Greatest band ever. Smarter and sexier than the Beatles, more unique and deeper the Zeppelin, more dangerous and real than the Stones. Don't just listen to their 5 star albums like The Doors, Strange Days, Morrison Hotel and LA Woman, but listen to their experimental stuff like Soft Parade and Waiting For the Sun. I wish they could have finalized Celebration of the Lizard, althpough listening to it live is spectacular. The Doors aren't just Morrison, they were also an excellent but very underated guitar player named Robbie Krieger, organist Ray Manzarak, and percussionist John Densmore. You couldn't pick any other band to represent the opening scene to Apocalypse Now. The Doors represented an era that was full of dark and light, war and peace, liberalism and conservatism, traditionalist and progressive views. Hell, they still do. Bands like ACDC, Sabbath, and Zeppelin only represent rock-n-roll. A superb band like the Doors transcend music and enter a nations psyche and help shape it's culture, society, arts, and politics. You say the Doors are pretentious? Guilty. But not nearly much so as Lennon, Pink Floyd, Dylan, King Crimson, Yes, or the Moody Blues. They are also very unique. To think they made their debut the same year as what some consider the Beatle's greatest album, and that they altered the rock landscape forever. They even did it with an album where all but two songs were originally crafted, unlike another band two years later who would debut with only two original songs, the rest covers(LZ.) Two things that make the Doors stand out: Lester Bangs pointed out that the Stones were dirty, but the Doors were dread. He stated the difference is crucial because dread is a great fact of our time. The Doors require a more mature listener. That is one reason there are fewer reviews of this band then of the Beatles and Zeppelin. Those bands are ok if you want to make bands into cartoons or sit in the basement getting stoned talking about how great a band is because they have an awesome drummer and have a lot of bass. To me, music has to put you in a variety of moods, only the Doors could ever achieve that.

Morrison was a controversial figure, but his distinctive voice was the main ingredient in the original sound that was The Doors.  The source of the groups' name was Aldous Huxley's book THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION.  Their debut album is a classic containing not just "Light My Fire", but also (Break On Through (To The Other Side)", "The Crystal Ship", and the haunting piece called "The End" which was used with great effect in the movie "Apocalypse Now".  Later songs that stand out include "When the Music's Over", "Touch Me", "Hello, I Love You", and "Riders of the Storm".  I saw one comment disparaging the group because they didn't have a bass player.neither did The Rascals.  Am I unaware of something?  Is it musical anarchy not to have a bass player?  To make up for that, and other dubious comments (i.e. "The best career move Morrison made was dying". which seems to ignore the fact that he'd already left the group before his death), I'm changing my rating to 5 stars. 

I really wanted to like the Doors... I tried to like the Doors... but considering their relatively average instrumental talents, their songs are far too self-indulgent, and are on the most part extremely boring. 11-minute songs are OK when you are as versatile, progressive and freaking interesting as Rush, but not when your music is as bland as that of the Doors. Listening to the 'Best of' the Doors was absolute torture.
Update: I take it all back! Upon the third listen, it all finally made sense, and I enjoyed it quite a lot. They're quite dark and bluesy at times, and they have their powerful moments. All-in-all a good band.
Second update: OK, I'm getting to know their songs now and I'm loving it! The Crystal Ship, amongst many other gems, is a work of absolute genius. (upgrade to five stars)

Just saw Stone's 'The Doors' again. I guess it's been about fifteen years since first watched it.

And of course while it's a brilliant film, Stone's best, what it brought me to was the short, brilliant artistic career of Jim Morrison, and what a genius he was, though he was a complete nihilist...witness how eagerly he sought his death at the age of 27.

I was born in 1950, seven years after Morrison, and so was a little young to take full advantage of the Summer of Love in 1967. But even as a 16 year old, it was amazing until it went bad, which happened really fast, with kids like me crowding every street corner looking for sex, drugs, and music. And though I never saw them, I knew that their presence was electric and transforming. Jefferson Airplane was a little like that, too, bringing chaos and drama to what had been, in the past, a grey America.

