Dismissed by Rolling Stone magazine upon its release
as “musical constipation”, The Soft Parade has never had it easy. An
inability to take risks and develop musically is surely a greater signifier of musical
constipation than the rampant experimentation on display here. Part of the
initial animosity towards the LP was based on the fact that five of the nine
tracks on offer had already been available on 7”. From a 21st
century perspective, where albums are exhaustively mined for hits, this
criticism hardly stands up. Robbie Krieger said of The Soft Parade that “we
liked it, but no-one else seemed to,” and Morrison bemoaned its lack of a
“unified feeling and style”. What do they know! Artists are inevitably too
close to their work to gauge its worth without their opinions being tainted by
the trials and tribulations of the recording process and the mauling of
critics.
The record’s sleeve is striking in its simplicity: a
long-shot of the band huddled around a camera which, like the band members’
gazes, focuses squarely on you, the record buyer. Are The Doors scrutinizing their
audience, trying to size them up? For much of their career the band had
appealed as much to a pop audience as to the acid-dropping hippie
revolutionary, so trying to second guess the expectations of such a diverse fan
base was all but impossible. What better excuse to give their creativity free
rein?
With The Soft Parade, Morrison had finally, explicitly
revealed himself to be the counter-culture Sinatra. Always equal parts crooner
and blues howler, Morrison’s regard for the Italian-American singer was well
established. His suggestion that Sinatra record a cover of You’re Lost Little
Girl in the light of his troubled marriage to Mia Farrow fell on deaf ears, but
would undoubtedly have been an inspired song choice for Old Blue Eyes.
So, what of the music? For many, the most contentious aspect
of The Soft Parade’s sonic tapestry is the introduction of, and heavy reliance
on, horns and strings. And certainly, the opening horn blast of Tell All The
People must have been a shock to long-term fans. Sinatra’s influence on Morrison
is immediately obvious. However, within the soulful lounge-rock stew is a potent,
Robbie Krieger-penned call to arms.
Touch Me, the first single from the LP, is
a jazzy, swinging tune with deft organ / drum interplay. Morrison sounds bored,
or perhaps just drunk, but there is no denying how infectious the tune is.
Shaman’s Blues has a sound that is instantly recognisable as The Doors. The
horns have taken the night off, a darker, more intense Morrison is in the vocal
booth and Robbie Krieger’s labyrinthine guitar, Ray Manzarek’s carnival organ
and John Densmore’s inch perfect jazz drumming combine in a waltz-time
concoction that must surely have been a huge influence on The Stranglers' Golden
Brown.
Do It would be as throwaway as many reviews suggest if it were not for
the usual telepathic interplay between drums, organ and guitar. Easy Ride is a drunken
Benny Hill Show hoedown and not nearly as bad as that description might
suggest, whereas Wild Child has that woozy, unsettling, hypnotic, off-kilter
rhythm of classic Doors. What am I saying? This is classic Doors. Morrison’s commanding voice is beautifully
complemented by Robbie Krieger’s haunting, stoned slide guitar. The horns make
their return for Runnin’ Blue in which fiddle and mandolin combine with
Krieger’s hillbilly vocal for a love it or loathe it chorus. A middle eight that’s
as dark as the chorus is hokey make this a song of contrasts (and so much the
better for it.) Wishful Sinful is more wistful than wishful, with a string
section lending a melancholy beauty to the piece. Someone in The Doors camp had
almost certainly been listening to what Arthur Lee had been doing on Alone
Again Or.
The centrepiece of the album is the title track. Clocking in
at just shy of nine minutes, it is an unhinged, Morrison-penned
album-within-an-album. Following the dreamy Wishful Sinful with The Soft Parade
demonstrates just how masterful the track sequencing is on this LP. Only by
listening to the album as a whole can it really be appreciated. iTunes cherry
picking cannot do it justice. The track starts with a Morrison rant against delusional
God-bothering (“you cannot petition the Lord with prayer”), then tumbles into a
harpsichord lullaby which in turn morphs into a lysergic funk interlude before reverting
to jazzy lullaby mode. The darker side of Morrison returns with some
exquisitely obtuse lyrics (“the monk bought lunch”) beneath which John Densmore’s drums steer
proceedings towards a conga and organ groove-fest. Morrison becomes increasingly
strident and impassioned over the band’s dirty, swamp-funk backdrop until his multi-tracked
vocals, sounding like the bickering voices of a schizophrenic, take the song to
its climax: “when all else fails we can whip the horse’s eyes and make them
sleep, and cry” intones the Lizard King in gloriously cryptic fashion. What
does it mean? Who cares? Would you really rather hear another lyric about how
my baby done me wrong? This track is a true nugget, and not of the turkey
variety either!
In the context of Janis Joplin’s post-Big Brother recordings
and what Arthur Lee was doing in Love, The Soft Parade album makes perfect sense. Sadly,
Jim Morrison’s reputation as an incoherent, drunken buffoon probably did more
to harm critical perception of The Doors than their most challenging music ever
could. Would The Doors’ body of work really have been enriched if this LP had never been made? Absolutely not! It would be much the poorer for its
absence.
