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The Doors
The Soft Parade
(Elektra/Rhino)
First Appeared in The Music Box, July 2007, Volume 14, #7
Written by John Metzger
While Waiting for the Sun may have provided hints that The Doors’
world was beginning to spiral out of control, its fourth endeavor The Soft
Parade offered positive proof that it had fallen completely apart. Since its
release, the set has been maligned for its horn- and string-adorned
arrangements, but these accouterments collectively were more of a symptom of the
issues at hand, rather than the cause. To its credit, the group was trying to
find a new direction for its music — one which not only would allow it to grow
but also would keep front man Jim Morrison engaged. Although the southern soul
textures that permeated The Soft Parade formed a natural progression of
The Doors’ sound, the ideas that the ensemble had concocted were, unfortunately,
half-baked and poorly executed.
In Oliver Stone’s biopic The Doors, there is a scene in which an
inebriated Jim Morrison is trying to summon the conviction to deliver the vocals
to Robby Krieger’s new tune Touch Me. Granted, Morrison’s disconnection
and boredom were magnified significantly, but in the process, the film
effectively chronicled just how fast The Doors’ chemistry was disintegrating.
Morrison was angered by his band-mates desire to allow Light My Fire to
be used in a commercial, while Krieger, Ray Manzarek, and John Densmore were
frustrated by their leader’s unpredictable and self-destructive behavior. Just
prior to the release of The Soft Parade, Morrison suffered an epic,
egomaniacal, art-rock collapse in front of an audience in Miami — the result of
which was a bogus charge of indecent exposure that haunted the group for the
rest of its days. The problems, of course, had been brewing for quite some time,
though they all came to a head in the weeks that surrounded the release of the
album.
The biggest challenge that The Doors had to overcome in crafting The Soft
Parade, however, was that it simply had run out of material. In the past,
its songs had been honed on a concert stage. They had been given ample
opportunity to ripen and evolve, and each member of the group had discovered the
proper manner of voicing the compositions. Having to write tunes in the studio
did not play to The Doors’ strengths, and the result of such an approach was
that everything on The Soft Parade sounded disjointed and confused. In
short, the ensemble was recording the album before it fully had processed and
become comfortable with its contents.
Tracks like Wild Child, Easy Ride, and Shaman’s Blues
were aligned most closely with The Doors’ early pursuits, but as is apparent
from Morrison’s delivery, he found them to be tediously redundant. When the band
tried to push itself onto new terrain, the guitars and keyboards were reduced,
more often than not, to providing atmospheric textures rather than bold
statements, and Morrison’s vocals were filled with uncertainty. On the Otis
Redding tribute Runnin’ Blue, which oddly juxtaposed R&B with bluegrass,
as well as on the more pop-oriented refrains of Tell All the People and
Wishful Sinful, the band sounded as if it were searching for an identity.
Tellingly, the place on The Soft Parade where Morrison felt most like
his old self was during the spoken-word introduction to the title track. For a
fleeting moment, his loud, booming baritone held the powerful sway that it did
on The Doors’ initial endeavors, but as the song progressed, it failed to
coalesce. Instead, it veered wildly — almost insanely — from a funky groove to
’60s pop to heady, conga-driven garage rock. Consequently, it came across as a
directionless pastiche of unfinished compositions. Granted, its psychedelic
meltdown mirrored The Doors’ increasingly splintered sunlight, but the band’s
fracturing facade undermined any hope that The Soft Parade would achieve
the artistic heights of Strange Days or its self-titled debut. The bonus
tracks featured on the recent reissue of the album make the case that the group
wasn’t completely floundering, though they also provide further indication that
The Doors wasn’t sure of what it’s next move ought to have been.  ½
The Soft Parade is available from Amazon.com.
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This album is also included
in the Perception boxed set, which
is available from Amazon.com. To order, Click Here!
For Canadian orders, please
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For UK orders, please
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Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2007 The Music Box
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