{"id":10310,"date":"2026-04-17T15:08:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T15:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/the-doors-10-greatest-songs-as-chosen-by-the-band-154098\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T15:08:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T15:08:31","slug":"the-doors-10-greatest-songs-as-chosen-by-the-band-154098","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/the-doors-10-greatest-songs-as-chosen-by-the-band-154098\/","title":{"rendered":"The Doors 10 greatest songs, as chosen by the band"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div class=\"post-preview\">\n<p><strong><em>Originally published in Uncut Take <em>339<\/em> (June 2025<\/em><\/strong> <strong><em>issue)&#8230;<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"post-content google-ld-json\">\n<div class=\"editable-content\">\n<p><strong><em>Originally published in Uncut Take <em>339<\/em> (June 2025<\/em><\/strong> <strong><em>issue)\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As John Densmore scrutinises the list of Doors songs Uncut has asked him to talk about to mark the band\u2019s 60th anniversary, the drummer smiles at the variety of music they produced in such a short time. \u201cThe Doors were an American melting pot,\u201d he says. \u201cRay Manzarek had blues and classical, Robby Krieger was flamenco, I brought the jazz; then we had Jim\u2019s literary and cinematic approach. We made a delicious gumbo from all these diverse ingredients.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Their music is indeed a rich stew, from baroque pop to heavy rock and epic psychodramas like \u201cThe End\u201d and \u201cWhen The Music\u2019s Over\u201d. The band recorded six albums on Jac Holzman\u2019s Elektra label during a tumultuous period that ended with Morrison\u2019s death in July 1971. We are speaking just days after another loss in The Doors\u2019 extended family: Val Kilmer, who gave such a memorable performance as Morrison in Oliver Stone\u2019s 1991 biopic. \u201cVal really did an amazing job,\u201d says Robby Krieger. \u201cHe did 90 percent of the vocals himself. It was like he became Jim Morrison that whole time \u2013 I was calling him Jim. He was such a cool guy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Krieger and Densmore are both still located in LA, where the band was formed in 1965 by Morrison and fellow UCLA film student Ray Manzarek. Both have been hit by the recent LA fires, with Densmore still waiting to return to his home \u2013 \u201cmy drum kit and gold records are all safe\u201d \u2013 and Krieger having lost the house in the Palisades where he wrote the band\u2019s first No 1 hit, \u201cLight My Fire\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The irony of the song title has not escaped him, but it hasn\u2019t stopped Krieger from celebrating the band\u2019s 60th birthday with a series of concerts at the Whisky A Go Go on Sunset Strip, where The Doors were the house band from May to August 1966. \u201cWe did the whole first album in order the other night,\u201d he says. \u201cThey filmed it. I\u2019m doing all the albums, one each month.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Densmore is due to join Krieger at the Whisky to play <em>LA Woman<\/em>. Beyond that, he continues to hold close the legacy of The Doors and their inner circle. Among the three albums he\u2019s working on, one has been recorded with Adam Holzman \u2013 son of Elektra Records founder Jac \u2013 who learned to play keyboards after watching Manzarek in the studio. Holzman went on to play with Miles Davis and he and Densmore have covered a series of songs by both Miles and The Doors.<\/p>\n<p>What would Morrison make of his bandmates\u2019 ongoing creativity? \u201cIt\u2019s hard to imagine what he\u2019d have been like, had he lived,\u201d says Krieger. \u201cMaybe he\u2019d have mellowed, become like the older Val Kilmer. Ray once joked that Jim wasn\u2019t really dead and that idea never went away. Because if there was anybody who could have pulled off a trick like that, it was Jim.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-light-my-fire\"><strong>LIGHT MY FIRE<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>(THE DOORS, 1967)<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"mbj1RFaoyLk\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>The first song written by Krieger, \u201cLight My Fire\u201d stayed at No 1 in the US for three weeks and introduced America to the sound of The Doors.