THE DOORS is the debut album by American rock band THE DOORS, released 1967; and has been an album I've been meaning to listen to for a good while. With it's dark and mysterious album cover and even darker lyricism, what did I make of this record?
The record opens with BREAK ON THROUGH which is this cool raunchy guitar number largely featuring frontman Jim Morrison screeching "BREAK ON THRU TO THE OTHER SIDE!!!!" as well as the now famous "SHE GET HIGH! SHE GET HIGH!" This track, as well as many other tracks on the record, have this real intelligence to their writing, even the opening lyrics of "Day destroys the night, night destroys the day" foreshadow a real intellect to the writing.
Despite being a novice vocalist before The Doors, Morrison demonstrates a real theatricality to his delivery, he knows perfectly when to hang back, when to stay on meter and when to get loose. Speaking of the writing and vocals, maybe one of his most memorable vocal passages in found on 5th track ALABAMA SONG- despite it's dark and pretty fucked up lyrics, Jimmy perfectly creates this unnerving atmosphere- which leads me to the instrumentalists.
The music has a real wit to it's playing and arrangement, again, ALABAMA SONG is maybe one of the best examples, if not the hit single in LIGHT MY FIRE with it's alternate extended borderline- prog noodling section in the middle, it switches from the organ soloing to the guitar soloing in such a brilliantly fluid way too.
I think one of the album's weaker points is the abundance of 2-3 minute *fairly* standard rocker-numbers, like these may well have been revolutionary at the time but given this record's influence they don't sound quite as unique and special as they once have. Like they aren't bad, some are better than others. That being said, BACK DOOR MAN fits this description and has the lyrics "eat your dinner, eat your pork and beans// I eat more chicken than any man ever seen" which makes me smile every time. Jim brashly proclaiming he's a "back door man" after telling us this makes that song more than worth it regardless.
The album's influence on rock as a genre is felt throughout nearly the entire thing: you can't go a track without being reminded of some other 70's rock song or something, despite the sound being relatively well established throughout the record, you can see where people have picked it up and just gone with it.
The record closes on the huge 11:35 THE END which is this funereal largely spoken word piece. I think I'd be remised not to dedicate a decent portion of my review to this song, not only because it constitutes a decent portion of the album, but also because of the lyrical content surrounding it. The lyrics change from these emotionally disaffected abstract poem verses to these unhinged murderous and sexual spoken word passages. It's crazy how songs like this can be heard echoed throughout the history of rock music. The instrumentation in this track is spot on too, the drums are airy for the most part whilst the organ and guitars aren't even slightly bothered about playing with dissonance, just completely off key a considerable amount. It often feels utterly revelatory at the end of a record like this, whereas other tracks only hinted at atonality this one embraces it, and it's definitely more than rewarding to sit thru the 12 minute runtime.
So in conclusion, this record was a blast. The Doors demonstrate a capability in songwriting, musicianship and arrangement not often seen before or since, and it's far from difficult to see why this album made such an impact when it released in 1967. It's good!
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