Original published in Uncut Take 245 (October 2017 issue)…

Although “Light My Fire” was written by Doors guitarist Robby Krieger, it was a hit born of many hands. The song was written by Krieger over a weekend, after Jim Morrison challenged his bandmates to take the songwriting burden off his shoulders, but the sultry vocal was all Morrison, while the distinctive introduction was by keyboardist Ray Manzarek.

The band were then persuaded by producer Paul Rothchild to place the organ at the start, fixing the song with a spiralling upbeat sense of momentum before it had even begun. “The song trumpeted its own arrival,” recalls Elektra founder Jac Holzman, who signed The Doors by persuading them his boutique label could give them the attention they felt they deserved.

The success of “Light My Fire” turned The Doors into the biggest new act in America, and confirmed Elektra were the coolest label. It helped lead to Elektra’s signing of the MC5 and the Stooges. Originally recorded as a seven-minute mini-epic, “Light My Fire” was not an obvious contender for a single, even though it was picked out for attention by various parties after it was released on The Doors’ self-titled debut album in January 1967.

However, while FM station DJs would happily play the longer version to their savvy rock audience, the AM stations – the ones that could make or break a hit – simply couldn’t accommodate such length into their commercial-saturated programmes. To get around this, DJs played the song at faster speed, while others created crude edits. Following the failure of first single “Break On Through”, the band agreed to release a shorter version of “Light My Fire”.

Rothchild delivered the three-minute edit, cutting out solos by Krieger and Manzarek. This was neatly done and, though painful, it was a price worth paying, as it sent The Doors to No 1 in July 1967. “When I think about the song, I always think of the long version,” says Krieger today. “After it started to do well, they began playing the long version on AM. Then ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ came out and the three-minute precedent was broken.”

Key Players:

Robby Krieger (guitarist)

John Densmore (drummer)

Jac Holzman (head of Elektra)

Danny Fields (press agent and ‘company freak’)

Bruce Botnick (engineer)

ROBBY KRIEGER: Jim was writing all the songs. We realised we didn’t have enough for an album, so Jim said, “Why don’t you write one, why should I do all the work?” I said I’d try and Jim said, “Write something universal, that won’t go out of style next year.” I thought of the elements and picked fire, as I always liked the Stones’ “Play With Fire”. That was the start of it.

JOHN DENSMORE: I first heard “Light My Fire” at an early rehearsal. I liked it immediately. I didn’t know it would turn into such an important song. When we played it at concerts it was our last song and everybody immediately got up and danced the whole time. Did I enjoy performing it? Tremendously!

KRIEGER: I only had one verse, so Jim came up with the second with the “funeral pyre”. I said, “Jim, do you always have to think about death?” It always got the best response at every concert. It started off at four minutes and kept getting longer.

JAC HOLZMAN: I first heard it in live performance. I was struck by it, but not wowed. But when they were in the studio it was the best session they’d ever given. They had encouragement from Bruce Botnick, a superb engineer, and Paul Rothchild, who helped them find their core and get rid of any excess. They were very lean, very Bauhaus.

DENSMORE: We did the recording in two takes, both real good. Larry Knechtel’s bass was overdubbed.

HOLZMAN: Things were worked out in “Light My Fire”. Rothchild suggested some switching of elements here and there. That was one of the reasons the song worked better on record than it did live.

KRIEGER: At first I didn’t have Ray’s organ, it was just the chords. If you look at those chords they are pretty crazy, I wanted to put every chord I knew into that song. Ray then put his signature on it. The organ part was originally in the middle after the solo. When we started recording, Paul had the idea of putting the organ at the start. And not just in the start, but at the end and also in the middle, so you get it three times.

BOTNICK: Paul realised they were a performance act and they didn’t need to be manufactured in the studio, they needed to be captured. We took a few liberties – we added bass and did some double vocals. The only problem in the session came when Jim was on acid and went to church and had an epiphany. He came back to the studio, saw the red light and thought the place was on fire, so used an extinguisher. Other than that it was very quick.

