When I was in high school, the Doors were about as popular as when Jim Morrison still lived. Everyone seemed required to own the 1985 compilation The Best of the Doors which included half of the band’s debut album. The Doors is one of the best debut albums in all of rock history, and one of my favorites. The combination of elements is so rare. When I became an English major in 1997, I often had to deal with the fact that literature felt one way and music felt another way. The Doors felt like both combined: Beat poetry that seemed to tap into William Blake and Romantic poets while also summoning up a strange concoction of blues, jazz, and psychedelic rock. Ray Manzarek’s keyboard often sounds like he’s a member of the undead playing us tunes from the underworld. Robby Krieger doesn’t offer up a pure rock guitar sound, instead weaving in classical, flamenco, jazz, and blues. John Densmore plays with a unique precision, and I can rarely guess what he will play next in any given song. And Jim Morrison. Whatever you think of him, it’s undeniable that he’s one of rock’s greatest lyricists and vocalists. I love how he never overtly used or cared about his sex appeal. He used his dark baritone to sing unnerving poetry about dark themes, and he was relentless about this mission. That’s why I think the Doors sound more timeless than other bands. They rarely write love songs or get topical. They write and perform poems using universal themes and imagery. Rather than alienate people, there is something about Morrison’s persona that appeals to both men and women. He’s the definitive dark, sexy, mysterious, and profound friend of yours who is exciting and dangerous when he’s around - even if you have to put up with drunkenness, callousness, indifference, chaos, and arbitrary behavior. For many women, he’s the ultimate bad boy. For many men, he’s someone to idolize - the philosopher-poet-partier-drunk who broke on through to the other side. That metaphor explains why the Doors remain popular decade after decade. Their music is a rite of passage, the moment when experience destroys innocence. This process usually begins in late high school or college. For me, it paralleled when I began to read classic literature as an English major. The veil had been ripped away and I began to see the ugly reality of the world. At the same time, I also began to understand its unlimited possibility. That’s the power of the Doors’s debut album.
I consider "Break On Through (To the Other Side)" one of my all-time favorite anthems that influences me to this day. I often use the song as a metaphor when I feel that artists aren’t breaking through. Great art requires bursting through a barrier that creates a mess but is necessary for truly connecting with your audience. I always feel when I’m living life or creating art that I need to break on through. There’s a danger in that, too. Everything can’t be amazing, and so it can also lead to a weird form of perfectionism. But the spirit remains. I don’t much care for art that hasn’t broken through. "Soul Kitchen" is definitive Doors - great groove and awesome lyrics. I love the line, “I light another cigarette and learn to forget.” "The Crystal Ship" is one of my favorite songs of all time. It reminds me of Anne Rice’s vampire novels, as if Lestat is singing the song while dancing with a beautiful woman in some castle in Europe. This song also encapsulates the “brief immortality” of youth. I often felt like this song’s vibe on various nights in college when it seemed that a definitive hangout with friends would never end. It’s youth incarnate, and I can only listen to the song now from a great distance. "Twentieth Century Fox" is more conventional but I love the off-kilter verses and straight ahead hard rock chorus. "Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)" (originally written by Bertolt Brecht in 1927 and set to music by Kurt Weill in 1930) was never one of my favorite Doors songs but it does perfectly evoke barhopping. The Brecht-Weill connection also gives the Doors an exotic flavor that other rock bands wouldn’t often touch.
Side one ends with "Light My Fire.” Not as anthemic as “Break On Through,” it’s still a definitive rite of passage song. Full of sex, danger, and desire, it’s about dark thoughts and more experience destroying innocence. The long instrumental passage is absolutely essential. These are moments when the Doors push the boundaries of rock forward and make us explore areas we’ve never explored before. Manzarek again sounds like he’s playing from the underworld and Krieger plays some eerie counterpoint to all of the madness. In the meantime, the song’s momentum never slows as if we’re being carried down the river Styx. Listening to “Light My Fire” in the dark with headphones is an essential rite of passage and I feel bad for anyone who hasn’t experienced those seven minutes. The rest of the album keeps the momentum going but rushes through the next four songs. “Back Door Man” contains some of the creepiest lyrics delivered in the creepiest way that I’ve ever heard. When Morrison sings, “You men eat your dinner, eat your pork and beans. I eat more chicken, than any man ever seen, yeah, yeah,” it’s truly disturbing. “I Looked At You” is almost negligible, not really adding anything to the album but not bad either. “End of the Night” is like a poor man’s “Crystal Ship,” trying to do the same thing. It does embody that mysterious night atmosphere that the Doors captured so well. “Take It As It Comes” is okay but again almost negligible compared to the other songs. I always appreciated “The End” more than actually enjoying it, but I think it’s significant in the history of rock for destroying more barriers of self-expression. Morrison takes us through a dream-like poem about Oedipal desires with the band washing us in soft and loud music perfectly attuned to Morrison. On a first listen, it’s not surprising to feel different at the end than when you entered the song. Morrison sang about things in popular music that hadn’t been sung before. And that’s really the essence of The Doors. It’s like reading Hamlet, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or Steppenwolf for the first time and getting it. You know more about life, and the doors are opening. The freedom of adulthood beckons, and it’s terrifying and exhilarating. And once the doors are blown open and you break on through, there’s no going back.
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