The Doors

'If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.' This quote from poet William Blake, via Aldous Huxley, was an inspiration to Jim Morrison (b. James Douglas Morrison, 8 December 1943, Melbourne, Florida, USA, d. 3 July 1971, Paris, France), a student of theatre arts at the University of California and an aspiring musician. His dream of arock band entitled ‘the Doors’ was fulfilled in 1965, when he sang a rudimentary composition, Moonlight Drive, to fellow scholar Ray Manzarek (b. 12 February 1935, Chicago, Illinois, USA; keyboards). Impressed, he invited Morrison to join his campus R&B band, Rick And The Ravens, which also included the organist's two brothers. Ray then recruited drummer John Densmore (b. 1 December 1945, Los Angeles, California, USA), and the reshaped unit recorded six Morrison songs at the famed World Pacific studios. The session featured several compositions which the group subsequently re-recorded, including Summer's Almost Gone and End Of The Night. Manzarek's brothers disliked the new material and later dropped out of the group. They were replaced by Robbie Krieger (b. 8 January 1946, Los Angeles, California, USA), an inventive guitarist, who Densmore met at a meditation centre. Morrison was now established as the vocalist and the quartet began rehearsing in earnest.
The Doors’ first residency was at the London Fog on Sunset Strip, but they later found favour at the prestigious Whisky-A-Go-Go. They were, however, fired from the latter establishment, following a performance of The End, Morrison's chilling, oedipal composition. Improvised and partly spoken over a raga/rock framework, it proved too controversial for timid club owners, but the group's standing within the music fraternity grew. Local rivals Love, already signed to Elektra Records, recommended the Doors to the label's managing director, Jac Holtzman who, despite initial caution, signed the group in 1966.
THE DOORS, released the following year, unveiled a group of many contrasting influences. Manzarek's thin sounding organ (he also performed the part of bassist with the aid of a separate bass keyboard) recalled the garage-band style omnipresent several months earlier, but Krieger's liquid guitar playing and Densmore's imaginative drumming were already clearly evident. Morrison's striking, dramatic voice added power to the exceptional compositions, which included the pulsating Break On Through and an 11-minute version of The End. Cover versions of material, including Willie Dixon's Back Door Man and Bertolt Brecht/ Kurt Weill's Alabama Song (Whisky Bar), exemplified the group's disparate influences.
The best-known track, however, was Light My Fire, which, when trimmed down from its original seven minutes, became a number 1 single in the USA. Its fiery imagery combined eroticism with death, and the song has since become a standard. Its success created new problems and the Doors, perceived by some as underground heroes, were tarred as teenybop fodder by others. This dichotomy weighed heavily on Morrison who wished to be accepted as a serious artist. A second album, STRANGE DAYS, showcased When The Music's Over, another extended piece destined to become a tour de force within the group's canon. The quartet enjoyed further chart success when People Are Strange broached the US Top 20, but it was 1968 before they secured another number 1 single with the infectious Hello I Love You. The song was also the group's first major UK hit, although some of this lustre was lost following legal action by Ray Davies of the Kinks, who claimed infringement of his own composition, All Day And All Of The Night.
The action coincided with the Doors’ first European tour. A major television documentary, "The Doors Are Open", was devoted to the visit and centred on their powerful performance at London's Chalk Farm Roundhouse. The group showcased several tracks from their third collection, WAITING FOR THE SUN, including the declamatory Five To One, and a fierce protest song, The Unknown Soldier, for which they also completed an uncompromising promotional film. However, the follow-up album, THE SOFT PARADE, on which a horn section masked several unremarkable songs, was a major disappointment, although the tongue-in-cheek Touch Me became another US Top 3 single and Wishful Sinful was a Top 50 hit.
Continued commercial success exacted further pressure on Morrison, whose frustration with his role as a pop idol grew more pronounced. His anti-authoritarian persona combined with a brazen sexuality and notorious alcohol and narcotics consumption to create a character bedevilled by doubt and cynicism. His confrontations with middle America reached an apogee in July 1969 when, following a concert at Miami's Dinner Key auditorium, the singer was indicted for indecent exposure, public intoxication and profane, lewd and lascivious conduct. Although Morrison was later acquitted of all but the minor charges, the incident clouded the group's career when live dates for the next few months were cancelled.
Paradoxically, this furore re-awoke the Doors’ creativity. MORRISON HOTEL, a tough R&B-based collection, matched the best of their early releases and featured seminal performances in Roadhouse Blues and You Make Me Real. ABSOLUTELY LIVE, an in-concert set edited from a variety of sources, gave the impression of a single performance and exhibited the group's power and authority. However Morrison, whose poetry had been published in two volumes, The Lords and The New Creatures, now drew greater pleasure from this more personal artform. Having completed sessions for a new album, the last owed to Elektra, the singer escaped to Paris where he hoped to follow a literary career and abandon music altogether. Tragically, years of hedonistic excess had taken its toll and on 3 July 1971, Jim Morrison was found dead in his bathtub, his passing recorded officially as a heart attack.
LA WOMAN, his final recording with the Doors, is one of their finest achievements. Recorded in the group's workshop, its simple intimacy resulted in some superb performances, including Riders On The Storm, whose haunting imagery and stealthy accompaniment created a timeless classic. The survivors continued to work as the Doors, but while OTHER VOICES showed some promise, FULL CIRCLE was severely flawed and the group soon dissolved. Densmore and Krieger formed the Butts Band, with whom they recorded two albums before splitting to pursue different paths. Manzarek undertook several projects as either artist, producer or manager, but the spectre of the Doors refused to die. Interest in the group flourished throughout the decade and in 1978 the remaining trio supplied newly recorded music to a series of poetry recitations, which Morrison had taped during the LA WOMAN sessions. The resultant album, AN AMERICAN PRAYER, was a major success and prompted further such archive excursions as ALIVE, SHE CRIED, a compendium of several concert performances and THE DOORS LIVE AT HOLLYWOOD BOWL. The evocative use of The End in Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam war film, Apocalypse Now (1979), also generated renewed interest in the group's legacy; and indeed it is on those first recordings that the Doors’ considerable reputation, and influence, rest. Since then the Doors’ cat alogue has never been out of print, and future generations of rock fans will almost certainly use them as a major role model. In 1991, director Oliver Stone's film biography The Doors, starring Val Kilmer confirmed Morrison as one of the '60s’ great cultural icons.