See also: The Doors (homonymy)

The Doors is a group of Rock founded in July 1965 with Los Angeles, California.

Composition

A fulgurating success

The Doors results from the meeting between two graduates of the UCLA, Morrison and Manzarek: on a beach of the Californian coast, one evening of summer 1965, vis-a-vis the setting sun, Morrison déclama of the poems of its composition with Manzarek; Moonlight Drive formed part of it. Struck by the lyric intensity of the text, the two brothers of Ray Manzarek decided to leave their old group (Rick and The Ravens) to found The Doors with Morrison. This name of commonplace appearance refers to a book of Aldous Huxley, The Doors off Perception , where the author tells his experiment of the amazing products (this title itself was inspired by worms of the collection of poem " The Marriage of the Sky and Enfer" , of William Blake). In August, the beater John Densmore leaves The Psychedelic Rangers and joined The Doors. He is imitated in October by the guitarist Robbie Krieger.

During the autumn 1965, provided with a demonstration recorded at the end of the summer, the members of the group canvass several recording companies but all refuse to make them sign a contract. In December, for want of anything better, The Doors signs a contract with a bar of Los Angeles, The London Fog , that they animate regularly during first half of the year 1966. Then they take down in May 1966 an new agreement with the Whiskey has Go-Go , another connected bar of Los Angeles. They ensure it in particular the first parts of the Irish group Them , whose singer Van Morrison (no family ties) will have a considerable influence on Jim: the little of importance that Van grants to a public which it regularly insults and its leaning naturalness for drink will mark with life Jim and the other members of the group, who will take again then regularly his song Gloria . These difficult beginnings make it possible the group to forge a solid scenic experiment, to control many recoveries and to test their own compositions.

In June 1966, the group finally manages to sign a contract with the recording company Elektra (represented by Jack Holzman): the contract envisages a collaboration for a minimum of six albums. In July, at the time of a performance of The Doors to the Whiskey has Go Go , Jim Morrison, who swallowed a seal of LSD, and undoubtedly inspired by the writings of Freud on the Oedipus complex , improvises words on the central musical section of the song The End : " Father. Yes sound? I want to kill you. Mother, I want to fuck you all night long" (" Father, I want to kill you. Mother, I want to kiss you all the nuit"). Scandalized, the owner of the Whiskey has Go Go throws The Doors outside without very leaving them time to finish the piece. This first incident inaugurates long series of transgressive provocations: they will become characteristic of The Doors and will contribute to forge the legend of Jim Morrison.

During the autumn 1966, The Doors record their first album, sobrement entitled The Doors , characterized by a single sound resulting from the combination of the circling style of Manzarek, the tonalities Jazz of Densmore and of the influences of the Flamenco and the Indian music brought by Krieger. It opens on a short piece and very rate/rhythm, Break one Through (To The Other Side) , with proclamation value since it invites to exceed banal appearances and to pass " other côté" by the use of the Drug. The album also includes/understands titles where the music emphasizes the poetic quality of the words of Morrison ( Soul Kitchen ; The Hook Ship ), of the lighter songs corresponding better to the " spirit; rock'n'roll 'N roll" inspired by unconcern ( Twentieth Century Fox ; I Looked At You ), and of the recoveries (in particular Alabama Song drawn from Rise and fall of the town of Mahagony of Kurt Weill, on words of Bertolt Brecht). The disc is completed in the long composition The End , of which the disconcerting atmosphere intensifies thanks to the words in turn mysterious (" Weird scenes inside the gold mine" , " Strange scenes in the mine of or"), evocative (" Wrinkle the snake/To the lake/The ancient lake" , " Overlap the snake/Until the lac/Le lake primordial") and scandalous (famous the " section oedipienne" , maintained textually on the album).

