Review Summary: Yet another bad attempt to make rock a fine art, one step closer to prog-hell.
It’s 1967 and “all the children are insane.” The clash of cultures is more prevalent than ever, with hippy kids tuning in and dropping out. High as kites, hippies are collecting bloated, pretentious psychedelic rock albums to guide them on their trips to colorful worlds. One of the most popular and enduring of those albums is The Doors self-titled debut.
This album fits right in with the psychedelic era in rock n’ roll: pretension, poor poetry posing as rock lyrics, tons of studio wankery, and a front man with an ego matched perhaps only by David Lee Roth. Misguided teenagers all across San Francisco were eating this crap up. The music is “trippy” and the lyrics sound artistic and philosophical, especially if you just took a bunch of acid. Perhaps it is because I was not stoned when I listened to this album, but from my “doors-of-perception-closed” perspective, this album was about as boring as the worst of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Add in a front man who thinks he is a god and you have one terrible rock album.
The Doors consists of Jim Morrison and uh… let me look it up again real quick… oh yeah, ok. Jim Morrison on vocals and most songwriting, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger, and drummer John Densmore. It is well known however that Morrison was the guiding force behind this band artistically, and so most people associate The Doors with Morrison rather than the entire group. It seems that, in many cases, the others were almost Morrison’s backing band. The biggest contribution any other member ever made was Manzarek writing the first line and the chorus to “Light My Fire,” the worst hit single in the history of rock radio (yeah, I mean that, keep reading).
The album opens with the simple keyboard-and-bass intro to “Break on Through,” and it is somewhat intriguing. Out of all the songs on the album, this one is actually easily the best: it is quick, concise hard rock without a lot of pretension or “I’m-a-great-poet” posturing by Morrison. “You know the day destroys the night, night divides the day,” Morrison interrupts the intro, and his voice is in top shape (namely, he doesn’t sound drunk here). Each verse is a sort of buildup to the eruption of the chorus, which consists of some excellent instrumentals and Morrison yelling “Break on through to the other side!” repeatedly. Not top quality rock by any measure, but the best The Doors ever had to offer.
Unfortunately, it all goes downhill from there.
If there’s one thing you learn from this album other than that rock isn’t Shakespeare and never should be, it is that Jim Morrison thinks pretty highly of himself. Throughout the record, we get a feeling not just from the obvious masculine “I-can-do-anything” attitude clearly in his voice, but also in his lyrics. “Show
me the way to the next
little girl,” Morrison sings in “Alabama Song.” Yes Jim, we get it, you have a lot of sex. We also get that you are proud of your junior high poetry. Rhyming “through” with “lose” and “mire” with “funeral pyre?” Where’s the genius again? This is the “Lizard King?”
And if that wasn’t enough, the music is some of the most boring you will ever hear. Like ten minute organ solos? Then you’ll love this album! Think sitars belong in rock n’ roll? Then you’ll love this album!
I’ll never understand why “Light My Fire” made it on the radio. Well actually I do, I just don’t enjoy remembering that we had an entire country of people on drugs once upon a time. This song contains an organ solo that drags on, and on, and on, and it seems to exist only to drive the listener to insanity. It is the worst hit single ever. Why? Because hit singles aren’t 10 minute songs (The single version was shortened but still contained minutes of masturbatory organ improvisation). Singles are supposed to be short, sweet and to the point. Basically, a good single should sound like what
all rock should sound like. I swear to God, I could kill myself when I have to hear this song. Morrison’s second-rate rhyming and the endless jam sessions are intolerable.
I thought it couldn’t get any worse when I heard that song on the radio. Then I made the mistake of listening to the album. “The End” is hell. It breaks every rule of good rock n’ roll and ultimately, is the worst song ever made, other than “Strawberry Fields Forever” by The Beatles during their psychedelic-crap stage. It starts off with a sitar, proof enough that the song is going to be a mind-numbing experience. Then, when you look at the track time, your heart drops…
this song is forever. The sitar drones on endlessly, with Morrison providing snippets of terrible lyrics before attempting to make it all worth it by shocking us with “ ‘Father?’ ‘Yes son?’ ‘I want to kill you. Mother? I want to…. f*ck you!” That’s it. Isn’t it sort of anti-climactic? A twelve minute jam for a shock-rock cheap trick? If not for that line, this would have been universally panned by everyone except the burnouts of the 60’s and the aging Baby-Boomers over at
Rolling Stone.
“Hang on,” you say, “you have a clear bias against psychedelic rock music!” I do indeed. This is because I like rock music. Thus, when I hear a genre of music dedicated to doing the complete opposite of what rock was originally about – rawness, rebellion, swiftness, excitement, activism – and especially when it is only a
small step away from some of the worst bands of all time like Yes, Genesis, Kansas etc, I absolutely despise it. “You just hate psychedelic rock,” you say. Yes, I do. You simply cannot call yourself a rock n’ roll fan if you enjoy The Doors, Sgt. Pepper era Beatles, Iron Butterfly, Pink Floyd, etc.
This album is praised by many as one of the greatest debuts in rock history. Thankfully, they are wrong. With this, their supposed greatest album containing exactly one quality song, it is obvious that the fascination with this group is based solely on adolescent notions about how great it would be to be Jim Morrison. Was he a sex symbol? You bet. Was he popular? Of course. Could he get away with anything he wanted to? Indeed. Was his band one of the greatest in American history? Absolutely not. Subtract all the legends about Jim Morrison and one is left with the distinct impression that this album is nothing but mindless improvisation and juvenile rhyming that is only enjoyable when on a substance.
