The Doors / Heart Of Darkness 1967 - 1971
1967 - 1968
01 Break On Through / Single A Side January 1967
02 End Of The Night / Single B Side January 1967
03 Soul Kitchen / The Doors January 1967
04 The Crystal Ship / The Doors January 1967
05 Alabama Song / The Doors January 1967
06 Light My Fire / The Doors January 1967
07 Back Door Man / The Doors January 1967
08 The End / The Doors January 1967
09 People Are Strange / Single A Side September 1967
10 Strange Days / Strange Days November 1967
11 Love Me Two Times / Strange Days November 1967
12 Moonlight Drive / Strange Days November 1967
13 My Eyes Have Seen You / Strange Days November 1967
14 I Can’t See Your Face In My Mind / Strange Days November 1967
15 The Unknown Soldier / Single A Side March 1968
16 Hello I Love You / Single A Side July 1968
17 Love Street / Single B Side July 1968
18 Not To Touch The Earth / Waiting For The Sun August 1968
19 Spanish Caravan / Waiting For The Sun August 1968
20 Five To One / Waiting For The Sun August 1968
21 Touch Me / Single A Side December 1968
1969 - 1971
01 Shaman’s Blues / The Soft Parade August 1969
02 Runnin’ Blue / The Soft Parade August 1969
03 Waiting For The Sun / Morrison Hotel March 1970
04 You Make Me Real / Morrison Hotel March 1970
05 Peace Frog / Morrison Hotel March 1970
06 Blue Sunday / Morrison Hotel March 1970
07 Land Ho! / Morrison Hotel March 1970
08 The Spy / Morrison Hotel March 1970
09 Indian Summer / Morrison Hotel March 1970
10 Who Do You Love? / Absolutely Live August 1970
11 Dead Cats Dead Rats / Absolutely Live August 1970
12 Break On Through No 2 / Absolutely Live August 1970
13 Love Her Madly / Single A Side April 1971
14 The Changeling / LA Woman May 1971
15 Cars Hiss By My Window / LA Woman May 1971
16 LA Woman / LA Woman May 1971
17 Crawling King Snake / LA Woman May 1971
18 The Wasp (Texas Radio And The Big Beat) / LA Woman May 1971
19 Riders On The Storm / LA Woman May 1971
Jim Morrison said it best, ‘All the children are insane’. We are children revolted by the banality of what people think is sane. When Jim rambled profoundly: ‘The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large scale revolution until there's a personal revolution’, he knew then what we are choking on now. You can't change the world without changing yourself, and if you try, you just end up destroying it.
My introduction to this world was a dog eared, second hand copy of the Weird Scenes Inside The Goldmine compilation in my 4th year at secondary school. It made me realise that rock’n’roll didn’t have to mean hollow hard rock posturing or insipid prog doodles, but it also planted the seed of reactionary fervor, the idea of wanting to be different, to defy what was expected. But more than anything, more than any author or poet, Jim Morrison and ‘The End’ in particular made me want to write. I read it aloud as a poem in front of my English class and it was as awe-inspiring then as it is now. Of course a few years later it became intrinsically linked with the mystical opening sequence of Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, a film portraying Vietnam as a locus to which America had removed all its 60’s nightmares.
What people fail to realise now about The Doors and Jim Morrison is just how unhip they were in the beginning. Then again, The Doors never fitted in. The poetic, artistic ambitions of their debut album and Strange Days opposed the pop cool of the day by registering the lurking malevolence encroaching on the good vibrations. And yet, no sooner had The Doors defined their time than they strayed into pretentiousness, Waiting For The Sun and The Soft Parade being both ridiculously self important and grandiose.
As the decade reached its near apocalyptic finale with the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the increasing death toll in Vietnam, the rise of overt racism and the double whammy of Altamont and Manson, The Doors rapid fall from grace transformed Jim Morrison from all conquering sex God to slobbering alcoholic in an alarmingly short space of time. Somehow he managed to pull himself together enough to record the masterful Morrison Hotel and LA Woman but the writing was on the wall and he knew it.
In the decades that have followed it’s surprising just how much The Doors have been overlooked in the great history of rock. I can only think it’s because of Jim Morrison’s death in Paris just a few months after the release of LA Woman. The shock horror sensation of his mysterious end appears to have overshadowed his groups recorded works ever since and continues to do so. Me, I will never forget the effect he had on my 14 year old self, bewitched by his words and his imagery before I ever knew anything about either his life let or his death. He was one of my earliest influences and gave me that all important first lesson in swimming against the tide. I couldn’t ask for anymore than that.
May 2012
