Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 75

Record label: Elektra

Produced: Paul A Rothchild

Recorded: Sunset Sound Recorders, Los Angeles; August–September 1966

Released: January 4, 1967

Chart peaks: 43 (UK) 2 (US)

Personnel: Jim Morrison (v); Ray Manzarek (o, p); Robby Krieger (g); John Densmore (d); Larry Knechtel (b); Bruce Botnick (e)

Track listing: Break On Through (S/US); Soul Kitchen; The Crystal Ship; Twentieth Century Fox; Alabama Song (Whisky Bar) (S); Light My Fire (S); Back Door Man; I Looked At You; End of the Night; Take It As It Comes; The End

Running time: 43.25

Current CD: Rhino 8122799983 adds: Moonlight Drive (Version 1); Moonlight Drive (Version 2); Indian Summer (8/19/66 Vocal)

Further listening: The Doors Box Set (1997); Waiting For The Sun (1968); LA Woman (1971)

Further reading: Break On Through: The Life and Death of Jim Morrison (James Riordan and Jerry Prochnicky, 1991); No One Here Gets Out Alive (Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman, 1981); www.thedoors.com

Download: iTunes

Jim Morrison was the narcissistic stuff of rock legend. Shortly after graduating from the Theatre Arts department at UCLA in 1964, he met the classically-trained keyboard player Ray Manzarek. In July the following year they got together with Robby Krieger and John Densmore – the drummer had shared a Transcendental Meditation class with Manzarek. Significantly, they took their name from Aldous Huxley’s The Doors Of Perception, an account of a mescaline trip. They clicked immediately: Manzarek’s alternately jittery and flowing organ identified a sound punctuated by Krieger’s blues riffs, jazzy runs and Spanish finger-picking, and Densmore’s fluid sensitivity to the overarching personality of the frontman. Morrison was magnetic: wild, handsome and possessed of a rich baritone. When producer Paul Rothchild (who also recorded Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Janis Joplin and Love) saw The Doors live during a six-month residency at the Whisky A-Go-Go, Los Angeles, in July 1966, he was so impressed by their presence that, according to his engineer Bruce Botnick, he at once proposed making a studio album as an ‘aural documentary’ of their live set.

Remarkably, that is what he achieved with The Doors, capturing iconic songs propelled by an awe-inspiring sense of drama. Break On Through bounds in on Densmore’s double-time bossa nova cymbal ride, Manzarek’s charging organ bassline and Krieger’s unison guitar; Morrison delivers his sermon with an evangelist’s certain fervour. Light My Fire, a Krieger composition, rolls in on a majestic Manzarek organ line, stretches out on keyboard and guitar solos, but always returns to Morrison’s sonorous vocal and the addictive chorus.

But, of course, there were problems inherent in Morrison’s temperament, fuelled by his artistic wrestling bouts with the nature of order and chaos. His most extreme exploration occurred during the final session – appropriately, while working on The End. Comprehensively wrecked, the singer wound up lying on the floor mumbling the words to his Oedipal nightmare, ‘Fuck the mother, kill the father.’ Then, suddenly animated, he rose and threw a TV at the control room window. Sent home by Rothchild like a naughty schoolkid, he returned in the middle of the night, broke in, peeled off his clothes, yanked a fire extinguisher from the wall and drenched the studio. Alerted, Rothchild came back and persuaded the naked, foam-flecked Morrison to leave once more, advising the studio owner to charge the damage to Elektra; next day the band nailed the track in two takes. Morrison lived for only another five years.