Completed in one week thanks to the professionalism acquired by the group, the album appears in January 1967. Criticisms are initially not very enthusiastic but during spring, Richard Goldstein writes an eulogistic article where he writes, in connection with The End : " whoever disputes the concept of literature rock'n'roll should meditate on this chanson". During this time, The Doors re-records one of the titles of the album, Light My Fire (whose words are of Robbie Krieger, and not of Jim Morrison) to reduce it by six to three minutes in order to leave it into individual on June 3rd. Success is immediate: as of on July 25th, Light My Fire , true anthem with the love insane, reached the n°1 of the billboard and remains there during six weeks, becoming the title worship of The Doors. The group is then acclaimed at the same time by the press teenager (in particular 16 ) but also by the intellectual press " sérieuse" ( Newsweek , Time , Vogue …), allured by the lyric quality of the words of Morrison. It was hardly frequent, to find an rock group which quoted Blake, Brecht or Freud.

In October 1967, the album The Doors and individual the Light My Fire become both gold discs. The exit, to the same moment, of the second album, Strange Days , contributes to maintain the group on the front of the scene. More disconcerting still than the first disc, Strange Days expresses, through several titles, a feeling of faintness, loss of identity, loneliness ( Strange Days ; You' Re Lost, Little Girl ; People Are Strange ). Songs seemingly more romantic ( Coils to Me Two Times ; Moonlight Drive ; My Eyes Have Seen You ) lets bore an emergency feeling, of imminence, which dyes even aggressiveness. These morbid impressions culminate in the central piece of the album, Horse Latitudes , a poem written by Jim Morrison during his last years of college, and where it describes the terror of horses thrown to the sea by sailors to reduce their ship. The disc is completed, like the first opus, on a long almost apocalyptic composition, When The Music' S Over , where Morrison expresses, in its most collected form and densest, the revolt of the end of the sixties against the American puritanism: " We want the world and we want it... NOW! " (" We want the world and let us want we it… NOW! ").

Increasing difficulties

The complex identity of The Doors allures crowd increasingly more young American who recognizes itself in the revolt expressed by the music and the words of the group, which fits in an older movement and more general of Protest song. In addition, Jim Morrison poses for many magazines, and its advantageous physique makes of him a sex-symbol as adulated as James Dean or Marilyn Monroe.

With that its sulfurous reputation of drug addict Dionysiaque is added, of notorious alcoholic and cursed poet. But in fact especially the scenic performances of Morrison lead the group to an incredible notoriety. Jim, who studied the work of Gustave the Good the Crowd psychology , can modulate his interventions according to the public, to be based on his reactions, to joke at the convenient period. He makes the proof quickly that he can handle the public with his liking: thus on December 5th, 1967, during a concert with New Heaven, Morrison stops singing right in the middle of a piece, asseoit on the edge of the scene, lights a cigarette quietly then, whereas the public observes a silence at the same time astonished and respectful, the singer starts to tell that, right before the beginning in the concert, it was in the slides with a girl, that a police officer took it for a prowler badly intentioned and sprinkled it irritating gas. While the policemen in charge of safety worry about these remarks, Morrison inveighs crowd: " Their currency, it is Protéger and to serve ". A police officer intervenes then directly on scene and stops Morrison for disorder with the law and order. The public murmurs, is indignant, but ends up dispersing in the calm one. May 10th 1968, to Chicago, Morrison further goes and transforms the concert into riot. However, this virtuosity of Morrison vis-a-vis crowd could be also exerted in a radically opposite direction: thus on December 13rd, 1968, at the beginning in a concert with Los Angeles, he arrives, in some sentences, to defuse explosive environment and to bring back calm almost complete.

However, the success of The Doors deeply destabilizes Jim Morrison, which devotes himself to increasingly frequent drinking bouts (see also, on this point, Jim Morrison). As of March 1968, the other members of the group feel obliged to place Morrison under monitoring and they engage for this purpose Bobby Neuwirth, which had inspired Bob Dylan for his song Like has Rolling Stone . In spring, The Doors record their third album, Waiting For The Sun , but the tensions revive within the group and several arguments burst. In particular, after long and rough discussions, the group decides to remove a very long song, The Celebration Off The Lizard , which was to occupy a whole face of the album, and to preserve only the center section of it under the title Not To Touch The Earth .

