Other Voices Massillon OH

Other Voices

The Doors

Elektra, 1971

REVIEW BY: David Bowling

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 10/19/2007

Early in 1971 Ray Manzarek, John Desmore and Robbie Kreiger began laying down tracks for the next Doors album while Jim Morrison was vacationing in Paris.

Little did they realize that Morrison was not coming back.

Yet in a somewhat odd move, the three remaining Doors decided to stay together and complete this album, as well as another one, before calling it quits. As is expected, Other Voices pales in comparison to the studio albums that preceded it, but overall the album as a whole is not as bad as history has labeled it.

It is interesting that Other Voices and the album that followed it, Full Circle, are so different. It makes one wonder if many of the songs for Other Voices  were in place before Morrison departed, which makes the overall tenor of the album similar to past Doors material. Full Circle, on the other hand, sounds like nothing else in the band's catalog, likely because Morrison had nothing to do with it, not even as a spectre looming over the words.