Strange Days
About this Album
Strange Days, released September 25, 1967, arrived less than nine months after The Doors' self-titled debut. Much of the material had already taken shape on stage during the band's 1966 residency at the Whisky a Go Go, before they had a record contract.[1]
Producer Paul A. Rothchild and engineer Bruce Botnick recorded the album at Sunset Sound Recorders in Hollywood using a newly available eight-track machine, pushing the group toward experimental techniques, including backward-recorded keyboard parts and one of rock's earliest uses of the Moog synthesizer.[1]
The record reached number three on the Billboard 200 and earned a gold certification, with "People Are Strange" and "Love Me Two Times" both charting as singles. Rothchild nonetheless came to view it as the band's strongest album and, paradoxically, its weakest seller relative to the debut.[1]
The album closes with "When the Music's Over," an eleven-minute piece that serves as its dramatic centerpiece, trading the concision of the singles for an extended structure built around a repeating organ figure modeled on Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man."[2][1]
Songs
References
- Strange Days (The Doors album) - Wikipedia — Album recording background, production techniques, chart performance, and Rothchild's assessment of the record
- When the Music's Over - Wikipedia — Detail on the closing track's composition and its organ introduction