The Doors – Strange Days

Since we're talking about my brother’s flat, it’s where I first heard these, when I was about 13 or 14. I’d gone to visit him, and he played me this record and it blew my mind. When I came back to Liverpool, I started buying all the other records with my paper round money. I just love everything about them, the slightly jazzy tinge they’ve got. And that Ray Manzarek did the bass on the keyboard. This alleyway on the cover is in New York, I’ve only just found it on Google Earth. You can’t get down it, there's a big gate at the end.

A lot of people don’t like the Doors, I find.

It’s just overkill. When that film came out at the end of the eighties, early nineties, they were everywhere. It’s like anything if it gets rammed down your throat too much you reject it. Like Big Brother!

The drumming is brilliant, absolutely brilliant, he [John Densmore] has such a light touch but it’s so powerful. Everybody thinks you have to hit the drums hard to make them powerful and you don’t always. He punctuates all the things Jim Morrison does, all the little flicks, they are just jazz. Jazz world! Yeah!