13

The success and continued popularity of 13 over the years was a perfect illustration of the way in which the Doors (and their record label) successfully manipulated the group's image in two distinctly different directions. 13 presented the Doors' most accessible, AM radio-friendly music, even bypassing their rather daring debut single, "Break On Through," in favor of the much more popular "Light My Fire" -- anyone hearing this stuff would perceive the band as an edgy pop/rock outfit with the most intensely brooding vocals this side of Elvis Presley and lots of great tunes and better playing. The reality was a lot more complicated -- the Doors were a challenging, often disturbing, and very serious musical entity, and a big chunk of their work, especially in concert (which was arguably what they were really about), was much more R-rated than the material on 13 would lead you to expect, trading in fierce sexual imagery, sophisticated philosophical ideas, and coarse, even ribald sensibilities worthy of the best bluesmen, all wrapped around a unique blend of poetry and blues, R&B, and jazz-inspired rock. Indeed, one begins to fully appreciate, listening to what almost amounts to the "Doors-lite" sensibilities of this collection, just how much of the group's success, commercial and artistic, was predicated on this split, with a certain percentage of those millions of listeners of the singles making the leap, crossing over to the more serious side of their work and taking in those albums as well as the concerts. Subsequent compilations would mix the two sides more freely, and, ironically enough, later in the same year as the release of 13, Elektra offered the first formal glimpse of that more serious side of the Doors' music with the concert album Absolutely Live; the latter, even with its carefully airbrushed cover shot of lead singer Jim Morrison -- by then very scruffy looking with his beard -- would totally miss the mass appeal enjoyed by 13, with its focus on blues pieces and decidedly adult works such as "Build Me a Woman." The latter quickly started turning up in cutout bins, while 13 remained popular for almost two decades, and became -- along with the group's self-titled debut album -- the most common first Doors album purchased by fans, this despite the fact that it was released too early to contain their last two singles, "Love Her Madly" and "Riders on the Storm" (which made it onto the more FM-oriented Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine two years later). ~ Bruce Eder