So I'd discovered the Doors

Like any 16 year old with no money in his pocket, buying a compilation album of a newly discovered artist was a wise investment. In 1976 is was only vinyl and cassette tapes that you had to pay for! No internet in them days.

The album I bought was a compilation album called The Doors Star Collection - Volume II. This is quite an obscure album and can fetch $20 or so now. I believe it was published in Germany and although I've seen it as a double album (with Volume I), my feint memory is that it was a single album.

It has a really unusual selection for a compilation which starts with Hello I Love You, Soul Kitchen and My Eyes have Seen You. But then track 4 is Runnin' Blue - perhaps the least memorable of all Doors tracks and then The Soft Parade at track 5, the title song of The Doors least acclaimed album. Horse Latitudes is in there too. Another unusual choice.


This is how you discovered music in 1976. You discovered new music through word of mouth, gigs and radio. Older music was through friends and their older brothers and sisters. For reasons I didn't understand, The Doors had been off the radar. It was years later that I really began to understand why - and it was part of the magic.