Doors - The Legend of the Lizard King

On the night between July 2nd and 3rd, 1971, Jim Morrison returned to his Paris apartment with his wife Pam after a night of movies and drinking. At home, drunk, he faced his final journey: a lethal dose of heroin that combined with the alcohol in his system, causing a pulmonary edema that killed him within hours. Thus faded the voice and soul of the Doors, one of the most important bands in the history of rock. Their revolutionary musical era, launched four years earlier, had managed to push rock beyond its boundaries, beyond those "doors of perception" described by the visionary poet William Blake: "If the doors of perception were cleansed," he had written, "everything would appear to man as it is, infinite." English author Aldous Huxley, inspired by Blake's quote, titled his treatise on the effects of mescaline "The Doors of Perception." Hence Jim Morrison's choice to name the band The Doors.

According to one of rock's legends, the Doors were born on a beach in Venice, California, when Jim Morrison recited to Ray Manzarek the lines of a poem he had just written: "Moonlight Drive." Morrison and Manzarek had met at UCLA's film school. What brought them together was an unbridled passion for the classics of decadent, accursed literature. But the two came from very different backgrounds. Morrison, originally from Florida, was the son of a high-ranking US Navy officer, himself destined for a military career. But he was a complex figure, both fragile and charismatic, driven by an extraordinary poetic streak and a blatantly nonconformist attitude. His was a restless personality, one that would lead him to clash with his own family to the point of declaring himself an "orphan." Manzarek, originally from Chicago, had less charisma but far more solid musical grounding, thanks to his background as a classically trained pianist with a particular fondness for rock and blues. He studied Law for a few years before turning to film, making three short films ("Evergreen," "Induction" and "Who I Am And Where I Live"), but he always kept his passion for blues alive, singing under the pseudonym Ray Daniels in a family band, Rick & The Ravens, alongside his brothers Rick and Jim and drummer John Densmore.

These are the Doors' earliest days: officially formed as a quartet in late 1965, when guitarist Robbie Krieger joined Morrison, Manzarek and Densmore.

In America it's the golden season of the San Francisco sound, under the banner of "Peace & Love," of the hippies, of the acid-blues of Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead, but also of the decadent rock of New York's Velvet Underground. The Doors, however, choose a new path, entirely atypical and original. In 1966, after a hard apprenticeship in the clubs of Los Angeles (London Fog, Whiskey A Go-Go), they sign with Elektra, the storied US label that will go on to launch bands like Stooges, Television, and The Cars. In two weeks, Morrison and co. complete their self-titled debut album, released in January 1967.

The Doors of Perception

The Doors is one of the most dazzling debuts in rock history. Visionary, intense, wild, the record is a showcase for Morrison's poetic talent, but also for the extraordinary skill of the other musicians: Robby Krieger, a superb composer and guitarist capable of ranging from flamenco to a distinctive style of bottleneck guitar; Ray Manzarek, a keyboardist and organist able to compose and perform even the melodic bass lines; John Densmore, a jazz drummer perfectly attuned to the band's theatrical timing and hypnotic rituals. The musical alchemy of the Doors fuses blues and psychedelic rock, decadent poetry and theatricality, occult rituals and exotic rhythms. And the stories declaimed by Morrison's unsettling baritone are a punch in the face to pre-established values. "The End," a rock version of the Oedipus myth that culminates in the infamous, heavily censored line "Mother, I will fuck you!", is a long, draining raga, lost in a sea of Eastern-tinged flourishes, sonic improvisations and psychedelic vortexes that cloud the mind and hypnotize it, before electrocuting it with an electroshock finale, in which guitar, organ and drums converge in a dizzying crescendo. An accomplished stage actor as much as a rocker, Morrison delivers one of his most chilling performances, ranging between hushed tones and furious surges, between moments of mystic ecstasy and epileptic spasms. The track will be made even more immortal by its use in the soundtrack of "Apocalypse Now," Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece.

