Originally published on my old blog, "The Angry Fix", August 22, 2012
I was turned on to the Doors in high school. At the time I thought they were probably the most "legit" band in my listening rotation (mind you, this was a time when I considered Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” to be the greatest piece of music ever recorded). As the High School years faded and the college years materialized, I dropped radio-friendly classic rock groups like Boston and Def Leppard for ‘60’s and ‘70’s art rock and punk. As my tastes changed, my interest in the Doors feigned for a while, and the contemporary critical image of the Doors didn’t help rekindle my interest. It seems that among the pioneering blues and psychedelic rock bands of the ‘60’s, the Doors, and Jim Morrison in particular, have achieved a pop-culture status tainted by negative connotations of overratedness and all-around douchebaggery. A lot of this cultural baggage can be attributed to the image of Jim Morrison as an obnoxious, arrogant, and cruel artist, as popularized by Oliver Stone’s 1991 film The Doors. For whatever reason, this is the image of Morrison that has stuck in the public and critical consciousness, clouding out, at least partially, the Doors’ contribution to modern music, art, and poetry (however great or small it may be). Though my interest in the Doors feigned, they remained on the backburner of my music rotation. In recent months I’ve delved back into the Doors canon extensively, and just finished reading the definitive Jim Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive. I’ve come out the other end with a newfound love for the band’s work, wondering how I ever let public opinion keep me from diggin' the music.
Jim Morrison got the name for his band from a line attributed to one of his major poetic influences, William Blake: “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” It was this sentiment that drove the Doors sound and mythos. Through the simplistic, moody, bluesy, and sometimes psychedelic sound created by keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger, and the voice and words of rock ‘n roll poet Jim Morrison, the band created doors of perception between darkness and enlightenment…gateways through which artists continue to follow and flourish in. Appreciating Morrison as both a singer and a true poet is a lot easier once the tired leather-pants-clad rock star image is set aside. It was an image that Morrison himself discarded in the midst of the Doors popularity (as can be seen by the beefy bearded Morrison featured on the cover of his last album with the Doors L.A. Woman), a media monster that has become far bigger than the man himself, as well as his work. But it's the work that speaks for itself.
Morrison had a wide range of artistic influences. He looked to a wide range of poets from William Blake to Allen Ginsberg for lyrical inspiration, and drew from the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and the grotesque imagery of the work of Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch for the dark landscapes he conceptualized in songs like “The End” and “Riders of the Storm”. What Morrison shared in common with his east-coast counterpart, the Velvet Underground’s Lou Reed, was that he took rock ‘n roll seriously as an art form, which in turn manifested itself through the oeuvre of his lyrics (simultaneously adult and childish, though some would call it infantile). While John Lennon and Paul McCartney were writing about love and adolescence, Jim Morrison was writing about sex and death, creating a dangerous stage persona (now infamously known as the Lizard King) to match his words. Julian Beck’s New York based experimental theatre group, The Living Theatre, directly inspired Morrison’s confrontational approach to his audience, revealing from yet another artistic angle that Morrison’s work is part of a long and integral tradition of art, performance and poetry. On the night of a concert, just before the Doors were about to go on stage, a DJ introduced them as “Jim Morrison and the Doors”. As the DJ passed them coming down from the stage, Morrison stopped him and said, “Uh-uh, man, you go back up there and introduce us right. It’s THE DOORS, the name of the band is THE DOORS.” Jim Morrison, though eventually a victim to the excess of his own stardom, was very aware that he was nothing on his own as a musical entity. He knew better than anyone what Jerry Hopkins poignantly described in No One Here Gets Out Alive, that “to get the best view of Jim Morrison you must go through the Doors, and the most important thing to remember about the Doors is that they were a band and each individual formed a side of the diamond that was the whole.” If Jim Morrison was the word and the image, the other three sides of the diamond were the music, each deserving far more appreciation for their contribution to rock music than they have received. It could be argued that Ray Maznarek was the architect of the Doors. It was he who really had the drive and knowhow to form the band after encouraging Morrison to step up to the mike after hearing him sing one of his songs unaccompanied on the beach while both of them were students at UCLA film school. It could also be argued that Manzarek’s keyboards are every bit as signature to the Doors sound as Morrison’s vocals and lyrics. The Doors never had an actual bass player in their line-up, opting instead for Manzarek to pull double duty, playing the keyboard with his right hand, and a keyboard bass with his left. It is the bizarre, often circus-like sound of Manzarek’s playing that pushes the Doors sound into a beautiful realm of the weird.
At their best, the Doors leave plenty of space open, and execute the balance between space and sound through a signature precision and simplicity. At the heart of this precision are the Latin jazz beats of John Densmore’s drumming, keeping the Doors sound tight while allowing it to go down smooth. He is greatly aided by the Elvis and L.A. Surf rock-influenced guitar of Robby Krieger. Morrison often lamented the fact that Krieger was not appreciated as one of the great guitarists of his generation, and Krieger’s name is seldom dropped in the same sentence as Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend, Keith Richards, or Eric Clapton. But as a guitarist, his rightful place right alongside his ‘60’s guitar-god contemporaries is unavoidable. And as a songwriter, his importance in the Doors is undeniable—having written (or co-written with Morrison) many of the Doors biggest radio hits including “Light My Fire”, “Touch Me” and “Love Her Madly”. It’s been my opinion for a while now that the Velvet Underground were the most important band of the ‘60’s (and if you haven't figured out that the Velvet Underground are more important to music than the Beatles, get with the program). It has a lot to do with the way the music of the Velvets continues to challenge society’s consciousness and open new doors of perception. This is the same reason I present for your consideration the Doors as one of the purest and most timeless acts in Rock history. If the cereal image of the band and their shaman front-man is thrown away, the work will speak for itself, and the music and words of the Doors WILL cleanse, and perhaps create new doors of perception to the willing listener. Recommended Doors Albums: The Doors (1967) Strange Days (1967) Waiting for the Sun (1968) L.A. Woman (1971) Absolute Best Doors Tracks: “Break On Through (To the Other Side)” “The End” “When the Music’s Over” “Five to One” “Peace Frog” “L.A. Woman” “Riders of the Storm” Reccomended Poetry by Jim Morrison: The Lords and The New Creatures Recommended Further Reading: No One Here Gets Out Alive: The Biography of Jim Morrsion by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman
No comments:
Post a Comment