And now, 57, with a tour of Vietnam in my past, and Nixon and all the obscene assassinations, not only Martin and Robert, but of others who wished to make change, I return to James Douglas Morrison and realize how brilliant he was.

Deranged, but brilliant.

But maybe that was the point, all along, and maybe I should have not been so safe with myself, at that.

The Monk Bought Lunch.

"I am the Lounge-Lizard King... I wil drink ANYTHING!!!" I'm what I like to call a recovered Doors fan. Late in high school through my early 20s, I thought the Doors were great because they were dark,  mysterious, Morrison was cool, blah blah blah... Now that I'm a little older, I've come to realize how lame they really were. It blows my mind that anyone close to or over the age of 30 still buys into this. They sound like lounge music!! Morrison was a pretentious creep who had ZERO respect for his audience who made him rich and famous. His lyrics and poetry were a bunch of nonsensical crap. His fans today say "he was a genius, and if you dont get it then you just don't understand!!" Face it, the guy was fu**ed out of his skull, and didn't know what the hell he was talking about. As far as the band goes, they stunk!! They had a few decent tunes like "Break On Through," but the group couldn't give that song the rocking treatment it needed to be effective. I mean... an organ solo??? In a song that's supposed to rock?!? Whatever. The song would have been far better in the hands of a more capable group. Their version of  "Back Door Man" is probably the single most vomit-inducing abomination ever put to record. The song "The End"? Ugh!!! 10 minutes of pretentious, incomprehensible nonsense. One of my favorite things about them is how they release a new greatest hits or best of set about every two years when Morrison died in 1971. Coming this fall, its "The All-time Greatest Legendary Band-favorite Best-of Anthology of The Doors! Featuring never before released  tracks of Jim Morrison belching and snoring into the microphone!" The best career move Morrison made was dying. "The End" of story!!!

My all time favorite Rock band! 3 briliant musicians and a mad poet/singer.They didn't made even one bad song!

Having nearly been bludgeoned into submission by the endless playing of Doors songs on classic rock radio I've revised them down to 2 stars and that's only cos I still like LA Woman (the tune). I find everything else they've done dismal and hugely irritating especially The End, Riders of the Storm and Light my fecking Fire.

The Doors were pretentious; The Doors were self-indulgent; The Doors were obsessed with their own perceived importance - BUT what a great legacy of music! Wouldn't we all want to be Jim Morrison with a happy ending?

Occasionally strange, but generally a joy to listen to.  All four members blended well together; combining Rhythm & Blues, Jazz, and Gypsy influences into a distinctive, energetic sound.  The melodic interplay between guitar and keyboards was always interesting.  Memorable lyrics rounded out this excellent group.

Well I'll be the first to admit that in the late '60's I was older and maybe not as hip as I once was, what with making a living, raising a family, paying bills, and paying taxes,  I truthfully can't remember the Doors being that big of a deal. After Morrison croaked, that got some pub, but it really wasn't until Apocalypse Now and the Oliver Stone film that the Doors really got into the public view. I like some of the songs, but raves they weren't!

Wow just Wow LeftFInger. The Doors were awesome and before Jim Morrisons Death Popular and Great. Not as popular or great as the Beatles but definitly top 5 or 6 best band.

Oh yeah, Jim Morrison was handsome, sexy and had great charisma on stage. He was the bad boy every teen aged girl was in love with.

My all time favourite from childhood to 31 years of age. Still can't get enough. Jim Morrisson is truly the greatest rock star that ever lived.

Certainly some terrific songs. . .but this band was nothing without their frontman. . .and only Guns and Roses cared less for the fans. . .

I Friggin love the doors Jim Morrison is awesome

When they were at the top of their game, there was no other greater band.

Way overrated. Jim Morrison did the best thing a person could do to guarantee legendary status - die. If it weren't for that, all of the Doors albums would've long been discontinued or in the bargain bin at Wal-mart.

Hey Jim, couldn't deal with life as an over rated, flamboyant, drug addicted loser so you just decided to up and croak on your legion of loyal fans. Way to make a dignified exit, whimp. Umm..wait a minuite. That was Elvis.....sorry.

Totally revolutionary and captivating.

