Hi, everyone. Welcome to another edition of Music Monday.

(Image found online.  Original source unknown.)

On January 16, 1964 a little club opened opened on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, California. Singer Johnny Rivers was the first performer at The Whisky a Go Go that night. Over the last 60 years hundreds of acts have followed including legendary bands like Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac and Guns ‘N’ Roses. Many of my great musical loves played there as well including Otis Redding, Elton John and The Doors. In fact, the latter were discovered there during their four month stint in 1966 and signed to a contract with Elektra Records.

Their self-titled debut album, released in January 1967, was an instant smash. It included a blues cover-Willie Dixon’s “Back Door Man”-along with original tracks like “Break On Through (To the Other Side)”, “The Crystal Ship” and the #1 hit, “Light My Fire”.

As much as I love this album, I tend to listen to the band’s subsequent ones more because of songs like “Roadhouse Blues”, “L.A. Woman” and “Hello, I Love You”. Then a random online poll asked for the best last track on an album. My usual answer is Bruce Springsteen’s “Jungleland”, a nine minute rock opera which is not only my favorite song of all time, it closed out the 1975 masterpiece, Born To Run.

But then I remembered the epic last track on The Doors first album. An unbelievably haunting, fearless, disturbing, brave and alarming saga set to music. Part song, part spoken word in a musical odyssey that takes us from the sublime (the music, Morrison’s incredibly rich baritone voice) to the shocking (an exploration of the Oedipal complex) while an incredibly mesmerizing guitar riff flows throughout bookmarked with intense drumming and a remarkable organ & Fender piano bass arrangement. It is an experience, not just a tune.

To have the courage to write and record a psychedelic song of this magnitude is unbelievable enough, but to put it on your first record is just as bad ass as it gets. And it made its debut at The Whisky in 1966. For eleven & a half minutes, the listener is paralyzed into a hypnotic haze inside Jim Morrison’s mind which in this case was not an easy place to go. But what a stunning ride it was and continues to be.

“Can you picture what will be?
So limitless and free
Desperately in need of some stranger’s hand
In a desperate land“.

Top: The Whisky A Go Go in 1966, the year The Doors were discovered there. Middle: The Doors circa 1966 (L-R): Jim Morrison, John Densmore, Robby Krieger and Ray Manzarek). Bottom: The band circa 1970 (L-R): Krieger, Morrison (back), Densmore and Manzarek. (Images found online.  Original sources unknown.)

The Doors: “The End” (1967, written by The Doors: John Densmore, Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek and Jim Morrison).

Stay safe & well.