The horns perform a fanfare fit for a king — even a self-proclaimed “Lizard King” like Jim Morrison. But with “Tell All the People,” which leads off 1969’s The Soft Parade from the Doors, Morrison comes off more like a lounge lizard. This shouldn’t have been too surprising. While renowned for his lunatic howl, Morrison could also croon with the best of them, and at times sounded like a psychedelic Sinatra. The Soft Parade was the most explicit example of this particular inspiration, where “Ol’ Blue Eyes” met “Ol’ Dead Eyes.”

In the 2010 book Becoming Elektra: The True Story of Jac Holzman’s Visionary Record Label by Mick Houghton, Doors’ engineer/producer Bruce Botnick recalled that when he first met Morrison, the singer was awestruck at the sight of a Telfunken U-47 microphone in the studio, saying “Frank Sinatra” as he stared at it. Botnick elaborated “On Sinatra’s Swinging Session there’s pictures of a U-47 with a Capitol logo on. And that’s when I knew he was a Sinatra fan.”

The feeling was not mutual. Sinatra once stated that “Light My Fire” was the worst song he had ever heard. “The Chairman of the Board” was widely known for his loathing of rock’n’roll, best summed up in a 1957 article for Western World magazine, where he referred to rock music as “This rancid smelling aphrodisiac I deplore.” Keep in mind he was referring to the early, clean-cut days of rock’n’roll. To put it mildly, his mind hadn’t changed by 1969, when rock had gotten louder, hairier, and perhaps even smellier. Most importantly, it evolved. The Beatles’ Abbey Road, Tim Buckley’s Happy Sad, Hot Buttered Soul by Issac Hayes, CCR’s Bayou Country, In a Silent Way from Miles Davis, Dusty Springfield’s Dusty in Memphis, Leonard Cohen’s Songs from a Room, Sly Stone’s Stand!, Tommy by the Who, Scott 4 from Scott Walker, and Bowie’s “Space Oddity” are just some of the memorable releases from that fabled year.

What made 1969 so extraordinary is it’s where the ‘60s met the ‘70s. The aforementioned artists would impact the latter decade and beyond, as well as all the acts that put out their full-length debut albums. It’s an absurdly long list that includes Led Zeppelin, the Meters, Johnny Winter, Humble Pie, the Jackson 5, Alice Cooper, King Crimson, Joe Cocker, Genesis, Yes, Blind Faith, Mountain, Can, Luther Allison, Rod Stewart, James Gang, Santana, Free, Grand Funk Railroad, Blodwyn Pig, Poco, the Edgar Broughton Band, MC5, Elton John, the Stooges, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Chicago, Rory Gallagher (with Taste), Mott the Hoople, Nick Drake, the Allman Brothers Band, and Crosby, Stills & Nash. We put a man on the moon that year, but almost as improbable is that the ‘60s began with songs like “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini” and ended with the dawn of hard rock, heavy metal, fusion, punk, progressive rock, funk, southern rock, glam rock, krautrock, and country rock. That’s a miraculous amount of progress in such a short period of time.

On The Doors’ “When the Music’s Over” from 1967, Morrison demanded like a deranged cult leader “We want the world and we want it now!” He and the rest of his generation would have to wait a little while longer. Despite the youth counterculture’s colossal influence on music, literature and cinema, it was still Sinatra’s world. He was as popular as ever in ’69 with the release of what turned out to be his signature song “My Way,” a symbolic reminder that the old guard was still in charge. And there were enough Americans who liked it that way, as Richard Nixon was inaugurated as President of the United States at the beginning of ’69. This was in large part due to the “Southern Strategy” which targeted racist white voters in the south, who were no longer democrats because of the party’s embrace of the civil rights movement. Among the architects behind this strategy were members of the younger generation resistant to progress like Pat Buchanan and Roger Ailes, both of whom could’ve been right out of the snobbish and noxious Omega Theta Pi House in Animal House.

These real-life versions of Neidermeyer and Marmalard notwithstanding, there was a massive generation gap effecting families like the Morrison’s, especially United States Navy Rear Admiral George Morrison and his son Jim. The elder Morrison was commander of the U.S. naval forces during the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident that escalated America’s participation in the Vietnam War. The irony is the Doors would often be associated with the war, as their music was popular with the soldiers, serving as a soundtrack connecting them to “the World” (slang for the United States).