<\/p>\n<p><strong>KRIEGER:<\/strong> We established ourselves in LA pretty quick. We got a gig at the London Fog on Sunset Strip and one day somebody saw us and booked us into the Whisky as the house band. When we recorded \u201cLight My Fire\u201d for Elektra in 1966, we only did two takes because we had been playing it every night at the Whisky and Ray had developed this great part over a period of months. That wasn\u2019t the intro at the time \u2013 it was in the middle of the song as a means of getting out of the solos and back into the verse \u2013 but our producer Paul Rothchild had the idea of making that the intro. We edited it, but eventually the DJs played the longer version on the radio.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DENSMORE:<\/strong> We were proud to break that three-minute barrier. That was terrific, as it removed those restraints. It\u2019s good to expand, it\u2019s good for the mind. As soon as Robby played the song, I knew it was a hit. I got goosebumps. This was before Ray\u2019s incredible Bach-like intro and the long jazz solos in the middle, when it was more like a little folk song. Robby wrote that version in his parents\u2019 house in the Palisades \u2013 that house just burnt down. <\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s Robby\u2019s song, but Ray showed straight away that we were different. I felt total simp\u00e1tico with Ray musically because his left hand was our bass. Ray played bass with his left hand and soloed with his right hand, and if he got a little excited the tempo would increase, and that\u2019s when I had to hold back those reins. We had auditioned a bass player or two but we just sounded like another white rock band trying to play the blues. The keyboard gave us room to improvise and a unique sound from the start.<\/p>\n<p><strong>BRUCE BOTNICK, (ENGINEER):<\/strong> I had been working with Love and then I met The Doors. I\u2019d never worked with a band that didn\u2019t have a bass player. Ray talked about being two people: Ray and Lefty, and Lefty was the left hand. Nobody had heard anything like that intro and it set the whole thing up. They were such an interesting band. Robby was one of the only guitar players I know who can play with his fingers; he didn\u2019t use a pick. Then there\u2019s John. John wasn\u2019t keeping time, he was playing the song, responding directly to Jim. Ray brings the blues with some classical influences. He was a very deep individual who knew more about world religion than anybody I ever met. He was full of facts but a master of confabulation, which is pretty much how he played. He takes the basics and then extrapolates.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-the-crystal-ship\"><strong>THE CRYSTAL SHIP<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>(THE DOORS, 1967)<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"rbulIrN4scs\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>The Doors tackled some dark and daring themes, but \u201cThe Crystal Ship\u201d highlighted Morrison\u2019s gift for exquisite love songs.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DENSMORE:<\/strong> This is an example of the incredibly gorgeous but very difficult melodies that Jim had in his head. He couldn\u2019t play an instrument, so he thought up melodies to help him remember the lyrics. I always viewed the words as percussive. Take a line like \u201cBreak on through to the other side\u201d \u2013 I wanted to play the drums to that beat. He was a natural songwriter who heard a concert in his head but didn\u2019t know how to get it out, so we accessed it for him. Nearly all our songs were written by Jim in that style, although Robby wrote quite a few \u2013 \u201cLight My Fire\u201d, \u201cTouch Me\u201d, \u201cLove Her Madly\u201d \u2013 more of the hits.<\/p>\n<p><strong>KRIEGER:<\/strong> We recorded the first two albums very quickly; it was only later things got more complicated. After The Doors came out, I remember listening to Sgt Pepper with Bruce. We were glued to the speakers because it was very cool, but we didn\u2019t think we had to copy that as we had our own thing going on. We were part of this whole West Coast thing with the San Francisco bands playing these longer songs, which was what the West Coast bands brought to the ring.<\/p>\n<p><strong>BOTNICK:<\/strong> This was a beautiful song by Jim, but you could always sense Jim\u2019s darker side. You saw the writing on the wall. I still meet people every day who are blown away by what he had to say. A lot of people spend money on shrinks, but Jim went to a bar with a beer and came back with a song.