{"id":10308,"date":"2026-04-17T15:07:46","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T15:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/the-ladies-all-loved-it-the-making-of-light-my-fire-by-the-doors-154094\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T15:07:46","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T15:07:46","slug":"the-ladies-all-loved-it-the-making-of-light-my-fire-by-the-doors-154094","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/the-ladies-all-loved-it-the-making-of-light-my-fire-by-the-doors-154094\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe ladies all loved it\u201d \u2013 The making of \u201cLight My Fire\u201d, by the Doors"},"content":{"rendered":"
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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. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Original published in Uncut Take 245 (October 2017<\/em> issue)\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

Although \u201cLight My Fire\u201d 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. <\/p>\n

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. \u201cThe song trumpeted its own arrival,\u201d recalls Elektra founder Jac Holzman, who signed The Doors by persuading them his boutique label could give them the attention they felt they deserved. <\/p>\n

The success of \u201cLight My Fire\u201d turned The Doors into the biggest new act in America, and confirmed Elektra were the coolest label. It helped lead to Elektra\u2019s signing of the MC5 and the Stooges. Originally recorded as a seven-minute mini-epic, \u201cLight My Fire\u201d 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\u2019 self-titled debut album in January 1967. <\/p>\n

However, while FM station DJs would happily play the longer version to their savvy rock audience, the AM stations \u2013 the ones that could make or break a hit \u2013 simply couldn\u2019t 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 \u201cBreak On Through\u201d, the band agreed to release a shorter version of \u201cLight My Fire\u201d. <\/p>\n

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. \u201cWhen I think about the song, I always think of the long version,\u201d says Krieger today. \u201cAfter it started to do well, they began playing the long version on AM. Then \u2018Like A Rolling Stone\u2019 came out and the three-minute precedent was broken.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"Light<\/figure>\n

Key Players: <\/strong><\/p>\n

Robby Krieger (guitarist)<\/p>\n

John Densmore (drummer)<\/p>\n

Jac Holzman (head of Elektra)<\/p>\n

Danny Fields (press agent and \u2018company freak\u2019)<\/p>\n

Bruce Botnick (engineer)<\/p>\n

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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

ROBBY KRIEGER:<\/strong> Jim was writing all the songs. We realised we didn\u2019t have enough for an album, so Jim said, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you write one, why should I do all the work?\u201d I said I\u2019d try and Jim said, \u201cWrite something universal, that won\u2019t go out of style next year.\u201d I thought of the elements and picked fire, as I always liked the Stones\u2019 \u201cPlay With Fire\u201d. That was the start of it.<\/p>\n

JOHN DENSMORE:<\/strong> I first heard \u201cLight My Fire\u201d at an early rehearsal. I liked it immediately. I didn\u2019t 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!<\/p>\n

KRIEGER:<\/strong> I only had one verse, so Jim came up with the second with the \u201cfuneral pyre\u201d. I said, \u201cJim, do you always have to think about death?\u201d It always got the best response at every concert. It started off at four minutes and kept getting longer.<\/p>\n

JAC HOLZMAN:<\/strong> 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\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n

DENSMORE:<\/strong> We did the recording in two takes, both real good. Larry Knechtel\u2019s bass was overdubbed.<\/p>\n

HOLZMAN:<\/strong> Things were worked out in \u201cLight My Fire\u201d. 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.<\/p>\n

KRIEGER:<\/strong> At first I didn\u2019t have Ray\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

BOTNICK:<\/strong> Paul realised they were a performance act and they didn\u2019t need to be manufactured in the studio, they needed to be captured. We took a few liberties \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

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\u201cthe only problem in the session came when jim was on acid and went to church and had an epiphany.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

DANNY FIELDS:<\/strong> I heard about The Doors from the superfans at Max\u2019s who were excited about having seen this band with an extremely sexy lead singer. There was a buzz. Then a friend\u2019s band were playing Whisky\u2019s 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\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n

STEVE HARRIS:<\/strong> When \u201cBreak On Through\u201d didn\u2019t make it, we were searching for another single. I met this kid in a club. He said he walked three miles to his girlfriend\u2019s house every night to hear one cut on the record. I said, \u201cWhat\u2019s the song?\u201d He said, \u201cLight My Fire\u201d.<\/p>\n

HOLZMAN:<\/strong> \u201cBreak On Through\u201d sounded like a single but we didn\u2019t think we\u2019d bring the first Doors single home. It\u2019s like in baseball \u2013 you need a sacrifice, you get one up in the air to bring something else home. We couldn\u2019t afford to blow \u201cLight My Fire\u201d. The advantage of waiting was that we had a lot of help from radio.<\/p>\n

KRIEGER:<\/strong> It should have been our first single, but because it was seven minutes they wouldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

HARRIS:<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

BOTNICK:<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

DENSMORE:<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

KRIEGER:<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

HARRIS:<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

HOLZMAN:<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

BOTNICK:<\/strong> It had a great hook, \u201cCome on baby light my fire\u201d, it was a love song, it had great melody and it was a great radio song \u2013 lots of ladies loved it.<\/p>\n