But let's go back to the beginning... "Break On Through": two breakneck minutes and it's already an immediate knockout blow. A generational anthem in which the prophet Morrison preaches rebellion and the pursuit of absolute freedom, backed by a hard-rocking riff reminiscent of the Kinks. But the Doors are also masters at tempering pathos with sudden dips in tension. Thus, in the lysergic ballad "Crystal Ship," unease is transfigured into dream, into a sort of sweet drowsiness. Morrison's baritone voice conjures surreal places and remote worlds, where one might find oneself again after tearing down every barrier ("We'll meet again, we'll meet again"), after crossing those "doors of perception" that limit the human mind. Discomfort and pain ("The days are bright and filled with pain") seem almost to evaporate into a slow loss of senses ("Before you slip into unconsciousness/ I'd like to have another kiss"), into a psychedelic-tinged oblivion, sublimated by an enchanting melody and the piano's closing crescendo.

The Doors' blues takes on cheerful tones, almost as if to stage a "light" interlude, in "20th Century Fox," a scathing portrait of a shallow, fatal woman (“She’s a twentieth century fox/ Got the world locked up/ Inside a plastic box”). And the atmosphere turns positively surreal in the woozy remake of "Alabama Song" by the duo Kurt Weill-Bertolt Brecht. The Doors slip into expressionist-cabaret atmospheres to craft their homage to early-20th-century European culture. The experiment will be echoed (just as splendidly) in David Bowie's version.

After these two "eccentric" interludes, the Doors' fiery soul regains the upper hand across the seven minutes of "Light My Fire," a swirling ode to sex consumed amid the flames of a wild blues-rock (written by Krieger). Morrison, a Dionysian faun, seems almost intent on reawakening the night of lost senses with his outrageous, self-destructive invocation: “Come on baby, light my fire/ Try to set the night on fire/ The time to hesitate is through/ No time to wallow in the mire/ Try now we can only lose/ And our love become a funeral pyre”. And as Morrison intones his dark, primordial call, a sonic explosion detonates amid the swirls of Manzarek's organ and the searing riffs of Krieger's guitar, in an ideal coupling of jazz and baroque sonatas, flamenco and boogie, rock and Arabic folk. A duet among the most legendary ever to appear on a rock score. And while the melodic "I Looked at You" and the driving "Take As It Comes" might give the impression of a "lightweight" close to the album, it's the ancestral litany of "End Of The Night" — a sort of terrifying nocturnal fairy tale set to the slow rhythm of a psycho-lysergic liturgy — that foreshadows an ending that will be anything but a "happy ending." And indeed the end comes, implacable: "The End." But for rock history, it will be only the beginning...

Morrison and his bandmates play in the temples of California rock, the Fillmore West and the Matrix, but they don't shy away from the occasional concession to show business either, as shown by their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. And it's precisely on that occasion that Morrison begins his war against America's moral guardians, ignoring a "family-friendly" censored version of "Light My Fire." The live shows only grow the Doors' legend. Their performances, which distill all of rock's ritualistic and esoteric charge, aim to unite performers and audience in an almost mystical symbiosis, striking directly at the Universal Mind. "A Doors concert," Jim Morrison explained, "is a public meeting called by us for a special dramatic discussion. When we perform, we are taking part in the creation of the world, and we celebrate it with the crowd." What guides them onstage is not only the singer's shamanic charisma, but also the Muse. Morrison, in fact, is convinced that inspiration is not the product of will, but rather of an artist's maximum capacity for receptiveness. The French poet Arthur Rimbaud had called for a "rational derangement of all the senses" to reach the Unknown. Jim Morrison follows in his footsteps: "There's the Known," he said, "and there's the Unknown, and in between are the Doors."

Strange Days

The dizzying organ intro, the bass rumbling like cannon fire, and that absurd, lunar Moog enveloping the ghostly voice, refracted through echo, of a Morrison more shamanic than ever: Mentre l'euforia della Summer of Love sta sfumando in un autunno foriero di malinconie e ripensamenti, i Doors guastano definitivamente la festa ai figli dei fiori. Strange days have found us. Strange days of bewilderment and desolation, for a present draped in mourning — the Vietnam war, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan — and for a future thick with anguished unknowns. Farewell California dreaming, the music is over, nothing left to do but turn out the light ("When The Music's Over").

