40. Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog – Break on Through
“Break on Through” has a proto-punk aesthetic, with its driving beat and subversive (but censored) lyrics. Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog goes full-on post-punk in this off-kilter cover. Ches Smith’s “George of the Jungle” drums roll in powerfully up top and are about the only grounding element of this scribbled crayon of a track. Ribot’s lyrics are right, but his timing is deliciously off from the original, backed by squealing guitars and noise of various kinds. It’s disorienting but, at just under 4 minutes, not exhausting. That is, unless you decide to try to dance to it, which is an adventure. – Mike Misch
39. George Winston — Wishful Sinful
In 2002 George Winston released Night Divides the Day: The Music of the Doors. The now-defunct Rhapsody website claimed that “even without Jim Morrison’s incredible voice and weirdo poetry egging you on, the songs still make you want to take off all your clothes, hog barbiturates, pass out under the bar, grow a beard, get fat… the whole nine yards.” This is what’s known as damning with faint praise. The fact is, Winston’s distinctive solo piano fits the songs like water on stone. “Wishful Sinful” may be one of the Doors’ less-remembered singles, but under Winston’s fingers, its melody has never been more beautiful. – Patrick Robbins
38. Los Lonely Boys — Roadhouse Blues
By late 1969, Morrison’s substance abuse issues and related legal problems had cost the Doors gigs and radio airplay, and The Soft Parade’s experiments with orchestrations, horns and strings proved unpopular. As so often happens when a band finds itself in this position, the prescription is a return to the roots, and the Morrison Hotel album was just that. “Roadhouse Blues,” called by sound engineer Bruce Botnick “the all-time American bar band song,” is a bluesy, rocking drinking song, with a nice harmonica solo from John Sebastian (credited under a pseudonym).
Los Lonely Boys, a literal band of brothers who never quite lived up to the success of their 2004 major label debut, put out a rocking cover of the song in, as they say in the intro, “Texican style,” on their 1969 album, featuring great singing and better guitar playing by Henry Garza, with solid bass and drums from brothers Jojo and Ringo. – Jordan Becker
37. Johnny Cougar — Twentieth Century Fox
Made to release his debut album under the name “Johnny Cougar” – even though he never went by “Johnny” – John Mellencamp also had to record a bunch of covers for it, presumably because the label that forced the name change on him also forced him to not only rely on his original material. It didn’t matter, the album bombed. But one of the covers contained within it is a great and kind of wild version of “Twentieth Century Fox.” It begins with a groovy riff utterly absent from the original. Mellencamp sings the verses like he is really into this woman whereas with Morrison’s original there’s a mix of admiration and something a little snide. But when it comes to the chorus, Mellencamp channels the energy of the emerging punk scene, almost yelping at times. The music behind him is where it gets really out there, with guitar feedback providing weird little noises throughout his cover and a horn section appearing out of nowhere in the middle of the song, only to disappear again pretty quickly. Not many people outdo Morrison as a performer, but Mellencamp’s vocal performance is commanding and the weird arrangement only makes it stand out more. – Riley Haas
36. Gregorian — The End
One thing that can be guaranteed is that there will be few fence-sitters for this one. You either love it or, possibly more likely, loathe it. But give it a chance, however wretched a travesty the concept might seem. There is, after all, something hymnal about the original, regardless of how the presentation of the original might beg an opposite. By emphasizing the celestial and expunging the visceral, Gregorian give a whole new game plan around how you might think about “The End.” Steel yourself with that thought, and, hey, it’s really rather neat. – Seuras Og
35. Michael Udelson — Riders on the Storm
In keeping with his day job as pianist at a swank hotel, Michael Udelson is not out to blow anyone’s mind with showy musicianship, or break on through to the other side of anything. On his instrumental renditions of songs by The Doors, Radiohead, Pearl Jam, R.E.M, the Allman Brothers (the list goes on) he declines to shred or reinvent; his trio follows the structural contours of the originals, so the listener rides a nice glide path, calmly sipping a drink with no worries of turbulence. Udelson solos beautifully, and explores some compelling dynamics with his top-notch trio, but it’s all in service of the song at hand. On the mesmerizing “Riders on the Storm,” bassist Pat Klobas takes a solo–I think the band must be aware that the Doors never had a bass player join them onstage. When the trio revisits Ray Manzarek’s cascading arpeggios at the close, they converge on the long keyboard flourish and bring it to a crashing climax. It’s so satisfyingly clean, and so unlike the Doors’ anticlimatic (but equally effective) ending, with its haunting fade out to the sound of rain, the rumble of thunder. Udelson’s covers always renew my appreciation for the originals even while making me want to hear more Udelson. – Tom McDonald
34. Booker T. & the M.G.’s — Light My Fire
Read anything about the Doors’ “Light My Fire,” and it is likely to reference the song’s erotic and drug-influenced lyrics, which famously got them banned from The Ed Sullivan Show when Morrison reneged on an agreement to make a minor change. One way to avoid those problems is to cover the song as an instrumental, and who better to do that than Booker T. & the M.G.’s, one of music’s foremost instrumental acts? Their version of the song is slower, and where the original’s eroticism is intense, Booker T. and the boys slow it down and make it sexy. – Jordan Becker
33. Billy Idol — L.A. Woman
In 1989, lifelong Doors fan Billy Idol landed his first film role in Oliver Stone’s The Doors, playing Jim Morrison’s friend Tom Baker. His admiration for Morrison also led him to record a hard-driving cover of “L.A. Woman” for his 1990 album Charmed Life. While Morrison’s original reflected growing disillusionment with Los Angeles and America, Idol said he was still having “a love affair with America,” giving the song a very different perspective.
