Artist: Doors, The
Label: Atlantic Records
Release: 1967
Rating: 4/5
The album that simply carries the band’s name, The Doors, came out in 1967 and, alongside Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band by the legendary The Beatles, was one of the finest artistic achievements of that year. It’s also considered one of the band’s best albums ever, both creatively and commercially, since it managed to win over a huge crowd of listeners.
The biggest influence on the making of the first Doors album was definitely singer Jim Morrison. It presents him not just as a rock vocalist but also as a poet, since he contributed most of the lyrics to the album. It was the first successful album to blend the soul of rock with touches of jazz, Latin rhythms, basic pop, and pure blues. You could say: there’s something for everyone! This very diversity of musical styles is what makes the Doors so different and so instantly recognizable, but on the first album it’s even more obvious, since the band was bursting with energy and ambition at the time.
The heart of the album is the pop track “Light my Fire”, which almost everyone still recognizes the Doors by today. The music and lyrics fuse phenomenally and build up the tension until it ends in a “real visual orgasm in the form of sound”, triggered by its finale: “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!”. What’s especially interesting is that the lyrics to The Doors’ most commercial and best-known song weren’t written by Jim Morrison, but by guitarist Robie Krieger. The original version was longer, with a long solo section, but it apparently had to be cut down at the demand of radio stations. Another one of the typical, but harder-hitting tracks is definitely “Break on Through (to the other side)”, which is where the album actually kicks off. The sound of the organ under Ray Manzarek’s fingers, Morrison’s hard-edged vocals, and the typical lyrics reveal the real, so-called “Doors sound” that you can recognize anywhere. The epic “The End” plays a huge role on the album, known both for its mystical content (it paints a scene of Oedipal love) and for being the longest track on the whole record, clocking in at well over eleven minutes. The song starts with gentle guitar sounds and tambourine hits, when suddenly Morrison’s dark, preacher-like voice kicks in and starts telling us a story about death. John Densmore’s drum fills throughout the song give Morrison lyrical freedom, which is exactly why Jim often bent the lyrics to his own will. In contrast to all this darkness, “Soul Kitchen” stresses how important it is to know how to forget certain things if we want to get through this cruel world emotionally unscathed (“learn to forget”), and there’s the provocative “Twenty Century Fox”, which hides a jab at one of the biggest film studios of the last century right in its name. The gorgeous ballad “The Crystal Ship” is basically a love song seasoned with undertones of passion and desire, showing the image of Morrison’s icon on thousands of posters and plakats that decorate his fans’ walls. The album also features two covers: “Alabama Song”, which draws on the old German opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny from 1920, and “Back door Man” by two of the greatest blues musicians of the twentieth century, Willie Dixon and Chester Burnett, also known as Howlin’ Wolf. Toward the end we find some lighter tracks, like “I Look at You”, the hypnotic “End of The Night” and “Take It As It Comes”, which don’t have much in the way of deeper substance (maybe the guys ran out of ideas), but still hold the album together as a whole.
The album definitely belongs among the rock classics and I’d recommend it to absolutely everyone, especially to anyone who doesn’t know The Doors’ music yet. For its time it was something completely new, and with its melancholic sound and mysterious lyrics it gave the Doors not just fleeting fame, but also a permanent place in rock history.
Lineup
Jim Morrison: vocals
Ray Manzarek: keyboards
Robby Krieger: guitar
John Densmore: drums
Production
Paul A. Rothchild
Track List
1.Break on through(to the other side)
2.Soul Kitchen
3.Crystal Ship
4.A twentieth century fox
5.Alabama song (Whiskey bar)
6.Light my fire
7.Back door man
8.I looked at you
9.End of the night
10.Take it as it comes
11.The end
Album length: 43.05
