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The Psych Ward–The Doors (first album)

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  • Emily Adair
  • February 3, 2023
  • 8:33 am

The Psych Ward–The Doors (first album)

The Doors released their eponymous first album, The Doors, in 1967, just four years before the death of frontman, Jim Morrison. Tracks include: “Break on Through (To the Other Side)”, “Light My Fire”, and the cinematic hymn of “The End”: chilling and mortality-interrogating even when it does not underscore Napalm-burning jungles (Apocalypse Now). It sits at the crossroads of past and present; “Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)”, the third track, is originally a German song written in the 1920s (by Bertolt Brecht) yet reverberates through modern times, as in My Chemical Romance’s “Mama”, off Welcome to the Black Parade.

The album pulls listeners down into a bluesy darkness, where Morrison and Company explore themes yet uttered in mainstream music.

The Doors debut album cover

Psychedelia has always investigated limits and boundaries: from post-war social conventions to the self and the mind, and reality itself. The Doors is no different. Taking cues from the 60s psychedelic movement (and simultaneously defining it) and music of the Deep South, the album pulls listeners down into a bluesy darkness, where Morrison and Company explore themes yet uttered in mainstream music. Slinking, sensual tracks such as “Soul Kitchen” and “Back Door Man” push common blues motifs into the mainstream. “The End” is about death, plain and simple. In a homogenized American music scene belabored with bubblegum pop and programs like “Hullabaloo”, The Doors (and contemporaries) destabilized norms and enshrined Jim Morrison as an iconoclast.

The Doors is a haunting and emboldened album, and listeners remain both aroused and shaken by Morrison’s vocal swagger and Ray Manzarek’s iconic carnival-sounding organ. I wrote to this album often in high school; I’m now a college student studying Creative Writing. In my junior year of high school, my mom and I went to an on-screen showing of the Doors’ 1968 performance at the Hollywood Bowl, where they performed much of their debut album.  The Doors is the sound of being 16—as I’m sure it has been for generations since its release.

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