42) The Doors : Rolling Stone

After blowing minds as the house band at the Whisky-a-Go-Go, where they were fired for playing the Oedipal drama "The End" (which was too explicit for even the Sunset Strip), the Doors were ready to unleash their organ-driven rock and Jim Morrison's poetic aspirations on the world. "On each song we had tried every possible arrangement," drummer John Densmore said, "so we felt the whole album was tight." "Break On Through (to the Other Side)," "Twentieth-Century Fox" and "Crystal Ship" are pop-art lighting for Top Forty attention spans. But the Doors hit pay dirt by editing one of their jamming vehicles for airplay: "Light My Fire," written by guitarist Robbie Krieger when Morrison told everybody in the band to write a song with universal imagery.

Total album sales: 3,406,000

Peak chart position: 2

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