“the only problem in the session came when jim was on acid and went to church and had an epiphany.”

DANNY FIELDS: I heard about The Doors from the superfans at Max’s who were excited about having seen this band with an extremely sexy lead singer. There was a buzz. Then a friend’s band were playing Whisky’s and I was talking to the club owner. She said she had a group she was very interested in, and could I get them any press. They were called The Doors. I went to a soundcheck, sat down with each of them, and then went to the show. The next day I went to Elektra and said I’d heard one song I thought was a hit, something about fire. They said they liked it too, but it was too long for radio at seven minutes.

STEVE HARRIS: When “Break On Through” didn’t make it, we were searching for another single. I met this kid in a club. He said he walked three miles to his girlfriend’s house every night to hear one cut on the record. I said, “What’s the song?” He said, “Light My Fire”.

HOLZMAN: “Break On Through” sounded like a single but we didn’t think we’d bring the first Doors single home. It’s like in baseball – you need a sacrifice, you get one up in the air to bring something else home. We couldn’t afford to blow “Light My Fire”. The advantage of waiting was that we had a lot of help from radio.

KRIEGER: It should have been our first single, but because it was seven minutes they wouldn’t play it on the radio. There was this guy Dave Diamond, who had an FM station in LA, and he played the long version and noticed he got a lot of requests after playing it. He told us we should cut the middle out and get it on AM radio.

HARRIS: I spoke to a DJ, Murray The K. He was on an AM station at the time and had a problem because of the length of the song. So he cut it down himself. We started getting calls to release it as a single.

BOTNICK: The DJ did a slapdash edit, not as cool as the one Paul and I did. It took a while to figure it out, to make it still sound interesting and short enough for radio. It was Paul who really figured it out and then mechanically made the edit.

DENSMORE: By the time we got round to releasing an edited version of it as a single, I knew it was a hit, so I wanted it cut. Although the cut took the balls out of it.

KRIEGER: It was a pretty obvious edit, you just had to cut out all the good stuff. It was a little painful, but we knew we had to do it.

HARRIS: You could tell a hip station from a square station as to whether they played the long or short version. Later on, even the AM stations played the longer version.

HOLZMAN: The single had an electronic trick. Dolby Noise Reduction was a system that provided a kind of compression that when played through Dolby revolving apparatus would have greater dynamic rungs, with the hiss level pushed below. We encoded that in the master and never decoded it, so it sounded great on radio.

BOTNICK: It had a great hook, “Come on baby light my fire”, it was a love song, it had great melody and it was a great radio song – lots of ladies loved it.

HOLZMAN: I always treated the single as something that would expand the reach of the album, a calling card. We picked songs that represented something close to the essence of the album.

FIELDS: I got a call asking if I’d like to work for Elektra as head of publicity. They said I was the first person outside the record company to say “Light My Fire” would be a hit. So it was a career single for me as well. I was able to style myself as an A&R guy as well as a publicity guy, and that meant I was able to see the MC5 and the Psychedelic Stooges on one weekend and get them signed by Monday.

HOLZMAN: He had great instincts that I learnt to trust. The signing of the Stooges was something nobody wanted except him, and I trusted him.

HARRIS: There was a term, company freaks. Each company had a person who was in touch with the underground and Danny was our company freak.

HOLZMAN: Out it went and it caught. We had the West Coast, then it moved ever so slowly over 10 weeks to the East Coast. The record did everything we hoped, it broke The Doors wide open. The LP sold 10,000 the first two months, 15,000 the third month and 250,000 the fourth month.

KRIEGER: It took the album to a new level. Elektra was not a powerful label. We had to work it.

‘WHEN I HEARD IT WAS #1, MY WATCH STOPPED’

HARRIS: It was Elektra’s first No 1. We found out in Chicago when we were in a meeting with distributors. I called Jim, and Jim said, “How come it took so long?”

