defending the indefensible, pt 1: the doors

Erm, I'd just like to point out the trousers. That is all.

i like all the doors EXCEPT morrison but hey, he's the one who got them in one place so he's OK too, on the "julia lennon is the fifth beatle" principle

Everett True to thread.

Well, could you be any more general if you tried? I can't think of a single band that someone loves that they could not describe that way. (Unless they are punk and *not* being excellent musicians is the point.)

(Though I've found that for making leather less smelly, the best thing to do is hang them in the bathroom while taking a really steamy and hot shower, and that will generally get most smells out.)

so what is ''blooz-shit''? are you just referring to blues in general or what?

I like every note and every vocal from that first album of theirs. I have heard a bit of LA woman actually and jim sounds drunk. One of the best examples examples of 'so bad its good'.

You know, it's one of the main reasons that the Dandy Warhols went electro - their guitarist stopped wearing leather trousers!

The Doors would've been OK, if they'd dropped the student art-wanker of a singer, and that fucking horibble dribbling keyboard sound, written a couple of memorable songs, lost all their pseudo-religious fixations, not actually released a record, and been incarcerated at birth

And the leather trousers of course

And the drugs

I've never forgiven them for the "sixties" either

And did ANYONE really enjoy having wanker Morrison's scrawny little dick waved in their faces?

if you wanna have a role model for leather trousers, go for Stephen Pastel (actually, I've never forgiven the Doors for that either). Or Astrid whatsername

The trousers were the best thing about the Doors, do not dis them.

Exactly what people love about the VU - the darkness and the drugs and the leather trousers and the arty affectations - are what the same people loathe about the Doors. And vice versa.

Have we had this taking sides yet?

kate, i wrote the above and then saw your post.

Taking Sides: The Velvet Underground vs. The Doors

hey scott I love the first two velvets records. after john cale left, not so good I'd say. And in fact lots of what the velvets did after cale left ended up being copied by awful indie bands from the 80s (in the UK this)=> i was sort of replying to jerry.

as i said i like doors and velvets up to cale. I like drugs (though i haven't taken them) and leather pants (I haven't worn them heh but i'm all for women wearing 'em) but I'm not that keen on the stooges. the guitars don't do much for me.

what does 'chamber-punk' mean? (I think i know but i'm not sure)

Plus old Frankie wouldn't have got his dick out, he knew it would have scared the audience.

The Verve has problems. When they were just Verve, I fight thee to the death.

The only couple of old 60s record collectors guys that I know whom were buying all of these records new love The Doors as much if not more than any other sixties bands. (As a side note, it also seems like Cream was a bigger/more popular/highly regarded band back in that era than now, where they are more of a side note to Clapton's solo career.)

I've always liked The Doors and have listened to them more than the VU, but not as much as The Stooges. I definitely like The Doors more than The Beatles.

The thing about the Doors is, is that a lot of people are just not going to ‘get’ the beauty of the whole mythmaking rock and roll, love, excess, getting high and chasing experience thing, or at least, they’re just not gonna identify with it. They see the beer boys nodding along with ‘Light My Fire’ which is being played on the rock radio for the 100 trillionth time, and this helps them confirm to themselves that The Doors are music for knuckleheads, teenagers or the lowest ilx denomination, the critically inept rockist. I toasted The Doors before on here and was caned by the cognoscenti, but since my previous post today was just to nail my colours to the mast, after Kate skewered me, I figured I’d try again to tie up just why The Doors are genius.

With the Doors, I’m not sure that attempting to interrogate the music via sober de riguer phraseology and critique will get to the heart of what this band is about for me. I’m not interested in trying to cut through the myth and the magic with these boys – for me, that’s exactly what it’s all about here. I’d put Morrison on a pedestal just because he can yell ‘C’mon’ and mean it harder, and fill the howl with more resonance than virtually anyone else.