I tend to agree with tboneya.

I think this would have to be one of the most overated bands of all time, at least in the top ten. The music does not hold up well and I find it, well boring. I never liked Morrison and the rest of the band was unimpressive.

2.80 ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!! They are probably one of the best bands in the world with great songs like Break on Through (to the other),People are Strange, L.A Women, Show me the Way to the next Whisky Bar and many more. Definatly one of my favorites!

A certain somebody that said the doors were an amateur band. As a musician who has been on tour round the world I will tell you that honestly they were a very tight band very energetic, and the doors is not all about Jim, its about the guys that sat behind him aswell. Stunning musicians. You may not like the music but learn what an amatuer band sounds like before cussing the doors

i like The Doors, but a 5 star band they are not. Started off strong with their 1967 debut and then it went downhill from there. Strange Days was just a retread of the debut, Waiting for the Sun was Lackluster and The Soft Parade just plain sucked, full of half-written songs, Bad Jim Morrison poetry and a heavy edited b/c they couldn't even get their drunken frontman into the studio on a regular basis. Two late career albums save this band in my opinion. Morrison Hotel and LA Woman are great, albeit uneven, whiteboy blues albums w/dashes of psychedelia thrown in. In a perfect world, i imagine Morrison lives and learns to balance the blues and The Doors would've spent the 1970's playing blues numbers and reveling in the heathen lifestyle that was LA. instead we get Mr. MOJO dead in France and Ray Manzarek trumping out the Doors of the 21St Century. a joke.

Morrison was one of the best singer/songwriters ever.He was also a gifted poet.The 5 stars are mostly for HIM. Robbie Krieger was an underrated guitar player,and also wrote many of their hits.Densmore,although a grumpy dweeb who is still pathetically jealous of his dead bandmate,was still one of the BEST DRUMMERS of the 60s.Ray Manzareks keys were often the worst part of the song,but sometimes,he too,shines.All together they raised the standards of Rock n Roll,allowing it to become multi dimensional,theatrical,dark and intelluctually stimulating.

What an AMAIZING band. Not only amaizing, but also unique. This is the only band where the keyboard played a major role (and may i add... Ray Manzarek is an awesome keyborad player) Unlike most bands, all of the doors where good composers. (Very little known fact that their greatest hit, 'Light my fire' my written by the guitar player). To me, Jim Morrison is the original rebel, the man who gave foot for all the 'bad boys' that came after him. His lyrics are some of the most interestting, deepest things i've ever read, but unfortunetly people find them mostly meaningless. That is, mainly, because Jim Morrison's mind was a closed book very few people could ever open. We never knew what was in his mind, and we'll probably never will. May he live forever.

amazing band. jim morrison mastered his own style of lyrics and singing methods. This is one of the many reasons i was turned onto the doors.

The genesis of the Doors was basically a wanna be poet (Jim Morrison) who was forced by events to focus his energies through music rather than the pen. This was a fortunate turn of events as Morrison would have most likely failed as a pure poet, but his verse converted into lyrics backed by mystic/psychedelic and sometimes bluesy, jazzy, or rock music worked as if it was destined to be. While the band was an excellent singles band, the Doors were first and foremost a full-length artist starting with their 1967 self-titled debut (which includes Break On Through (To the Other Side), The Crystal Ship, Light My Fire, and The End). The band found it difficult to match the quality of the debut, subsequently releasing several good (but not great) studio efforts; however, these recordings did include some of the band's most well known songs (eg Love Me Two Times, People Are Strange, Hello, I Love You, and Touch Me). The band didn't start to approach the excellence of their debut until Morrison Hotel (1970) and L.A. Woman (1971) when Morrison died in Paris following the latter's release. Looking back at the Doors in retrospective, one sees a lot of excesses and not as much diversity as one would have wanted (but this could have been due to the untimely death of Morrison). Given this, most casual listeners will be satisfied with one of the more complete compilations such as Legacy: The Absolute Best (2003).

Hits and misses. But I can't listen to this without people thinking I am a crackhead.

