RIP. Here's something I posted several years ago. Morrison was deep and dark and the band's focal point, but the other three members were also important in The Doors' sound. The Beatles can be be credited with a diverse sound and a complex, varied body of work, but the Doors accomplished their own ecleticism in a much shorter time using many fewer songs. Doors' songs just don't sound that much alike except for the constancy of Jim Morrison's mesmerizing vocals and the use of minor keys on many of the slower songs. Their far ranging stylings, varied rhythms, multiple influences and their spacious mix of keyboards, guitar and drums intrigued me and held my interest even more than Jim's excellent vocals. IMHO, I could have been really good as their bass player, but they covered that another way. Give them the benefit of synthesizers and electronic percussion, which came along a bit later, and some background vocals and harmony singing, which they didn't use, and they could have given us soundscapes of even more incredible variety, lushness and scale. However, that wasn't their place, mission or lot. They just did their own thing: darkly inspired, relatively quickly and pretty well and, as I hear it, laid some ground work for such later groups as Genesis, The Cars, Tina Turner's "Private Dancer" comeback and even Michael Jackson's great sonic collaborations with Quincy Jones. I'm not saying The Doors were the best musically or even my favorite personally, but their recorded output is very varied and certainly influential, especially for those of us who listened to whole albums of their music. They definitely turned lots of people on, inspired many other musicians and really opened some doors as was their goal. Not a bad legacy.
Man the Doors is one band I would have loved to see in concert in their heyday. When i visited Paris France about 20 years ago, I visited Jim Morrison's grave and I thought that was pretty cool. His fans are pretty devoted, RIP Ray, the world is going to miss you.
Great keyboardist that added a sometimes playfull, sometimes bluesy, sometimes eerie, and still haunting sound to the Doors music.
The cascading-raindrop piano riff on “Riders on the Storm" has always put me in a different place. RIP
