Doors

When the doors of perception are cleansed,

things appear as they truly are: infinite

(William Blake)

At the dawn of the three-year period that would revolutionize rock history (1967-68-69), Jim Morrison's Doors make their debut. In America it's the golden season of hippies and pacifism, of the acid-blues of Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead, but also of the decadent rock of New York's Velvet Underground. While San Francisco and the whole Bay Area celebrate the glories of "flower power" amid clouds of smoke and free sex, in the basements of Los Angeles the legend of this quartet is spreading underground - a band that on stage manages to set the audience ablaze thanks to the insolent performances of its charismatic frontman. The Doors move along artistic coordinates that are utterly atypical for the sound of the era. Their goal is to expand rock beyond its boundaries, beyond those "doors of perception" described by the visionary poet William Blake and revisited by the English author Aldous Huxley in his treatise on the effects of mescaline, "The Doors of Perception." Hence the choice of name by "Lizard King" Morrison and his court.

With the doors to the quartet's sonic universe thrown wide open, here is one of the most dazzling debuts in rock history. Visionary, sensual, dark, savage, "The Doors" (1967) is a showcase for Morrison's poetic talent, but also for the extraordinary ability of the other three musicians: Robby Krieger, an excellent composer and guitarist capable of ranging from flamenco to a distinctive kind of bottleneck guitar playing; Ray Manzarek, a keyboardist and organist able to compose and perform melodic bass lines as well; John Densmore, a jazz drummer perfectly attuned to the band's theatrical timing and hypnotic rituals.

From sessions at the legendary Sunset Sound Recorders comes a white-hot sonic magma that blends blues and psychedelic rock, Beat Generation poetry and decadent verse, occult liturgies and exotic rhythms. And the lyrics declaimed by Morrison, a kind of shaman with a hypnotic, unsettling allure, are a punch in the face to established values. Starting... from the end: "The End," the rock version of the Oedipus myth that culminates in the notorious, heavily censored line "Father, I want to kill you... Mother, I want to fuck you." It's a long, exhausting raga, lost in a sea of Eastern-tinged filigree, sonic improvisation, and psychedelic vortexes that cloud and hypnotize the mind, before jolting it awake with an electroshock finale in which guitar, organ and drums converge in a dizzying crescendo. A consummate stage actor as well as a rocker, Morrison delivers one of his most chilling performances, moving expertly between hushed tones and furious surges, between moments of mystical ecstasy and epileptic spasms. His is a delirium, the delirium of a dying man, of a mad visionary poet stuffed with hallucinogenic drugs: "Ride the snake, ride the snake/ To the lake, the ancient lake, baby/ The snake is long, seven miles/ Ride the snake... he's old, and his skin is cold." But it's also the apotheosis of a family crime: "The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on/ ...He went into the room where his sister lived, and... then he/ paid a visit to his brother, and... then he/ He walked on down the hall, and.../ And he came to a door... and he looked inside/ Father, yes son, I want to kill you/ Mother... I want to... fuck you." Eleven minutes of agony, one of the most epic electric rides in rock history (which would also help immortalize the images of "Apocalypse Now," Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece).

But let's start again from the beginning... "Break On Through": two breathless minutes and it's already an immediate knockout. A generational anthem in which the prophet Morrison preaches rebellion, the pursuit of absolute freedom, backed by a hard-rocking riff reminiscent of the Kinks ("You Really Got Me," "All Day And All Of The Night") and a driving drumbeat. We're almost at the dawn of punk. The mood shifts quickly with "Soul Kitchen," turning darker and more nocturnal, psychedelic and dreamlike. The Doors' journey veers toward a dirty rhythm and blues, with Manzarek's organ taking center stage, right up to the demonic explosion of the finale.

But the Doors are also masters at defusing tension with sudden dips in intensity. So, in the lysergic ballad "Crystal Ship," unease is transfigured into dream, into a kind of sweet drowsiness. Morrison's baritone croon conjures surreal places and distant 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 the senses ("Before you slip into unconsciousness/ I'd like to have another kiss"), into a psychedelic-hued oblivion, sublimated by an enchanting melody and the piano's final crescendo.

The Doors' blues takes on a cheerful tone, almost as if simulating a "lighter" interlude, in "20th Century Fox," a scathing portrait of a fickle, fatal woman ("She's a twentieth century fox/ Got the world locked up/ Inside a plastic box"). And the mood turns downright surreal in the dazed remake of "Alabama Song," by the duo Kurt Weill-Bertolt Brecht. The Doors sink into expressionist cabaret atmospheres to craft their homage to early-20th-century European culture. Morrison's hallucinated (and tipsy) singing accompanies its wandering search for the next "whiskey bar" ("Show me the way, To the next whiskey bar/ Oh, don't ask why, Oh, don't ask why/ For if we don't find, The next whiskey bar/ I tell you we must die, I tell you we must die"). The band backs him up, forging a sound that's Teutonically martial yet at the same time as bizarre and disorienting as ever. The experiment would be echoed (just as splendidly) in David Bowie's version.

After these two "eccentric" interludes, the Doors' incendiary soul takes back over in the seven minutes of "Light My Fire," a swirling ode to sex consumed amid the flames of a savage blues-rock (penned by Krieger). Morrison, a Dionysian faun, seems almost to want to awaken 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." Sex as catharsis and self-combustion, then. 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 stave. The only disheartening thing about this song will be the covers that, over the years, will (successfully) attempt to ruin it.

After so much fury, the cover of Willie Dixon's orthodox blues number "Back Door Man" serves almost as a chance to catch one's breath, though it certainly doesn't let up on Manzarek's organ, which keeps unleashing phrases of rare elegance, providing the ideal backdrop for Morrison's voice, that of an arcane enchanter. And while the melodic "I Looked At You" and the driving "Take As It Comes" might have given the impression of a "lightweight" close to the album, it's the ancestral litany of "End Of The Night" - a kind of terrifying nocturnal fable unfolding at the slow pace of a psycho-lysergic liturgy - that foreshadows an ending that will be anything but a "happy ending." And indeed the end arrives, implacable: "The End." But for rock history, it will be only the beginning.

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29/10/2006