There is a separation between critical language and human emotion. Though the two may be intertwined and informed in a million myriad ways, there remains a distinction, a separation between the prick of nostalgia and lateral analysis, between blinking euphoria and writing a review. For me, the carnal, sweating, hypnotic thrash of the Doors in full flow was an attempt to overload the senses and prise the lid off your mind. I’m up for a bit of that, as it happens, and though Jim makes me laugh with his often deluded warblings, turning the volume up full and soaking it all up is sometimes a truly powerful experience. I don’t mind that Morrison wore leather trousers if he’s prepared to act the fool or the piper on such a grand scale and tell me in terrifying detail about his existential trips in this world and his slipping grip.

I believe that rock and roll is an ethos, not a badge to stitch on. Like anything in this world it is comprised of cliché and riddled with stereotype, but for me, all unabashed here, rock and roll in part, is something electrifying and intangible. It’s another word for Other and though its original has long since been assimilated, reproduced and sold back as another fucking badge, there are still strands to the grand story and idea to cherish. There are words that I can use to explain its parameters but without actually living these words, rock and roll will always just remain a critical category on the page. You can’t understand its possibilities without tasting them yourself. And you can’t understand The Doors without diving in and getting your hands dirty.

What I’m saying, in a stupid roundabout way, is that it seems a pretty empty task, picking apart The Doors in detached critical terms. They are a band that cry out to be lauded as shamanic, dangerous, unpredictable rollers. Shower clichés on them man – they helped start the whole fucking thing anyway – Morrison wrote his name all over the late 60’s. Their music and power doesn’t come from being confounding or elusive or oblique. If you are prepared to subscribe or at least suspend your reservations, what you get is a three-piece psychedelic blues outfit led by a drug-crazed desperado with an urge to provoke. You get anthems and calls to arms, you get protests and sex and danger and blood, you get the shimmering void and the dance of death. You get a wild black clad preacher babbling over-the-top inanities in between joyful exaltations to adoring crowds or uncomprehending beer halls and there is something beautiful, and powerful, and poignant perhaps, about that.

The Doors lived man. They clearly had a wild ride and they represented, on a grand scale, just like The Stones did, an alternative to greyness and boredom and the same old same old. If you know how it is to fall into black depression despising the shape of your face, to dance on a bar-top, to fuck someone on a pool table, to walk in a field of gold with your lover while a stream sings, the sun sets in a scarlet slash and you both cry at the perfection of the moment, to drive around late at night swigging from a bourbon bottle and look to your left and right and fully love the people sat there, and if you’re not afraid to celebrate these things then The Doors are the perfect soundtrack. And if you don’t know about any of these moments, then The Doors can help you to guess what they might feel like, and who knows, get you to live just a little bit.

I love the bombast and stupidity of the lyrics because for every miss, Jim will pull off a huge hit "cancel my subscription to the resurrection" – haha, it means nothing but at the same time it’s loaded up to sound like it means everything, and I love the sheer balls it took to strike that pose and the idea that you can take that phrase, and others like it, a long way if you want to, and think you can get away with it.

I love that Morrison wanted to push his audience and challenge them, and get them in some small way to think. Although he could be an asshole up on stage, he could also be a raging Bacchus, urging his followers to love and be loved, begging them to question and not to accept blindly, pushing them towards experience and experimentation on every level, as behind him the band produce a sonic cacophony to literally blow the doors off the mind.

The staggering, leering figure of Morrison up there is like some sinister blend of dada, drugs, and murder one moment, sunshine, brotherly love and freedom the next. It’s about abandon, release, charge, the primordial roar of man unshackled and then its about driving with your girl and a beer and not giving a fuck because it really doesn’t get any better than being here right now. Every single moment is experience, and leads to more experience, and if you don’t wake up and realise that, your life is gonna slide by – The Doors were sounding the wake-up call.

I love the barrage of imagery that Morrison pulls out the hat; his words are shot through with half truths, lies, boasts, beliefs, dreams and visions, hallucinations and insights all of which fuse into one another in a hazy half awake state somewhere between now and forever. "Let’s swim to the moon uh huh, let’s climb thru the tide, surrender to the waiting worlds that lap against our side," "Lazy diamonds, studded flunkeys," "I found an island in your arms, a country in your eyes, arms that chain, eyes that lie...Break on through to the other side…" prise apart the deluge of faces and signs that clog Morrison’s words and you’ll find gems.

