For whatever reason, the Doors have a pretty soiled reputation among music aficionados. I do not understand this. Maybe it has something to do with the late Jim Morrison, a charismatic, controversy-stricken frontman obsessed with drugs, obscenity, and Greek literature who was the only (really) good looking member of the band, who’s death at 27 (which now at 25 I realize is even younger than I thought) exalted him to the same heights as Jimi Hendrix, Robert Johnson, and Janis Joplin. His face has been put on t-shirts and posters and (in more than one case) blankets with the heading “American Poet,” which is a difficult case to make in the face of people like Walt Whitman, e. e. cummings, Alan Ginsberg, and even fellow musician Bob Dylan (the fact that these t-shirts are worn by teenagers who have never read a poem outside of English class only exacerbates the resentment).

But Jim Morrison is not the Doors, and the Doors is not Jim Morrison. Morrison himself knew this, and on later albums tried to share the spotlight with the rest of the band (see: Morrison Hotel, L.A. Women). Even here on their debut, on the still-played single Light My Fire, Morrison is only present for less than three of the seven minutes. Album closer The End, for all of its reputation for a vehicle for Morrison’s most obscene and ambitious literary desires, is more accurately described as a drone jam between Robby Krieger and Ray Manzerek, with Morrison improvising Oedipus Rex over it, drummer John Densmore following his energy throughout. This, not Jim Morrison, is the Doors. The Doors was and forever should be remembered as a band of three of the best rock musicians of their time (the jam sections on this album are more engrossing than anything Cream accomplished) accompanied by (not accompanying) one of the most electric frontmen of all time. And who couldn’t love that?