"Can you picture what will be? So limitless & free..."

31 July

(From The End)

"Well your fingers weave quick minarets, speak in secret alphabets..."

30 July

(From Soul Kitchen)

"My wild love is crazy, she screams like a bird."

29 July

(From My Wild Love)

"He was a monster - black..."

"...dressed in leather..."

28 July

(From Queen of the Highway)

"I'm going to love you till the stars fall from the sky..."

27 July

(From Touch Me)

"She has a house & garden, I would like to see what happens..."

26 July

(From Love Street)

"Like a flower, his head is just floating in the breeze."

25 July

(From Dawn's Highway)

"To trade some beads for a pint of gold."

24 July

(From L'America)

"Your ballroom days are over baby, night is drawing near..."

"...Shadows of the evening crawl across the years..."

23 July

(From Five to One)

"Tell you 'bout the world that we'll invent - wanton world without lament..."

22 July

(From We Could Be So Good Together)

"Please believe me, the river told me..."

21 July

(From Yes, the River Knows)

"We chased our pleasures here, dug our treasures there..."

20 July

(From Break on Through)

"Free from disguise, gazing on a city under television skies."

19 July

(From My Eyes Have Seen You)

"Windows started tremblin' with a sonic boom..."

18 July

(From Cars Hiss By My Window)

"Now her world was bright orange & the fire glowed."

17 July

(From Orange County Suite)

"Blood will be born in the birth of a nation..."

16 July

(From Peace Frog)

"Journey we more into the nightmare, cling to life our passion'd flower..."

15 July

(From An American Prayer)

"Playin' warden to your soul, you are locked in a prison of your own device..."

14 July

(From Unhappy Girl)

"It's time to live in the scattered sun."

13 July

(From Waiting for the Sun)

"No tears, no fears, no ruined years, no clocks."

12 July

(From Twentieth Century Fox)

"I was turning keys, I was setting people free. I was doing all right."

11 July

(From Universal Mind)

"An ancient lunatic reigns in the trees of the night."

10 July

(From Wild Child)

"What got us this far to this mild equator?"

9 July

(From The Soft Parade)

"Strange days have found us, strange days have tracked us down."

8 July

(From Strange Days)

Happy Birthday, Y.

xxx

"When the still sea conspires an armour & her sullen and aborted currents breed tiny monsters..."

7 July

(From Horse Latitudes)

"Into this house we're born, into this world we're thrown..."

6 July

(From Riders on the Storm)

"Forget the night. Live with us in forests of azure. Out here on the perimeter there are no stars..."

5 July

(From Texas Radio & the Big Beat)

"Oh tell me where your freedom lies, the streets are fields that never die..."

4 July

(From The Crystal Ship)

"We should see the gates by mornin', we should be inside the evenin'..."

3 July

(From Not to Touch the Earth)

On this day 40 years ago, Jim may well have seen the gates.

xxx

"Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel..."

"...The future's uncertain & the end is always near."

2 July

(From Roadhouse Blues)

"For the music is your special friend - dance on fire as it intends..."

With hindsight, the Doors had everything – the music, the frontman, the danger, the excitement, the look, the lyrics, the presence, the theatre, the talent, the blues, the voice, the rebellion, the controversy, the mystery, the early death & the consequent legend.

As a band, they were a seemingly disparate collective, with differing musical styles that seemed to merge naturally in one of rock’s more happy syntheses.

Jim Morrison was the bluesman with a Wildean twist & through his life appears to have been desperate to be taken seriously. This tends not to happen for two reasons. Firstly, much is made of his poetic pretensions, but his poetry & lyrics are about the most clearly painted pictures in rock music. Secondly, his terrific penchant for showing off & the subsequent trouble this got him into (he was pardoned in 2010 for that incident). People don't like show-offs in general. But then what is the point of a frontman?

Without him, the Doors might have been another hippy band forgotten forever. He took them from noodling trio to psychedelic rock idols. Without them, he would have had neither platform nor structure for his work. They took him to the masses.

Introduced to me as a child in an Adam Ant interview, I enjoy their records’ rich cultural background as well as their full-on rock-out factor. The cynics don’t know what they’re missing.

To mark the 40^th anniversary of Jim Morrison’s death tomorrow, July’s band is the Doors.

1 July

(From When the Music's Over)

"The sun that lights inside, we're the world that spins a line."

30 June

(From Jubilee)