Doors’ Debut Album: 10 Things You Didn’t Know
If you wanted to craft the perfect rock debut, the most obvious route wouldn’t be to meld Bavarian oompah with Willie Dixon’s Chicago blues, Bach minuets with John Coltrane charts, 12th-century Celtic myths with ancient Greek tragedy, topped off with plenty of existential angst and a healthy dose of psychedelics. But even with influences touching on all of the above, the Doors‘ 1967 self-titled debut would soon make the band immortal, thanks to songs like “Break on Through (to the Other Side),” “The End” and the immortal “Light My Fire.”
Fresh from their gig as the house band at the Sunset Strip’s Whisky a Go Go – where they were fired for performing a profanity-laced riff on Oedipus Rex during “The End” – poet/vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore spent a week at Sunset Sound Recorders documenting the act that had vaulted them to the top of the Los Angeles scene in less than a year. “The first album is basically the Doors live,” Manzarek says in the documentary Classic Albums: The Doors. “There are very few overdubs. It’s ‘The Doors: Live from the Whisky a Go Go’ … except in a recording studio.”
The Doors captured for eternity the raw, vital, hypnotic excitement of four fearless artists. In honor of the album’s 50th anniversary, here are 10 little-known facts about the record’s conception and reception.
Retrieved on 19 December 2018 from https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/doors-debut-album-10-things-you-didnt-know-115997/
