{"id":8752,"date":"2026-02-12T12:22:49","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T12:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/the-making-of-the-doors-riders-on-the-storm-4035\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T12:22:49","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T12:22:49","slug":"the-making-of-the-doors-riders-on-the-storm-4035","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/the-making-of-the-doors-riders-on-the-storm-4035\/","title":{"rendered":"The story behind The Doors\u2019 Riders On The Storm: \u201cA whisper fading away into eternity\u2026\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

Originally published in Uncut Take 117 [February 2007 issue<\/strong>] \u2013 Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore<\/strong> reveal how they created the epic closer to their final studio album, LA Woman, which would prove to be Jim Morrison\u2019s haunted, spiritual swansong<\/strong>…<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Originally published in Uncut Take 117 [February 2007 issue<\/strong>] \u2013 Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore<\/strong> reveal how they created the epic closer to their final studio album, LA Woman, which would prove to be Jim Morrison\u2019s haunted, spiritual swansong<\/strong>\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

By the time The Doors came to make their sixth and final studio album, LA Woman, they were close to collapse. Their tour at the end of 1970 had been disastrous. Jim Morrison was charged with indecent exposure in Miami in September, then apparently suffered a breakdown at the band\u2019s last ever show in New Orleans. But LA Woman was the LP that pulled them back from the brink, breaking new ground with its mesmerising seven-minute epic, \u201cRiders On The Storm\u201d. The final track on the final Doors album, its irrepressibly maudlin lyric would serve as their singer\u2019s sultry, rain-washed epitaph.<\/p>\n

The LA Woman sessions began badly in November 1970. The band fell out with their long-term producer, Paul Rothchild, who quit two weeks in, unwilling to go another six rounds with an increasingly drunken, unpredictable singer. The Doors then elected to produce the album themselves, with help from regular engineer Bruce Botnick. The decision to record in their own two-storey workshop rather than a hired studio also re-energised the band, and they wrapped the entire LP in five days. They began mixing the following March but, even before completion, Morrison had re-located to Paris. LA Woman was released in June and it quelled any doubts that The Doors were a spent force.<\/p>\n

In the weeks before Morrison died on July 3, 1971, he intimated to John Densmore that he would soon be ready to record again. As it was, released shortly after the singer\u2019s death, \u201cRiders On The Storm\u201d would become his haunted, mesmerising swansong.<\/p>\n

Today, Densmore is pragmatic about what might have been: \u201cEither Jim would be a drunk playing blues in a club, or a vibrant, creative artist, clean and sober like Eric Clapton.\u201d<\/p>\n

___________________<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ray Manzarek (keyboards):<\/strong> \u201cRobby and Jim were playing, jamming something out of \u2018Ghost Riders In The Sky\u2019. I proposed the bassline and piano part; the jazzy style was my idea. Jim already had the story about a killer hitchhiker on the road. Serial killers are all the rage now, but in America they go back to Billy The Kid. In essence, it was a very filmic song about a serial killer \u2013 way ahead of his time in 1970. Interestingly, Jim was pulled in two directions \u2013 he didn\u2019t want to complete the song just about a killer hitchhiker. The last verse: \u2018Your world on him depends\/Our life will never end\/You gotta love your man<\/em>.\u2019 It becomes a very spiritual song; you won\u2019t still occupy this body, but the essential life will never end, and love is the answer to all things. It gives the song a different perspective.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the last song recorded by The Doors and the whisper voice is the last singing that Jim ever did in the studio, in the background on the ride out. How prophetic is that? A whisper fading away into eternity, where he is now. Viewing it from the outside, you can put a neat little bow on it and see it as our last performance, but for us we were just playing our butts off. Fast, hard and rocking, but cool and dark, too. Every Doors song has its own spirituality, its own existential moment. Jim had a great mind and when we were starting out, he said that in that year we had a great visitation of energy and that year for us lasted from 1966 until 1971. I love the sound of The Doors \u2013 I can become an outsider now and think to myself, that is one tight motherfucking band.\u201d<\/p>\n