In July of ’69, Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” was taken literally, as “the World” (and the rest of the world) witnessed their fellow Americans depart Earth and land on the moon. That same week, the Doors (who implored “Let’s swim to the moon” two years before) released The Soft Parade, a decidedly less ambitious endeavor than a moon landing, but still somewhat of a departure for them. According to the liner notes from 2006’s The Soft Parade reissue, George Harrison seemed to think so. David Fricke writes that Harrison visited the studio during the recording and said that what he heard reminded him of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. A more apt comparison is another masterpiece from 1967, Love’s Forever Changes. Similar to that album, some of The Soft Parade exudes a lonely paranoia draped in sunny strings and horns.

It’s hard to fathom that, in spite of his reputation as a fearless performer, Morrison could be quite paranoid. “Touch Me,” the first single off The Soft Parade, was originally titled “Hit Me.” He told guitarist Robby Krieger, who wrote the song, that he believed strangers would start hitting him, so Morrison came up with “touch.” And the Doors apparently turned down the Woodstock festival, which happened a month after The Soft Parade came out, because of his fear that he’d be assassinated. Even a man as self-destructive as Jim Morrison had his limits.

Although you could make the case that it was complete self-destruction not to perform at the most beloved concert in rock’n’roll history. In ’69, the Doors walked the thin line between bold and foolish. With the ascendancy of hard rock and other genres of loud, heavy music that year, it probably wasn’t the best time to put out an experimental album with “soft” as part of the title. Especially since another exhibitionist singer named Jim (better known as Iggy) was starting to make his presence felt. Sometimes even literally.

The Stooges, label mates of the Doors, would release their self-titled first record a few weeks after The Soft Parade. Iggy Pop received all the attention, but the Asheton brothers were a brutal force to be reckoned with. Scott lived up to his nickname “Rock Action” by providing the music its thrashing, grooving heart while simultaneously making the drums sound as if they were falling down the stairs, and Ron’s primitive, excessive use of the wah-wah pedal gave the songs a swirling maniacal cackle. The electric guitar had never sounded so psychotic. With Sinatra and the Stooges at opposite ends of the spectrum in ’69, the Doors found themselves in a unique position, between progenitor and progeny. The Soft Parade was the result.

It was recorded at the then-new Elektra Sound Recorders Studio on La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood. Located in the middle of Art Gallery Row, Morrison would occasionally visit the galleries, the Boulevard filled with people popping in and out of them, looking like Kirchner’s Street Scenes paintings set in the Age of Aquarius. A year later, in 1970, visitors would’ve seen the Stooges around, as they used the studio to record their masterpiece Fun House, vaporous phantasmagoric punk delirium at its seedy best. The feeling of exhilaration from what was happening outside is palpable on Fun House. With The Soft Parade, that spirit is present, but more subdued.

On the opener “Tell All the People,” Morrison’s relaxed croon, Ray Manzarek’s mellow Vince Guaraldiesque piano shadings and the horn section conjuring up the jaunty sounds of a parade’s commencement would appear to belie a more threatening, messianic undercurrent. The first verse is “Tell all the people that you see/Set them free/Follow me down.” It seems innocent at first listen, even somewhat hippy-dippy, but Morrison’s presence instantly gives any song an ominous gravitas, even those he didn’t write like this one. Krieger’s composition later states “Can’t you see me growing, get your guns/The time has come/To follow me down.” With the reference to guns, and what appears to be a madman bragging about his increasing authority over everyone, it’s now suddenly a different song, where the line between community and cult is essentially non-existent. It brings to mind the moronic and malevolent cult of personality we’ve all endured on an everyday basis for the last few years.

By the end of the ‘60s, rock bands with horns were starting to become prevalent like Electric Flag, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Chicago. On The Soft Parade, horns added a new dimension to the Doors. “Tell All the People” used brass in a subversive manner, whereas the earnest “Touch Me” incorporated brass and strings to accent the dedication expressed in the song, exemplified when Morrison sings “I’m gonna love you/Till the heavens stop the rain” at the two-minute mark. The pastoral beauty of the harpsichord and strings coalescing with Morrison’s gritty roadhouse southern baritone, is one of the more sublime moments in rock’n’roll.

