The Music of The Doors
The Doors’ first album, The Doors, takes the listener on a journey through the doors of perception and invites the listener to experience through music, what Jim Morrison was fascinated with throughout his brief but dramatic career..
Having never analyzed the music of the Doors before, I am extremely glad that I did. There is a wealth of information that lies through Jim Morrison’s poetry that most people seem to miss. The music contained in this album is nothing short of fantastic, and combined with the genius of Jim Morrison’s poetry, allows the listener to take a voyage through the Doors of Perception, and into another reality.
The album starts off with the song, Break On Through (To the Other Side). Jim Morrison tells us to “Break on Through” and get out of our daily humdrum lives and into a new state of mind. The “other side” being the fantastic reality that lies beyond our existing reality, just waiting to be explored. Jim Morrison had a macabre fascination with this altered-reality, and he frequently tested its’ (and his own) limits with mind-expanding hallucinagenic drugs. This song is said by some to be the theme of his life and the reason for his excess in almost everything that he did (Curtis, p. 178). When he says, “I’ve found an island in your arms, a country in your eyes, arms that chain, eyes that lie...” Jim tells us that although we accept reality as comforting (the arms and the eyes) it really tricks us and keeps us away from the “other side”, and we need to “break out” and explore these boundaries. Although most people are not willing to use hallucinagenic drugs, or live like Jim Morrison did to explore the boundaries of reality, the music itself takes the listener on...
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...rld that lies beyond these doors of perception. Although Jim Morrison’s fascination with hallucinagenic drugs are prohibitive and quesionable to most listeners, his message transcends that and instead takes the listener on a journey through the music itself.
Bibliography:
Bibliography
Ewen, David. All the Years Of American Popular Music. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1977
Gilmore, Mikal. Night Beat.. New York: DoubleDay, 1988
Curtis, Jim. Rock Eras: Interpretations of Music and Society, 1954-1984. Mass.: Bowling Green State University Press, 1987
Hopkins, Superman. No One Here Gets Out Alive. New York: Warner Books, 1980.
Smith, Lawrence. The Doors: A Tribute To Jim Morrison. dir .Gorden Forbes. Hollywood Heartbeat Productions, 1981.
Rothchild, Paul. The Doors. Elektra/Asylum Records, 1988
album contains an amazing combination of poetic lyrics and edgy music that make it an
“Why The Grateful Dead Were the Greatest American Rock Band:, BlogCritics, BlogCritics, 2014, web, 16 April 2014
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