AboutDaniel Keating Expertise All areas of the bands music and lyrics and the band`s history. I also like to delve into the movie and examine how and why it all went wrong.
Experience I have been a true dedicated fan for many years now, I am a collector in rare Doors memorobilia. I also have a web site, www.wastingthedawn.com, and all content is from my personal collection. It has won the Legacy Link Award for Excellence, Golden Web Award, Site of the Week from Dotmusic.com and has been shortlisted for the Peoples Choice Award each year since 2001. It is also included in the BBC Best Of The Web.
I am doing a research assignment on The Doors and one of the questions stated asks what their influences and contribution to the sound of rock music is/was. Can you help me?
By influences i mean what their influences were on their fans whether it was a good influence or bad and if so for either what was it.....by contribution i mean how did they contribute to the sound of rock we know today, did they put any effort into changing what rock music was and about.
I hope you can solve my questions, thank you
Ashley Ellen
Answer Hi Ashley,
The Doors weren't part of the peace ‘n' love Airplane-Dead-Quick-silver acid rock sound of San Francisco. They had nothing to do with the English invasion, The Beatles / Rolling Stones, or even pop music in general. They weren't part of L.A.'s folk-rock scene, Byrds, Buffalo Springfield etc. They were a world unto themselves. But what a wonderful and darkly exotic world it was.
No one ever caught the vision of L.A. in all its seedy beauty like The Doors, and quite possibly no one ever will. Songs like 'Light My Fire', 'Riders On The Storm', 'The End', 'When The Music's Over' and 'Roadhouse Blues' have kept The Doors in that rare pantheon of groups whose music evokes the memory of the turbulent '60s and continues to make fans not only of those who lived during that time but of following generations as well.
Morrison said, “I offer images, I conjure memories of freedom that can still be reached. But we can only open the doors – we can't drag people through.”
Their audiences were people who wanted to be taught, to experience Doors concerts, which were called ‘shamanic, trance-inducing séances'.
William Blake said, ‘The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom' and ‘Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity'. Jim did not court the maid and seldom knew incapacity. Jim drank and yelled and pleaded, danced in honour of divine inspiration, and to hell with the cost, calling on his inspiration to unite the band, to ignite the audience, to set the night on fire, once and for all, forever.
The Doors commented through their lyrics and music the upheaval that was going on in America and the loss of innocence. For rock ‘n' roll, drugs and sex – and in the Sixties, violence and Vietnam – provided a fountain of imagery for Morrison to draw from. As John Densmore wrote in Riders On The Storm, “Jim's poetry was erotic not pornographic; mystical not pretentious.”
Morrison as an artist understood symbols and their relationships in the context of the American culture and how he expressed them became the hallmark of The Doors' legacy.
Jim communicated to his audience using short snatches of poetic imagery and themes that could grasp the fast-paced contemporary mind. He understood the power of obscurity. Tantalise with a short burst of energy. Arouse curiosity. Excite with sexual tension. With drug imagery. With the threat of violence. Of unknown fears. Of death. Then leave the mind in a state that it seeks to complete the aroused experience.
The Doors were a distillation of their time. The music they made was raw yet poetic, angry yet seductive. The stage show at its best was dramatic, brilliant theatre. Jim Morrison's sensual stage presence, charged with strength and energy, capable of projecting a sense of danger, spoke to young audiences' fantasies and became a catalyst for an era.
Thanks for the question and I hope they answer helps,
Dan.
