The story of the Doors
Change was already in the air in California circa 1966. As the ‘Summer of Love’ swept across Los Angeles, fans were finding new ways to tune in, drop out, and live in a world of never-ending utopia while playing the best music they could. While the Grateful Dead may have been one side of California, The Doors helped introduce rock and roll to its dark side.
Formed by lead singer Jim Morrison and pianist Ray Manzarak on a beach in Santa Monica, the goal was to make rock and roll with a more artistic edge. While the band went through a handful of lineups, including Manzarak’s brother on harmonica for a spell, the group landed on John Densmore as their drummer and Robbie Krieger as guitarist.
Even though they may have been looking to make the best rock and roll they could, the Doors were already going about it in a strange way. Outside of the blue fills he played, Krieger never played with a pick, making it sound like BB King if he were forced to play with a folksy style rather than the blues.
The band would also have no long-term bassist throughout their career, with Manzarak playing most of the bass parts with a keyboard bass with his left hand. Although the band didn’t fit anyone’s view of what a normal rock group was supposed to be, that didn’t seem to matter. This was music for outcasts, and they were going to make songs designed for outcasts.
Going into the studio for their first album, Morrison was already turning into the archetypal rock frontman, reaching into his soul to create songs like ‘Light My Fire’ and ‘Break On Through (To The Other Side)’. While the band would become with their flair for off-kilter singles like ‘People Are Strange’, some of their wildest moments came on the deep cuts on their records.
On tracks like ‘The End’, fans looked into what Morrison’s head was really like, spending the back half of the song rambling free verse for a few minutes and building up a wall of musical chaos behind him. That would only become stronger as the years went on, with the band continuing to stretch out their records on tracks like ‘When the Music’s Over’ and ‘The Soft Parade’.
The band was also a bold reflection of what the counterculture was doing then. For all of the people dropping acid, Morrison was the devil amongst angels, recognised for causing a stir in every town the band played and becoming known for getting up to the kind of hijinx that would become expected of the boozed-up rock star.
Morrison never saw himself as a musician, though. He was always a poet, and the rest of the band’s career saw him capitalising on his penchant for the written word. Outside of working with string players and horns on albums like The Soft Parade, Morrison was taking influence from artists like Allen Ginsberg for his writings, trying to paint a picture of his generation without having to use long, drawn-out essays.
While the fans couldn’t get enough, the band were quickly heading towards a brick wall with Morrison’s drinking. Even though he had always been known to be slightly out of hand whenever the band played live, Morrison was losing a battle with alcoholism, which resulted in a disastrous gig in Florida in the early 1970s.
After trying to goad the audience, Morrison was arrested for alleged indecent exposure, which would put a damper on his creative self when working on the album LA Woman. Despite being a return to the band’s blues-infused roots and featuring wonderful long exercises like the title track and ‘Riders on the Storm’, Morrison was already long gone by that point.
Instead of touring the record, Morrison elected to move to Paris, wanting to spend more time with his girlfriend, Pamela Courson, and relishing the opportunity to grow as a poet. As the band eagerly awaited Morrison’s return, he would never make it back to the US, passing away of an alleged heart attack in his sleep while taking a bath.
Although the band tried on numerous occasions to get themselves back together, no one could stand in for what Morrison did, eventually cutting solo albums and moving into other parts of the entertainment industry. That didn’t mean that Morrison was the only person that made The Doors special, though.
Throughout their time together, the best part of the band’s sound was when everyone was working off each other, only for the face of the band to be taken away and join the 27 Club before the 1970s got underway. Rock and roll may have had to change by the next decade, but any art-rock act or artist looking to push their songcraft into more creative waters is only building off of what Morrison had done. Lou Reed may have brought art-rock to the seedy underbelly of New York, but The Doors were his seedy Los Angeles counterpart.
