The Doors: The Soft Parade (50th anniversary edition) [RHINO / ELEKTRA]

Why you'll love it

This 50th anniversary edition is digitally remastered on 180g vinyl in a gatefold jacket. The Soft Parade reached No. 6 on the Billboard 200, and "Touch Me" became another Top 10 hit for the band.

This edition

• 50th anniversary edition
• Remastered
• 180g vinyl
• Gatefold jacket
• Stereo mix

About the album

By late 1968 the Doors were playing the Hollywood Bowl and Madison Square Garden, and they came off the road with their notebooks empty. Producer Paul A. Rothchild suggested something new: horns and strings, arranged by Paul Harris, and a bigger, jazzier canvas than anything on their first three albums. Session players Doug Lubahn and Harvey Brooks came in on bass, and local jazz horn players joined members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

With Jim Morrison turning more to poetry, Robby Krieger stepped up as a writer, and his "Touch Me," "Wishful Sinful" and "Tell All the People" are the brassy, string-swept singles that came out ahead of the album. Ray Manzarek and John Densmore, both jazz fans at heart, took to the new sound happily. "Wild Child" and "Shaman's Blues" keep the old menace, "Runnin' Blue" swings, and the multi-part title track shifts through one mood after another.

Sessions ran at Elektra Sound West on La Cienega Boulevard from November 1968 to May 1969, and the album cost $80,000 to make, against $10,000 for their debut. That's a lot of trumpets, and the band got every penny's worth of them.

Also at Kops: more The Doors on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Elektra / Rhino (cat# R1 75005), a reissue of the 1969 album.