The Doors, "Morrison Hotel"

CJ woke up this morning and got himself a beer

, and

Feb 02, 2022

CJ’s Pitch:

I had a college girlfriend who was obsessed with The Doors. (Her other obsession was the Violent Femmes. Yeah, she was a lot.) She listened to Doors albums every day, quoted lyrics to me constantly and even had the Jim Morrison “American Poet” poster (the one where a shirtless Morrison assumes the Christ pose) above her bed.

Initially, I was noncommittal about the band. I liked the same Doors songs that most people liked plus one or two deep cuts and that’s about as far as I went. But I indulged her proselytizing of Jim and her devotion to the music and eventually something broke on through to the other side, so to speak.

Maybe it was because I was an English major swimming in British poets and novelists, but Morrison’s rambling verses started to speak to me. The whole Doors vibe was literary to begin with, the band having gotten their name from an Aldous Huxley essay about being geeked on mescaline called “The Doors of Perception”. And Huxley himself had cribbed that title from William Blake, who wrote some of the darkest, most twisted shit we covered in my Brit Lit I class. So I started to pay closer attention.

Doors fans have their reasons for choosing one album over the other five (I’m not counting the three records they made after Morrison died). For me, the band is at their best when they show out as a tight rock blues act with gritty, obscene lyrics. There may be more hits on other albums, but Morrison Hotel checks all the boxes that make me an acolyte.

From the opening notes of “Roadhouse Blues”, Morrison, Manzarek, Krieger and Densmore serve notice that this isn’t going to be another Soft Parade. Gone are the wistful strings and meandering vocals, replaced by Manzarek’s hard-driving keyboards and Krieger’s inventive guitar. Morrison himself sounds more focused and confident. It’s like the band found something they had lost.

There are several highlights throughout Morrison Hotel. I love the hold over “Waiting for the Sun” which somehow didn’t make it onto the earlier album of the same name. It feels like a prelude to the love letter that the Doors would write to the city of Los Angeles with their next album LA Woman.

“Peace Frog” has always been one of those songs that periodically finds its way into my subconscious. It’s got an incredibly bouncy beat for such a dark tune. Amongst all the talk of blood, Morrison calls out New Haven, Connecticut where he got into a little dust-up with the local constabularies over a backstage incident and was subsequently arrested during the show. Either that or they took him down to the station for wearing his white puffy shirt after Labor Day because, you know, Connecticut.

“Blue Sunday” finds Morrison in an almost Sinatra-like croon while expressing his love for his girl. “Ship of Fools” is a metaphor for a dying civilization that has been used by everybody from the Grateful Dead to World Party. But the Doors give it a swinging, almost hopeful beat. Then they follow it up with “Land Ho!” which seems to suggest that they’ve found a way off the ship of fools onto solid ground. It also would’ve made a great Tik Tok when that sea shanty craze was hot for five minutes last year.

The other companion songs on this album, “The Spy” and “Queen of the Highway”, are raw, unfiltered looks into Morrison’s star-crossed relationship with Pamela Courson. They are equal parts love and regret, just like a good poem.

The last song on Morrison Hotel is perhaps its hidden gem. “Maggie M’Gill” is the perfect bookend to “Roadhouse Blues”. It’s another slick, growly blues track that underscores the swagger the Doors display throughout the whole album.

That college girlfriend and I ultimately split up for one of the million reasons relationships end. We went our separate ways both having gained something from the experience. She gave me The Doors and today I’m paying it forward by giving them to Newbury St.

Ken’s Response:

“I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot.” - Holden Caulfield

I went to summer camp up in New Hampshire for 8 weeks every summer. For most of those years, my reading consisted of the sports section of The Boston Globe and whatever comic books my bunkmates had laying around. In 1987, I started reading some actual books…for fun…without having been assigned them in school. I don’t remember any of the books I read that summer, but I do remember my first day coming home to Needham, MA and walking a mile or so to the Waldenbooks on Great Plain Ave. (where coincidentally both CJ and Mitch had worked at some point). I was enjoying reading for the first time in my life and was now going to use my hard earned cash to buy an actual book. My choice was Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman’s bio of Jim Morrison, No One Here Gets Out Alive. I was so enthralled with Morrison, an antihero of rock marching to his own beat, and so disruptive to the mainstream rock scene that he was seen as one of the bad boys, even in an industry built on bad boys. He had a cool look, an intriguing voice, a dark persona, and for me he was the greatest poet since Walt Whitman, complete with his very own barbaric yawp!