Strange Days is released on September 25, 1967, nine months after the debut LP. Strike while the iron is hot — the label executives seem to suggest, eager to make the Doors America's answer to the British Invasion of the Beatles. And at Sunset Sound Recorders in Hollywood, Los Angeles, no expense is spared: in the control room is once again the debut's producer, Paul A. Rothchild, but everything is more polished and sophisticated. The record is cut with the most modern instruments, the recording jumps from four to eight tracks, and, fittingly, a futuristic Moog synthesizer makes its appearance.

Musically too, the evolution is tangible: the California band's signature sound grows darker and more morbid, oscillating between blues roots and psychedelic aromas, jazz inflections and rock adrenaline. More intimately psychedelic: like an introspective journey aimed at probing the darkest recesses of the mind. Krieger's guitar builds tension riff after riff, Densmore's drumming is tribal and martial, while Manzarek's keyboard lines sound even more hypnotic. There's also the arrival of a guest bassist, Doug Lubahn, at the time a member of another Elektra band, Clear Light. Morrison's lyrics also grow more personal and decadent, recounting stories of everyday alienation and loneliness, skillfully dramatized by the shadings of his baritone: funereal in the most apocalyptic episodes, subdued and contrite, almost whispered, in the more confessional moments.

Eccentricity is the watchword, starting with the cover art, which doesn't depict the band at all, but rather some jugglers and street performers, captured by photographer Joel Brodsky in Sniffen Court, a historic alleyway off 36th Street in Manhattan. But "strange" is a multivalent adjective, one that also takes on the meaning of "foreign," "different," "hostile" and "hallucinated," depending on the narrative turns of a record that, as a whole, is an anthem to nonconformity, to the uncompromising attitude of never falling into line.

Ten tracks for just 35 minutes of music: it's a concise, perfectly focused menu for the California band's sophomore effort. Starting right from that memorable opening. It's hard to say what's more epic in the title track: Manzarek's whirling Vox Continental at the start, the Moog's roar (played by Morrison with help from Paul Beaver), the singer's desolate prophecy, Krieger's overdriven guitar, or Lubahn's commanding bass weaving the splendid lines that dominate the track. The fact remains that "Strange Days" stands as one of the Doors' definitive masterpieces, as well as one of their most modern and prescient songs. Legend has it that it was inspired by a visit the band made to Andy Warhol's feverish New York, and it's easy to believe: the comparison with their contemporaries Velvet Underground is hardly out of place.

Feeling lost, estranged, unhappy is the condition shared by the record's two "girls" as well. The soft, ballad-like cadences of "You're Lost Little Girl," cradled by Morrison's warm voice and the flourishes of Krieger's Gibson (here also featured on the album's first solo, in an almost flamenco vein), break against that sinister, mechanical, noir-cabaret gait that reveals the song's ambiguous, scabrous nature. "Unhappy Girl" too — melancholic and lively at once, with the psychedelic shadings of the keyboards, Krieger's slide riffs and Manzarek's piano bass — moves from mischievous premises to arrive at an exhortation to break free from the prison of one's own body and swim in the river of mystery. And a woman is also the addressee of the invocation in "Love Me Two Times," one of their irresistible blues-rock numbers, propelled by Densmore's frenzied drumming and Manzarek's harpsichord, accompanying a wildly sensual Morrison as he cries "Love me two times, I'm goin' away" (lyrics by Krieger, inspired by American soldiers hoping to be "loved twice" before leaving for Vietnam).

But the record's manifesto song, alongside the title track, is "People Are Strange," with its wonderful refrain, an eternal anthem to urban alienation and marginalization: "People are strange when you're a stranger, faces look ugly when you're alone." Written by Morrison in a matter of minutes after a drive with Krieger through the hills of Santa Monica that culminated in a sunset atop Laurel Canyon, it's lysergic and poignant, theatrical – with that vaudeville cadence – and steeped in blues melancholy, with the guitarist's gorgeous arpeggio and Manzarek's honky-tonk saloon piano underscoring the Lizard King's dejected vocal. Just over two minutes of pure sonic magic, faintly streaked with psychedelia thanks to the organ's flourishes.

