All this was confirmed in Oliver Stone's 1991 biopic The Doors and, yet, this motion picture provided the seeds for the coming backlash. Wait, he was a disgusting pervert? He treated virtually everyone around him like shit? He wasn't much of a poet and visionary and was by and large an intellectual fraud? He threw his life away? Apparently, there were all these secrets about the so-called Lizard King (oh yeah, I just thought of another one: He gave himself a really pathetic nickname?) that had been hiding in plain sight all along.
As a result, there probably isn't a more divisive group in the annals of rock. (Even the likes of Led Zeppelin and U2 can't compare) The bulk of the fallout though seems to come down to the public being turned off by what a grotesque pig Morrison had always been rather than the quality of their work. Where once there had been somewhat exaggerated claims that their entire discography went from strength to strength, now there are those who are convinced that there's next to nothing of value in their surprisingly hefty back catalog. (Six albums in just over four years is a solid work rate for any band, let alone one led by a shamanist seeker dirtbag)
The big problem I have (particularly for this blog) is that The Doors were always an albums act. I'm quite fond of their self-titled debut as well as their grubby masterpiece Morrison Hotel and Morrison's posthumous swan song LA Woman. The others have never done much for me but fans seem to be split pretty evenly among all of them. The singles, however, seldom paint much of a picture of the group at their very best or even at their most relevant. Near-miss number one "Light My Fire" is the one real exception to this rule but, otherwise, their 45s are either remarkably slight or aren't catchy enough to be single material.
"People Are Strange" is more of the latter than the former. The melody and refrain are memorable enough but it's rather weird that it just cranks from verse to chorus and back again with nothing else to pad it out, not even a much needed bridge. I suppose once you've elaborated on people being strange there's not much more to be said on the matter. And I suspect that Morrison and his cohorts knew there wasn't much to it as they wisely kept it down to an economical two minutes and fifteen seconds. While Echo and the Bunnymen's version from the soundtrack to eighties cult classic The Lost Boys has its merits — mostly due to singer Ian McCulloch sounding far more vampiric than Morrison ever could — their decision to tack on an extra ninety seconds of superfluousness doesn't do their recording any favours.
Needless to say, Jim Morrison was a deeply strange individual so his perspective ought to have been ideal for such a song. Rather than tackling it head on though, a much better understanding of his peculiarities can be found in his work as a whole and the messed up life he led. He didn't need to tell us about how strange he was since everyone had already guessed.
Score: 5
~~~~~
Can Con
Over on the CHUM chart, there have been a handful of unique number one hits with Canadian acts Lords of London (who I really ought to have covered in this space but for my neglectful ways) and The Ugly Ducklings. It seems homegrown acts stood a better chance on the hit parade in the Metro Toronto region rather than Canada as a whole. The Ducklings have already been reviewed by me but "Gaslight" proved to be by far their biggest national hit — and it's a step up from previous entry "Nothin'". I was immediately struck by some proto-metal chords at the beginning which led me to wonder if they were the missing link between garage rock and the heavier stuff that really began to take off in the early seventies. Strange that more of the garage rockers never went in the direction of metal - either that or maybe that's exactly what many of them did only we choose not to examine them as such. Power is a good word to describe "Gaslight" and I can certainly imagine young men who'd later from Trooper, Helix and Platinum Blondes hearing this and getting some ideas in their heads. Influential or not, "Gaslight" is a worthy Top 20 hit. It's just a pity they won't be coming up again.
