Almost all my life of music I have always refrained from favouriting bands. However, when I first heard “The Doors” they took that spot in my life. It began when I was retrieving something for my father one day. Rummaging through his drawers I came across a back stage pass that read “THE DOORS ALL ACCESS.” I asked my dad if it was anything like “Three Doors Down” since they were the only band I knew at the time with the word “doors” in their name. He replied with something like “No man, it’s The Doors. You should look them up, they’re good.” I told him I would, but I never did until a while later when I heard a friend say something about a band called “The Doors.” I remembered that name and decided to finally look them up. I went on YouTube, typed in “The Doors” and listened to the first two songs “Riders on the Storm” and “People Are Strange.” I fell in love with that main riff from “People Are Strange” and the way Ray’s keyboard in “Riders on the Storm” sounded like raindrops. Everything about both tracks was pure perfection. The way Jim’s vocals sounded on both songs were low and sounded almost haunting.


After I first heard those two songs I didn’t go much beyond that. Then one day, when Hot Topic was still around, I purchased my first “Doors” shirt. At the time my sister didn’t really know who they were. I told her to listen to them, so at one of our first visits to FYE she picked up their self-titled debut album “The Doors.” After hearing that first album they held the title of “favorite band” to me. Every track was pure art and beautiful in every note. The album was so diverse in many ways. It had the psychedelic sound from tracks like “End of the Night” and “The End.” The poetic piece from “The Crystal Ship,” the bluesy “Back Door Man” cover and their saloon sounding take on “Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar).”Also there was that pure sound of a 1960 California summer with tracks like “Break on Through (To The Other Side)” “Soul Kitchen,” and their first single “Light My Fire,” written by guitarist Robby Krieger. Every song tied together into, in my opinion, one of their best albums.



After that first album I started to get familiar with the band. I quickly learned the names and faces of the four men, and then I started to learn about them. Still getting familiar with them and their music, I told my father that I liked “The Doors” and then brought up that back stage pass. He told me it was fake but that I could have it. I didn’t mind that it was a fake because it was still pretty right on. I just thanked him and went into the house to find a place for it. Some time later he came in a VHS tape that said “The Doors” with a picture of a man who looked identical to Jim. After having the tape for a little bit we finally had the time to watch it. My sister rewound the tape then hit play.



From the beginning of the film we were in love. It was trippy from the very first scene where a four year old Jim is traveling with his family through the deserts of New Mexico. There are Indians on the side of the road and they’re bleeding. The young Jim wants to help them but his parents try to assure him that it’s just a bad dream and that help is on the way for them and that they’ll be fine. However, the young Jim Morrison was not fazed by his parent’s words. He felt that the Indian Chief’s soul had entered him as he left the Earth. Although the whole scene may seem unneeded and have nothing to do with the band, many other aspects of the film did. Throughout the film we learned much more about the band, but the biggest thing I learned was the person that Jim Morrison was.



Jim Morrison was no idol to me, but he did give me an inspiration to learning more about the 1960’s. Jim was actually the reason I discovered more about the psychedelic age. Before, the only music of the sixties that I listened to was the Grateful Dead and John Lennon, World Fest was looked at as the family camping trip, LSD was never even heard of, and Woodstock was just “that crazy hippie fest,” being a vegetarian was normal, patchouli was our perfume and Nag Champa our Lysol. These were all ways of living the psychedelic life that we had been doing although we never realized it.



When I first heard The Doors it was around the summer time. We had just got in our mother’s old mini-van after my sister, Faith, purchased the self-titled debut album form “The Doors.” She tore into the plastic wrap that covered the hard case, peeled off all the stickers, and slipped it into the disc player. Track one started, which was “Break One Through (To The Other Side).” This song was an immediate favorite. It was my first “real” listen to the band. I felt more on this album than the first two songs I heard in the beginning.



When I listened to The Doors I was living the summer of the 1960s. I smelled patchouli and Nag Champa, I saw hippies roaming Haight Ashbury and the streets of White Lake. That first album took me to a place where music was actually good and everything was psychedelic, the music, the art, and even the people. I was amazed at how people could quit their whole lives and become these wayfarers. They lived each day at a time, woke up and didn’t worry about tomorrow. They just traveled with what they had and didn’t ask or want more. They all lived happily and free, but when the album has come to an end, all that is just history of forty years ago and I come back to realize that I’m living in this embarrassing generation.