- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- The Doors’ first album was a bolt from the blue – the album was so powerful on so many levels that it seemed to inhabit a category all its own.
The Doors – The Doors (1967): The Doors’ first album was a bolt from the blue that seemingly everyone had to own – the album is so powerful on so many levels that it seemed to inhabit a category all its own. The outsized personality of lead singer Jim Morrison dominated the band, though the other bandmembers were equally laden with talent. Along with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison is one of the most famous members of the “27 Club”: popular musicians who died when they were 27 years old. Their first hit song “Light My Fire” closes Side 1 and is as irresistible today as it was more than a half-century ago, particularly the “long version” as given on the album. Also, their dark, meandering masterpiece “The End” is the final cut on Side 2; it was memorably at the forefront of the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now (1979).
While these two songs get all of the ink, the other songs on the album are equally great, from group-penned songs like “Soul Kitchen” and “Twentieth Century Fox” to classics like the Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill song “Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)” and the Howlin’ Wolf/Willie Dixon song “Back Door Man”.