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-the-end\"><strong>THE END<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>(THE DOORS, 1967)<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"9pRGoSbYHQE\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Honed during live shows at the Whisky, \u201cThe End\u201d was the band\u2019s first great psychotropic epic, showing the West Coast could do nihilism just as well as The Velvet Underground.<\/p>\n<p><strong>KRIEGER:<\/strong> According to the movie, \u201cThe End\u201d got us kicked out the Whisky, but that\u2019s not how I remember it. When \u201cLight My Fire\u201d was a hit we simply became too big for the Whisky. But the other part of the movie was right \u2013 he did the Oedipal part the first time on stage at the Whisky. The night we recorded it, he was on a lot of acid. I remember sitting round the table at Sunset Sound and he was saying over and over, \u201cfuck the mother, kill the father, fuck the mother, kill the father\u201d. OK Jim, we get it. He could be an intense guy. He wasn\u2019t always like that, but he was like that more than most.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DENSMORE:<\/strong> Jim sang \u201cThe End\u201d to us a cappella. I thought it was a beautiful love song. Well! Over many months in clubs it kind of evolved into this dirge-like epic. The Oedipal section, he just sprang that on us one night at the Whisky and by the time we recorded it, we had nurtured it along. We always did \u201cThe End\u201d as an encore, which wiped everybody out. They left quietly, chewing on what they heard.<\/p>\n<p><strong>BOTNICK:<\/strong> If you look at The Doors in relation to the other bands at the time, nobody was doing anything like \u201cThe End\u201d. This was new. He was one of the few songwriters who was genuinely a poet, and when you look at the best Doors songs, they all celebrate that life experience.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-when-the-music-s-over\"><strong>WHEN THE MUSIC\u2019S OVER<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>(STRANGE DAYS, 1967)<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"nOJSmXSFCWk\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>The band\u2019s masterly second album ended with another psychedelic epic, with Morrison digging into foreboding themes from environmental awareness to loss of innocence \u2013 over expansive guitar and organ backing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>BOTNICK:<\/strong> I\u2019d been working with The Turtles and George Harrison had given them a mono reference copy of Sgt Pepper. I played that for the guys and they loved it. We had an eight-track and this permission to experiment. So when Robby did his solos for \u201cWhen The Music\u2019s Over\u201d, we overdubbed three guitars. We wanted to be creative because of Sgt Pepper, so I plugged Robby\u2019s guitar into the console and turned it up until the lights were glowing, giving it a fuzz. Jim came in the next day and sang. He was into psychedelics, and who knows what he saw? We were right across the street from a Catholic church and Jim would occasionally disappear over there and have an epiphany. Maybe some of that went into \u201cWhen The Music\u2019s Over\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><strong>KRIEGER:<\/strong> Jim had this song in his mind, the words and melody. I don\u2019t know exactly what it\u2019s about, other than it\u2019s one of the first rock songs about the planet and environmentalism. Ray started playing the bassline from the Herbie Hancock song, \u201cWatermelon Man\u201d, and we went from there. The night before we went to record it, I got a call from Jim. He was with Pam [Courson] and they were having a bad trip. He said they needed help. I went over, told them to put on some clothes and took them to Griffith Park to hang out by the fishpond until their mood improved. We went to the studio the next day and Jim didn\u2019t show, so we played \u201cWhen The Music\u2019s Over\u201d with Ray on guide vocals. Jim came in the next day and did the vocals in one take. He gave a great performance because he was a bit embarrassed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DENSMORE:<\/strong> I am very proud of that one. It\u2019s really tight. I had seen John Coltrane as a kid and watched what Elvin Jones did with the sax player \u2013 they had this conversation. So on \u201cWhen The Music\u2019s Over\u201d, as Jim was singing \u201cWhat have they done to the Earth, what have they done to our fair sister?\u201d, I started jabbing at the drums. I am crazy for that song and we played it really well live. We\u2019d open the show with it and the audience would be bludgeoned.