The Doors

The Doors: 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition

Stereo and mono remasters of the epochal debut plus live tracks.

The Doors are habitually viewed as a Dionysian poetsinger and his shadowy cohorts, but this writer met a bass guitarist who played uncredited sessions with them in the late ’60s, who called them a “cocktail jazz band on Quaaludes”. But that contrast of the hip and the square, the dark and the cheesy is essential to their unique sound, from Break On Through (To The Other Side) – one of rock’s most charged mission statements – to the metaphorical murder ritual of The End. The live disc is the March 7, 1967 set from the Matrix, San Francisco, which has previously been released, but is here sourced direct from the recently rediscovered masters. The sounds is excellent and the band are coolly poised, well drilled, expansive at times, and Jim Morrison sounds young and fresh, his vocals often less intense than on the studio versions.