The Doors

The Doors

The Doors soon created a sound that was highly innovative, and a fitting accompaniment to Morrison’s distinctive, haunting baritone voice. Ray Manzarek played keyboards, whilst Krieger’s guitar style featured elements drawn from both his classical training, and Spanish flamenco guitar. Interestingly, there was no bass guitar in the lineup, and this is one of the factors that made The Doors musically unique at that time. The bass element of the music was actually provided by Manzarek on his keyboard Fender bass, which was a small bass-scale version of the famous Fender Rhodes electric piano, which had in fact only just been released.

Making use of the latest technology of the late 1960s, The Doors produced a sound that was totally unique and musically ground-breaking. This was due in no small part to Jim Morrison’s lyrics, which were drawn largely from his poetry and writings. Morrison’s songs tackled dark and powerful subjects, such as death, murder and madness, along with the traditional themes of sex and drugs and rock and roll. The Doors’ guitarist, Robb Krieger, also contributed on the song writing side, and wrote or co-wrote many of the band’s most famous numbers, including 'Touch Me', 'Love Me Two Times' and most importantly, 'Light My Fire'.

The Doors were signed to the Elektra record label early in 1967, and began to be noticed shortly afterwards. Their first single release was 'Break On Through', but it was 'Light My Fire' that really put them on the map, when it went to number one in June 1967. Three months later, The Doors were invited to appear on the Ed Sullivan show, a popular Saturday night chat show that had featured celebrities such as The Beatles and Elvis Presley. Morrison caused a furore when he agreed to change the lyrics of 'Light My Fire' so as not to implicate drug taking on the show, but then went ahead and sang the original lyrics anyway! The show’s host, Ed Sullivan, was allegedly so incensed that he refused to shake hands with the band after they had performed. In addition, they were never invited back. Jim’s response to this was: "So what? We already did The Ed Sullivan Show!”

By the time their second album, 'Strange Days', was released, The Doors had become a national musical phenomenon, and were one of the most popular rock bands that the world had ever seen. The band’s mixture of styles, which embraced blues and rock with psychedelic was totally novel, and made them irresistible to young rock fans. Their choice of lyrics was as far-reaching as Morrison’s literary tastes, and included 'Alabama Song' from the Brecht and Weill operetta, and 'Rise and Fall of The City of Mahogonny', which had first been written and performed during the 1930s. The band also created a new genre of song by producing extended concept works, including the famous epic songs, 'The End' and 'When The Music’s Over', along with their famous concert piece, 'Celebration of The Lizard'.

Another factor which made The Doors hugely popular and innovative was the way Morrison and Manzarek drew upon their background in film (they had both studied film at UCLA) to produce some of the earliest music videos to accompany their music. Morrison and Manzarek produced a film for 'Break On Through', their first single release, which featured the four members of the band playing the song on dimly-lit set, with alternate views and cutaway shots of the performers, and Morrison singing the lyrics. Morrison and Manzarek also made videos to accompany other singles, including 'The Unknown Soldier', 'People Are Strange' and 'Moonlight Drive'.

The Doors’ third album, 'Waiting For The Sun', came out in 1968. Morrison originally planned that this album would include several extended concept songs, including 'Celebration of The Lizard' taking up the whole length of Side Two. But Elektra Records vetoed this proposal, much to Morrison’s annoyance. From this point on, Jim became increasingly resistant to the demands of both his record label and the concert-going public, frequently ignoring their requests to sing the most famous numbers from The Doors’ repertoire, including 'Light My Fire' and 'Love Me Two Times'.

The The Doors’ fourth album was called 'The Soft Parade', and featured a far more heavily orchestrated, pop-oriented sound than earlier records. The change in musical style was not well received, and this fourth album was widely slated by both the press and the listening popular. After a long break in recording, the band got back together in late 1970 to record what was to be their last LP with Jim Morrison, called 'L.A. Woman'.

Like the fourth album, this record had a highly commercial sound, with smooth instrumentation and Bubblegum-style songs, such as 'L.A Woman' and 'Been Down So Long'. But the album was redeemed by the inclusion of the classic number, 'Riders On The Storm'. Despite the album’s success, the producer Paul A. Rothschild, who’d worked on all their previous records, walked out, loudly voicing his disapproval of the band’s new material, which he called “lounge music”. The album broke with the earlier Doors sound, with its intensely personal and poetic lyrics, exchanging it for a highly commercialised sound, like many other rock bands of the time.

Morrison Hotel: Is The Doors' fifth album. It was released in 1970. After their experimental work The Soft Parade was not as well-received as anticipated, the group went back to basics and back to their roots. On this album, there is a slight steer toward blues, which would be fully explored by the band on their next album, L.A. Woman. The strategy worked; even though no major hit singles were drawn from the album, Morrison Hotel reestablished The Doors as favorites of the critics, peaking at #4 on the US album chart, and when they followed with L.A. Woman the next year, they were rewarded with two more US Top 20 hits. The album also became the band's highest charting studio album in the UK, where it peaked at #12.

L.A. Woman is the sixth studio album by The Doors, and the last recorded with lead singer Jim Morrison, who died in July 1971. Its style is arguably the most blues rock-oriented of the band's catalog.

Following the departure of their record producer Paul A. Rothchild around November 1970, the band fell in to a state of depression and Jim Morrison was obviously bored with Sunset Sound, the studio in which their first two albums were recorded. Bruce Botnick, their engineer, suggested they record at the Doors' workshop. He and the band began production on the album at The Doors Workshop in Los Angeles. Most of the tracks were recorded live, except for a few overdubbed keyboard parts by Ray Manzarek. Morrison recorded his singing in the studio's bathroom to get a fuller sound. Elvis Presley's bass player Jerry Scheff was brought in to play bass on the album and rhythm guitarist Marc Benno was brought in so that Robbie Krieger could focus on playing lead guitar during live takes.

An American Prayer: is the ninth and final studio album by The Doors. In 1978, seven years after lead singer Jim Morrison died and five years after the remaining members of the band broke up, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore reunited and recorded backing tracks over Morrison's poetry (originally recorded in 1969 and 1970). Other pieces of music and spoken word recorded by the Doors and Morrison were also used in the audio collage, such as dialogue from Morrison's film HWY and snippets from jam sessions.