Part II of The Winky Sturges Tough Guide to All That Jazz (and Rock & Country): In This Edition The Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Albums By The Doors
James Hannibal Morrison: An American Guy (1943-1971)
Hello! Remember last time when I told you about the first, second, and third albums of the Doors? (If not you can find it HERE.) Well, I did a little digging (online) and discovered three more records by the selfsame band!
THE DOORS: A SOFT PARADE (1982): Legend has it that Jim and Ray (Morrison and Manzarek are their last names) of the Doors were asked to take part in the 89th Annual Clauding Day Parade in Niceville, Florida. Having never seen a parade before (parades had just been invented) they were absolutely floored by the experience—so floored that they nearly changed their bandname to The Flooreds, but were voted down by bandmates Tagg Chance, Chloe Feldberg, Magnus Klorrr, Dennis, Odie Bulletpan, Kaspar Gluten, Tennis Freehold, Cher (not that Cher), Shang-Chi, Mister Pony, Jar Jar Barrymore, Jeff “Skunk” Skunkster, and Lefty Smedweather (guitar, guitar, bass, drums, bass, percussion, keys, guitar, backup vocals, percussion, guitar, and bass, and drums, respectively).
Anyway, the point is Rim and Jay (as they often jokingly referred to one another) became obsessed with the brave new world of paradism and rushed into their rehearsal space to start penning a concept album on the subject (parades).
And the result of those frenzied songwriting sessions? None other than the Doors’ finest album, Soft Parades. The first track is called “Tell All The People” and is about telling people about how great parades are. It features an all-oriental brass band and someone playing the congas. The Beatles often cited this as their most favorite song of the ’60s, and it’s easy to see why!
Secondly on this album is a song called “Do It” which you might remember from the famous Nike commercials in the 1990s directed by Spike Lee.
Third up is a song called “Sha-man’s Blues” which Jim wrote about the time he was abducted by aliens and one of them entered his body and told him how to become a Shape Man or “sha-man” (pronounced “shommin”). A Shape Man, he was told, can turn into a rectangle or triangle or question mark, but not a circle. Hence his “blues.”
Next up is “Easy Ride” and for once I’m not even kidding you with this: I’ve listened to the Soft Parade roughly nine million times over the past twenty years and for the life of me I cannot remember how this one goes. I assume it’s pretty good, though, because it’s on a Doors album and they only allowed the best, most-excellent tunes onto their product. If someone can hum this one to me to jog my memory, please call Tuskaloosa-4542, and ask for bigdoorsfan1991. Onward!
Moving on to Side 2, you get the all-time classic “Wild Child,” another in a long line of Morrison songs to feature two words in the title that rhyme. Other examples include “Long Song,” “Dear Beer,” “Cool Stool,” “Tan Man,” and “Sad Dad.”
Moving on to Song 2 on Side 2, we come to “Runnin’ Blue” which is the Doors taking a crack at country & western (or “counwestryern”) music. The “Otis” referred to in the opening lines (“Poor Otis dead and gone…”) is of course the famous inventor of the elevator, Otis T. Elevator.
Penultimately is the pretty ballad “Wishful, Sinful” which features bird and pterodactyl noises and other colorful sound effects (like wind). This heartbreaking tune was written by guitarist Handsome Jake Hornblower about his girlfriend, Larry (sadly now dead).
Finally, the last song of this minirockopera/suite/opus/album/souffle is the long (in terms of length) “That Soft Parade,” which contains nine thousand verses and only one chorus (“SOFT! PARADE! SOFT! PARADE! YEAH! SUCH A SOFT! PARADE!”). This song is in 9/7 time, I’m pretty sure, but you’d have to ask a drummer.
If you asked me to sum up this collection of tunes, I would say: “Another bullseye by the Doors!” and then laugh.
THE DOORS: MORRISON HOTEL (2067): By now The Doors had made a whole bunch of albums (like nine or something) but there was one area they hadn’t yet touched. That’s right, I’m talking about the blues.
With Morrison Hotel—named after an actual hotel that was named after Doors singer Jim Morrison, who was himself named after the famous hotel, which was named after this (self-titled) album—the Doors would crash headlong into the shiny brick wall of the blues with songs like “Roadhouse (Blues).” With its famous exhortation to “let it roll, baby, roll” and the famous line “Woke up this mornin’ and I got myself up here,” it may be the definitive blues song of all time, and certainly one of the very first.
Elsewhere on the album, the band flexes their musical muscles like musical body-builders with huge, bulging muscles, both musical and otherwise. Songs like “Land Ho” (about a boat) and “Ship of Fools” (about a different boat) became instant classics (especially among boaters), and “Peace Frog” was their finest animal song since “Twentieth Century Fox.”
The only bummer about Morrison Hotel is that there are no long compositions like the ones that made the Doors so famous. Thankfully, modern digital technology allows us to play all of the tunes at a mere fraction of their original speed, stretching out such too-short numbers as “You Make Me Real” and “Blue Sunday” to epic, Doors-ian lengths. If you don’t know how to do this, ask someone on the street or buy a book for Christ’s sake.
The album also features the song “The Spy” which has been used in at least four James Bond movies for obvious reasons.
But the Doors wouldn’t be resting on their laurels for long—only like seven or eight years—because their next move would surprise even themselves … and others! Please read on!
THE DOORS: LA WOMAN (the Sixties): As everyone knows, shortly before his death (or is it??!?), Jim Morrison moved to France. What maybe you don’t know is that he went there to learn how to speak their beautiful language. As he soon discovered, that language was known as French, as in the toast.
Hence the confusing title of this, the final album by Le Doors.
The first song on La Woman is “The Changeling” (pronounced “chang-a-ling” like the sound your keys might make) and it’s about keys, and the sounds they make. Expert rock critic Greil Marcus once said, “I will have the turkey,” because he was in a restaurant in Bridgeport and that was the only thing on the menu that looked good. Along the same lines, this song is GOOD.
The second song on the album is the famous hit “(Doncha) Love Her Madly?” The “her” of the title is as mysterious as Mona Lisa’s smile, and twice as sexy! If I had to guess, I would guess that this song is about the guitarist’s girlfriend because he wrote the song and if he wrote it about another woman his girlfriend would likely be upset, especially if he wrote it about someone else’s girlfriend (like Jim’s) in which case not only would his own girlfriend be mad at him but the other girl’s boyfriend would be mad at him and since these are turbulent times we’re talking about (JFK had just been assassinated, the Korean War loomed), there might have been a lot of yelling and screaming which would have completely ruined the song.
The third and fourth songs on Side One and the fourth song on Side Two are all what you might call blues numbers. Speaking of numbers, that comes out to 3+4 times ONE, which is 7, to the power of 4 times TWO, or 7 to the 8th power which is probably a pretty big number (in the thousands or so) but don’t ask the Doors what the answer is because they’re too busy playing music to carry around calculators. But if you WERE going to ask one of them, I would ask Ray because he’s the one in the glasses and therefore most likely to have such a thing.
All of the other songs on the album are about killer robots and most of them rhyme.
And there you have the magnificent career of the fabulous DOORS! Check in next week when we examine every Eurovision Song Contest winner since 1956!
