Only CDs Is Sounding Like These # 17: The Doors, The Soft Parade (1969)

A new occasional series - CDs are coming back baby! And I’m here for it. BIGTIME! Also, some albums just REALLY suit the format, right

I’ve spent a lifetime listening to The Doors, a lifetime going in and out of (the) doors though…

I went from The Best of The Doors through the whole catalogue, collected them all up on cassette tape, then CD, then vinyl. Nothing quite stuck. I have always loved Morrison Hotel, and most of L.A. Woman, but sometimes I think my absolute favourite Doors album is An American Prayer — bonkers though it is.

It’s only now, recently, that I think my favourite might be 1969’s The Soft Parade, the band’s fourth album. There are great singles (and some great album tracks) on the early three records, for sure, and some other day I might put Strange Days or The Doors on again, and declare it my favourite for a time. But recently, I was just compelled out of the blue to buy The Soft Parade on CD — Doors albums on vinyl never worked for me, and I can’t explain it. (Maybe I just did the majority of my Doors listening as an obsessive CD buyer/collector?)

I remember, vividly, first hearing The Soft Parade and feeling nothing but bitter disappointment. Touch Me was the representative on The Best of The Doors, and though it had long gone the way of wedding bands, I still liked the song, probably because it was a real workout for me in the best of my drum-practice days, so I spent a while on it. But all of the other songs felt insane. I wanted to love the title track because the snippet of it that plays in the Oliver Stone movie, The Doors, felt like it had an urgency far above anything else the band ever did. What a letdown to hear the actual studio version for the first time. Again, I can’t really explain it, but I took it personally. I felt betrayed.

A few listens in and I started making excuses, warming to a few songs. And then, something happened. I started wanting to hear Do It and Easy Ride as much (or more) as I wanted to hear People Are Strange or The Crystal Ship.

Then Wild Child just utterly floored me. And it felt like side two was the ticket (in the cassette tape days). I adjusted to the actual, proper version of the title track and forgot about the movie-scene version. That was easy to jettison. And then I was in. Suddenly the weird, celebratory horns that open the record were an odd joy. Suddenly Robby Krieger’s weird, Dylan-esque vocal on Runnin’ Blue was a highlight, in fact I feel like Robby was doing the lifting here; still committed to the band, as everyone started to feel Jim slipping away from them. He wrote much of the album, and shaped a lot of it, Ray Manzarek starting to get annoyed with Jim more than ever before.

But Jim was a freak. And he sounds magnificent here. Across every song. His vocals are warm and wise and engaging and rich and full and though he was a lunatic he sure had something. And I’m forever baffled by that, and him as a result.

Some days I fucking hate The Doors, on a Big Lebowski Hates The Fuckin’ Eagles level. Other days I’m so blown away by the sound of this mercurial four-piece, essentially a musical backing trio chasing along behind a wild spirit with their butterfly nets.

Somehow, now, The Soft Parade makes the most sense as both the encapsulation of that, and the bridge between the beat-combo/ish starting point of their first three albums, and the transmogrified LA-privilege white-boy blues of their final two records.

All I’m trying to say is The Soft Parade is the one for me right now. The best part of the trip. The part I really like…