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?