HOLZMAN:<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

FIELDS:<\/strong> I got a call asking if I\u2019d like to work for Elektra as head of publicity. They said I was the first person outside the record company to say \u201cLight My Fire\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

HOLZMAN:<\/strong> He had great instincts that I learnt to trust. The signing of the Stooges was something nobody wanted except him, and I trusted him.<\/p>\n

HARRIS:<\/strong> There was a term, company freaks. Each company had a person who was in touch with the underground and Danny was our company freak.<\/p>\n

HOLZMAN:<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

KRIEGER:<\/strong> It took the album to a new level. Elektra was not a powerful label. We had to work it.<\/p>\n

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\u2018WHEN I HEARD IT WAS #1, MY WATCH STOPPED\u2019<\/strong><\/h1>\n<\/blockquote>\n

HARRIS:<\/strong> It was Elektra\u2019s first No 1. We found out in Chicago when we were in a meeting with distributors. I called Jim, and Jim said, \u201cHow come it took so long?\u201d<\/p>\n

DENSMORE:<\/strong> When I first heard it had reached No 1, I felt very proud.<\/p>\n

HOLZMAN:<\/strong> The moment I heard, my watch stopped. I think it was some kind of cosmic attention, maybe the great beard was saying, \u201cLook what I\u2019ve done for you.\u201d The next day I went out and bought a very expensive watch as I could now afford it.<\/p>\n

HARRIS:<\/strong> The big thing when it was released was The Ed Sullivan Show. They said they wouldn\u2019t have them on the show unless they left out the line \u201cGirl we couldn\u2019t get much higher\u201d, because they thought it was a drug lyric. Robby said, \u201cDon\u2019t they know you can get high on love?\u201d I said, \u201cI guess they don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

KRIEGER:<\/strong> I couldn\u2019t believe it, I thought it was the stupidest thing. Was it a drug reference? It could have been, but that\u2019s another thing Jim told me \u2013 he said when you write a song, make it so people can interpret it any way they want. So \u201chigher\u201d could mean five different things. One guy came to me and said he knew what \u201cLight My Fire\u201d was about, it was the fire in the third eye. He was into meditation. I said he was right, I liked that interpretation.<\/p>\n

FIELDS:<\/strong> They felt if Americans heard the word \u201chigher\u201d they\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n

HARRIS:<\/strong> Jim agreed to change it. Sullivan\u2019s son-in-law Bob Precht was producer and he made Jim promise. So Jim promised.<\/p>\n

FIELDS:<\/strong> Jim kept the line in. I remember watching on TV and thinking, \u2018My God, he\u2019s said it.\u2019 I think he tried to tear the set down as well. He was expressing his anger at being told what to do.<\/p>\n

DENSMORE:<\/strong> Jim did whatever he wanted.<\/p>\n

KRIEGER:<\/strong> In the movie, they show Jim clearly enunciating \u201cget much higher\u201d, but he just sang it normally. I don\u2019t think he was paying attention.<\/p>\n

HOLZMAN:<\/strong> The Ed Sullivan thing didn\u2019t bother anyone but Ed Sullivan. It meant we wouldn\u2019t get back on the show, but we\u2019d already been on it. Great fun. The son-in-law came in and screamed at them.<\/p>\n

HARRIS:<\/strong> Precht was shouting, \u201cThey promised me, they promised me!\u201d He came to the dressing room and said to The Doors, \u201cYou\u2019ll never play the Sullivan show.\u201d Jim said, \u201cWe just did.\u201d<\/p>\n

FIELDS:<\/strong> 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\u2019t dead. That\u2019s an indication he was not a fun guy to be in a co-operative organisation with.<\/p>\n

HOLZMAN:<\/strong> The Doors were never lovable but they were desirable.<\/p>\n

FIELDS:<\/strong> There were consequences. Everything about that song was consequential; it was more than a song, it was a cultural and civilisational event.<\/p>\n

KRIEGER:<\/strong> To mark the 50th anniversary of it getting to No 1, I\u2019ve been asked to throw the first pitch at the Dodgers and they\u2019re going to play \u201cLight My Fire\u201d. It\u2019s just a good song, man.<\/p>\n

FACT FILE:<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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<\/p>\n

TIMELINE:<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Spring 1966<\/strong> After Jim Morrison suggests other members start writing songs, Robby Krieger comes up with \u2018Light My Fire\u2019, the first song he\u2019s written for The Doors.
August \u201966<\/strong> The original seven-minute album version is recorded in Hollywood and released in January 1967 on the self-titled debut. \u2018Light My Fire\u2019 starts to attract radio interest but is too long to be played on AM radio.
Feb\/March \u201967<\/strong> The Doors agree to release a shorter version as a single. Released in April \u201967, this rises to No 1 by the end of July and is certified gold by September.
September \u201967<\/strong> The Doors perform \u2018Light My Fire\u2019 on The Ed Sullivan Show, with Jim Morrison provoking a minor scandal when he refuses to change the line \u201cGirl, we couldn\u2019t get much higher\u201d to something less druggy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post \u201cThe ladies all loved it\u201d \u2013 The making of \u201cLight My Fire\u201d, by the Doors<\/a> appeared first on UNCUT<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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