DENSMORE: When I first heard it had reached No 1, I felt very proud.

HOLZMAN: The moment I heard, my watch stopped. I think it was some kind of cosmic attention, maybe the great beard was saying, “Look what I’ve done for you.” The next day I went out and bought a very expensive watch as I could now afford it.

HARRIS: The big thing when it was released was The Ed Sullivan Show. They said they wouldn’t have them on the show unless they left out the line “Girl we couldn’t get much higher”, because they thought it was a drug lyric. Robby said, “Don’t they know you can get high on love?” I said, “I guess they don’t.”

KRIEGER: I couldn’t believe it, I thought it was the stupidest thing. Was it a drug reference? It could have been, but that’s another thing Jim told me – he said when you write a song, make it so people can interpret it any way they want. So “higher” could mean five different things. One guy came to me and said he knew what “Light My Fire” was about, it was the fire in the third eye. He was into meditation. I said he was right, I liked that interpretation.

FIELDS: They felt if Americans heard the word “higher” they’d associate it with marijuana. People might hear the song and indulge in sex, drugs and whatnot. People were already getting high and getting laid in America in 1967, with or without The Doors.

HARRIS: Jim agreed to change it. Sullivan’s son-in-law Bob Precht was producer and he made Jim promise. So Jim promised.

FIELDS: Jim kept the line in. I remember watching on TV and thinking, ‘My God, he’s said it.’ I think he tried to tear the set down as well. He was expressing his anger at being told what to do.

DENSMORE: Jim did whatever he wanted.

KRIEGER: In the movie, they show Jim clearly enunciating “get much higher”, but he just sang it normally. I don’t think he was paying attention.

HOLZMAN: The Ed Sullivan thing didn’t bother anyone but Ed Sullivan. It meant we wouldn’t get back on the show, but we’d already been on it. Great fun. The son-in-law came in and screamed at them.

HARRIS: Precht was shouting, “They promised me, they promised me!” He came to the dressing room and said to The Doors, “You’ll never play the Sullivan show.” Jim said, “We just did.”

FIELDS: His songwriting persona was certainly dangerous, it gave him that notoriety. Jim was one of the greatest performers ever, but one of the greatest assholes, too. Robby said to me once he had nightmares that Jim wasn’t dead. That’s an indication he was not a fun guy to be in a co-operative organisation with.

HOLZMAN: The Doors were never lovable but they were desirable.

FIELDS: There were consequences. Everything about that song was consequential; it was more than a song, it was a cultural and civilisational event.

KRIEGER: To mark the 50th anniversary of it getting to No 1, I’ve been asked to throw the first pitch at the Dodgers and they’re going to play “Light My Fire”. It’s just a good song, man.

FACT FILE:

Written by Jim Morrison, Robby Krieger, John Densmore, Ray Manzarek
Produced by Paul A Rothchild
Performers Jim Morrison (vocals), Robby Krieger (guitar), John Densmore (drums), Ray Manzarek (keyboard), Larry Knechtel (bass)
Recorded at Sunset Sound Recorders, Hollywood, California
Released April 24, 1967
Chart peak US 1; UK 49

TIMELINE:

Spring 1966 After Jim Morrison suggests other members start writing songs, Robby Krieger comes up with ‘Light My Fire’, the first song he’s written for The Doors.
August ’66 The original seven-minute album version is recorded in Hollywood and released in January 1967 on the self-titled debut. ‘Light My Fire’ starts to attract radio interest but is too long to be played on AM radio.
Feb/March ’67 The Doors agree to release a shorter version as a single. Released in April ’67, this rises to No 1 by the end of July and is certified gold by September.
September ’67 The Doors perform ‘Light My Fire’ on The Ed Sullivan Show, with Jim Morrison provoking a minor scandal when he refuses to change the line “Girl, we couldn’t get much higher” to something less druggy.