The Doors were named for the essay by Aldous Huxley entitled The Doors of Perception. This essay was an about face for the well educated Huxley. At one time he had written that all drugs were "toxic short cuts to self-transcendence”. Apparently this mescaline journey changed his mind. Jim Morrison had studied Huxley to some degree, the perennial philosophical, transcendentalist intellectual seemed to have a profound impact upon Jim. Jim Morrison was influenced and inspired by the writings of many other philosophers and poets as well. Count among them Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Rimbaud, Jean Cocteau and Jack Kerouac. He was also an obsessive reader of mythology and philosophy.
Living on the rooftop of a building inhabited by his old UCLA cinematography friend, Dennis Jakobs, Jim wrote the lyrics of many of the early songs the Doors would later perform live and record on albums. According to Jakobs, he lived on canned beans and LSD for several months.
Jim Morrison was personally familiar with the other side and spent the rest of his life teaching other people what he found, by his music. He had become disillusioned with the US after the Miami incident, and decided that Paris was a fresh start for him. Nearly 100 years to the day after the famous revolutionaries known as The Communard's, took their last stand in Père Lachaise Cemetery, the musical revolutionary Jim Morrison joined them less than 100 yards from their mass grave in the south-east corner. For those of you who would like to visit the site, I went there, and marked it on the google map, its a very large graveyard with over 1 million interred, and 6 million in ashes. Here is the google map location of Jim Morrison's grave.
You can see the archetype of the awakening and the journey just by glancing at the album titles and the order of the songs.
Strange Days
Tracklist
| Strange Days | 3:05 |
| You're Lost Little Girl | 3:01 |
| Love Me Two Times | 3:23 |
| Unhappy Girl | 2:00 |
| Horse Latitudes | 1:30 |
| Moonlight Drive | 3:00 |
| People Are Strange | 2:10 |
| My Eyes Have Seen You | 2:22 |
| I Can't See Your Face In My Mind | 3:18 |
| When The Music's Over | 11:00 |
The Doors
Tracklist
| Break On Through (To The Other Side) | 2:25 |
| Soul Kitchen | 3:30 |
| The Crystal Ship | 2:30 |
| Twentieth Century Fox | 2:30 |
| Alabama Song (Whisky Bar) | 3:15 |
| Light My Fire | 6:50 |
| Back Door Man | 3:30 |
| I Looked At You | 2:18 |
| End Of The Night | 2:49 |
| Take It As It Comes | 2:13 |
| The End | 11:35 |
Waiting For The Sun
Tracklist
| Hello, I Love You | 2:22 |
| Love Street | 3:06 |
| Not To Touch The Earth | 3:54 |
| Summer's Almost Gone | 3:20 |
| Wintertime Love | 1:52 |
| The Unknown Soldier | 3:10 |
| Spanish Caravan | 2:58 |
| My Wild Love | 2:50 |
| We Could Be So Good Together | 2:20 |
| Yes, The River Knows | 2:35 |
| Five To One | 4:22 |
The Soft Parade
Tracklist
| Tell All The People | 3:24 |
| Touch Me | 3:15 |
| Shaman's Blues | 4:45 |
| Do It | 3:01 |
| Easy Ride | 2:35 |
| Wild Child | 2:36 |
| Runnin' Blue | 2:27 |
| Wishful Sinful | 2:56 |
| The Soft Parade | 8:40 |
Morrison Hotel
Tracklist
| One: Hard Rock Cafe | |
| Roadhouse Blues | 4:04 |
| Waiting For The Sun | 3:58 |
| You Make Me Real | 2:50 |
| Peace Frog | 2:52 |
| Blue Sunday | 2:08 |
| Ship Of Fools | 3:06 |
| Two: Morrison Hotel | |
| Land Ho! | 4:08 |
| The Spy | 4:15 |
| Queen Of The Highway | 2:47 |
| Indian Summer | 2:33 |
| Maggie M'Gill | 4:24 |
L.A. Woman
Tracklist
| The Changeling | 4:20 |
| Love Her Madly | 3:18 |
| Been Down So Long | 4:40 |
| Cars Hiss By My Window | 4:10 |
| L.A. Woman | 7:49 |
| L'America | 4:35 |
| Hyacinth House | 3:10 |
| Crawling King Snake | 4:57 |
| The WASP (Texas Radio And The Big Beat) | 4:12 |
| Riders On The Storm | 7:14 |
Other Voices
Tracklist
| In The Eye Of The Sun | 4:48 |
| Variety Is The Spice Of Life | 2:50 |
| Ships W/ Sails | 7:38 |
| Tightrope Ride | 4:15 |
| Down On The Farm | 4:15 |
| I'm Horny, I'm Stoned | 3:55 |
| Wandering Musician | 6:25 |
| Hang On To Your Life | 5:36 |