Gloria Gloria Gloria

Jimi Hendrix, Patti Smith and the Doors tackle what could be the greatest rock and roll song ever written - Them's 'Gloria'. I feel like I need to write this to figure out for myself what makes each of these so wonderful, because things like these sure aren't happening anymore.

So, the first thing that I should point out is that the songs are about sex. Not in an excited, teenage way at all. These are songs that elevate sex and place it at its rightful place near the centre of human existence. These songs aren't about sex so much as they cause a Copernican re-centering of the human experience around the sexual act. In this new existence. , love, anger and sadness are merely functions of something far more fundamental.

This is all highfalutin talk though. The specific manifestations of this spirit are far more interesting and (from a musical standpoint) far more analysable.

For example, Patti Smith and Jim Morrison of the Doors are both primarily vocal artists : their expression of the sacred sexuality becomes vocal intensity. When Jim screams 'Make me feel alright!' it is a moment of release. His voice suggests drunken rage; his lyric improvisations suggest the worst(best?) forms of crudity. Its justification is intensity and power - and the comparative sedateness of the rest of the Doors allows him to lapse into refractory periods that build into orgasm again and again.

Patti's vocal style is another thing altogether, partly because she's a woman, and partly because her femininity gives her a different perspective on the whole issue of sex. This is not to deny Patti credit for her own brand of wonderful violence, but that violence is refracted through a kind of poetry. Patti's version is much more symbolic - 'I heard those bells ringing in my heart' - 'i wanna tell the world that I made her mine, made her mine, made her mine' etc. Patti's message brings evangelism and religion into the sexual universe.