“Moonlight Drive” is a daydream under the moon that conceals yet another invitation to set sail, to escape the suffocating urban jungle. Krieger's bluesy bottleneck-guitar filigree, with its constant rising-and-falling riffs, combined with the lopsided rhythm, conjures an irresistible sense of estrangement.

But it's also the seemingly minor tracks that shape the shifting kaleidoscope of "Strange Days." Take the psychedelic hallucination of "Horse Latitudes," with its manic little organ chasing after the singer's raving spoken-word, grappling with the tale of a ship forced to jettison its cargo, horses included, into the sea; or the rocking build of "My Eyes Have Seen You," with another of Morrison's abrupt mood swings underlined by Krieger's blazing solo and Lubahn's bassline; or again "I Can't See Your Face In My Mind," with its languid lounge atmosphere, barely disturbed by the leader's seductively menacing vocal, the bass giving way to Manzarek's marimba, with delicate touches of slide guitar and keyboards.

A chapter all its own is deserved by the grand finale of “When The Music's Over”. Eleven minutes for a new psychotic soliloquy from the Lizard King, announced by an anthology-worthy intro: the jazzy languor of the organ, Morrison's howl, the distorted lash of the guitar, anticipating the long journey studded with mysterious imagery and biblical metaphors that takes flight over the extended Krieger-Manzarek improvisation, only to fade as Morrison begins declaiming his verses, before culminating in the chilling unison chorus of “We want the world and we want it now!” that unleashes the final frenzy and another Morrisonian climax. Everything implodes into a dreamlike swoon from which there is no escape. Music is the only reason for living, and when it ends, there's nothing left but to “turn out the light”: the most unsettling prophecy of what would happen to Jim Morrison on that terrible 3rd of July, 1971.

Although it grabbed the No. 3 spot on the American charts, “Strange Days” would disappoint Rothchild's sky-high expectations. The blame, in his view, lay entirely with the absence of an icebreaker single on the order of “Light My Fire”, which kept the album from matching or surpassing the success of the debut (No. 2 on Billboard). Yet the more the years go by, the more one becomes convinced — at least this writer does — that it's actually an even more mature and profound record than the debut. Its ten songs capture the truest sense of The Doors' musical mission: an experimental psychedelic rock band nonetheless able to claw with a pop appeal of extraordinary impact. And in its lyrics, written during Mr. Morrison's own autumn of discontent, one can glimpse the other side — the darker, sicker side — of California's great acid era, of the Age of Aquarius and youthful rebellion.

Waiting for the sun

So in 1968 they set off on their first European tour alongside Jefferson Airplane. But the following album, Waiting For The Sun (1968), fails to match the level of its two legendary predecessors. The single “Hello, I Love You” rather apes the Kinks' “All Day And All Of The Night”, and the record shows signs of fatigue, despite the presence of a psychedelic gem like the Spanish-flavoured “Spanish Caravan”.

Morrison's poetic calling finds room inside the sleeve, with the long, introspective, metaphor-laden poem “The Celebration Of The Lizard”, which would forever earn him the nickname “Lizard King”. It's a poetic vocation that leads the Doors singer to self-publish two collections of poetry, “The Lords” and “The New Creatures”, which fail, however, to achieve the success he had hoped for.

The Doors are now walking a thin line, caught between their newfound fame and the self-destructive path of their frontman, increasingly lost in his excesses and existential musings. Morrison has for some time been living in a constant state of psychophysical alteration, due to his abuse of alcohol and drugs, and loses no opportunity to stage his provocations, too often gratuitous and almost never endorsed by the rest of the band. The group's creative output pays the price.

When The Soft Parade comes out in 1969, the more commercial intent of this new direction is immediately apparent, expressed through a single as well-crafted as “Touch Me”. But the band's growing popularity and the media's newfound goodwill take a severe hit on March 1st of that same year in Miami: at the climax of what has since become a legendary performance, Jim Morrison exposes himself and is promptly arrested on charges of public indecency. For The Doors, it's a devastating blow.

In 1970, Morrison Hotel comes out, an album featuring one of The Doors' future classics, the blazing “Roadhouse Blues”, along with a handful of tracks that confirm the band's full class and craft, such as “Waiting For The Sun”, “Ship Of Fools”, “The Spy” and “Indian Summer”.