Just weeks before filming and the album’s release, Idol nearly lost his leg in a motorcycle accident, forcing him to give up the role of Tom Baker, which went to Michael Madsen. Stone instead created the smaller role of “Cat,” allowing Idol to appear in the film on crutches while he recovered, and his injury is also visible in the “L.A. Woman” music video. The accident also cost him the role of the T-1000 in Terminator 2, but his cover of “L.A. Woman” and his appearance in The Doors helped introduce Jim Morrison’s music to a new generation. – Eric Taylor
32. Tom Waits — Take It As It Comes
For reasons known only to him, Tom Waits covered “Take It As It Comes” one time only, at a New Years Eve show in 1988. He opened the show with it, and you can hear the audience roar as he enters the stage. He goes full Waits on it, bellowing in his raspy gravel. On the tape, you can hear a few crowd members laugh as they realize what song it is. He gives it full commitment, and it rules. – Ray Padgett
31. Blondie — Moonlight Drive
If there’s a descriptive noun that’s stuck to Blondie like warts, it’s “dilettante.” Hopping from genre to genre, Debbie Harry and company got #1 hits out of their dabbles into disco, reggae, and nascent hip-hop. So it makes sense that they would give gothic rock a spin, taking on “Moonlight Drive,” the song which legend has it Morrison first sang to Manzarek in 1965 and which prompted them to form a band. Blondie brings their New York strut to the Doors’ L.A. pallor, and Harry can’t help but seduce with her offers of swimming and penetration. “While very little can dissuade me to reconsider The Doors,” said Lars Gotrich, producer of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, “there’s a reckless glamor to this version that can’t be denied.” – Patrick Robbins
The list is superb; I would only add the Apocalypse Now opening credits as an essential Doors cover. That aside, I’m bewildered and somewhat put off by why Cover Me editors would open with calling out derisive and insulting comments about the band, continue this thread through some of the accompanying song choices copy, yet go through the exercise of compiling 40 cover versions,. Why do that with this bias, editorializing them mostly with comments about the covers and not the power of the originals. Take a stand, Personally, I think the band deserves all the accolades: their music was revolutionary in the beginning, constantly captivating, composed and played by spectacularly competent musicians, and immaculately produced. As to Morrison’s shtick, it is no less outrageous and perhaps manufactured as what has been applied by countless others in every genre of music for the last 70 years; why single Morrison out as iconically shameless and shameful? (And why not give him the street credit for dying as a tortured artist in exile, assume it wasn’t all artificial?) Anybody can have an opinion about any music, whether they’re just a fan or a self-important critic. But to casually, cruelly, and completely dismiss the impact of this band, in its time and for all these years, seems to indicate these are indeed some curated salacious opinions, in the minority and undeserving of the slant of this article. If 40 artists have managed to find deep and enduring meaning in this band’s music and this man’s image — let’s go with that. Or don’t offer the playlist in the first place. Whatever, but don’t be agnostic or lopsidedly critical on a site all about the passionate love of music.
Stan –
It’s a fair cop, but society’s to blame.
Our readers and commenters are very often passionate about their subjects. More than once they’ve lit into us when their confirmation bias is not supported. When I chose the Doors for this month’s Best Covers Ever artist, quite frankly, I didn’t want to deal with that.
So I made a number of preemptive strikes. Like Eminem at the rap battle in 8 Mile, I acknowledged the bad things that could be said before the other guy could say them. After nuclear disarmament had been accomplished, I said that there were twice as many good things that could be said, and gave a good lengthy example.
Now, could I have given four “not only do the Doors not suck, they’re great” quotes? Yes, I could have. But I felt like we had forty good examples of their greatness and proceeded accordingly. If my accentuating the positive didn’t match my eliminating the negative, that’s on me.
In the end, I don’t feel like my quoting others sullies the band’s legacy, which is already intricate enough without my two cents. What matters is the music, which will last long after you and I are gone.
Thank you for commenting, and for your appreciation of what we selected.
Patrick, thanks for your thoughtful response. Looking at it this way–that you chose to feature Doors’ covers and that 40 artists were represented, some obscure and still worthy but many of them better known and respected–is a hefty counterweight to the argument that the Doors were all veneer, no depth. Passion about music inevitably leads to “your band sucks” arguments. Considering all the things that polarize the world today, it’s a pretty benign argument. But not a meaningless one. Music has meaning, possibly now more than in a long time. So thanks for all you and yours are doing to make this site happen.