The Doors: Jim Morrison (vocals); Robby Krieger (guitar); Ray Manzarek (keyboards); John Densmore (drums). Additional personnel: Larry Knechtel (bass). Recorded at Sunset Sound Recorders, Hollywood, California. The first Doors album was an important development in the evolution of rock, representing the dark underbelly of the '60s counterculture, the Jekyll to the Beatles/Beach Boys' Hyde. The Doors were the antithesis of windblown Californian pop. Dark, brooding and alienated, every element of the quartet's metier was unveiled on their debut album. In Jim Morrison they posessed one of rock's authoritative voices, while the group's dense instrumental prowess reflected his lyrical mystery. Highly literate, they wedded Oedipian tragedy with counter-culture nihlism and, in "Light My Fire", expressed exotic images previously unheard in pop. Howlin' Wolf, Brecht and Weill are acknowledged as musical reference points, a conflict between the physical and cerebral that give THE DOORS its undiluted tension. Or you can just enjoy it as a brilliant album that sucks you in as it breathes out the '60's.
