The Doors – Part Two

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Listen to Part One here!

The Doors ‘Break on Through’ with their first album

It’s tough to believe but forty-plus episodes into this podcast, The Doors self-titled debut album is our first track-by-track journey in the 1960’s as far as album’s go. And as far as important bands and great albums go it doesn’t get much more “Classic” than this.

Emerging from the buzzing Los Angeles, CA mid-60’s rock scene the Doors featured one of the most literate and charismatic frontmen in the history of rock in one Jim Morrison. Morrison was a sardonic, laconic and iconic writer and singer without peer.

But the band was more than just Jim.

The band’s founder was Ray Manzarek on the keys, the soft-spoken Robby Krieger on guitar and the sometimes outsider, John Densmore on drums. The guys teamed up to create one of the most original and long-lasting templates in the annals of pop and rock music which has inspired everyone from Danzig to INXS to Echo & the Bunnymen and hundreds in-between.

They released their debut album on January 4, 1967

The Doors featured their mega-hit and classic rock staple “Light My Fire”. But the as we discover in our track-by-track review, this album was chock full of greatness and variety. One minute you’d get a flamenco-jazz-tinged song like “Break On Through” and the next you’d get a proto-dream pop song like “The Crystal Ship”. And of course it also has the penultimate Doors epic, “The End” in all its Oedipal grandness. As far as debut albums go it still stands as one of the all-time greats almost 50 years later.

So what song did Handsome Dan almost break Randy’s eardrums to? What exactly is a minaret? Who would Randy invite to his ‘Soul Kitchen’? All of this and more is discussed by the Dandy Classic team as we geek out to one of our favorite classic rock albums and band’s ever.