To see the Doors as a radical political influence seems to me misguided. According to Morrison, "The Unknown Soldier" is a love song. "The violence is just a metaphor," he's quoted as saying. "It's about sexual intercourse. The firing squad is just a metaphor for what's going on." Soldiers in Vietnam turn on and listen to the Doors records—what kind of politics is that? Are the Doors any more subversive than the Vietnam war?…

With the Stones at the doorstep, it takes a lot of cerebration to see the Doors—a less interesting musical group than, say, Traffic, though they still write nice songs like "Light My Fire" and "Love Street"—as more relevant than Dylan (A. Goldman in New World Writing 3) or more to the point than "Street Fighting Man." (p. 12)

Jonathan Cott, "Doors, Airplane in Middle Earth," in Rolling Stone (by Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc...