The Doors Punching Above Their Weight?

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

It's interesting but The Doors always seem to pop up in polls about who are the best rock acts of all time but if we examine their actual acheivements they are left standing by artists that sometimes barely register on this kind of thing.

Throughout their career (as a 4 piece) they were ONE HIT wonders here in the UK and that hit was just a very minor one.

Worldwide they have never emulated the success of 60s/70s bands like Zeppelin, ELP, Purple, Yes, Wishbone Ash, Tull or Sabbath.
These guys conquered Europe, America, Australasia and Japan.
ALL the major record markets.

The Doors never managed that trick.
Outside the US they were a minor underground phenomena for a few weeks in 1968 and 1970.
They had minor album sucess here with MH and WFTS and played a handful of concert dates that attracted some attention from TV and the media as well as Special Branch.

In between that hey were talked about in places like the UK but were not of any great import. Even a band like T Rex acheived more worldwide than The Doors in their lifetime.

They did well in the US that is not in dispute but their poll ratings as one of the top bands in the 'world' never has really been in proportion to their record sales and concert record during their lifetime on a global scale.

But 40 years later bands like Ash and Tull and Yes are considered old hat whilst the Doors are considered cool.
Popularity has soared for The Doors who were a very minor worldwide act during their lifetime and bands who filled stadia across the world, as well as their own country, become postscripts.
It's an interesting enigma.

Any thoughts on this?

[eks74014]

excuse me for taking the easy route here, but being the first to reply, I guess I can get away with it

could the answer be Jim Morrison or worse even, the Legend of Jim Morrison?...

it was always Jim who was in the main spotlight from day one... the guys at Elektra caught on to his enigmatic presence and good looks from day one, hence many of the record sleeves; Jim wasn't happy about how his band mates appeared like dwarves in comparison to him on the debut album and he absolutely hated the sleeves for "Absolutely Live" and "13" for what they did was portray an image of him he was trying to shrug off at the time - that of the angelic, streamlined leather clad rock hero... these were but a hint of things to come and surely after his demise, starting in 1972 with "Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mine" and followed by all subsequent 'best of' and 'greatest hits' packages -except for "Legacy"- Jim would become to the Doors what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris... and we should not forget the entire Elektra Doors concert output...
it was always Jim and Jim only staring at punters from the album sleeves, preferably using one of the plentitude of shots from the 'Young Lion' photo session by Joel Brodsky...

then the 1980s came rolling along with the Jim Morrison biography -not The Doors story- "No One Here Gets Out Alive" opening the floodgates to an outpouring of further book releases... many focussing on Morrison rather than the band, too many of them making easy money by portraying his sole figure on the cover... the majority of books to cash in on the life and times of our ultimate hero followed in the wake of the Oliver Stone flick with the wrong title... also cos of the whole Morrison-through-Stone's-eyes thing, publishers and marketeers the globe round landed their vessels and set up base on planet Morrison...

then of course there's the irresistible myth of death at young age, which made Jim immortal overnight as easy as that... the crazy young rock god who lived life on the back of a rocket, rebelling against all possible authority, dies the perfect death in the most perfect of places, or fakes his own untimely demise and escapes the insane merry-go-round that life to him had become... there's some of the main ingredients that legends are made of right here...

over the many years, when talking to people about my favourite band, many have surprised me by frowning to the mention of the name 'The Doors' and then going "aha!... I know him, he was awesome / great singer / love that crazy bare chested wildman / he was in a band once, wasn't he?"... DUH!...

this is but scraping the surface of course... Jim's portrayal in modern media has always outshone that of The Doors and his bandmates... not that he ever liked it during his lifetime and I'm sure that had he lived through the decades, things would have been very very different... many bands have buried themselves under the loads of fading quality and endlessly repeating themselves for years and decades after their long gone heyday, mocking themselves towards and uncomfortable end... The Doors' magnificent candle was blown out in time, well before burning up into complete oblivion... Jim's raging fire was dimmed by lack of oxygene, not by old hat attitude where aging artists find themselves going roung in circles, in pursuit of their own tale until they go mad and succumb to the lurking dungeons where the forgotten, banned-from-stardom reside...

is it "better to burn out than to fade away" after all, Neil?...

now this is said, let's step things up and discuss what really matters: the music, the poetry, the placing in history, etc...

[eks74014]

then of course there's the irresistible myth of death at young age, which made Jim immortal overnight as easy as that... the crazy young rock god who lived life on the back of a rocket, rebelling against all possible authority, dies the perfect death in the most perfect of places, or fakes his own untimely demise and escapes the insane merry-go-round that life to him had become... there's some of the main ingredients that legends are made of right here...
is it "better to burn out than to fade away" after all, Neil?...

funny I should write this in the wee early hours of the day Amy Winehouse takes a very similar route and joins 'Club 27'... wondering where her legend will be in 40 years from now, nowhere near that of Robert, Brian, Jimi, Janis, Jim and Kurt; I'm quite sure...

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Obviously this is the place everybody starts when answering a question like this ....including me.
But!
Taking aside the mysterious manner of Jim's death what else does Jim have that dozens of others didn't?
Led Zeppelin were far more outrageous than Jim Morrison and dozens of bands during the 70s and 80s beat them hands down for levels of excess and controversy.
From Alice Cooper to Depeche Mode.
Also in terms of popularity measured by record sales The Doors are left behind by many many inferior artists and bands.
They were next to nothing, measured by that yardstick, everywhere practically but the USA and were dying on their feet from 1969 onwards until the resurgence in the 80s that still is hard to quantify exactly what happened.
I saw with my own eyes my favourite band become popular in the UK and still am unsure how it happened exactly.
Yes of course Apocalypse Now made people sit up and notice followed by NOHGOA, which became possibly the biggest rock bio ever written, but there were hugely more popular front-men than Jim in the 80s and NOHGOA did make him look like a bit of a dick.
Yes there is the Legend but it still amazes me to this day that Jim is such a popular figure. This myth that is attached to the legend that he will always be young and handsome is not sustainable as when he died he was fat and bloated with a beard (OK he shaved it off in Paris) and was far than handsome.
So is all there is a pretty boy photo that he hated used to adorn anything The Doors want to sell?
It’s a question that is practically impossible to really answer as the Myth has taken over completely and how we got from the fall to the rise of The Doors seems lost in time and spin.


And Neil just swiped his famous phrase from someone else just like Jim liked doing.
‘It is better to wear out than to rust out’
was said by Richard Cumberland a Bishop and philosopher during the English Civil War.

[taylor23]

The door still not punh too much as compare to many other bands have been puch more than door. They still having weight where they are punching. So they are according to their standards.

[glasstecwindows]

it was always Jim and Jim only staring at punters from the album sleeves, preferably using one of the plentitude of shots from the 'Young Lion' photo session by Joel Brodsky...