
And the one striking thing that occurred to me is, there are no doubt people who love the Doors, and even a few specific songs, but who would say that they don't like jazz, and those people are insane. To say that the Doors have jazz influences is almost redundant: almost all popular music has at least some jazz influences, and it's no stop-the-presses moment to suggest that the Doors has more than many. And that's especially noticeable in John Densmore's drumming, and to a lesser extent in Ray Manzarek's keyboard playing; the guitar and vocals are both bringing more of other sensibilities to the music.
But the jazz influence is really pronounced compared to a lot of other bands about whom one speaks of a jazz influence. I was particularly struck by the song Riders on the Storm, one of my three favorite Doors songs ever (the others being Crystal Ship and Spanish Caravan). It occurred to me that if you found someone who had never heard Riders on the Storm and played a fairly faithful cover but with a less recognizable voice, and asked them what genre it was from, they are at least as likely to say jazz as rock. It's really more of a jazz song than a rock song, and most of what suggests rock is Jim Morrison's delivery, not anything about the instruments, melodies, composition, or rhythms.
Most likely, anyone who reads this (and doesn't outright disagree with me) will probably be thinking "well, duh, that's obvious," and that's really the point, it is obvious. But I bet we all have things that we've known from our early childhood about which there are obvious things we never noticed. And no matter how many times I realize that (and I've posted about it a few times before on this very blog), I still never quite find myself sitting down and going back over the first ten years of my life to give everything the critical appraisal it would have gotten had I first encountered it at the age of 13 or later. And neither does anyone else.
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