The Doors

My Mount Rushmore of rock and roll would have some familiar faces: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Who, but for the fourth selection I wouldn't go with the obvious choice of Led Zeppelin (I've never been big fans of them, for some reason) I would go with The Doors, the only American band in my pantheon. It came to my attention recently that though I have loved The Doors for years, ever since I discovered them as a teenager in the mid-70s, I have none of their stuff on CD. I only have two of their albums, their self-titled debut and L.A. Woman, on vinyl.


I remedied that by purchasing The Very Best of the Doors, a pretty comprehensive two-disc collection that covers most of the bases (the only song I miss is "The Soft Parade"). I've been listening to it the car for the last couple of weeks, and since I haven't heard a lot of The Doors lately on a regular basis, I've had some interesting reactions.

Being a big fan of The Doors isn't always easy, not even back in the day. They were popular among a certain "cool" crowd back in high school in the late 70s, but as I met new people I found that this admiration was not universal. Joe, my best friend in college, didn't like them at all, and mocked the pretentious lyrics--I remember that he derisively quoted the line from "Soft Parade" "The monk bought lunch" as a prime example--and as I've aged I can see his point. The larger-than-life persona of Jim Morrison, who was the poster child for rock and roll excess (which is saying something) and his mythic status as some sort of hipster poet has turned The Doors into something close to self- parody.

But fuck, I still think The Doors had some great songs. Yes, there go beyond the pale at times. "The End," memorably used by Francis Coppola in Apocalypse Now, doesn't hold up quite as well when you're almost fifty. But if you look past the fancy-pants Oedipus-inspired lyrics, it still is evocatively eerie. The same for their other eleven-minute-plus opus, "When the Music's Over." I'm still intrigued by lines like "The scream of the butterfly."

The rest of The Doors catalogue falls into some neat categories. They had some catchy, radio-friendly hits that still groove, like "Hello, I Love You," "Love Me Two Times," "Twentieth-Century Fox," "Touch Me," "Love Her Madly," and their biggest smash, "Light My Fire," which though ubiquitous on classic radio still makes me feel good.

Then there's the gutsy rock that The Doors did very well, typified by "Break on Through to the Other Side," "Five to One," the Willie Dixon cover, "Back Door Man," and their great rock and roll epic, "L.A. Woman," which if I had to name my top ten favorite songs would be right on the list. When I was in college and this song came on at a party I could be persuaded to sing along. Thank god there's no video of that. And how great is it that they covered the Brecht-Weill composed "Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)" from Threepenny Opera, and absolutely killed?

But I've found that while listening to this collection I'm drawn to songs that weren't hits, and were kind of a hybrid of beatnik jazz, blues, and Morrison's sinister, fucked-up spirituality. I'm thinking specifically of "The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat), "The Changeling," "Peace Frog," and "Waiting for the Sun." These songs utilized Morrison's gift for the language, as well as The Doors distinctive sound, which was dominated by Ray Manzarek's almost-cheesy organ.

I've even found undiscovered treasures. From the album American Prayer, which the remaining Doors released a few years after Morrison's death, comes "The Ghost Song," which is Morrison reciting poetry to new music. The whole project seemed ghoulish to me, and I have never listened to it, but if it's like this, I may have to adjust my attitude--it's really good.

These guys were not about peace and love. The Doors were something else entirely, a piece of the 60s that was less about politics and more about the part of ourselves that we aren't proud of. Yes, they were closely tied to the drug culture, but when Morrison tripped he saw things that weren't bright colors. His view was as bottomless as his baritone voice.