Personally, I like the Doors best when they are staring into the void. That usually comes over best on the live recording where Morrison goads and whips the band into a frenzy of peaks and troughs, all the while exhorting and cursing at the crowd, bringing down a miasma of delight, decadence, awe and escape. ‘The End’, for example, is just an unbelievable dive into the black, a cold glimpse of the place of no return, whatever the hell that may mean to each of us. ‘Riders on the Storm’ is a delicate farewell perhaps, certainly it’s deliberate in its fragility and nihilism, the fluttering Rhodes picking out the intricacies of the melody like the drops of rain that fall in the background. Clearly ‘People Are Strange’ with that warped honky piano is like a jaunty pop ditty nailed backwards and suffused with the nightmare of loneliness. The Doors catalogue is littered with songs that touch upon the frailty and fear or trying to live, I guess. Morrison sometimes celebrates it and gives in to being a messed up man, but sometimes he really stares at himself and the soundtrack that he and the band come up with to communicate those moments of doubt, fear and anxiety is irresistible.

Of course, musically, you can pick them apart and see just why they are so good: Manzarek on the organ is a fucking lunatic, I mean the guy can play. Besides helping to wheel the Hammond out of the Bingo hall and into the musical canon and ignoring his technical skill (playing those relentlessly loping bass parts with his feet you mean while his solos go into overdrive), his nous for hitting the right note in the right place is uncanny. His flourishes and builds adorn the songs like sparkling vines, the trills and loops twisting around Morrison’s vocal lines and bringing the best out of that sleepless growl.

Krieger on the six strings is one of the most modest guitarists in the canon. He has the ability to drop your jaw when he wants to (see the solo from ‘When The Music’s Over’) but most of the time his slides and licks are the wallpaper while Manzarek and Morrison rip the room to pieces. He’s an atmospheric player but underneath the psych he’s actually really rootsy, a bluesman with a diamond cut edge.

Densmore, the drummer, is all over everything with little jazz flicks and splashes. Like Krieger he’s never intrusive, and once you start really listening out for what he’s up to, his calibre emerges. He plays slightly behind, letting the band swing to their blues tendencies although when it comes to the hammering builds, Densmore is always there to bring the crescendo’s in washing over like a black tide with repeated series of stupid rolls.

Do me a favour and put ‘When The Music’s Over’ on some time. It’s got to be loud to the point where you are prepared not to give a fuck if your neighbour stroke partner stroke cat is gonna get their hackles up. If you start from that perspective, you’re in a much better position to begin to understand just why The Doors are such geniuses. In whatever measure you want to take it, it’s about the thrill, the chill, the buzz of the senses – it’s about living and being. Just try not to think about the smell of leather trousers.

Ha. I just read all that through. It’s a bit full on huh. Well, that’s The Doors though. Full on. And when I’m in the right mood, they really do hit the fucking spot.

Hey man, listen up. I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. You know that new Depeche Mode album? It sucks. You know what? That new Cure album? It sucks. That new Happy Mondays album? I don't know if there is one, but if there is, it sucks. I can say this 'cause I know. 'Cause I'm a Doors fan. And you know, if you want to be a Doors fan, you know what? You might already be one, and you don't even know it. You know, sort of like being gay, you're walking around, you know something's up, you just don't know what it is. You see, Doors fans aren't made, they're born. I'll bet right now, in Africa, there's some guy madely beatin' on a drum; he's one. Or an old lady on a bus, suckin' humbugs; she's a Rider on The Storm, and she don't even know it. I do... 'Cause I'm a Doors fan.

And if you want to be a Doors fan, don't just go buy a greatest hits album. Greatest Hits albums are for housewives and little girls. You want to be a Doors fan, you gotta do it right. It's very scientific. You gotta buy Waiting For The Sun. It's their third album, but really it's their first. We call it the departure point.

Okay, Quick quiz: Who's on bass? No bass. That's right. The Doors had no bass. You see, the gypsies ad no homes. Don't let that scare you, let that free you. Let that liberate you. 'Cause when you're free-flying with the Doors, man, you don't need no safety net. If you scream, "Viva la Doors!" loud enough for your landlord to start thumpin' on the walls, then you might in fact be a Doors fan.

