[demonrail666]

I can never decide if they're a band I want to like more, or less than I actually do. I know that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever but it's the best I can do.

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by Glice

Haino has mentioned in loads of interview that 'when the music stopped' (or something like that) made him want to be a musician.

Doesn't mean I like them though.

My broadside wasn't directed at anyone here, by the way, I've just met a lot of people in real life (remember that?) who have insisted that I'm wrong about the Doors. Interestingly, they tend to also be Zappa fans.

Glice, the song that Haino is referencing is the epic "When The Music's Over."
And I'll venture a guess that there's not a single published rock critic alive that doesn't know the name of that tune.

[Torn Curtain]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

The Doors are much darker than most of their contemporaries.

"Five to One" directly critiques the flower-power hippie movement and encourages a revolutionary uprising.

Yes, that may be why The Doors were a strong influence on The Stooges.

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by Torn Curtain

Yes, that may be why The Doors were a strong influence on The Stooges.

Yep, and another The Doors/The Stooges tie-in is the presence of Danny Sugerman.
Danny started working answering fan mail for The Doors at age thirteen, wrote No One Here Gets Out Alive, and similarly befriended Iggy after Jim died because he saw the same spirit in him. And depsite Iggy wrecking his Wonderland Ave. home many times over, he later became Iggy's manager. Sugerman was always trying his damndest to get The Doors back together with Iggy as the frontman. And perhaps it was the open invitation to Sugerman's place as a crash pad in the Hollywood Hills and the easy availability of heroin thereabouts that drew Iggy away from The Stooges. Of course, Iggy made attempts to clean up too. As many know, he was visited by Bowie while in a mental institution after The Stooges had been broken up for the second time, and taken abroad to West Berlin to hopefully change scenery and lose touch with former drug contacts. Also, Ray Manzarek, The Doors keyboardist/bass pedalist, once bailed Iggy out of L.A. county jail on a public drunkeness charge after he was nabbed walking down Santa Monica Blvd. wearing a green dress and carrying a bottle of cheap Ripple wine.

[jetengine]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

Yep, and another The Doors/The Stooges tie-in is the presence of Danny Sugerman.
Danny started working answering fan mail for The Doors at age thirteen, wrote No One Here Gets Out Alive, and similarly befriended Iggy after Jim died because he saw the same spirit. And depsite Iggy wrecking his Wonderland Ave. home many times over, he later became Iggy's manager. Sugerman was always trying his damndest to get The Doors back together with Iggy as the frontman. And perhaps it was the open invitation to Sugerman's place as a crash pad in the Hollywood Hills and the easy availability of heroin thereabouts that drew Iggy away from The Stooges. Of course, Iggy made attempts to clean up too. He was visited by Bowie while in a mental institution after The Stooges had been broken up for the second time, and taken abroad to West Berlin to hopefully change scenery and lose touch with former drug contacts. Also, Ray Manzerek, The Doors keyboardist/bass pedalist, once bailed Iggy out of L.A. county jail on a public drunkeness charge after he was nabbed walking down Santa Monica Blvd. wearing a green dress and carrying a bottle of cheap Ripple wine.

And don't forget how Reed, Cale, Morrison and Iggy all had their turn on Nico! (Not to mention Brian Jones, Jimmy Page, Bob Dylan, Eric Emerson, Gerard Malanga, Alain Delon, etc., etc....)

[atari 2600]

Yeah, sex was a different enterprise back then. I noticed I accidentally misspelled "Manzarek" as "Manzerek" after seeing you quote the post. oops...

[Disgruntled Youth]

Waiting for the Sun would be second.

[jetengine]

Originally Posted by Disgruntled Youth

Waiting for the Sun would be second.

Waiting For The Sun is a great record, but it often winds up lower on 'classic Doors LPs' lists because it sounds rather like an 'odds and sods' sort of collection, a compilation of outtakes and b-sides or what-have-you. This is probably because, according to legend, it's an amalgamation of 2 or 3 other projects which they were forced to abandon because of pushiness at the top of Elektra Records (something else they [unfortunately] shared with The Velvet Underground over on Verve Records). According to the stories I've heard/read, it was intended to be at least 2 other projects, and contains still another two or three tracks that were left over from the first two records (e.g., definitely 'Summer's Almost Gone'). One projected album was American Nights, which would have contained stuff like 'Unknown Soldier', 'Five To One', 'We Could Be So Good Together', etc. The other projected album was The Celebration of The Lizard, which would have featured just the one complete 35- to 40-minute version of their epic theatrical piece. It's lucky for Jethro Tull that this LP never materialised, otherwise Ian Anderson and company would not be taking credit for producing the first two 'single-number' rock albums (Thick As A Brick and A Passion Play from 1972). The compromise with Elektra involved printing the complete text to the epic number inside the gatefold sleeve, and including just the 'Not To Touch the Earth' segment on the record. Ironically, the American Nights number that wound up being pulled to make room for the segment was the one which the album was to be retitled after: 'Waiting For the Sun'. That number, of course, wouldn't see the sun until the band's fifth album, Morrison Hotel/Hard Rock Cafe in 1970!

[sellouteater]

 

Any one ever listen to this one.
Its terrible sounds like a cross between Spinal Tap and Yes.

[sellouteater]

The lyrics are equally idiotic

Well, you asked how much I love you
Why do ships with sails love the wind?
And will I be thinking of you
will I ever pass this way again?
I'll be returning some day
Until then

[jetengine]

Originally Posted by sellouteater

 

Any one ever listen to this one.
Its terrible sounds like a cross between Spinal Tap and Yes.