Some of the best art consists of those kind of disparate elements. The main guitar/organ riff from “Touch Me” is the bridge between 1967’s “C’mon Marianne” by the Four Seasons and 1977’s “Lust for Life” from Iggy Pop. And Curtis Amy’s buoyant saxophone solo at the end is pure Prestige-era Coltrane. Krieger’s spirally arpeggio’s after Morrison asks “Why won’t you tell me what she said?” makes for an odd, yet melodic accompaniment to the wariness articulated in the question.

“Shaman’s Blues” is the first Morrison composition on The Soft Parade. With a title like that, it would have to be his. You could easily forget that Morrison didn’t write every song for the Doors, but like his idol Sinatra, he was a stellar interpreter. (Considering his privileged background, it’s a shame he didn’t live long enough to cover Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money.”) The organ and guitar combine for a melody that’s equal parts ‘60s Winterland Ballroom and ‘20s Ballroom Foxtrot. Krieger later contributes a solo that’s a hazy precursor to Ritchie Blackmore’s work with early ‘70s Deep Purple. The overall result comes across as both jolly, and because of the inherent darkness of the Doors, evil. In particular, when Morrison sings “I know your moves and your mind,” repeating “And your mind” enough that it sounds like “And you’re mine.” Considering the sentiment of the line, he may as well have.

“Do It” features the lyric “Please listen to me children/You are the ones who will rule the world.” Given the current state of the world, with America now in its bloated, unstable Morrison phase, that line takes on a whole new meaning. “Easy Ride” wasn’t associated with the film Easy Rider, which came out four days before The Soft Parade, but it’s catchy country pop along the lines of the Lovin’ Spoonful or the Monkees. If the Doors had their own show like the latter, this would’ve been the song playing during the madcap high jinks sequences.

The opening guitar riff on “Wild Child” is formidable to the extent that Morrison yells “All right!” (Morrison was the inspiration for Matthew McConaughey’s “All right, all right, all right!”) John Densmore’s powerful tribal beat then kicks in, with the organ gliding along the guitar, giving this psychedelic blues incantation a distinctive, spellbinding melody. Krieger’s slide guitar wailing is expansive enough that it connects the Mississippi Delta with South Asia. Oddly enough, the song invokes the summer of ’85 rather than ’69, as that’s when the Doors video/performance compilation Dance on Fire came out. Due to the ubiquity of “Wild Child” on MTV, it’s just as big a part of that summer for Generation X as Tears for Fears, R.E.M. and ironically, “Summer of ‘69” by Bryan Adams.

“Runnin’ Blue” is Krieger’s tribute to Otis Redding, with Morrison lamenting at the start “Poor Otis dead and gone/Left me here to sing his song.” The proceeding guitar lick is the prototype for the opening of Steely Dan’s “Hey 19,” and the horns make a return appearance to contrast mourning lyrics like “Got to find the dock of the bay/Maybe find it back in L.A.” The tone shifts when fiddle and mandolin appear and Krieger takes over the vocals, sounding like if the young Bob Dylan were a square dance caller. There’s another shift during the instrumental break, where the brass section gets a melodic spotlight on par with Chicago, which then turns into a brief avant-garde jazz breakdown. For all intents and purpose, “Runnin’ Blue” is four different songs in one, yet it flows seamlessly.

“Wishful Sinful,” another Krieger contribution, is one of the more overlooked songs in the Doors catalog. It doesn’t sound like 1969 so much as the template for Echo & the Bunnymen’s 1984 orchestral nocturnal pysch-goth classic Ocean Rain. Following a catchy bassline that’s a model of brevity, the watery guitar arpeggios perform a hypnotic lullaby. The orchestra that first quietly appears during the second verse is a beautifully subtle depiction of yearning. Later on, the stunning sequence where Champ Webb’s English horn solo gently floats amidst the strings, and then descends to earth when paired with Krieger’s suspicious guitar, manages to be transcendent, poignant, and sinister. The recurring line “Can’t escape the blue” stands out because of its ambiguity. “Wishful Sinful” uses the sea as a symbol for devotion and lust. However, Morrison’s melancholy crooning tells another story, conveying those times when awe and despondency are intertwined. “Can’t escape the blue” is also an apt summation of The Soft Parade cover, which has the Doors posing around a camera tripod, with blue light hovering above illuminating the darkness that surrounds them.