Démotivé, broken down of inspiration, Morrison renâcle in an increasingly marked way: Robbie Krieger supplements the album with three titles of its feather ( Wintertime Love ; Spanish Caravan ; Yes, To rivet Knows ). Finally published at the beginning of July 1968, and these difficulties, the album is received with enthusiasm by the press during the summer, in particular thanks to the pacifist song Unknown Soldier of which the last one towards, " The war is over" (" The war is finie"), by its simplicity even, transforms itself quickly into political slogan of the opponents to the Guerre of Vietnam. The magazine Crawdaddy describes the effect of the song on the public of Fillmore: " the crowd of the teenagers, releasing several months of frustration, exulta while howling in the alleys: " The war is finished! The Doors stopped the whore of war! " "

These remarkable scenic performances, renewed throughout the European round undertaken by the in September 1968 group, do not prevent however Morrison from being detached little by little from the rock'n'roll. As of June, with the fear of the other members of The Doors (who are still held by contract by Elektra for three albums), Morrison announced its intention to stop its career of singer. In October, whereas it benefits from a rest in London, it becomes acquainted with Michael McClure, poet of the movement " beat" near to Jack Kerouac and Ferlinghetti. Morrison then seems to be directed towards poetry (see on this point Jim Morrison).

These new professional choices combine with the visionnage rushes concert given by The Doors to the Hollywood Bowl, in Los Angeles, on July 5th, 1968. Jim Morrison, struck by these images, declares: " to see a series of events which I believed to control… I am of only one blow returned account (...) which I was only the puppet of many forces whose I had only one notion" wave;. Thereafter, it will become increasingly careful in its " manipulations" of the public.

The disinterest of Morrison for the rock'n'roll still increases with the beginning of the year 1969, during the recording of the fourth album, The Soft Parades : he writes only four of the nine songs of the disc, the others being signed Krieger. Exceeded by the worms " Such all the people " Get your gun" " (in the song Such All The People of Krieger), Morrison is indignant: " One cannot advise with people to take their firearm! " As it requires as the authors of the songs be identified on the small pocket of the album (until now, all the songs were signed The Doors without another precision). Lastly, the coldness of Morrison towards the other members of the group transfers with anger when he discovers that Krieger, Manzarek and Densmore agreed to sell the melody of Light My Fire to the car manufacturer Buick for a publicity.

The concert of Miami

March 1st 1969, Jim arrives with more than one hour of delay at the concert envisaged at Miami moreover the promoter of the concert had sold more places than the room could not accommodate some what was going forcing to pose a problem moreover thereafter. It missed twice its plane: drunk died, he does not manage to sing only one song in his entirety, stopping unceasingly to digress, joke, treat the public of " bunch off slaves" (" bands of esclaves"), of " bunch off idiots" (" bands of abrutis"). He inveighs crowd: " How long are you gonna let it go one? Lettin' people push you around ? Long How of ya think it' S gonna last? Maybe you like it, maybe you like being pushed around… Maybe you coils it, maybe you coils gettin' you face stuck in the shit… " (" How long will you let yourselves make? You let people hustle you. How long will that still last in your opinion? Perhaps that you like that, perhaps that you like that you are hustled… Perhaps even as you adore that, than you adore that one puts the head in the shit to you… "). A little later during the concert, Jim simulates a fellatio with Robbie Krieger, fixed on its guitar.

Then intervenes the fatal incident: taking again one of its " discours" ground well to handle the public, Morrison announces: " We are there to play of the music, but that is not enough for you, not truth? You want some more… You want something moreover… " Still teasing crowd, it ends up announcing that it will be naked. Did it do it? The question remains open. An extreme confusion reigned at this time in the concert hall, and a doubt remains as for the probity of the witnesses of the charge. Morrison itself remained in uncertainty. He will declare later that it did not remember any more, that it was well too drunk to remember.