That same year Elektra releases Absolutely Live, a double live album recorded between the summer of 1969 and the early months of 1970, which puts The Doors back on the charts, even though the internal rift now seems irreparable and becomes even more evident when Morrison refuses to tour in support of their renewed commercial success. In those hectic months, the quartet returns to the studio to record L.A. Woman, which seems to show signs of a resurgence.

The masterpiece is “Riders On The Storm”, a poignant epitaph that closes the album, but “L'America” (originally composed for director Michelangelo Antonioni), “The WASP (Texas Radio And The Big Beat)” and the single “Love Her Madly” also offer hope of a rediscovered creative vein.

The tragic epilogue

But Jim Morrison's crisis is by now irreversible. In March 1971, together with his wife Pamela, the singer moves to Paris, seeking comfort in the cultural atmosphere of the French capital, the shrine of his favourite poets: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine. But just a few weeks later comes the tragic night of July 2nd: the last, fatal journey “beyond the doors of perception”. A few days earlier, Morrison had given his final statement to the press: “For me, it was never about a show, a so-called performance. It was a matter of life and death, an attempt to communicate, to involve a great many people in the private world of thought.” Abandoned by his family, Jim Morrison is buried in the Parisian cemetery of Père Lachaise, near Wilde, Balzac, Proust. On his tombstone, destined to become one of rock's great pilgrimage sites, an inscription reads: “James Douglas Morrison – Poet, Singer, Composer.” The three surviving Doors record two albums between 1971 and 1972, but Morrison's absence mercilessly exposes their limitations.

The rumoured attempts to replace the singer soon come to nothing, and the three are left with little choice but to live off the exploitation of The Doors' catalogue, content with the sizeable royalties. In 1976 Francis Ford Coppola uses “The End” for his masterpiece “Apocalypse Now”, a loose adaptation of Conrad's “Heart of Darkness” set against the Vietnam War. In November 1978, An American Prayer is released, on which Morrison recites his own poems over a musical backdrop composed by the three remaining Doors. But starting in the 1980s, the Doors' legend experiences an extraordinary revival, accompanied by the publication of dozens of biographies, anthologies, live albums and videotapes. Jim Morrison is worshipped by a new generation of young fans, enamoured of his poetry, his music, his charisma. While countless bands have been influenced by The Doors' music, director Oliver Stone cannot resist capitalising on the phenomenon with his film “The Doors”, an evocative work that nonetheless stirs up considerable controversy among the band's fans, who in many respects consider it “untruthful”.

Forever fuelling suspicion, conspiracy theories and new interpretations are the circumstances surrounding Jim Morrison's death. That fatal Parisian night consigned him to the pantheon of rock's burned-out lives, alongside Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, who had passed away only a few months earlier. It marked the close of a mad season, made of lysergic dreams, poetry and damnation. One cannot help but agree with rock critic Riccardo Bertoncelli when he writes that “with his sincere but pathetic drive toward an art-as-truth, with his desire to hurl himself even unto immolation in the fire of Pure Expression, Jim Morrison ended up killing The Doors and ruining himself, embodying to the utmost the contradiction at the heart of rock: music of joy and liberation that carries within it the black clot of destruction and chaos”.

After various attempts to reform the band, which also gave rise to unpleasant controversies over the use of the Doors name, Ray Manzarek also died on May 20, 2013. The brilliant keyboardist (and bassist), architect of the group, passed away at 74, at the RoMed clinic in Rosenheim, Germany. He had long been fighting bile duct cancer. Guitarist Robby Krieger, with whom he had resumed collaborating and touring in 2002, paid tribute to him with these words: "I am deeply saddened by the news of the death of my friend and bandmate Ray Manzarek today. I am just grateful to have been able to play Doors songs with him for the last decade. Ray was a huge part of my life and I will miss him always."

Now that magnetic keyboard has fallen silent too, the doors of perception really have closed. And yet the myth of the Doors has never been more alive than it is today. Yes, the music is over. But this doesn't really look like "the end".

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