The Doors

1	Break on Through (To the Other Side) 2:30
2	Soul Kitchen 3:35
3	The Crystal Ship 2:34
4	Twentieth Century Fox 2:33
5	Alabama Song (Whisky Bar) 3:20
6	Light My Fire 7:08
7	Back Door Man 3:34
8	I Looked at You 2:22
9	End of the Night 2:52
10	Take It as It Comes 2:17
11	The End 11:43

Barnes & Noble

When the Doors emerged in 1967, the world of rock had never seen anything quite like them before. Their closest relatives were probably New York's Velvet Underground, who also mixed poetry with decidedly anti-flower-power rock. But where the VU came from a gritty, more urban context, the Doors were influenced by the freewheeling approach of '60s West Coast psychedelia -- mostly in that they were a reaction against it. On the band's eponymous debut, a dark, lyrical sensibility stands at odds with the LSD-tinted visions of the Grateful Dead et al., but the depths to which the Doors' penetrating, unsettling visions were explored could only have been possible in a community set free by the psychedelic revolution. With their lack of a bass player, Ray Manzarek's semiclassical keyboard flourishes, John Densmore's jazzy, impressionistic drumming, and Jim Morrison's surreal, iconoclastic lyrics, the Doors were virtually without precedent in rock 'n' roll. On The Doors, they used blues (Willie Dixon's "Back Door Man"), pop ("Light My Fire"), and even Brecht-Weill art song ("Alabama Song") as vehicles to express their unique sentiments. While the catchy "Light My Fire" was the band's breakthrough hit, it is the groundbreaking 11-minute epic "The End" that showcases the band in all its improvisational, poetic glory. Jim Allen

All Music Guide

A tremendous debut album, and indeed one of the best first-time outings in rock history, introducing the band's fusion of rock, blues, classical, jazz, and poetry with a knockout punch. The lean, spidery guitar and organ riffs interweave with a hypnotic menace, providing a seductive backdrop for Jim Morrison's captivating vocals and probing prose. "Light My Fire" was the cut that topped the charts and established the group as stars, but most of the rest of the album is just as impressive, including some of their best songs: the propulsive "Break On Through" (their first single), the beguiling Oriental mystery of "The Crystal Ship," the mysterious "End of the Night," "Take It as It Comes" (one of several tunes besides "Light My Fire" that also had hit potential), and the stomping rock of "Soul Kitchen" and "Twentieth Century Fox." The 11-minute Oedipal drama "The End" was the group at its most daring and, some would contend, overambitious. It was nonetheless a haunting cap to an album whose nonstop melodicism and dynamic tension would never be equaled by the group again, let alone bettered. Richie Unterberger