10 Perfect Songs That Started Hard Rock

When you look at every psychedelic band that was making their way to San Francisco in the '60s, the Doors seem to stick out like a sore thumb. Though someone like Jim Morrison made the trek to California from Florida, he was clearly looking for something more than just going on a drug trip. His vision had a lot of dark passages in it, and Break On Through was the mission statement that set the band off in the right direction.

Knicking a riff from a song by Paul Butterfield, The Doors' introduction to the world captures all of the strangeness that was going to come in the next few years, putting together sex, drugs, and rock and roll in the same room and creating something a bit more chaotic with your instruments. While Jim's tortured poet persona is a little more refined on this song, the power behind his voice is there from the beginning, sounding like he's trying to physically break through to your mind on the last few verses of the song.

After years of listening to acts like the Grateful Dead taking music into new and interesting places, half of the hard rock bands of today have the Doors planted into their subconscious, from their bluesy background to having the right to be weird on whatever track that you want to. The idea of breaking through to something else could be about drugs or could just be about attaining a higher form of consciousness, but either one would probably elicit the same reaction from Jim.