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Morrison Hotel

The Doors - Morrison Hotel Audio CD

A fair review of the The Doors "Morrison Hotel" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all The Doors reviews here, or go back to the The Doors tabs.

Band: The Doors
Title: Morrison Hotel
Rating:

Release Date: 1990-10-25
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Roadhouse Blues 2: Waiting for the Sun 3: You Make Me Real - The Doors 4: Peace Frog 5: Blue Sunday 6: Ship of Fools 7: Land Ho! 8: The Spy 9: Queen of the Highway 10: Indian Summer 11: Maggie M'Gill

1970 Doors record remastered on CD.
With the party favorite, Roadhouse Blues, not to mention Ship of Fools, and Peace Frog. This was the version that I heard, and found it to be quite pleasing. This record was easier to listen to than, The Soft Parade, because of the long medley on that record.

Less keys, more wheeze
I undoubtedly place it in that second bracket of lesser works- however a lesser Doors disc is still a higher disc for most other groups, with at least a few classic songs imprinted to guarantee purchase. 3 1/2

The Doors continued to open towards bluesy rock and close on a signature psychedelic sound they ushered forth, and depending which half of their career you prefer more will depend on how much you enjoy the work.

"WELL, I WOKE UP THIS MORNING AND I GOT MYSELF A BEER !" (The Doors are wide open at Morrison Hotel)
Why? "Rock n' Roll!", he said. The Doors organist Ray Manzerak has said that Morrison Hotel (1970) was his favorite of all of The Doors' albums. It's the closest they ever came to a pure rock or blues-rock album. Sure, they had done blues (Back Door Man) before and were always a rock band, but their main focus had always been on theatrics and darkly sensual rock poetics. On Morrison Hotel, Robbie Krieger's electric guitar leads the way while the tinkling avant-garde English organ passages of the past give way to a bluesy Hammond B-3 organ sound. The Lizard King isn't much interested in poetry or theatrics now, he's ready to party and rock n' roll!

Roadhouse Blues opens the album, and right from the start you know you're in for a rocking good time. The song rocks harder than anything The Doors would ever do, and the wildly manic Morrison rips it up good.

Well I woke up this morning and I got myself a beer
The future's uncertain and the end is always near.
Let it roll, baby, roll
Let it roll. . .
All night long

Waiting For The Sun, the unreleased title track from their third album is a classic. A mixture of spacy poetic longing and commanding electric rock, Morrison is melodious and vivid.

At first flash of eden
We race down to the sea
Standing there on freedom's shore
Waiting for the sun

You Make Me Real acknowledges identity validation from a lover.

You make me real
You make me feel what lovers feel
You make me throw away mistaken misery
You make me feel love, make me free

The strong and funky rocking Peace Frog was taken from two separate Jim Morrison poem fragments. The first was originally called "Abortion Stories".

There's blood on the street, it's up to my ankles
There's blood on the streets, it's up to my knee

The second poem in the song is spoken by Morrison, and was originally titled "Ghost Song".

Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding
Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind

Blue Sunday is a tender love song that's a nice change of pace for the album. Ship Of Fools and Land Ho work in tandem to bring metaphoric images of the sea together with good rock n' roll. I like the slow, bluesy and sensual The Spy, too. Queen Of The Highway and Indian Summer are both rather forgettable, then the album closes with the blues flavored rock of Maggie McGill.

Morrison Hotel was a return to form for The Doors after their somewhat disappointing attempt at a rockestrated epic, The Soft Parade. It doesn't get much better for Doors' fans than some of this stuff, but like every Doors' album, there are some weak spots. So get this one for Roadhouse Blues, Waiting For The Sun, Peace Frog, Ship Of Fools, Land Ho!, The Spy and Maggie McGill.

.

The Doors Let It Roll
"Morrison Hotel" (1970) has no misfires. After the critical brickbats that greeted "The Soft Parade" (1969), Jim Morrison and company made a smashing return to form with their most cohesive album. "Roadhouse Blues," "You Make Me Real" and "Peace Frog" are among the hard-rock highlights - punctuated by effective ballads such as "Blue Sunday" and "Indian Summer. " The Doors would take their blues-oriented sound even further on "L. A. Woman" (1971), but "Morrison Hotel" evokes the perfect bar-band atmosphere.

A best of the Doors
It is stripped bare of the pretention Jimbo was infamous for, the psychedelic crud, and the poppy banality of their previous releases. This is my favorite of the Doors' catalog. Their debut, while one of the best debuts of any rock group, still maintained one of my least favorite songs in their canon, the oft-hailed but unendingly dull and pompous "The End. " I'm sure the cursors are furiously searching for the "no" button at the bottom of this review, but I find that "opus" to be sophomoric and indicative of the worst Morrison brought out from his notebook meanderings. Thankfully, Morrison Hotel has none of that. Jim keeps the non-sequitors and "Hey! Listen to me! I studied philosophy!" references in control and writes more straight-forward and purposefully than before. Perhaps he realized that his utopian vision of changing the world had dissipated like the smoke from so many joints in the audience he dared to manipulate and who, in the end, ignored his attempts at social experimentation and instead cried out for "Light My Fire. " Whatever the reason, it's to our advantage that Morrison Hotel finds Jimbo focusing on simply being a member of a very good band. To that end, the vastly underrated guitar work of Robbie Krieger is the musical focus of this work, from the galloping intro of Roadhouse Blues to the trebly riff which closes out Maggie McGill, this album is a Krieger showcase. He demonstrates his unique finger-picking style, slide chops, and genre virtuosity throughout this powerful album. The FM staples "Peace Frog" and the aforementioned "Roadhouse Blues" are masterworks for both the guitarist and the band.
In fact, one of the best things about Morrison Hotel is that it is the best recording of the Doors as a band, per se, opposed to a combo backing an erratic poet. Even the inside photo, one of the coolest ever of these guys, is a balanced shot of the foursome, instead of the more common ones with Jim front and center and the other three taking up space in the background. Morrison Hotel is a rocking, bluesy, and bare-bones piece of American rock and roll that stands as the most concise and cohesive highlight in the brief history of this influential band. .

You can see a complete list of all The Doors discography, or go back to the The Doors tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.