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-love-street\"><strong>LOVE STREET<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>(WAITING FOR THE SUN, 1968)<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"vf7m-ogAW5A\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>A lighter moment from their third album, with Krieger\u2019s baroque guitar chords, a jazzy piano solo from Densmore and Morrison tipping a bemused nod to Laurel Canyon\u2019s hippie counterculture.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DENSMORE:<\/strong> Going into Waiting For The Sun, things were getting more difficult. We had used all our material on the first two records, which meant we had to write songs in the studio which is a very expensive way of doing things. Plus Jim was starting to drink more. I didn\u2019t know he had a disease, but I knew there was an elephant in the room. I wanted to get off the road but the records continued to be good. We had another big hit with \u201cHello, I Love You\u201d, which was also our first hit in the UK. One of my favourites from Waiting For The Sun is \u201cLove Street\u201d, which is kind of lamenting the Summer of Love and Laurel Canyon. Ray does a lovely solo and the melody is gorgeous. What can I say? I\u2019m just tooting our horn.<\/p>\n<p><strong>BOTNICK:<\/strong> Jim was inebriated a lot of the time, but he was a romantic. He loved women and \u201cLove Street\u201d is about that. Some of his love songs could be so teenage, like \u201cHello I Love You\u201d, and there was the more poetic psychological stuff, but when you take something like \u201cLove Street\u201d or \u201cThe Spy\u201d you hear that pure appreciation of the feminine form.<\/p>\n<p><strong>KRIEGER:<\/strong> Sunset Strip was hippie heaven, but \u201cLove Street\u201d was written about this place where Pam lived in Laurel Canyon. As it comes down from the hill to meet Sunset, halfway down there is a little shopping area, and that\u2019s where she lived. Recently they renamed one of the streets there Love Street. I loved doing this song. It was the first time I got to do major seventh chords, which I guess are kind of baroque.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-summer-s-almost-gone\"><strong>SUMMER\u2019S ALMOST GONE<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>(WAITING FOR THE SUN, 1968)<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"aRGm2JrsXAg\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Morrison laments the end of a love affair on one of the many songs on Waiting For The Sun imbued with a sense of loss.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DENSMORE:<\/strong> This is a bit of a fan favourite. It reminds me of sitting on the beach in Venice, California. We\u2019d look south towards LA airport to watch the planes taking off and think that one day that might be us. Around then, we came to the UK for the first time. We played the Roundhouse \u2013 \u201cthe psychedelic sound comes to London\u201d. Rumour has it that McCartney was there. We had equal billing with Jefferson Airplane and I remember the audience staring at us as if we came from Mars. But we could see the counterculture was international. I walked up and down Chelsea and it was like the Fillmore or the Strip: the same people, the same clothes. It felt like we were taking over.<\/p>\n<p><strong>KRIEGER:<\/strong> Jim wrote this after breaking up with one of his girlfriends. Pam was consistent, but others were coming and going. For this album we tried to record the epic poem, The Lizard King Trilogy [released as \u201cCelebration Of The Lizard\u201d on 1970\u2019s Absolutely Live]. Jim was obsessed with lizards, I don\u2019t know why. He wanted it to be almost the entire album, but that was just asking too much. So we put the poem on the inner sleeve instead.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-touch-me\"><strong>TOUCH ME<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>(THE SOFT PARADE, 1969)<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"8lVqEchxIxw\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Morrison\u2019s arrest on March 1, 1969 in Miami for indecency took the band off the road for months. But The Doors continued to make classic singles \u2013 including Krieger\u2019s beautiful \u201cTouch Me\u201d, one of the highlights from The Soft Parade, which introduced horns and strings to their sound.