If there was ever a Doors song you could conceive of Sinatra covering, it’s “Wishful Sinful.” He would’ve really put some “Vegas” into the line “I know where I would like to be/Right back where I came!” Despite Sinatra’s consuming hatred for rock’n’roll, he performed a rendition of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson” for his My Way album in ’69. Yet you could still hear the jovial contempt for the song in his voice when, instead of “Jesus,” he gave a shout-out to his pal Jilly Rizzo, singing “And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson/Jilly loves you more than you will know, wo wo wo!”

Presumably, Frank and Jilly wouldn’t have loved the last song on The Soft Parade, the innovative title track, which even more so than “Runnin’ Blue,” is essentially multiple songs. Morrison had been influenced by the experimental downtown Manhattan theatre group, The Living Theatre, and it shows on “The Soft Parade.” The song starts off with Morrison doing his fanatical southern preacher routine, repeating the phrase “Petition the lord with prayer.” After a few moments of tense silence, Morrison turns it up several levels by shouting “YOU CANNOT PETITION THE LORD WITH PRAYER!” As a kid, this came across as frightening. Now it’s somewhat comical when you realize he sounds like Neidermeyer in Animal House, yelling in Dorfman’s face “A PLEDGE PIN?! ON YOUR UNIFORM?!” The next part settles down considerably, but is no less tense, with Morrison singing “Can you find me soft asylum/I can’t make it anymore/The Man is at the door.” Harpsichord and other exotic instrumentation eerily accompanies Morrison’s paranoia, illustrating how the Doors were often just as much haunted house as roadhouse.

The last thing you would expect to come next is proto-disco, but that’s exactly what happens, the sequence conjuring up Polyester-clad dancers under a neon disco ball years before that image became a reality. The “Champion sax” referenced in this particular verse is likely an homage to the 1959 novel Doctor Sax by Jack Kerouac (who died three month’s after The Soft Parade was released), which was one of Morrison’s favorite books. With the addition of Krieger’s jazzy solo, this part sets the stage for the Grateful Dead’s more dance-oriented material on 1975’s Blues for Allah.

Once again, the tempo changes, the cheerful keyboards leading the way to a section that’s more akin to an elderly vaudeville performer doing a soft-shoe dance on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, while also a forerunner to Beck’s baroque nursery rhymes, with Morrison singing about “Catacombs/Nursery bones.” The lyric “The monk bought lunch” launches another shift, this time a tribal funk tempo, with an emphasis on interplay between guitar and keyboards, not unlike what the Talking Heads accomplished a decade later. You can even picture David Byrne in the “big suit” doing his unconventional dance moves to this part. Morrison is so impressed with the section he becomes every annoying drunk guy you’ve ever seen at a concert, stating in what appears to be in an intoxicated manner “This is the best part of the trip/This is the trip, the best part!” He wasn’t done giving props to his own song as it was in progress, adding “Pretty good, huh/Huh!/Yeah, I’m proud to be a part of this number.”

In spite of the amusing obnoxiousness, he had every right to feel pride. The song could’ve just ended at this point, but to paraphrase his hero, the best was yet to come. Following the “Lions in the night” verse, the rhythm shifts to a more aggressive pace, with what sounds like an army of angry Morrison’s. After the foretaste of funky late ‘70s Talking Heads, the final two and half minutes exudes menacing hard rock cabaret swagger that sounds more like Alice Cooper than the actual Alice Cooper band did when they released their debut Pretties for You a few weeks before The Soft Parade.

With so many examples, it’s remarkable to hear how ahead of its time The Soft Parade was, in particular the title track. The numerous Morrison’s screaming Beat-imbued poetry over each other at the end of “The Soft Parade” clearly made an impression on Patti Smith, who pulled a similar trick on the epic frenzied rave-up “Land” from her 1975 landmark debut Horses. (Smith has admitted that Robert Mapplethorpe’s legendary Horses cover, where she throws her jacket over her shoulder, was partially influenced by fellow Jersey luminary Sinatra.) That album also featured “Break It Up,” Smith’s tribute to Morrison, inspired by a dream she had about him, and from a visit to his grave in Paris.

On “Shaman’s Blues,” Morrison sings “There will never be another one like you.” Half a century later, you could say the same about the Doors.

Matt Leinwohl