On July 12, I mentioned When You're Strange, Tom Decillo's recent documentary about The Doors, and said that I would be writing about them soon after giving their work another listen. Well, here goes:

The Doors were just slightly before my time (I was born in 1962) so I probably didn't appreciate their contributions the way I should have. For most of my life, I wasn't a fan - and not for the first time, I was wrong. With the help of the film, and older ears, my perspective on their music has changed. At the top of my reasons for new-found respect is the fact that they put the poetic aspect of their work at the forefront. They weren't hiding it behind any sort of ironic detachment: it was their reason for being. Jim Morrison's background was more of a literary nature than a musical one, but this allowed him to forge a unique identity. His singing I'll get to in a moment, but as a performer, well, the film puts it best - he had "the rare combination of intelligence and danger", (I realize now that frontmen like Iggy Pop wouldn't have existed without him) and that he was essentially personifying the poetes maudits like Verlaine and Rimbaud that had been such an influence on him. Of course, William Blake gave the band its name, and what a name it was. There'd be an argument for it being top of the list.

Musically, their strengths came from their weaknesses. Morrison's lack of experience made him a self-conscious vocalist - he sounds like a macabre easy-listening singer who can just barely control a demonic alter-ego, (check out "Light My Fire", both the record and on Ed Sullivan, for an example). Robby Krieger played without a pick, which is rare in rock, and he seemed to have more background in flamenco than the blues - but this too became central to their sound. Ray Manzarek covered both the keyboard and bass duties, which gave a slighly lighter touch to their music than one might expect of a band of their type. Finally, the drummer, John Densmore, was the best player in the group. Like two other greats of that era, Keith Moon and Mitch Mitchell, he had the power of a rocker and the inventiveness of a jazzer. In other words, he played with great energy and sensitivity without repeating himself. As I once said about Charlie Watts, I doubt this band would have been famous without him.

One of the central qualities of their music as a whole is its sense of discovery - one feels that the band is learning as they go, and that each song is a new adventure. Except for Densmore, they weren't great musicians (compared to, say, The Jimi Hendrix Experience), but in rock that can be a plus. I had a teacher once who said he would rather be working on student compositions than studying the works of Mozart, because in the students' music there is life. In the music of The Doors, there's a lot of it. And to be fair, it is easy to hear each member making major musical strides over the course of their six studio albums.

In the film, Jim Morrison gives Robby Krieger some concise and valuable song-writing advice: make sure that each line has more than one meaning. This is central to poetry, and to art in general. Of course, it's also the listener (or reader) who must keep that concept in mind - to read poetry, one must think like a poet. And to appreciate The Doors, one must listen like one.