The Doors
By D.J. Nettleton
http://www.musikrave.com/music/the-doors
“O, This is the end, beautiful friend
this is the end, my only friend, the end Of all, elaborate plans the end Of everything that stands, the end No safety or surprise, the end I’ll never look into your eyes..again
The Killer awoke before dawn.
He put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery and he walked on down the hall.”
Those were the chilling, hypnotic lyrics from “The End” by Jim Morrison and the Doors that I heard for the first time as we sat around a campfire, stocked well with a keg of beer, a bag of goodies and a portable cassette player in the middle of a pine forest in Fairfield, CT…and we were all speechless. We listened intently to the distant and perfectly paced notes of reverb from Robbie Krieger’s Gibson guitar dancing in the shadows, with the simple shakes of tambourine hissing like a rattlesnake, a stark yet simple intro as the words unveil the story of a murderous Norman Bates; of a man who wants revenge on his father and bliss with mother.
I became fascinated with The Doors that night and the legend of one James Douglas Morrison. But first some of the back story.
Back then (mid 1970′s) there was no cable tv, internet or cell phones. But there was an explosion of great music in every genre..from the 16th century flutes sounds of Tull to the island groove of Marley, to superior storytellers like Dylan and Neil Young, to the progressive adventure of Pink Floyd and Yes.
This vast content on vinyl plus massive, affordable concert touring made music a plentiful source of entertainment and curiosity for the next mega-hit band. Everyone!..jocks, gearheads; glittergals and of course those who did nothing but party would rush to the record stores when Zeppelin, The Stones, Skynyrd and dozens of great new bands like The Blue Oyster Cult or Boston would release ground breaking debut albums.
One night a friend of a friend’s older brother got one of the first copies of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti. This dude also had one of the best stereos in town- a
400 watt amp with JBL’s.You heard 20 seconds of the beat and riff of “Kashmir” and knew that Page &Plant & Bonzo once again topped themselves!
That was a great feeling; taking knowing right away that you heard a historic recording before it even made it onto the airwaves!
For about 10 bucks you could go to the New Haven Coliseum and see Bad Company and Foghat warm up for the Edgar Winter group..a month later they were headliners! I also witnessed bottles breaking on the drumkit of The Ramones; chased off by the drunken, rowdy, general admission crowd who came to see Johnny Winter play the blues and not some unknown punk band blaring out two minute songs that seemed to be just noise! (Of course I hated them too until I knew better in later years.) Or the night a totally convincing Ray Davies at the Palace Theatre in Waterbury (capacity 2,500) swayed by the stage like a drunk during The Kinks “Demon Alchohol”. Or the mania of the Frampton Comes Alive tour. My buddy Bob and I made the hour trip to Colt Park in Hartford in the back of a pickup truck sitting on lawn chairs with a cooler full of tall boys when Frampton raced onto the stage, tripped and a broke a rib but kept playing to the huge crowd of hippies and teeny-boppers.
But there was something mysterious and fascinating about the Doors music that turned them into my favorite band (at the time as a sophomore in high
school) even though Morrison had been dead for half a decade perhaps it was the smooth, baritone voice or the way he worked the arena crowds and ad-libbed with the audience on “Absolutely Live”. Or maybe it was the fact that Morrison was totally unpredictable and no one including the members of the band knew what he was going to say or do next.
I heard “Light My Fire” and “Love Me Two Times” thousands of times along with their other collection of FM hits – but when you went deeper into their library you could cue up much more complex and thematic material, poetic visions of war (The Unknown Soldier), Conquistadors (Spanish Caravan, The Crystal Ship, Land Ho!), gorgeous love songs (Indian Summer), mayhem (Peace Frog), hard driving, original blues (Road House Blues): “I woke up this morning and I got my self a beer! The end is always near.”
Morrison told Rolling Stone Magazine’s Ben Fong-Torres how his career got started after dropping out of UCLA Film School: ” I never did any singing. I never even conceived it. I thought I was going to be a writer or sociologist, maybe write plays. I never went to concerts, one or two at the most.
But I heard in my head a whole concert situation, with a band and singing and an audience..I was living down in the beach in abject poverty..it was a beautiful hot summer, and I just started hearing songs. I think I still have the notebook with those songs written in it.”
In a simple twist of fate, (yes that’s a Dylan song!) Ray Manzarek, a keyboardist and friend from his UCLA days stumbled upon a much thinner Jim hanging out at Venice Beach. Jim told Ray he lost a lot of weight from taking acid and not eating and mentioned his songs on paper. After convincing Morrison to show him his lyrics, Manzarek was blown away after reading the lyrics and hearing Jim sing “Moonlight Drive”.
“Let’s swim to the moon/let’s climb through the tide Penetrate the evening that the city sleeps to hide Let’s swim out tonight love/it’s our turn to try Parked besides the ocean on our Moonlight Drive”
And that is how the Doors were born, Manzarek telling Rolling Stone.
“He had great lyrics and was a poet..”Moonlight Drive” was Jimmy Smith, Ray Charles, funky organ, just being cool and bluesy and he had death in his lyrics!” At the end of “Moonlight Drive” he says, “Come on baby, gonna take a little ride, go down by the Oceanside, get real close, get real tight, baby gonna drown tonight”. Morrison was the first rock n’ roller that I ever heard who brought death into the equation of youth; and I thought it was just brilliant. When Morrison came along and I heard those lyrics,” I said, ‘This is it.’ To get a rock and roll band together with a guy who was so amusing and so much fun and so knowledgeable and was writing original
lyrics- I said ‘Yeah, let’s do it Jim’, were gonna go all the way with this one!
Of note, Robbie Krieger wrote their biggest hit “Light My Fire”.
Here are my top 10 Doors Songs
1. The Soft Parade
2. Soul Kitchen
3. Moonlight Drive
4. The End
5. Light My Fire
6. Peace Frog
7. Indian Summer
8. LA Woman
9. When the Music¹s Over
10.Riders on the Storm
Also check out the live version of Little Red Rooster and Gloria covers
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