<\/p>\n<p><strong>KRIEGER:<\/strong> This is the album [where] we started to bring in different instruments. We got criticised, but I love some of the songs we did on that record with Paul Harris, who wrote the string and horn parts. I love especially \u201cTouch Me\u201d, there\u2019s some great stuff on that one. It was originally called \u201cHit Me\u201d, as I wrote it about a game of blackjack we were playing in Hawaii, but Jim really didn\u2019t like that idea \u2013 he thought people might actually come on stage and hit him \u2013 so he said we should change it. The Miami incident meant we couldn\u2019t get a gig, but that gave us plenty of time to record. I worried about Jim, but in those days it was \u201cdo your thing, man\u201d. This was the \u201960s, it wasn\u2019t cool to get in the way \u2013 although one day we did take him to my dad\u2019s house. He tried to talk Jim into seeing a shrink and Jim did actually try it, but I think he stopped because he felt he was smarter than the shrink, so why should he listen to him?<\/p>\n<p><strong>BOTNICK:<\/strong> Rolling Stone put Jim on the cover that photo of him like Jesus \u2013 and Jim saw it on the mixing desk in the studio and got a black Magic Marker and drew a big beard. We taped that over the glass. He was reacting against his fame. He just wanted to make the music. He was still a lot of fun, even if he didn\u2019t have a lot of songs. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we called it \u201cHit Me\u201d. It wouldn\u2019t have been a No 1 record, that\u2019s for sure. It was one of the band\u2019s great singles, and we were still in a Top 40 world where you needed a hook and a memorable lyric.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DENSMORE:<\/strong> That was another gift from Robby Krieger, and the arrangement was quite wonderful. We started recording the album just after the Miami incident. I don\u2019t know what to say. Jim did not expose himself, but he was drunk. It was a mess, basically. There was a \u201cRally For Decency\u201d with 30,000 people, the homophobe Anita Bryant gave a talk, Nixon sent a telegram of support and all our gigs were cancelled. But that was OK, because I was worried about Jim\u2019s drinking. I didn\u2019t mind that we were taking a break, and Jim was still writing great lyrics.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-wild-child\"><strong>WILD CHILD<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>(THE SOFT PARADE, 1969)<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"ctkoy-29Lkk\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Music and the cultural mood was getting heavier in 1969, which suited The Doors. Some of that rage and aggression went into \u201cWild Child\u201d, where the band dug deep without forgetting to swing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DENSMORE:<\/strong> This has really great lyrics by Jim about Pam. I found myself doing this Art Blakey roll, bringing in a different beat. It\u2019s a really strong song, with a lot of bottom. I think partly Jim was writing about the energy of the \u201960s and the energy of rock\u2019n\u2019roll: it\u2019s a human healing energy. America\u2019s greatest gift to the world. It\u2019s cathartic.<\/p>\n<p><strong>BOTNICK:<\/strong> \u201cWild Child\u201d was the very first song recorded at the new Elektra studio on the West Coast and if we had continued down that road for the rest of the album, it would have been a lot more like Morrison Hotel.<\/p>\n<p><strong>KRIEGER:<\/strong> That one let me use my slide guitar with this real fuzzy sound. Most of the other songs with the slide were like \u201cMoonlight Drive\u201d, a bit swoopy, but this was more rough and ready. Music was getting heavier, but we were always like that. When we played Isle Of Wight in 1970 it was dark, in more ways than one. Jim wouldn\u2019t let them turn the lights on because he wasn\u2019t happy with how he looked \u2013 he was quite overweight and had his beard. It was a very intense show. We always did quite a heavy show.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-peace-frog\"><strong>PEACE FROG<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>(MORRISON HOTEL, 1970)<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"6lnoM25D-js\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>A funky number with an outstanding psychedelic organ solo from Manzarek, \u201cPeace Frog\u201d was \u2013 like \u201cFive To One\u201d and \u201cThe Unknown Soldier\u201d \u2013 one of the more political songs written by the son of a US Navy Admiral.