The reactions are not made wait: whereas The Doors benefit from three days of rest in Jamaica, as of on March 4th, the preserving newspapers of Miami call with a " reaction against the obscénité". The 5, Jim Morrison is accused under four chiefs: " behavior indécent" , " nudity publique" , " insult with good the mœurs" and " intoxication publique". In the tread, the concerts with Jacksonville, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Providence, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Strait, are cancelled. It is necessary to wait June so that agitation is calmed a little, and that Chicago, then Mineapolis, accommodate The Doors. In this tended atmosphere, the exit of The Soft Parades , in July, passes almost unperceived.

The group does not start any less, in September, to record a fifth album. November 9th, appearing before the jurisdictions of Florida, at the time of a preliminary audience, Morrison decides to plead not culprit. The lawsuit will begin in August 1970 and will be balanced, the next month, by the release for the chiefs of " behavior indécent" and " of intoxication on the way publique" , but accompanied with a judgment in eight month of prison and a fine of five hundred dollars for the two other counts of indictment, of which he is recognized guilty.

Meanwhile, the fifth album, Morrison Hotel , appear in February 1970, with a group at best of its form. Militant for typical engagements of the movement hippie ( Ship Of Fools treats environmental pollution), the album joins again musicalement with a more traditional tradition rock'n'roll ( Roadhouse Blues ) treating topics like the love ( You Make Me Real ; Queen Off The Highway ; Blue Sunday ; Indian Summer ), without giving up more elaborate compositions with the words carrying the lyricism caracterisitic of Morrison ( Waiting For The Sun ; Land Ho! ), as well as the feeling of faintness which dominated Strange Days ( Peace Frog ; The Spy ). The disc receives critics extremely eulogistic, which do not hesitate to speak about the " retour" of The Doors.

The autumn 1970, spoiled by the lawsuit of Jim Morrison, delays the repetitions for the sixth album, which begin only in November. December 8th, the day of his twenty-seventh birthday, Jim goes to the studio and records a reading of some of his poems. On December 11th and 12th, The Doors give their last concerts with Jim Morrison to Dallas and New-Orleans.

At the beginning of January 1971, The Doors record their sixth album, Woman in ten days only. This brevity is not without pointing out the recording of the first disc. This last opus with Morrison takes a tonality much darker ( The Cars Hiss By My Window ; Been Down So Long ) and inspired by the blues ( Woman ; Riders One The Storm ), in spite of a few pieces purely rock'n'roll ( The Changeling ; Coils Her Madly ) and a composition where the music lights one of the best texts of Morrison, The W.A.S.P. (Texas Radio And The Big Beat) . A unanimous critic greets the disc, often considered as best of the group.

However, the decision of Jim appears from now on irrevocable: it chooses to give up the career of singer rock'n'roll, to reduce his alcohol consumption, and to be devoted to the production of films while continuing its poetic work, already firmly launched by the encouragements of Michael McClure and by the in April 1970 publication, at Simon & Schuster, of a double collection, The Lords and The New Creatures (see Jim Morrison). Its sex was not shown with the public like affirmed it the hundred photographers present.

To accentuate this rupture, Morrison leaves the United States in company of his/her partner of always, Pamela Courson, and settles in Paris on March 5th, 1971. The other members of the group take a few holidays and evoke the possibility of a seventh album. July 5th, however, a rumor court with Los Angeles according to which Jim would be deceased. Dispatched on the spot as of the 6, Bill Siddons, the manager of The Doors can only confirm: Jim Morrison died in the night from July 2nd to 3rd. Sam Bernett, director of the nightclub of the Rock-and-roll Circus tells (in " The end - Jim Morrison" , ED. Deprived, 2007) how he discovered dead Jim of overdose in the toilets of his establishment before one transports the body in the bath-tub of the apartment where he was officially found by Pamela Courson. It is buried - without autopsy on July 7th, with the Cimetière of the Father-Lachaise, Paris.