I never really got excited about The Doors. They were just a hippie rock group that ended up disbanded because there dumb lead singer died of a drug overdose. They get 2 stars due to the songs, but their stupidity overmatches the songs.

They were overrated, and got a lot of attention because of Jim Morrison's flamboyance. There were many other bands around that time that were better but just didn't get as much as attention because they didn't have such a charismatic frontman.

HELL MAN NOW THATS WHAT I CALLED A REBEL JIM MORRISON IS THE ORRIGINAL BAD BOY OF ROCK.

I wasn't alive at the time, but I'm sure a lot of people were really relieved when this band came out to expose the dark underbelly of the hippy movement (in a safe, non-Charles Manson sort of way). Much darker than most of the psychedelic crap floating around at the time. The Doors weren't about peace and love at all. They were very nihilistic, singing about bad trips (Peace Frog), serial killers (L.A. Woman, Riders on the Storm, among others), and other less appetizing subjects. Three talented musicians with a frontman who, despite his appallingly bad poetry and constant drunkenness, had unbelievable charisma and sex appeal (when he wasn't falling down or jibbering away at some butterflies that only he could see).

If you know nothing about the Doors then you only think of Jim as being the Doors. What made the Doors great were the musicians who backed him up. Manzarek, Densmore, and Krieger were all great musicians in their own right and made the Doors great. Even when Jim was drunk, the band still sounded awesome.

This band had a small canon of less than 60 songs, of which only about a half dozen had any merit. They produced two pretty dreadful albums ("The Soft Parade" and "Morrison's Hotel"), and were noteworthy in that they were a rock band without a bass player, which is pretty wussed-out when you think about it. Manzarek was the only one with any musical talent (he did great work producing X in later years), and Morrison was a third-rate poet. That "Lizard King" nonsense was so bogus and juvenile that I used to laugh my butt off about how lame it was: and I was only 16 years old at the time!!! The problem with this band was they finally got it right on the "L.A. Woman" track, only to have Morrison drop dead in his bathtub in Paris shortly afterward. Very self-indulgent and overrated act that had very little influence on any bands of its time, and later on, which is telling.

You just had to pay attention. NOT for Monkees fans.

Agonizingly bad music made worse because of all the pretension and preening. Morrison's best career move was dying, otherwise he'd now be playing a Ramada Inn in Topeka 6 nights a week. Don't be fooled -- the Doors are NOT rock. The Doors are hype.

with or without morrison the doors would have been great. jim was a drunk but what a drunk. la woman is a classic album

I am 15 and I appreciate the Doors. My mother always listened to it when I was little. I have a special appreciation for them. My favorite shirt to this day is my Jim Morrison shirt I got when I was 4.

To rate the Doors less then five is a crime against music itself!

Brilliantly weird yet catchy at the same time.

Weird lines, excellent gloomy music, LONG LIVE THE LIZARD KING!

Long live Jim! Even my 3 year old daughter is a fan. Diverse musical styles. Admittedly, not everyones cup of tea, but who wants in your face pop trash.Get a bottle of JD, put on their debut album, and get out of your head.

Great music.... lousy politics.

Jim Morrison was a dark poet, he was the 60s version of Kurt Cobain, but with the band's unforgettable melodies and hooks, they definitely left a mark in rock and roll history.

the doors are one of my type 5 all time bands/ downside is a lot of the songs sound a like 5 tunes in a row is my tolerance zone

Awesome stuff.

Original but overrated....

an amerikan icon! leather pants, snakes,lizards,women and boozes!

ABSOLUTELY LIVE tell the story! Jim Morrison made the stage his, for the world to see. A poet and film student, Jim meets Robbie Krieger at the beach to set lyrics to music. A different tale of love, war and lizards! With Ray Manzarek and John Densmore the journey has begun. WAKE UP! feel music run down your back and thru you universal mind, to the other side. Break on Through! DOORS 13 is my favorite album, the best of best hits when Jim was alive. Then there was L.A. WOMAN, some thought they have lost it with all the disorder, it is best album by the group. A must have! Then... When the Music is Over, Jim died, a mystery still to day. Other Voices took a turn for group, fans wanted The Lizard King! An American Legend!