I Don’t Like Them As Much As I’m Supposed To: The Doors

I Don't Like Them As Much As I'm Supposed To

the doors I Dont Like Them As Much As Im Supposed To: The Doors Firstly, guess what? There was more than one person in The Doors. Guess what else? The one you always think about was the least talented of the four. Lester Bangs (the greatest rock critic who ever did live) called Jim Morrison the “Bozo Dionysus” and I’m right behind him. “I am the Lizard King! I can do anything!” Jimbo once hollered… anything except jerk off in the bath without dying. But hey, I’m falling into the ‘Jim Morrison was The Doors’ trap. Let’s look at the canonised output.
People tend to fall over themselves to heap praise on The Doors (I’m looking at you Q Mag, Mojo, NME and Uncut). I don’t get it. Sure ’nuff, they made some decent pop records… that’s right, POP. “Peace Frog” is alright, “Break On Through”, “Roadhouse Blues”… all decent pop records. Anything more? Nope. They’re up there with Duran Duran, A-Ha and Take That - pop chancers who got lucky with a couple of choruses and a much-fancied singer.

Another thing that sticks in my craw about this buncha dippy LA hunks carved from soap is the glossing over of those that got ‘em to where they were. Jim Morrison, biggest culprit of them all, never once paid his dues to Arthur Lee and Love. Man, Love virtually got The Doors a record deal single-handedly. Jim swaggered around talking of having a native American parent (no, that would be Arthur Lee) and even went as far as buying a chocolate Labrador, just like Arthur Lee. Yeah, the Latin rhythms in their early work? That’d be the product of listening to a load of Love LPs. However, do Love get taken on the whirlwind ride of The Doors? Do they fu…
Aside from my bitterness over Love not gettin’ credit, there’s the songs themselves. The band saw themselves as beat poets in psychedelic clothes. Sonically, The Doors are a two-dimensional outfit with most LPs of theirs being very tame and safe compared to their more adventurous peers. The Doors are Disney compared to Love, Dylan, The Chocolate Watch Band, The Seeds, 13th Floor Elevators and some. The Soft Parade sounds like the Fifth Dimension (”Up Up And Away”, “Aquarius”) if they read from a 13 year-old Rimbaud fan’s book of self-penned poetry.
Jim Morrison once said: “If you can get a whole room full of drunk, stoned people to actually wake up and think, you’re doing something.” Yeah, that’s true… but if you’re a hopeless stoned drunk spouting piffle, people gonna move on, y’know?