THE DOORS

I can't, in good conscience, justify giving the debut album by the Doors a five-star rating, since it has just a little too much filler for that; "Twentieth Century Fox", in particular, seems to have been tossed in to pad out the running time, and the band's hearts just don't seem to be in it. But at the same time, it ought to be stressed how important this album was in promoting the electric organ as a rock music instrument. Densmore and Krieger both have important parts to play, of course - "The End" just would not have had the impact it has without Krieger's inspired guitar work, and Densmore's one-man rhythm section is key to holding the whole thing together, but it's Ray Manzarek's keyboards that are the key to the glories of "Break On Through" and "Light My Fire".

And all this is without mentioning main man Jim Morrison, who single-handedly took the stage technique of, say, Mick Jagger and took it into a dark and mysterious place - and made us all want to follow him there. The chemistry in evidence on this album, in the way Krieger's guitar and Manzarek's organ and Morrison's voice all blend together to evoke a strange, seductive atmosphere of mingled expectation and fear, couldn't have been achieved by any other group of people, and when they really get behind a song - which they do on most of the tracks - nothing can beat them.