I’d be reduced to slurring at horrified chicks should Mrs 1537 ever get sick of living with a record obsessive!
You just did this so could use the word Manzareking again! I’m on to you.
I hated this band for years. All my pals got mad into them when the movie came out and I hated it. Decades later I finally got that out of my system and got into them. This is definitely one of their best. And I like the last couple a lot too.
The word Manzareking has become the most important thing in my life.
I used it in two letters, a report and a court document at work this week.
If I wasn’t a wuss I’d probably have it tattooed on my wee soldier. True story.
I read the No One Gets Out of Here Alive book and went to see the Stone movie back in 91 and bought the Greatest Hits set. I tried getting into them I really did lol
Like Roadhouse and a few others ..
That’s my story.
I have started enjoying hem more and more as I get older. This is a fantastic release. Nice write-up.
Thank you. In lockdown I’ve mostly modelled myself on late period Morrison, bearded and cuddly.
Ha!! Yes, we probably all have actually.
HA!
Just stay out of bathtubs.
Oh Jimmy, what lovely trousers and tousled hair. A Lizard King with so much flair.
Not saying that your poetry’s bad,
but rhyming road with toad is just so sad.
Loved The Doors but I do think people put Morrison on a pedestal way too high. Like anyone who does too many psychedelics he disappeared up his own fox hole in the Nam long before Charlie had time to put the zap on him. Shame really, as he had a good band behind him. Watching those later recordings of him stumbling all over the stage while they covered for his awol ass, is like watching Elvis in his fat suit, sweating his way through An American Trilogy, or Trump trying to woo black voters. Not something a grown man should ever have to see.
Anyway, good review as ever. I’m off to take my insane children off to a Roman wilderness of pain. Catch ya later.
Isn’t Johnny Mojohnny a clever anagram of ‘Riders On the Storm’?
It was definitely his time to go, when (if?) he did take that dip in Paris. L.A Woman was a fine send off though, there’s an argument that the music got better as he got burlier and beardier.