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.

Doors, "The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)" (1971)

(listen)

I'm not sure I would call the very last album by the Doors, L.A. Woman, their best—for one thing, I'm nearly as tired of "Riders on the Storm" as I am of its peers "Stairway to Heaven" and "Maggie May." But I rank it pretty high. I liked this blues direction they were falling all over. It is also home to this strange and wonderful song, which raves and thunders, looking directly into the future (if not the sun) at psychobilly, the Burning Man festival, and other human impulses. A methodical pounding rhythm section provides the foundation for Jim Morrison's heavily reverbed vocal, as he sing-tells tales of goings-on in the wilderness at night. Or the evolution of the blues. Or something. The mood is stark and dramatic and effective. The song has hold of a mighty current. Catharsis, purgation, revelry, ecstasy—all these things quiver behind and within it, underscored by the vivid lyrical scenes, the back beats cool and slow with plenty of precision, the Negroes in the forest brightly feathered, the friends we have gathered together on a thin raft. Yes, it veers dangerously close to sing-songy nursery rhyme children's music at points (it's not much of a melody for sure, and "the loss of God" is pure cheese as phrased), but it's fantastical and alive. Music for visions. Note: Texas radio and big beats are touched on here but there is nothing specifically about any white Anglo-Saxon Protestants that I can detect, except by implication insofar as they populate regions under discussion (Texas and Virginia). Inspirational line: "Out here on the perimeter there are no stars / Out here we is stoned—immaculate."

Doors, "Waiting for the Sun" (1970)

(listen)

Wikipedia covers the main points regarding my initial confusion, on a disambiguation page: "Waiting for the Sun is a 1968 album by The Doors [pictured above].... 'Waiting for the Sun' [is] a song by The Doors from their 1970 album, Morrison Hotel." This oddness did not matter to my brother and his friends, who introduced me to Morrison Hotel, and especially "Waiting for the Sun," which they championed tirelessly. They recommended listening to it with headphones, an exciting new consumer electronic product at the time—and loud, needless to say. It was a bracing reintroduction to the Doors, following the pop hits. There's a context for it, I should mention—Jim Morrison & co. fighting for counterculture integrity after the disgrace of those hits, taking on the blues late, and incidentally in more trouble for alleged self-exposure antics on the part of Morrison in live performance in Miami. Talk about identity crisis. But the various shuttlings about between proto-gothy poets of doom, teen heartthrobs, and drunken white blues boys were surprisingly seamless, partly because they managed it by distending to embody the contradictions. And what a fine example we have here. Taking care of the teens is the easy part, with equal parts California sun worship and the skeevy Lizard King persona already well established. Then they proved surprisingly adept as a blues band, starting with Morrison Hotel particularly. The Doors as musical enterprise remain underestimated at one's peril. As for the poets of doom shtick, well, that's actually what makes this work. "Can't you feel it now that spring has come? / That it's time to live in the scattered sun." Key word here, I think, being "scattered," which torques it just enough in a certain direction that it amplifies the effect of the band coming in so hard, lending it an almost majestic quality. Especially if you are listening to it on headphones very loud.

"Light My Fire" (1967)

88. Doors, "Light My Fire" (June 24, 1967, #1, 3 wks.)

When Robby Krieger got frustrated at the progress he was making in trying to write this song and shoved it away in a drawer imagine what would have happened if his bandmates hadn't encouraged him to take it out again. One great big hole in the heart of the '60s, that's what. This first song that the Doors carpetbagged onto the charts may well be the best of all theirs; at least it's certainly an impressive statement of purpose, and the most successful too—though, in Billboard terms, just by one week at #1 over "Hello, I Love You." The long version, which got played late at night on all the FM stations, which became the classic rock stations, which still play it late at night and all day long too, now, when they feel like it, offers only a hint of the kind of thing that could be found on the albums. Ray Manzarek strikes the tone with his swirling organ play. Guitarist Krieger steps up and gets off a lovely solo. And the singer, Jim Morrison, who also fancied himself a poet, equates fire to sexuality to doom with his sincere brow all furrowed. I think he means it. In fact, when I hear what he's going on about on the long tracks from the albums—"The End," "When the Music's Over," like that—I know for sure he means it, every syllable. He's really into funeral pyres for one thing, see. Oh, and I promise not to make a habit of this, but the parade of covers on this one is pretty impressive too: Jose Feliciano (but you knew that), Nancy Sinatra, Astrud Gilberto, Julie London, Brian Auger, Shirley Bassey, Cibo Matto, UB40, Massive Attack, Minnie Riperton, Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Type O Negative, B.J. Thomas, and Trini Lopez. Among others. So that settles it. Another major icon.

L.A. Woman (1971)

Between a bubblegum knock derived from "Light My Fire" (or more likely "Hello I Love You") and the alleged presentation by Jim Morrison of his dick to a Miami audience, it's easy to forget that the two best Doors album were their last, when they had already officially failed and humiliated themselves and slunk away to lick wounds. This one, the very last, was released only a few months before Morrison died. It's as loose and freewheeling as anything they ever did, with plenty of small and happy discoveries along the way, and it sounds good loud too. Sure, we all got as tired of "Riders on the Storm" as we did of "Stairway to Heaven" and "Maggie May." That's a no-brainer. But who could have guessed how well "The WASP" would stand up over the years against the Gun Club and various assorted psychobillies?

Morrison Hotel (1970)

"Waiting for the Sun" Thing about the Doors was, they always did amount to more than Buffoon & the Wanna-Be's. Granted -- "Celebration of the Lizard," "The End," "When the Music's Over," maybe even "Light My Fire" -- Jim Morrison often put himself center stage. (All those songs, btw, particularly "The End," have their points, but that's another discussion.) The last two Doors albums are their best because the buffoon finally figured out he had a pretty good band back of him and that they all did better as a unit when he let them take things out, musically speaking. By that time, playing the blooz had to look a damn sight better than the bubblegum they'd been purveying in their mid-period. And so it was.

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