The Doors after the death of Jim Morrison

The death of Jim Morrison intervenes in a difficult political climate in the United States. The opposition to Richard Nixon and the Guerre of Vietnam grows, and several rock'n'roll-stars (Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin) died they also of overdoses, while the two leaders of the movement Afro-American, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were assassinated.

It seemed inevitable that this premature death, these funerals precipitated without very an autopsy to determine the causes of death, in a foreign country in addition, caused rumors and many interrogations. Several theses clash. Some, perhaps a little too paranoiac, claim that the FBI had a " list noire" charismatic personalities " dangereuses" , not to say " with abattre" , and that Jim Morrison was reproduced on this list. Others still claim that Morrison would have in fact orchestrated a " death fictif" intended to cover its escape, and which it would be always alive.

The assumption of simple a arrrêt of the heart following a life of excess (Morrison praised to have taken two hundred times of the acid) appears still most probable: it remains nevertheless that this mysterious death, at an age if not very advanced, in the country even which saw being born Baudelaire and Rimbaud, could only add to the legend of Jim Morrison and contribute to offer one to him will have " poet maudit" that nothing any more will be able to contradict today since the only direct witness, Pamela Courson, died of a heroin overdose in 1974.

The remaining members tried despite everything to make survive the group but two albums been sulky by the public, Other Voices (1971) and Full Circle (1972), push the group with the bursting. It is briefly reformed in 1978 to compose of the pieces which will be used as melody support with the recordings of poems carried out by Morrison on December 8th, 1970, and published in disc under the title An American Prayer . The interest for The Doors was then started again by Oliver Stone which devoted, in 1991, its film The Doors with the course of the group, while taking as a starting point the biography of Jim Morrison written in 1980 by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman, No One Here Gets Out Alive ( Nobody will leave from here alive ).

At the end of 2002, Manzarek and Krieger have ressuscity The Doors by recruiting Ian Astbury group The Cult with the song, the beater Ty Dennis and the bass player Angelo Barbera, these two last belonging to the Robby Krieger Band. In 2005, the group re-elects title of one of their more famous song, " Riders One The Storm " , following problems of rights with the heirs Morrison and John Densmore.

The Doors Box Set

At the time of the 30e birthday of Doors, Paul.A.Rotchild and the 3 members of the group link themselves to create " The Doors Box Set" , a compilation of unfinished pieces, news, of recording studio, live and versions different from certain pieces of Doors.Sur this compilation of 4 cds one finds: CD1 (called " Without has Safety Net"): Recordings live of a few pieces of Doors, and enregistements studios.CD2 (Called " Live in New York "): The live one in New York recorded in Madison Square Garden in 1970.CD3 (Called " Future The Ain' T What It Used To Be"): Even kind of contents that CD1.et finally CD4 (Called " Band Favorites"): Or one can listen to the 5 favorite pieces of the group of each remaining member (Ray Manzarek-Robby Krieger-John Densmore). This compilation is sold in two forms: A Form made up of 2 times 2 cds (that is to say two boxes differntes) and a version from once 4 cds.

Quotations

  • MAKE ME FEEL ALLRIGHT!!! (Gloria)

  • “When I was back there in seminary school, there has person there who could forth the proposal that you edge petition the Lord with prayer. Petition the Lord with prayer! Petition the Lord with prayer! … YOU BOAT PETITION THE LORD WITH PRAYER!

  • “Father! (Yes, its?) I want to kill you! … Mother! I want to… fuck you all the night! ”

  • “Chancel my subscription to the resurrection, send my credentials to the house off detention; I' ve got nap friends inside"

  • “SHUT UP (the excited room pains to make silence). Does Now, is that any way to behave in have Rock 'N roll concert?”

