The Doors

A debut that captured, almost as they were and in a matter of weeks, songs polished hundreds of times in clubs. It was the moment the spare sound of the 4-piece and Morrison's baritone first reached the world.

• In “Break On Through,” the first song we've picked to watch, Densmore said he carried the finely chopped rhythms of Brazilian bossa nova over to rock drums. Listen closely to the cymbal (hi-hat) and the clicks on the drum rim in the intro.
• Instead of a bass guitar, Manzarek's left hand lays down the low notes on the keyboard while his right plays a piercing Vox organ line. Listen while picturing one man pulling two lines at once, and the band's structure comes into view.
• With only four recording tracks, there are few instruments and almost no overdubbing. So there is a sense of space, as if you were hearing them onstage, and the gaps between the instruments create tension.
• Krieger plucks the strings with his fingers, no pick. Thanks to this technique learned from flamenco, his guitar sounds round and soft, stepping aside instead of colliding with the organ.

The first song Krieger ever wrote made the band national stars overnight. The Ed Sullivan Show uproar grew out of this very song.

• Manzarek said he wrote the organ melody of the intro with Bach-style baroque music in mind. At the very end of the song the melody returns, binding the beginning to the end.
• At the heart of the 7-minute album version, the organ and then the guitar unfold long improvisations over a simple accompaniment that moves between just two chords. The members said they borrowed this approach from the playing of jazz saxophonist John Coltrane.
• The radio single cut this improvised section, trimming the song to close to 3 minutes. Listen to the two versions back to back and you'll hear how different an experience the same song can be.
• In the verses Densmore's drums seem to sway like Latin music, then switch to a straight rock beat in the chorus. That shift gives the song its restless drive.

The song that got the band fired from the Whisky a Go Go, and that later met a new generation through “Apocalypse Now.” It begins as a song of parting and spreads into a theater of taboo.

• Influenced by Indian classical music (raga), Krieger's guitar sustains a single low note and traces winding melodies above it. Follow only the guitar for the first minute and the Eastern coloring is unmistakable.
• Running over 11 minutes, it has almost no verse-and-chorus frame. It is built less like a song than like a play, a chain of poetry recitation and improvisation.
• Midway, when Morrison enters the Oedipus passage, Densmore's drums grow rougher and rougher until the whole band explodes. This section is said to have been spliced together from two takes recorded on the second day.
• Morrison's voice moves between singing and speech. The way he tells the listener a story in a low near-whisper, then suddenly shouts, creates the song's sense of dread.

Said to have been written with Krieger after a depressed Morrison came back from watching a sunset on a hillside. The alienation he felt amid sudden fame is packed into 2 minutes or so.

• Manzarek's piano bounces like an old barroom piano (honky-tonk), conjuring the air of a German cabaret song of the 1920s.
• Morrison confesses in the first person to drifting alone among strangers. Listen for the tone, lonely yet faintly mocking.
• It's a short song of just over 2 minutes, and midway Krieger's brief guitar solo lurches in and out. The whole song sways like a staggering gait.
• From this album on, the recording tracks grew to eight, and with bass (session player Doug Lubahn), piano and organ layered together, the sound is fuller than on the debut.

The song that best represents the lavish arrangements of The Soft Parade, it showed Krieger's gifts as a songwriter once again. It was also here that the criticism began that the band was drifting away from rock.

• Brass and strings wrap around the song from the very first bar. The four players seem almost to hide behind the orchestra, and this is exactly what fans and critics of the day found so unfamiliar.
• Near the end comes a saxophone solo by the jazz saxophonist Curtis Amy. It is a rare moment: a jazz solo given the last word on a rock band's song.
• Morrison sings bluntly, as if clinging to a lover. He closes with a single line twisted from a detergent commercial of the time, an ending that seems to mock his own earnest confession.
• Densmore's drumming is neat and restrained to fit the orchestra. Set beside the surging playing of the early songs, it makes the band's change unmistakable.

This is the song with which the band, cut off from the stage by the Miami incident, returned to the blues and got back on its feet. It became a regular closer at later shows, and in 1993 they sang it with Eddie Vedder as well.

• The bass was played by the blues guitarist Lonnie Mack. A heavy, bouncing rhythm (shuffle) rolls the whole song forward.
• John Sebastian's harmonica wails back and forth with the guitar, conjuring a bar band from the American South. Because of contract issues, he was credited under a pseudonym.
• Here Manzarek sets aside the organ and pounds the piano, drawing out the sound of a battered saloon piano (barrelhouse).
• Morrison's voice has turned from the smooth baritone of the early years into the rough, husky voice of a blues singer. Drink and exhaustion seep straight into the sound.

This is the last album the band made on their own in the rehearsal room after their producer left. Once the recording was done, Morrison left for Paris and never came back.

• The title track, “L.A. Woman,” runs over seven minutes. Midway it slows the tempo, then gradually speeds up again into a headlong rush, built like a car on the highway easing off and then flooring it.
• Jerry Scheff, once Elvis Presley's bassist, plays a bass line that never stops running. For the first time the band sounds like one with a proper rhythm section.
• Morrison used the rehearsal-room bathroom as a vocal booth. The sound bounces off the tiled walls, giving his voice a natural echo.
• The climax comes in the closing section, which builds as Morrison repeats a nickname made by scrambling the letters of his own name. It reads as a love-hate song dedicated to the city of Los Angeles.

It is known as the last song Morrison recorded with the Doors. It was playing on the radio around the time he died.

• The sound of rain and thunder effects opens and closes the song. The engineer Botnick added these recorded sounds.
• Manzarek's Fender Rhodes electric piano paints a rainy night in clear notes like falling drops of water. His solo is a calm melody close to jazz.
• Morrison recorded a whispering voice once more over his lead vocal (overdubbing). On headphones you can hear the whisper trailing behind the singing like a shadow.
• Scheff's bass and Densmore's soft drumming hold a slow groove (a rhythmic feel that sets the body swaying of its own accord) steady for seven minutes. The members recalled that the song came out of playfully jamming on the Western ballad “Ghost Riders in the Sky.”