There's one way to know for absolute sure. Get an eight-track tape of LA Woman -there's only a few in existence- and steal a car. Even if you own one, steal a car. Get in that car, play the tape, full blast, and drive West. When the tape ends, get out, and go to the nearest bar, and start to play pool, or pinbball, or possibly even foosball, and wait to get into a fight. Afterwards, get back into that car, and drive till it runs out of gas. Then, torch it. And if, as you're standing there, watching those flames, if you can still hear the Doors sound, you will have become a Doors fan. You wanna know how I know? You wanna know who told me? Well, last year, Jim fuckin' Morrisson told me, that's who. He came to me, 'cause I'm a Doors fan. I'm a Doors fan, man... man, I love their sound. I like the Doors.

DAMN YOU ILX!!!

Alex K I'm sorry, I stopped reading after that. It seemed like the right thing to do?

It really shows how much they breathed as a group, I love the dynamics and ability to open up their songs (not just to turn them into jams, although they do that too, but to include the vocals as a leading improvisational instrument).

at the end of the day is it possible that they're both just good pop bands,and people let image get in the way?

Though "Touch Me" remains hilarious.

the oliver stone portrayal of him made him seem humorless, though.

I just dug Waiting for the Sun out of my stacks of vinyl and listened to it way loud last night. I forgot how much of a visceral reaction this band's music could pull out of me. Good shit, me says.

I always thought that Densmore was 90% of what I liked about the Doors and even though he's still a dorky hippie in this article I find his outlook here refreshing...

Bob Dylan is singing "The Times They Are A-Changin' " in a television ad for healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente these days, and who could argue? With Led Zeppelin pitching Cadillacs, the Rolling Stones strutting in an Ameriquest Mortgage ad and Paul McCartney warbling for Fidelity Investments, it's clear that the old counterculture heroes of classic rock are now firmly entrenched as the house band of corporate America.

That only makes the case of John Densmore all the more intriguing.

Once, back when rock 'n' roll still seemed dangerous, Densmore was the drummer for the Doors, the band with dark hits such as "Light My Fire" and "People Are Strange." That band more or less went into the grave with lead singer Jim Morrison in 1971, but, like all top classic-rock franchises, it now has the chance to exploit a lucrative afterlife in television commercials. Offers keep coming in, such as the $15 million dangled by Cadillac last year to lease the song "Break On Through (to the Other Side)" to hawk its luxury SUVs.

To the surprise of the corporation and the chagrin of his former bandmates, Densmore vetoed the idea. He said he did the same when Apple Computer called with a $4-million offer, and every time "some deodorant company wants to use 'Light My Fire.' "

The reason? Prepare to get a lump in your throat — or to roll your eyes.

Great pop singles band

Shitty art rock band

where's the devotion like this today? the sincerety like this?

he died cuz he was a fat fucking junkie and alcoholic...everything i've read about morrisson was that he was pretty "devoted" to being a total asshole.

Shitty art rock band

-- M@tt He1geson (matt@game[remove]informer.com), October 5th, 2005.

Yeah, I don't agree. Where's the dividing line? Is "The Crystal Ship" shitty art rock or good pop singles music? Or any number of songs from the second album, for that matter? What about "Light My Fire" at almost seven minutes - shitty art rock?

"When the Music's Over" is my favorite of their long tracks. It's great.

I'm not "outraged" by it. I just find it interesting that it seems so natural to see a thread like this on ILM - a popular thread, at that - and yet you wouldn't expect the same thing for the Stones or the VU.

Sure, Morrison was a douche bag but he had a serious set of pipes and he wrote some fantastic rock 'n' roll poetry.

Manzarek is a dickweed but he came up with some hypnotic, droning, meandering but always rhythmic organ parts.

Fuck, I can't even explaint myself on this one. The Doors rule.

OTM. Morrison alone is classic for spawning Iggy & Keiji Haino.

picked up my first three Doors albums (s/t, Strange Days, and L.A. Woman), and I think 80% of the people in this thread are crazy.

I bet if they came out now everybody would be championing their cause.