THE DOORS
important work in color
1967: The
Doors * Strange Days. 1968:
Waiting for the Sun. 1969: The Soft Parade.
1970: Morrison Hotel * Absolutely Live *
13 (greatest hits). 1971: L.A. Woman * Other
Voices. 1972: Weird
Scenes Inside the Gold Mine
(greatest hits) * Full Circle. 1973: Best of the Doors. 1978:
American Prayer. 1980: The Doors Greatest Hits. 1983: Alive, She
Cried. 1985: The Best of the Doors. 1987: Live at the Hollywood
Bowl. 1991: In Concert (combines Absolutely Live, Alive, She
Cried and Hollywood Bowl). 1996: Greatest Hits. 1997: The Doors:
Box Set.
Very little separated the Doors from the greatest sixties' bands.
Good material can be found on all of the Doors records and their
greatest hits albums tend to overflow. At their best they sounded
like they loved playing together as they snaked and humped their
way through sinuous musical passages. Their personal style was as
enjoyable and as recognizable as that of The Band or The Allman
Brothers. The twists and turns in some of their lounge-like,
jazz-inflected, mid-tempo arrangements are transcended by
Morrison's smarmy personality and the wit of the playing. Their
blues covers were endearingly pop-tinged and updated in a way
that was fresher than the mimicry of more serious white players;
and Morrison's distance as he sang lines like "I've got the
blues, from the top of my head, down to my cowboy shoes"
gave the blues a punk context. When they rocked and rolled they
seemed stylists as precociously immersed in tradition as NRBQ or
The Beatles. Guitarist Robbie Krieger's blend of Texas swing, Les
Paul/Charlie Christian fluidity and surf's twang and vibrato was
beautiful and his funky, vamping lines unusual and memorable. Ray
Manzarak was one of the era's best keyboard players, a
psychedelixized Booker T. who put the color in the band's gothic
ethos. John Densmore floated nimbly while Morrison crooned in a
shamefully sensuous, sultry vibrato with an self-concious, yet
endearing and sexy, passing break.
If anything dogs the bands'
oeuvre, it is a mixture of shallow poetic conceit and a couple of
squishy albums (Strange Days and Waiting For the Sun)
that sound like rush jobs and take up too much space in the
middle of their brief career. They sang about
"revolution" ("When the Music's Over,"
"Tell All the People," "Do It," "Five to
One," "The End") in a way that nobody sings about
it anymore. Kind of a "revolution of the mind" or a
"revolution of the senses" with overtones of danger and
violence. It’s a great them that, like a recurring dream,
runs through much American art – from poets like Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, writers like William Burroughs, and even recent
movies like "Fight Club." "We want the world and
we want it now," but "when the music's over, turn out
the light." They celebrated the lizard, jettisoned the
horses, rode the snake to the lake, and tried to ignore the
animals in the yard. The animal references reinforced the
preverbal, primitive nature of the Doors’ chosen stance
against the 60’s establishment. Sex is wildly emotional, out
of control, without clear meaning. Sex is linked to street
violence in "Peace Frog," to murder in "The
End" and "Riders on the Storm," to adventure in
"Spanish Caravan" and "Land Ho," to a scary
bliss and ancient circularity in "Queen of the
Highway," to transcendence in "Moonlight Drive."
Songs like "The End," "Tell All the People,"
"Lament for My Cock" and "Maggie M'Gill" are
enhanced, not diminished, by Morrison's
narcissism, ill-humor, and brooding ambivalence, which was all a
bit of a put-on. The moodiness is often vague, sometimes shallow,
but quite seductive. In fact, Morrison's voice was perfect for
selling both the snake oil and the medicine.
The critics who have called Morrison a crappy poet seem to have taken his writing more seriously than perhaps the tongue-in-cheek nature of the tunes deserve. It was a mistake to condemn Morrison as a mediocre poet just because he acted like he thought of himself as such. This misses the point that Morrison was a very good lyricist - always interested in something more than the pop norm, easily outdistancing the usual by the force of his hipster attitude. When Morrison says, in the middle of "The Soft Parade," "This is the part I like the best" and the band cuts into a major, stereophonic groove, his calling attention to the music, at the expense of his own contributions, reveals his healthy self-deprecation, and at the immersed, natural communion the band shared: they seemed predestined for each other.
At their worst, The Doors supplied a sort of spook-house/circus music that disguised the shallow plainness of songs like "I Can't See Your Face in My Mind," "You're Lost Little Girl," "Unhappy Girl," "We Could Be So Good Together," "The River Knows," "Five to One," "Wild Child," "Blue Sunday" "Ship of Fools," "The Spy," "Indian Summer," "L'America" and "The Wasp." These are underwritten on a lyrical level, but the musical hooks remain surprisingly fresh and the skill of the band could enliven even their lamest lyrical ideas.
With the exception of the classic debut album, the albums fare about the same. The Soft Parade is lushly produced, even slick; Robbie Kreiger wrote four, and co-wrote another, of the albums' nine songs. Some critics have found the orchestration superfluous, but "Wishful, Sinful" is luscious, and the humorous narcissism of "Touch Me" benefits from the Hollywood horns. You can indulge in The Doors what you wouldn’t in lesser bands thanks to the good-natured self-consciousness that lies in the background of their music: these Southern California boys always seemed to be having a good time. Morrison Hotel and L.A. Woman have a bit of a rocking edge that has made them preferable for some listeners and critics. The most "poetic" album, American Prayer, released after Morrison's death, with music added to some of Morrison's spoken word stuff, has some grand moments. As popular as the Doors remain, some of their songs - "My Eyes Have Seen You," "Horse Latitudes," "Hello, I Love You" "Summer's Almost Gone," "Wishful Sinful," "You Make Me Real," "Queen of the Highway," "Maggie M'Gill" and "Hiacinth House," - seem insufficiently appreciated.
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