| The Doors: When
the music is over |
By Scott Garceau
The Philippine Star 06/13/2004 |
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Named after The Doors of
Perception, a work by Aldous Huxley, this ’60s band led by Jim
Morrison has the dubious distinction of being one of the most
exciting, and simultaneously one of the most pretentious, groups in
rock history. Equally sublime and silly, The Doors have been
mythologized by fans beyond any rational understanding. Just scan
the "appreciation" by hippie novelist T.C. Boyle in the liner notes
to Legacy to glimpse of the problem: with all the clarity of
a barely-recalled acid flashback, you can feel Boyle straining to
attach significance to a blazing moment of his youth. You kind of
had to be there, I guess.
But then again, Jim Morrison and his pals were more than just an LA
bar band with poetic pretensions. They entered the rock game at a
time when theater and cinema were becoming as much a part of youth
culture as Sgt. Pepper and Monterey. Film students and beach
bums before turning pro, The Doors turned out to be one of the most
cinematic rock bands ever. First, there was the narrative unfolding
of Jim Morrison’s rock dream: with self-references like Lizard King,
Mr. Mojo Rising and other crypto-erotic tags at his fingertips,
Morrison inhaled a blast of Rimbaud, Baudelaire and the Beats, and
served up his own rock and roll soufflé: it was always in danger of
collapsing under its own symbolic weight. Fortunately, the music,
and the moment, kept it (more often than not) real.
This two-CD collection captures all the classics, throws in a few
bunts and misses, and makes you wish the band had gone just a little
further in their journey into rock’s heart of darkness.
Yes, it was Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) that
first revived Jim Morrison’s from rock-footnote status, and made him
hot again. The evocative use of their 11-minute epic The End
in the film showed just how convincing The Doors could be, when they
were unfettered by bullshit and pomp. With snaky guitar lines and
organ swirls, gently opening up to Morrison’s primal, Freudian
narrative, it’s one of rock’s finest moments; time hasn’t touched
this one a bit. As keyboardist Ray Manzarek builds up the frenzy,
Robbie Krieger’s guitar stabs work the song into a snake charmer’s
miracle: hypnotizing, mythic, then orgasmic. Cinematic, in fact.
More interestingly, the version on Legacy includes the
restored vocal mix that was only used on the Apocalypse Now
soundtrack: censored back in 1967, now you can hear Morrison egging
the band on to a climax, barking out "Fu… fu… fu… yeah… come on…!"
It’s an inclusion that changes the song’s meaning from murderous
frenzy to petit mort: the little death of sexual release. The
Doors may have never improved on the first album, the one with
Light My Fire, Soul Kitchen, Break On Through and The End.
But they went on kicking.
The second album, Strange Days, included psychedelic gems
like When the Music’s Over, People Are Strange, Moonlight Mile
and the title track. By that time, the mythos was already starting
to unravel: Morrison was a pop star, a media idol (even appearing,
famously, in Tiger Beat! magazine) and, increasingly, a
drunk. His fascination with The Living Theater led him to challenge
and confront his audiences, goading them to riot and occasionally
flirting with public exposure himself onstage. Morrison got arrested
so many times onstage that it must have seemed like part of the act.
A half-assed political posture existed behind Morrison’s musings. He
sang about picking up guns on Five To One, but few thought
the lounge-y Doors would ever lead a street revolution. Morrison
once called himself an "erotic politician," and that’s a bit closer
to his influence on youth culture. It was more of an attitude:
leather pants, messed-up on drugs or booze, he would shrug and pout
through each press appearance, rock’s embodiment of rebellion. A
clown prince of darkness.
But the music suffered. By the time 1968’s Soft Parade came
out, Morrison’s voice was shot to hell. The second disk of Legacy
opens with Touch Me, one of The Doors’ most popular
singles, and one of their most embarrassing. The tracks from that
album only work when placed in an historical context: fortunately, Legacy
does exactly that. You can see Morrison guiding the band back to
truer, safer ground with the next release, Morrison Hotel,
wearing his white blues on his sleeve. The music was better, and
just when the band was reclimbing its way to respectability, they
decided to go out quietly into the night: 1970’s somber LA Woman
was a classic of FM radio formatting, with its misty-rain drive
song, Riders on the Storm and other blues-and-poetry hybrids.
Were The Doors now officially a lounge act? Morrison gave few clues,
his voice no longer a reverbed, authoritative yelp, but kept low and
mysterious in the mix. A few months later, he was found dead in a
Paris bathtub, and was eventually buried at Pere Lachaise cemetery.
Do The Doors still matter? Yes, in some strange, still undefinable
way. There have been no others like them. |
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