___________________<\/strong><\/p>\n

Robby Krieger (guitars):<\/strong> \u201cWe were playing \u2018Ghost Riders In The Sky\u2019 and Jim was fooling around and came up with \u2018Ghost Riders On The Storm\u2019. When we recorded it, Jerry Scheff, the bass player, just played what Ray was playing with his left hand and that\u2019s why it\u2019s so distinctive. It\u2019s not something a bass player would come up with \u2013 it has more of a jazzy melody to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs normal, we played the songs to Paul Rothchild and he just didn\u2019t dig it. He was bored and said, \u2018\u201cRiders On The Storm\u201d was like cocktail music.\u2019 I didn\u2019t know what to make of that. He\u2019d just made an LP with Janis Joplin [Pearl], and possibly he thought The Doors were going downhill and there were better pastures for him. It was a shock and, at first, it was suggested that I produce the record, but then we decided that we would all produce it with Bruce.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe adapted our rehearsal room, bringing in a portable board, a kind of forerunner of today\u2019s ProTools set-up. We were comfortable there, plus there were two titty bars next door. It was the fastest time we recorded anything after the first album, all recorded live between the four of us, very few takes, Jim in the bathroom, with the door off. Not stoned, not drunk. Unless he was drunk, he was great to work with. Jim\u2019s concentration level was low, but he was focused the whole time. After the first album, Paul Rothchild had said, \u2018Boys, we better record as much as we can \u2019cause Jim ain\u2019t gonna be around for too much longer.\u2019 I always thought Jim would last forever. He was indestructible. He wasn\u2019t saying Jim was going to die, but maybe go off and live in Africa or somewhere. You didn\u2019t always know what Jim was going to do the next day so, as a group, we did everything for the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

___________________<\/strong><\/p>\n

John Densmore (drums):<\/strong> \u201cJim always had notebooks of writings and poems to draw from and would just pull lyrics out from these. Jim had made the film, HWY, that was a road movie and he played the hitch-hiker who killed the guy that gave him a ride. It was out there, experimental. He called his friend, the poet Michael McClure, and pretended that he had actually committed a murder just to get a reaction. I\u2019m not aware it was based on a true story, but Jim was a voracious reader as well as having a wild imagination.<\/p>\n

\u201cPaul Rothchild taught us how to make records, but he could be quite dictatorial. He thought \u2018Riders On The Storm\u2019 sounded like cocktail jazz, but he didn\u2019t really listen to the darker underbelly of the song \u2013 only the lighter lounge feel. His quitting depressed us at first, but we rallied round. Paul suffered desperately as a result of Jim\u2019s descent into self-destruction. He had a difficult time pulling vocals out of Jim from The Soft Parade onwards. But when we were doing LA Woman, Jim got empowered by the responsibility of making the record ourselves. He had to pull the vocals out of himself \u2013 that was the difference. After we\u2019d finished \u2018Riders On The Storm\u2019, I had this idea, which I suggested to Bruce Botnick, that Jim went back in and did another vocal that was just whispered, and it\u2019s really subliminal. Unless you know it\u2019s there, you don\u2019t hear it.<\/p>\n

\u201cJim would sometimes go too far, but this time he was able to keep his problems and his alcoholism out of the studio. When we were doing concerts, Jim found it very difficult dealing with the adulation and being worshipped. He was always very hard on himself and would go over the edge. On stage, he was very volatile. It took a long while for the Miami hysteria to die down before we could think about playing live shows again, but it was a mistake to play those final few shows at the end of that year. New Orleans was a sad end but a relief. After he left for Paris, we didn\u2019t know what we were going to do or what he was going to do. He talked about returning, but his heart was always searching.\u201d<\/p>\n

___________________<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bruce Botnick (engineer):<\/strong> \u201cPaul Rothchild felt that he was responsible for The Doors being The Doors and that he had to keep it up to a certain level and to control it, because the guys couldn\u2019t do this for themselves. Once we had taken it in, we were all thrilled Paul had taken a powder so we could create something without anybody telling us what to do. Afterwards, Paul said: \u2018You did a great job, but I wouldn\u2019t have done it that way \u2013 there were a lot of things I would have done differently.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to remember the exact chronology \u2013 unfortunately a lot of the tape boxes and outtakes were destroyed \u2013 but \u2018Riders On The Storm\u2019, like everything else, took only two or three takes and, as an afterthought, we recorded Jim\u2019s whispered vocal. We all thought of the idea for the sound effects and Jim was the one who first said it out loud: \u2018Wouldn\u2019t it be cool to add rain and thunder?\u2019 I used the Elektra sound effects recordings and, as we were mixing, I just pressed the button. Serendipity worked so that all the thunder came in at all the right places. It took you somewhere. It was like a mini movie in our heads.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post The story behind The Doors\u2019 Riders On The Storm: \u201cA whisper fading away into eternity\u2026\u201d<\/a> appeared first on UNCUT<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published in Uncut Take 117 [February 2007 issue] \u2013 Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore reveal how they created the epic closer to their final studio album, LA…<\/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-8752","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\/8752","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=8752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}