The Best Bands of All Time - Number 9

THE DOORS! read on...





Before you shower me with hate mail and death threats I will ask you to put the leather trousered vision of pops biggest buffoon out of your mind and spare a thought for poor frizzy haired guitarist Robby Krieger. Its a little known fact but Robby wrote all The Doors hit songs, not the long boring freakouts about fucking your mother, they were 100% Jimbo, but the really varied funky ones that come on the juke box and you go "Oh it's The Doors? Cool!". Its the varity of styles they seemed to comfortably inhabit that I like, considering most US bands in the 60s outside of Zappa ran all the way from blues to ermmm blues with maybe some flower patterned strides thrown in, The Doors produced sleazy lounge (Light My Fire, Touch Me), funky soul (Soul Kitchen, Peacefrog), moronic garage (Hello I Love You), heavy metal (Five To One), Flamenco (Spanish Caravan) and really rocking blues (Road House Blues, LA Woman). Peacefrog is officially the funkiest song by a white group and it invented the baggy beat aka Happy Monday and The Stones Roses.

Not many bands could sound equally good ripping off both John Lee Hooker and The Seeds but it fits The Doors just fine, also few bands could appeal to both the beard stroking mystics (Strange Days) and teenage girls with braces and pigtails (Hello I Love You). One final thought, without Jim's bottomless baritone there would be no Ian Curtis, Nick Cave or Iggy Pop!