15. Doors, The Doors (1967)

[2010 review of “Light My Fire” here]

Decades after the fact, the Doors remain controversial. To a significant number of people, they—specifically the singer, Jim Morrison—are preening, drunken buffoons. I recently happened to see some quotes on social media by David Crosby before he died, deriding the Doors hard. Good grief, man. David Crosby! He should talk. Even Jim DeRogatis, in his wide-ranging psychedelic rock compendium Turn On Your Mind, dismisses the Doors as non-psychedelic. On one level I see the point. They were a bit silly and perhaps too mindful of the top 40 charts, if that’s your issue (“Light My Fire,” #1 ’67; “People Are Strange,” #12 ‘67; “Love Me Two Times,” #25 ’67; “The Unknown Soldier,” #39 ’68; “Hello, I Love You,” #1 ’68; “Touch Me” #3 69; “Love Her Madly,” #11 ’71; “Riders on the Storm,” #14 ‘71). Later they turned convincingly more to bluesy fare, but this debut LP harks much to the source of their name—The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley’s 1954 memoir of psychedelic experience. The album opens with the rousing “Break On Through (To the Other Side),” which makes you want to, and it closes with 12 minutes of something called “The End,” a wandering exercise that dramatizes the Oedipal situation with a thudding foot and other stuff too. “The End” may not be the kind of thing you’ll be tempted to play on repeat. But I bet you like the way it kicks off the movie Apocalypse Now. In between, the album is a smorgasbord of little happy surprises. The seven-minute “Light My Fire” is moving toward if not already in the category of songs, with “Stairway to Heaven,” “Maggie May,” and their own “Riders on the Storm,” that we have likely heard as much we need to by now. But try this long version of “Light My Fire” one more time. Sit and listen to it. You don’t have to do it a second time, but you might be surprised how much is still there in terms of mood, tone, and explosive movement. I also love their version here—and especially that they thought to do it at all—of “Alabama Song (Whisky Bar),” the Brecht/Weill song from one or another of their operettas. Among other things it emphasizes that the mood-altering substance of choice by the Doors (certainly Morrison) appears to be basically booze and sex. They’re not mine, at least, for sex, not the way the cover of Willie Dixon’s “Back Door Man” means it. But fair enough. I’m more by way of the mainstream psychedelic camp of weed and acid. It doesn’t mean I can’t get with what’s being put down here and find my mind blown on the way.