The Doors

For Jim Morrison and the Doors, it was an unbelievably creative time, as evidenced by the songs on this, their first album. To say there is not a bad track here only begins to communicate the importance of the record. Some at the time called them America's Dionysian counterparts to the Rolling Stones, and that's a good place to start. Let's just say the Doors showed what could happen when "California Dreams" turned into nightmares, as "The End" so aptly describes.

The gem here remains "Light My Fire", every bit as incandescent as when I first heard it all those 34 years ago during the "Summer of Love." Of course, we're talking about what we then called the "FM Version" with its soaring keyboard and guitar break in the middle. The album snaps, crackles and pops with the bluesy "Break on Through", "Back Door Man", "Take It as It Comes", and such fine rock standards as "Alabama Song", "Twentieth Century Fox" and "Soul Kitchen". Another favorite of mine is the softer "Crystal Ship", and of course, "The End", which later gained new fame from its appearance in the film "Apocolypse Now" (a particularly poignant use of the song I might add).

Another reviewer called this one of the four or five best rock albums of the 1960's. (I'm inclined to agree with that, but completing that list is a difficult chore indeed!) Simply put, Morrison's later death in 1971 would rob the music world of perhaps many other great works to come. For the Doors, only L.A. Woman rivaled this one creatively.


The Doors' debut album breaks on through to the other side   October 29, 2004
Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota)
8 out of 10 found this review helpful

The Doors were probably more controversial than they were influential, but they were certainly one of the signature rock bands of the 1960s. The group was formed in Los Angeles in 1965 by a pair of U.C.L.A. film students, keyboard player Ray Manzarek and vocalist Jim Morrison, along with guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore. Because the group did not have a bass player their music was dominated by Manzarek's distinctive electric organ work and Morrison's evocative vocals of his evocative lyrics. Signed a year later to Elektra Records with the goal of capturing on vinyl what the group did in live performance, their self-titled debut album featured the hit "Light My Fire" and because of their distinctive sound became one of the best albums of psychedelic music. In fact, "The Doors" was such a great album that it made everything that came afterwards pale in comparison and gave credence to the idea the group was on a destructive arc fueled by Morrison's personal problems and then went nova with "Morrison Hotel" and "L.A. Women" right before his death.

The music of the Doors was a peculiar blend of rock, blues, classical, jazz, and powerful lyrics. Nobody around played guitar like Krieger, while Manzarek's classical influences showed up in his organ riffs, Densmore brought some Latin influences, and Morrison's lyrics contained moments of searing emotional poetry. From the opening notes of "Break on Through (To the Other Side)" it is clear this group is different. For somebody who was consuming mass quantities of drugs and alcohol, Morrison's lyrics were the sort that students should be discussing in literature class: "I found an island in your arms/A country in your eyes," a love that becomes transmuted into "arms that chain" and "Eyes that lie." Then the song explodes into sound as the band announces its presence with authority. This is such a key song in the history of the Doors that there is reason it leads off most anthologies and collections of their best songs.

"Light My Fire," and I can remember finally getting to listen to the long version having only heard the single version with the impressive, intricate organ solo that still stands alone as the epitome of what can be done with that instrument in a rock song. Then Jose Feliciano proved how good it was in his totally stripped down acoustic version. "Take It As It Comes" is also pretty good, even if not quite in that same class. Still, it is the moodiness of "The Crystal Ship" and the "eleven-minute Oedipal drama" of "The End" that defined the Doors as one of the strangest and most ambitious rock groups around. It is impossible to think of another Sixties rock group that was as disturbing as the Doors, an idea codified in popular culture by Francis Ford Coppola's use of "The End" at the climax of "Apocalypse Now." Not only literature classes but future psychologists and psychiatrists could have a field day analyzing Morrison's lyrics as well.


the Doors best album!   September 11, 1998
3 out of 5 found this review helpful

It ain't much to say.. It's the Doors best album what so ever!


I eat more chickens any man ever seen   November 11, 2005
A.J.H. Woodcount
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

This album is regarded as one of the best debut-albums ever made. Probably correct. There haven't been a lot of bands with a song as charismatic as The End on their first album. The album shows the Doors for what they were musically and lyrically.
A little bit of criticism is at it's place bacause the album has it's weaker moments. The Doors got better over the years and this album has a fierce sound (that is typical for that period of the history of recording studio's) and not every song does as much to you as The End does. I believe that not even the still living Doors would disagree about that. But let's focus on the best parts of the album, because it's an album everybody with an interest in music and poetry should own.

The best songs on the album are Break On Through (To The Other Side), The Crystal Ship, Light My Fire and The End. These songs are of such unbelievable high level for a debut-album that it's not strange that there are so little new bands reaching the level of the Doors. If you compare this album to the first one of the Beatles or the Stones (hail to both of them) you must agree: this one says a lot more.
The album has the high flying guitar, the mystic running groovy organ, the great free jazzy drumming and the poetic strength the Doors are famous for.

Something about two of the songs:
Break On Through (To The Other Side): In poetry there are some programatic first poems to be found (at least in Dutch poetry) in the poetry of new poets. In rock-music that's an exeption. What would have been more programatic for the music and the lyrics of the Doors than this song? It says almost everything about what the Doors were all about.
The End: When I was at puberty I found the part of The End that says: `father, I want to kill you, mother I want to...' to be a little shocking (especialy for others..). When I got to know to stories of the ancient Greek I found out that there really wasn't anything shocking about this song, exept the fact that Morrison put the story about Oidipus and the Freudian version of it into clear words. I still believe The End has a more honost and direct way to put the Oidipous-complex into words. Nothing more (or less) than poetic freedom.

To give stars for an album is difficult. For it's importance in pop- and doors-history this album must have 5 stars. The End is more worth than five stars and some other songs are real good too. But the album put into perspective of the whole Doors-oeuvre would be a 4-star-album, with the four songs I mentioned earlier definitly bringing it up to five stars.
(For more comments on The Doors: look up my other Doors-reviews)