Once I was in college, I spent a lot of my free time hanging out at coffee houses and reading everything I could get my hands on. I bought a copy of The Catcher In The Rye for $2 at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, AZ and by the time I finished it a few days later, Holden Caulfield had become somewhat of a hero of mine. He had it all figured out; it didn’t matter that he was an early literary recipient of white privilege, he was a badass that didn’t know jack squat about the world, but he knew enough not to trust adults. He called them all “phonies” and goddammit I believed he was spot on with that assessment.

Then I grew up.

I reread The Catcher In The Rye when I was 34 years old and my god, what a transformation! Holden Caulfield wasn’t a hero, he was a whiny, privileged, little shit who didn’t appreciate any of the opportunities that had been handed to him. The “phony” was him.

Around that same time, I tried to take a deep dive back into The Doors. I’m not sure what I was trying to get out of it, maybe I just needed to listen to their stuff for fear of losing the memory of their music. Here’s what I found; Jim Morrison wasn’t a hero, he was a whiny, privileged little shit who didn’t appreciate any of the opportunities that had been handed to him. The “phony” was him.

I’m 51 now, and I still find the characters of Caulfield and Morrison to be long-lost brothers of self-righteousness and immaturity. But, while they’re both among the most loathsome sort, they’ve each made huge impacts on our culture. In Morrison’s case, he was the beneficiary of having three bandmates who put together some incredible music that fit perfectly into the wholly manufactured, dark, self-indulgent front man he wanted people to see.

As much as I would like to banish him forever, I can’t deny the power of a “Roadhouse Blues” or a “Waiting For The Sun”, or a “Peace Frog”.

Pitch successful (but please don’t compare Morrison to Sinatra again. It pains me.)

Mitch’s Response:

Time had lost all meaning. All I could focus on was the man on the ledge. He was full of despair, threatening to jump. Worst of all, I wanted him to jump. I felt despair too, because deep down inside I knew he would never take that fateful leap. I knew it was all a lie. Jim Morrison never jumped to his death and this terrible fucking movie about him would never end.

I felt that same despair again this past week whenever “Maggie M’Gill” came on the stereo. Yes, the very song on Morrison Hotel that CJ praised as a “hidden gem” reminded me of every single thing I hate about The Doors and Jim Morrison. It’s a boring slog with an unpleasant sound and brooding, dark lyrics, but on the bright side, at least it ends.

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I always liked The Doors’ singles when I was a teen and I owned their double greatest hits album, but I never liked them enough to listen to their albums. Years later I tried to listen to their whole catalog in order, but I tapped out before getting to Morrison Hotel. Like Oliver Stone’s movie, it was just way too much Morrison to take.

I do think Morrison is a powerful rock and roll singer - one of the best. The bass-less Doors have a unique sound, although Ray Manzarek could easily find work at a CIA black site with his endless loops of shrill keyboard sounds. The songs are catchy. Looking at it on paper, everything should work.

But The Doors are all about Morrison and you either buy his tortured artist Lizard King schtick or not. And I’m not buying. Morrison seems like he would have been a good hang, right up until the point where he started a bar fight and then slipped out the back. We’ve all had a friend like Morrison - hell, I might have even been the Morrison friend at some point - but Morrison is best taken in small doses, when you’re in the right mood, and when you’ve got the next day off.

Back to Morrison Hotel: “Roundhouse Blues” is a classic. “Peace Frog” might be the best Doors song. “Waiting for the Sun” and “Indian Summer” are fine, I guess, but there’s a lot of middling songs on this album and the collective vibe is that of the dark end of hippiedom - the depressing post-Altamont period that marked the end of an era. That ain’t my vibe, man. I like the good time dance party hippie music, not the depressing “just got home from ’Nam” stuff.

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The idea of keeping The Doors out of Newbury St. seems absurd - they’re in the pantheon of classic rock artists - but we’re not voting on The Doors here. We’re voting on the Morrison Hotel album, and for me there are too few good songs and too much Jim Morrison. I’m not signing up for spending a lifetime with that dude on Newbury St., he’ll get me kicked out of Daisy Buchanans again.

Pitch Failed (Land No!)

CJ’s pitch was not successful and The Doors’ Morrison Hotel has failed to break on through to the Newbury St. Collection.

When the music’s over head on over to the comments section and tell all the people whether you love Morrison Hotel two times or if the people who actually like it are strange.

Exile on Newbury St.

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