The Doors: their best albums ranked, according to Mojo magazine

British magazine Mojo has devoted an in-depth feature to the Doors, complete with a ranking of their albums from worst to best. In the introduction, Andrew Male reflects on how the band's critical standing has, over the years, been shaped by certain prejudices. "When did people learn to hate the Doors?" Mojo asks. "In the 1979 edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide, probably the first real album-buying guide, the recorded works of Jim Morrison, Robby Krieger, John Densmore and Ray Manzarek received a fairly balanced range of ratings, from two to five stars, with critic Billy Altman describing the group as 'brash, courageous, intelligent, adventurous, uncompromising and unique.' Then, in the revised 1983 edition, something happened: editor Dave Marsh stepped in and dismissed the band as 'banal… adolescent… and pompous…' While it wasn't unusual for this San Francisco publication to take swipes at Los Angeles bands, in this case there seemed to be a genuine shift. Perhaps also as a reaction to the sensationalist 1980 biography 'No One Here Gets Out Alive' by Danny Sugarman and Jerry Hopkins, the magazine — by then heading toward mainstream respectability — was distancing itself from a band emblematic of Sixties counterculture, now viewed as indulgent, confused, crude and pretentious. Of course, over the course of their five-year career, from their shadowy 1967 debut to the growling motorik blues of 'L.A. Woman' in 1971, the Doors really did end up embodying all of those traits. What's more, there is perhaps no other American rock frontman whose end has, in the eyes of certain observers, been seen as more pathetic: once a beautiful hybrid of Narcissus, Dionysus and Marsyas, Morrison was destroyed by his own arrogance, vanity and excess, becoming an embarrassing symbol of the death of the Sixties. Better to disown him at all costs. Unfortunately, Oliver Stone's well-intentioned attempt to relaunch the band with his 1991 biopic only made things worse, emphasizing the moral excesses and stylistic clichés of Morrison and co., while also adding a fair amount of overblown directorial fabrication. In short, under Stone's gaze, the Doors became an indulgent caricature of psychedelic depth, even easier to despise than the Sixties original. Saying you hated the Doors in the Nineties often just meant hating that scene where Val Kilmer, Kyle MacLachlan and Kevin Dillon pretend to write 'Light My Fire.' In recent years, though," Male goes on, "a backlash to the backlash has emerged. Iggy Pop and Patti Smith have both pointed out just how much the Doors' late-Sixties performances influenced the punk wave that followed, while surviving members John Densmore and Robby Krieger have reassessed their own band with a more detached, critical eye… For this reason, the aim of this ranking of the Doors' essential albums is to reassess a band so often maligned, freeing it from the prejudices of the past in light of a more contemporary sensibility.

So here is the ranking of the Doors' 10 albums from worst to best, according to Mojo (full feature here)

10. The Best Of The Doors (1985)
9. In Concert (1991)
8. Live In Detroit (2000)
7. The Soft Parade (1969)
6. An American Prayer (1978)
5. Waiting for The Sun (1968)
4. Morrison Hotel (1970)
3. L.A. Woman (1971)
2. Strange Days (1967)
1. The Doors (1967)

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