The Doors: Strange Days (mono mix) [WARNER]

Why you'll love it

This 180g LP restores the original mono mix, remastered from the 1967 mono master tape. Strange Days reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200, went platinum and gave the band two Top 30 singles in "People Are Strange" and "Love Me Two Times."

This edition

• Mono mix
• Remastered from the original 1967 mono master
• 180g vinyl

About the album

Eight months after their debut, The Doors went back into Sunset Sound in Hollywood with a new toy: an 8-track tape machine, then the cutting edge. Producer Paul A. Rothchild and engineer Bruce Botnick let the band chase new studio ideas between tour dates, and author David V. Moskowitz calls Strange Days arguably the one the band itself most appreciated musically and creatively.

Jim Morrison plays a Moog synthesizer on the title track, programmed with Paul Beaver, one of its earliest appearances in rock. Ray Manzarek played the intro to "Unhappy Girl" backwards, swapped to harpsichord for Robby Krieger's "Love Me Two Times," and Botnick hand-cranked a tape machine to make the wind on "Horse Latitudes." "Moonlight Drive" goes back to the band's earliest days, and "When the Music's Over" closes with eleven minutes of slow-burning theatre.

Writer Stephen Davis calls it the best Doors album and one of the great artifacts of the rock movement. "People Are Strange" came out of a walk up Laurel Canyon, which is the most productive stroll we've heard of; ours usually end at the coffee shop.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Elektra / Rhino (cat# RM1-4014), a reissue of the 1967 album.