The Doors – Tracks From “Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mine” (“Break On Through”, “Riders On The Storm”, “The End”) And “Light My Fire”

In early 1972 (summer in New Zealand), aged 14, I mowed my parents’ rather large lawn to get the NZ$14 required to buy the double album “Weird Scenes Inside The Goldmine” by a band called The Doors.

I had never heard of The Doors before, and at the time I don’t believe I realised that their iconic singer Jim Morrison had died just months before the previous year (3rd July 1971 in Paris).

Nor did I realise that “Weird Scenes Inside The Goldmine” was a compilation, I didn’t know any of the songs.

When school started I took the album with me to my boarding school. One of the guys in the dorm had a record player linked up to some lights that pulsated according to the music.

We turned off the dorm lights and I remember all these 14 years olds jumping up and down and dancing to “Break On Through” with the flashing lights.

Here’s the original:

And a live version:

Other tracks from “Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mine” that stood out for me were…

Riders On The Storm

And of course The End (a little weird in places):

“The End” was featured in the 1979 Francis Ford Coppola film “Apocalypse Now”, the Vietnam War epic with Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen.

Perhaps the best known song of The Doors is “Light My Fire”. Here’s the album version:

And a longer version of “Light My Fire” with lots of Doors images:

Actually The Doors were really a band of the Sixties, but I only heard about them in the Seventies, so I’ve included them here.

There have been various versions of the band since, but none of them matches the original lineup and the mythical magic of their poet lead singer Jim Morrison.

Hope you enjoyed this little peak “inside the gold mine” of Doors music…

Paul