  • “We want the world and we want it now ! ” (“We want the world and let us want we it now! ”)

  • “The future is uncertain and the end is always near” (“the future is dubious and the end is always close”)

  • “I amndt the Lizard King, I edge C anything!” (“I am the Lizard-King, I can do anything! ”)

  • “Now is blessed. The rest remembered”

  • “I Hope the Chinese junkies' L get you”

  • “Dreams are At ounce fruit & outcry against judicious year atrophy off the. Dreaming is No solution”

  • “There are things known, and things unknown. In between are The Doors ” (“There are known things and other unknown factors. Between the two there is The Doors”)

  • “Drugs are made to expand your mind, not to escape.” - Krieger

(“Drugs make it possible the spirit to extend and not to escape”)

  • “Exposes yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has No power, and the fear off freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.”

(" Face your major fears, after that, the fear does not have to be able any more, and the fear of freedom disappears. You are libres")

General discography

Albums studio

Died of the singer Jim Morrison

Albums live

  • 1970 : Absolutely Live
  • 1983 : Alive She Cried
  • 1987 : Live At The Hollywood Bowl
  • 1991: In Concert
  • 1998: Jim Morrison Live: Feel The Blues Featuring Albert King
  • 2000: Riders One The Storm: The Doors Concerto
  • 2000: Live In Strait
  • 2001: No One Young stag Gets Out Alive
  • 2001: Live In Hollywood: Highlights From The Aquarius Theater Performances
  • 2001: Live At The Aquarius Theater: The First Performance
  • 2001: Live At The Aquarius Theater: The Second Performance
  • 2002: Backstage And Dangerous: The Private Rehearsal
  • 2003 : Boot Yer Butt

Compilations

  • 1970 : 13
  • 1972: Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Undermines
  • 1973: The Best Off The Doors
  • 1980: Greatest Hits
  • 1985 : Classics
  • 1985 : The Best Off The Doors
  • 1991: BO of the film The Doors
  • 1996: Greatest Hits (CD-ROM)
  • 1997: Box Set
  • 1999: The Supplements Studio Recordings
  • 2000: The Bright Midnight Sampler
  • 2000 : The Best Off The Doors (Simple & Double)
  • 2003: Legacy: The Absolute Best
  • 2003 : The Supplements Studio Recordings
  • 2006: The doors perception
  • 2007: The Very Best Off The Doors

General bibliography

  • 1975 : Jim Morrison beyond Doors , Herve Muller, Albin Michel/Rock&Folk, with much of translated extracts of words
  • 1983: The Doors: the Illustrated History , Danny Sugerman, W. Morrow and Co Compilation of articles, interviews…
  • 1991: The Doors , To groove Moddemann, Heel (in German language)
  • 1991: The Doors in their own words , Andrew Doe and John Tobler, Perigee edition, Reprint of London: Slow train, 1988.
  • 1991 : Riders one the storm: my life with Jim Morrison and the Doors" of John Densmore, Delta
  • 2000: Doors: the true story of Ray Manzarek
  • 2005: riders of the storm of John Densmore, Riders one the storm: my life with Jim Morrison and the Doors" but in French, biography
  • 2005: It tragic lovesong of Pamela and Jim Morrison of Patricia Butler, Astral Beaver Editions
  • 2005: Morrison, a feast between friends of Frank Lisciandro, Astral Beaver Editions
  • 2005: Jim Morrison or doors of perception of Jean-Yves Reuzeau, Astral Beaver Editions
  • 2007: The End, Jim Morrison of Romain Fox. Cartoon recalling the course of the singer. Casterman Editions

External bonds

  • the official site
  • The Doors Lyrics
  • French site devoted to THE DOORS
  • THE DOORS VBC - Vinyls, Bootlegs, Concerts, videos, Books, Poetry (the integral of the texts, poems songs, American version & Frenchwoman), File
    • Video
  • of " Ligth my fire"
  • Association Lizard King - protection of the burial of J. Morrison
  • The Doors (in Polish)
  • http://www.webalice.it/tonkat/
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Simple: The Doors

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