Understanding The Doors’ Music: Listening Journal

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Authenticity in rock music is a rather flexible concept, the boundaries of which should be immediately established. In a broad sense, it is understood as an inextricable relationship of organicity and naturalness between the rock poet and the words and music that they communicate. At the moment, researchers have the opportunity to widely apply the concept of authenticity, placing it in the context of the artist and their cultural background. Authenticity when talking about major rock poets of the 1960s, like Jim Morrison of The Doors, means the deep connection between the poet’s personality, philosophy and behavior, and what is expressed in their songs. The presence of this connection seemed especially valuable to the audience of rock musicians during the cultural revolution that took place in the 1960s.

The Doors were one of the most influential rock bands of the 20^th century. Jim Morrison, their lead singer, was certainly unconventional but attracted a following like no other. Roy and Kaparvan (2022) add that “in the 1960s, Jim Morrison shattered America’s literary tradition with his acidic blend of music, theater, lyric, and daring” (p. 83). The Doors defied the classic 1960’s music scene, with bands such as the Beach Boys and the Trashmen dominating that period (Friedman, 2011). Moreover, they were influenced heavily by jazz music, with Jim Morrison’s singing and Ray Manzarek’s amplified organ riffs.

The Doors gained notoriety for their daring performances, in which Jim Morrison’s risky conduct overshadowed the music. On March 1st, 1969, in Miami, Morrison mocked the crowd by removing and tossing a police officer’s cap into the audience. In the format of a concert performance, where the group expanded and supplemented the structure of the composition with jam and improvisational material, their songs turned into a ritual, cathartic conclusion to the concert mass. Morrison’s stage performance, trance-like demeanor and associated shamanistic behavior captured the audience’s attention and earned him the reputation of a “rock messiah.”

Ritual and messianic analogies, pursued by critics from the very beginning of The Door’s career, take place in all elements of their classical work – textual and musical fabric, and, of course, live performances. In these conducts lies an additional, marginal manifestation of authentic artistic behavior, balancing on the verge of performance art and inextricably linked with rock mythology.

Authenticity in this more borderline context should be understood as an attribute of rock star behavior – self-aggression and public harm. Rock musicians consciously broadcast the aesthetic and life-creating attitudes of the beat generation, and Morrison can be considered a prime example of this. For such artists, self-mutilation and physical harm was a way of proving one’s own immediacy – while the absurdity of the act contradicted the basic sociopolitical norms that the rock stars rejected and overcame. Thus, authenticity in rock music is a manifestation of the present, which always exists as a refutation of objective reality – for a rock performer, protest is already an expression of the present.

One of The Doors’ most famous songs was ‘Riders on the Storm’, made in 1971, in which Morrison compares the listeners to “The Riders,” who ride restlessly through the stormy, chaotic universe. The future leader of The Doors, Jim Morrison, was a student at Florida State University in Tallahassee in the early sixties. At the same time, he closely communicated with a girl named Mary, who lived a few hundred miles from him. Jim often hitchhiked to her place, getting into random cars on the deserted night road.

One can only guess what effect these dangerous journeys left on Jim’s psyche, which had never been stable to begin with. In any case, in his drawings of that time, the image of a lone traveler, forced to independently confront the difficulties of distant wanderings, often appeared. It is possible that it was from that period that the story of the ‘Riders on the Storm’ song began. Robbie Krieger, however, has claimed that ‘Riders on the Storm’ was inspired by Stan Jones’ Ghost Riders in the Sky (York, 2021). According to another version, the film “Rain Passenger” directed by René Clement became the source of inspiration for it.

In the second verse of the song, the central image is the “road killer,” inspired by Morrison’s work in the short film “HWY: An American Pastoral.” In the scenario, Morrison played the role of a hitchhiker who killed a driver who agreed to take him in (Jones, 2018). However, there is also an opinion that these lines are an allusion to Billy Cook, a serial killer who shot his family, pretending to be a hitchhiker (York, 2021). The third stanza becomes a love letter to Jim Morrison’s muse and girlfriend, Pamela Courson: “The world on you depends / Our life will never end. / Gotta love your man.” The last verse repeats the first one, looping the composition and emphasizing the repetitiveness and cyclicity of the plot about confronting life’s storms.

Thus, the song ‘Riders on the Storm’ is a metaphor for the existential path. The lyrical hero becomes an observer who, being “outside all dimensions,” gives advice to lyrical subjects in order to avoid death and overcome life’s trials during the global all-cleansing flood, symbolized by a storm. Although The Doors’ albums can hardly be called conceptual, that is, having a clear internal narrative, they still seem to be organized according to the dramatic principle of increasing dynamics and tension.

On studio albums, The Doors created songs of various shapes and arbitrary lengths, so they organized them on the album in accordance with the catharsis that builds up towards the end of the record (Jones, 2018). Epic compositions such as ‘Riders on the Storm’ are found at the end of each of their albums. The Doors applied this approach regardless of how hermetic the recording was in terms of the coherence of texts, sound, imagery, or belonging of the lyrical subject.

‘Riders on the Storm’ is assuredly one of the greatest rock songs. All the characteristics of a classic rock song are present in ‘Riders on the Storm’. It is atmospheric, and while Manzarek’s shimmering keyboards and Krieger’s subtle guitar solo are easy to hear, it is a great ensemble work (York, 2021). The special vocal effect of ‘Riders on the Storm’ was achieved by overlapping vocal parts, sung in full voice and in a whisper. Ray Manzarek simulated the sound of rain on a synthesizer, and sound engineer Bruce Botnick added the sounds of a thunderstorm and a train (Grow, 2021). The fact that it was carried out with such commendable moderation by all parties involved has helped to improve its reputation.

Bibliography

Friedman, Jon. “Why Have The Doors Remained so Popular?” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company. 2011. Web.

Grow, Kory. “Hear the Doors’ Long-Forgotten, Raw-Sounding ‘Riders on the Storm’ Demo.” Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone. 2021. Web.

Jones, Josh. “The Doors’ Ray Manzarek Walks You through the Writing of the Band’s Iconic Song, ‘Riders on the Storm’.” Open Culture, 2018. Web.

Roy, Dwaipayan, and Shuchi Kaparwan. “Decoding the Poetical Genius of American Poet Jim Morrison.” Comparative Literature: East & West, vol. 6, no. 1, 2022, pp. 83–104. Web.

York, Alan. “Riders on the Storm: The Story Behind The Doors’ Elemental Classic.” Dig!, 2021. Web.

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Understanding The Doors’ Music: Listening Journal

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