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DENSMORE:<\/strong> Robby had this little guitar riff and Ray and I were salivating when we heard it. But Jim had nothing. So we recorded it as an instrumental track with a bit of a James Brown influence. But you have to hand this one to Paul Rothchild: he asked for one of Jim\u2019s poetry journals and pulls out \u201c<em>Blood on the street in the town of Chicago<\/em>\u201d with this sort of sub-story about a woman with \u201c<em>sunlight in her hair<\/em>\u201c. He combined these two poems to create \u201cPeace Frog\u201d. The main lyric kind of emulates our own journey: New Haven, where Jim was busted; Venice, where we formed; Chicago, where Ray was from \u2013 like this flow of blood through our career. It\u2019s about that and it\u2019s about the civil unrest of the time.<\/p>\n<p><strong>BOTNICK:<\/strong> Things were getting darker at the end of the 1960s, but Jim was in better shape by Morrison Hotel. Being in the studio for an artist can be a very safe space. \u201cPeace Frog\u201d is a peculiar song. I have friends in the movie business who want to make movies about that whole time \u2013 1968 and 1969 \u2013 and this would be the ideal song. Jim was bringing his life experiences to historic events and putting them together in a way that made perfect sense.<\/p>\n<p><strong>KRIEGER:<\/strong> Paul found a poem that Jim wrote about an abortion one of his girlfriends had. We didn\u2019t want to call the song \u201cAbortion Stories\u201d, which was the name of the poem, so we called it \u201cPeace Frog\u201d. I never really thought of it as being about anything else. For bass, we used Ray Neopolitan. Ray was an unusual player and played the bass with a pick, so it\u2019s a very strange part, real kind of jumpy.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-riders-on-the-storm\"><strong>RIDERS ON THE STORM<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>(LA WOMAN, 1971)<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"7G2-FPlvY58\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>The last song Morrison ever recorded, the haunting \u201cRiders On The Storm\u201d featured sound effects of rain and thunder, bringing another new dimension to the band\u2019s sonic landscape. Released as a single shortly before Morrison\u2019s death, it demonstrated that the band still had plenty to offer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>BOTNICK:<\/strong> \u201cRiders\u2026\u201d was such a funny song. The famous story is Paul Rothchild calling it \u201ccocktail jazz\u201d \u2013 he might have had a point, as Ray in jazz mode was not as fluid as any of the great jazz pianists. Paul stood down and I became producer [for LA Woman], which was fine for the band. Jim wanted to add lightning and thunder and I\u2019d recorded a storm for an Elektra sound effects record. We added that. That was a magical thing, as it still gets played on the radio whenever it rains in LA. It really brings out the cinematic quality of the band and I wonder where they would have taken it if Jim had lived.<\/p>\n<p><strong>KRIEGER:<\/strong> You can\u2019t really talk about The Doors without \u201cRiders On The Storm\u201d. We\u2019d been jamming on the surf song \u201cGhost Riders\u201d and that does not sound like cocktail music, but Paul had recorded with Janis Joplin just before she died and he became really worried that Jim would be next. He didn\u2019t want to be known as the suicide producer, so he quit. That song always feels like a look at the possible future of The Doors. It came from a jam. Jim came up with the words on the spot and then we added the sound effects. I feel that is how we would have continued to write.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DENSMORE:<\/strong> This was probably the most organic evolution of any song we ever did. The feel of the song was jazzy and I got to nudge it that way purposefully to make it a little less of the to-and-fro of rock\u2019n\u2019roll. That came from the words, which always told me what to do. As soon as we finished, Jim went to France. I was hoping he would clean up his act, but I know that he\u2019s in Paris, where they have wine for breakfast. He didn\u2019t come back. But Jim was a shooting star, a quick flash with a big impact.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uncut.co.uk\/features\/the-doors-10-greatest-songs-as-chosen-by-the-band-154098\/\">The Doors 10 greatest songs, as chosen by the band<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uncut.co.uk\/\">UNCUT<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Originally published in Uncut Take 339 (June 2025 issue)&#8230; Originally published in Uncut Take 339 (June 2025 issue)\u2026 As John Densmore scrutinises the list of Doors songs Uncut has asked&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,35,903],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-interviews","category-the-doors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}