I like it, but I could have done without the awful group portrait on the back cover. 'Eye of the Sun', 'Ships W/Sails' and 'Tightrope Ride' are the standout tracks for me.

Actually, though, I prefer the jazzier tracks on their next (and last) album, Full Circle; namely, 'Verdilac', 'The Mosquito' and 'Piano Bird'.

[jetengine]

Originally Posted by sellouteater

The lyrics are equally idiotic

Well, you asked how much I love you
Why do ships with sails love the wind?
And will I be thinking of you
will I ever pass this way again?
I'll be returning some day
Until then

Its debatable as to who actually wrote the 'Ships W/Sails' lyrics and when. Krieger and/or Manzarek is usually presumed to be the author(s), but judging from the beat poetry spelling ('w/' instead of 'with'), it's probably an uncredited Morrison creation. Judging from who's credited as bass player (Ray Neapolitan), it probably dates from late '69, from the Morrison Hotel/Hard Rock Cafe sessions.

[jetengine]

Originally Posted by swa(y)

the doors were okay like 20 percent of te time.

unlike the stooges, who were amazing 100 percent of the time (even if iggy was inspired by jim) until 2007 when they too, started to suck.


let old gods die.

no room for new gods at the moment though, so if ya wanna keep em on life support a bit that fine too.

The Stooges were more like The MC5: mostly straight-ahead hard-driving rock. The Doors, on the other hand, were more in The Velvet Underground/Jethro Tull/Led Zeppelin/King Crimson/Sonic Youth vein: many different strains and strands of music all present in the one band. On some Doors albums, you could hear blues, artsy hard rock (proto new wave), spoken-word, vocal jazz, twisted country, etc. back to back to back to back. That's troubling for a lot of those people who tend to stick with the one musical vein--especially KISS, AC/DC and Ramones fans!!!

[Torn Curtain]

Originally Posted by swa(y)

the doors were okay like 20 percent of te time.

2/3 of the time for me.

[Norma J]

The Doors are fucking great, man. I don't listen to them frequently, but when I do listen to them I realise how damn great they were.

[PAULYBEE2656]

i never was a fan of the doors or jim morrison at all. musically much better than lyrically. i always felt jims personality overshadowed his actual talent.

[jetengine]

Originally Posted by PAULYBEE2656

i never was a fan of the doors or jim morrison at all. musically much better than lyrically. i always felt jims personality overshadowed his actual talent.

Hmmm...I'd argue his notoriety and 'erotic politics' sometimes overshadowed his talent. Furthermore, Elektra never really gave him and the rest of The Doors the real unbridled, uncensored opportunity to show off the full force of their creativity--but that was true of just about everyone else in those days. Probably Jethro Tull, The Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin got away with more than anyone else. Maybe Black Sabbath too. The American artists were treated especially bad by their labels--Zappa & The Mothers, The Velvet Underground and MC5 in particular.

[jetengine]

[quote=swa(y)]

Originally Posted by jetengine

The Stooges were more like The MC5: mostly straight-ahead hard-driving rock. The Doors, on the other hand, were more in The Velvet Underground/Jethro Tull/Led Zeppelin/King Crimson/Sonic Youth vein: many different strains and strands of music all present in the one band. On some Doors albums, you could hear blues, artsy hard rock (proto new wave), spoken-word, vocal jazz, twisted country, etc. back to back to back to back. That's troubling for a lot of those people who tend to stick with the one musical vein--especially KISS, AC/DC and Ramones fans!!![/

while i agree the doors dont get the proto-punk respect they prolly deserve, i dont think they were and more "avant garde" than the stooges. the stooges were highly influenced by the doors, but took that sorta bluesy/creative fuck head vibe and ran wild with it. totally invented something new.

i dont think ya could really say the same for the MC5...who were good...but literally a straight ahead rock band for the most part.

stooges were loaded with noisy improvisation blues freakout shit.

Hmmm...sounds like I've offended a true-blue, hardcore Stooges fan!!--believe me, I love 'em too!

As for The Stooges being more avant-garde than The Doors, well, I simply can't hear that on the three legitimate studio releases. (No, I must confess that I haven't heard the reunion album or any of the bootlegs.) 'We Will Fall' on their debut and 'L.A. Blues' and the title track on Funhouse are the most avant-garde of the studio things I have in my collection.

Ironically--or oddly, the most avant-garde things The MC5 did sound like Doors experiments being performed by The Stooges! 'Starship' and 'Future/Now' immediately come to mind. Come to think of it, Nugent & The Amboy Dukes had similarly sounding moments circa Marriage on the Rocks/Rock Bottom. Maybe even Alice Cooper on some albums (those vocal-jazz moments hemmed in by garage rock).

As for The Doors as proto-punk/new wave, I've long maintained that the first two albums and selected numbers off the subsequent albums predated Roxy Music as 'earliest examples of the New Music'. I mean, lift 'The Unknown Soldier' off Waiting For the Sun and shove it on U2's War--it would fit in perfectly! You can almost imagine Bono wailing towards the end, "The war is ooo-o-o-vvveerrrr...". When I listen to Joy Division, The Stranglers, Lene Lovich, The Cars, The Psychedelic Furs, Echo & The Bunnymen, U2, INXS, The Cult, Eat, etc., I hear The Doors all over the place. And Yes, I hear them in Sonic Youth, too--certainly lyrically, but also musically in stuff like 'The World Looks Red' (has 'L.A. Woman' intro), 'Expressway to Your Skull' ('The End'), 'Drunken Butterfly' ('Hello, I Love You'), etc. Punk-wise, 'Break On Through' has a nasty edge that probably only The Who could match circa its release as a single in December of '66.

But anyway, these are my takes on such matters--feel free to disagree....