‘The Doors’ – The Doors
In the wake of The Summer of Love, every other rock artist wanted to make something different from the standard three-minute pop song. From the Grateful Dead engaging in different jams onstage to The Beatles pioneering quirky recording techniques, every band had a knack for making something that spoke to fans deeper than just a handful of good tunes. While the aesthetic may have been about Flower Power, the first albums by The Doors gave fans a different kind of power.
Roaring out of the gate with ‘Break On Through’, fans were first given a glimpse of the power in Jim Morrison’s throat. Fancying himself more a poet than a singer, Morrison inhabits the song with reckless abandon, singing with the same power as someone like James Brown might have done. Though the first track promises a hard-rocking good time, The Doors were far more eclectic than just rock and roll.
Throughout every track, the band engage in some of the strangest sounds ever heard in rock. While some tunes like ‘Back Door Man’ fit pretty snuggly within blues traditions, The Doors always stay within their own unique genre, painting a graphic picture of what it’s like to live hand to mouth on The Sunset Strip in the late 1960s. Throughout songs like ‘Soul Kitchen’, it’s easy to picture Morrison slumped over the bar at The Whisky-A-Go-Go, lamenting that the clock on the wall says its time to close.
Morrison isn’t alone in translating his feelings onto tape. Right beside his guttural howl, Ray Manzarek is one of the biggest sonic presences on the record, working both the organ and doubling the bass part in the studio on another keyboard with his hand. Instead of the traditional rock band setup, Manzarek drives most of the tunes, responsible for the looping chord progression that introduces the song ‘Light My Fire’.
Used as the opening single for the record, ‘Fire’ is a tour de force on the studio version, featuring a gentle back-and-forth progression where both Manzarek and guitar Robbie Krieger trade lines between each other. Although the song becomes more of an elongated jam, the ebb and flow of the progression bring to mind the sounds of a smooth jazz club than anything remotely rock and roll until the main motif comes back in to welcome Morrison’s voice.
Robbie Krieger’s short stabs on lead guitar are also a shift from what is commonly used in rock and roll. Compared to his contemporaries like Keith Richards or even George Harrison, Krieger’s habit of playing with his fingers gives a certain tenderness to the guitar parts, as if he is trying to squeeze anything he can from his instrument.
When brought together with John Densmore’s jazz-style drumming, every one of these songs exists in its own little world. Whether it’s taking on blues traditions on ‘Back Door Man’ or creating something that would fit on the radio like ’20th Century Fox’, The Doors illustrate the strange dichotomy of being in the middle of the peaceful oasis in California while paying attention to the terrors of the modern world.
Although Morrison’s voice can sound heavenly on crooning songs such as ‘The Crystal Ship’, some of his major turns behind the microphone have more in common with someone ripping their throat out of their neck. While he might be strictly reciting his poetry, his innate knowledge of melody is always intact, blending in with the rest of the band to create something magical.
Even a handful of songs on the record seem to be singular in their own weirdness. For all of the blues and jazz antecedents, no one else was on the scene coming up with songs like ‘Alabama Song’. Set in a waltzing time signature, The Doors’ take on an old musical number about wanting more whisky is just crazy enough to fit them, complete with a German oom-pah beat to anchor it all together.
As the record trails off further, the band begins to tread into darker territory. Compared to the radio-friendly songs like ‘Fire’, ‘End of the Night’ could easily soundtrack a modern horror movie, complete with the foreboding sounds of Krieger’s slide guitar and Morrison droning on as he talks about those born as a part of the endless night.
Even for 1967, though, no one was prepared for the final track, ‘The End’. Sprawling out over 11 minutes on the studio version, Morrison starts the lyrics off as a pseudo-breakup song before launching into his vocal version of a jam session. Starting with reciting different pieces of poetry, Morrison gets more animated as the song goes on before recreating scenes from Oedipus Rex in the final verses. As he slowly groans to the end, fans are shocked at what they hear.
For as strange and off-putting as the album may have seemed at the time, The Doors’ debut is an absolute triumph for the psychedelic era. After spending most of their days wondering how good they looked when putting flowers in their hair, the hippy generation was given a hint at what the dark side of life would look like with this one album. There may have been hope for something better, but it takes true artists to hold up a mirror to their generation like this and go against the grain.
