The Doors - The Story of LA Woman

-MUSIC: "The Movie"

-'The movie will begin in five moments

'The mindless voice announced

'All those unseated will await the next show...'

This programme contains some strong language.

LA Woman was like coming home

and it was simple and bluesy

and it was the bare bones, the essence of what we were about.

Rock'n'roll was supposed to be out of a garage.

-MUSIC: "The Changeling"

-# I'm a changeling, see me change...

The record has that feel to it -

it's almost like a jam, you know.

Uhh... It was probably the most fun album to make.

-MUSIC: "Love Her Madly"

-# Don't you love her face

# Don't you love her as she's walking out the door...

'1970. We had one last album to go and this could be our last album.'

We're gonna make the album in this Zen moment in time,

we didn't discuss the future, the end is always near.

-MUSIC: "Riders On The Storm"

-# Riders on the storm

# Riders on the storm...

This was the album that wrapped it all up in a neat bow

and presented The Doors' essence to you personally.

They found a unity that was what they needed to show their audience

that they still had what everyone originally loved them for.

Musically, I think it holds up. 40 years later, it's still fantastic.

-MUSIC: "LA Woman"

-# Well, I just got into town about an hour ago

# Took a look around, see which way the wind blow

# Where the little girls in their Hollywood bungalows?

# Are you a lucky little lady in the city of light?

# Or just another lost angel

# City of night

# City of night

# City of night

# City of night, whoo!...

I'm telling you that right now there's a 16, 17, 18-year-old kid

who's listening to The Doors for the first time

as a new band and is getting his or her mind blown.

-MUSIC: "Break On Through"

-# You know, the day destroys the night

# Night divides the day

# Try to run, try to hide

# Break on through to the other side

# Break on through to the other side

# Break on through to the other side, yeah...

We were a four-man band, like the jazz quartet of rock'n'roll.

-MUSIC: "Light My Fire"

-# Come on, baby, light my fire

# Come on, baby, light my fire

# Try to set the night on... fire...

The Doors sunk themselves very deeply

into the cultural history of not only rock'n'roll,

but of the United States.

They had established themselves in the American consciousness,

they had established themselves as special.

By the time we get to '69,

The Doors had achieved probably

continental notoriety.

-MUSIC: "The End"

-# Father?

# Yes, son

# I want to kill you...

We were the filthy, dirty Doors.

I don't think they sought notoriety, but it sure did come to them.

# Mother?...

After all, the name The Doors comes from Aldous Huxley's book

The Doors Of Perception.

And that comes from William Blake -

"If the doors of perception were cleansed,

"men would see things as they are" - dot, dot, dot - "infinite".

# Fuck you, Mama, all night long

# Beware, Mama, gonna love you, baby, all night, yeah...

There was an entire new culture being born.

It was called the counterculture,

but we thought it was the new culture to come,

the culture of the 21st century.

They were working on an intellectual and... lyrical level

that was higher than most other people.

They were, to me, right up there with the Beatles and Dylan.

Jim led with his poetry.

He didn't... He wasn't waving a flag and saying "Follow me".

He reached into your heart,

shook you and made you work out who you were and what mattered to you.

-MUSIC: "People Are Strange"

-# When you're strange

# Faces come out of the rain

# When you're strange

# No-one remembers your name

# When you're strange

# When you're strange

# When you're strange...

-MUSIC: "Hello, I Love You

-# Hello, I love you, won't you tell me your name

# Hello, I love you, let me jump in your game

# Hello, I love you, won't you tell me your name

# Hello, I love you, let me jump in your game...

We'd consider ourselves more a mirror of society.

We were just commenting on what was going on.

There were more things to explore, it was just beginning.

I thought "We've done three albums in the same setting,

"the same configuration - let's bring in

"the horns and the strings."

The idea of strings and horns was something Ray and I talked about

before we even made our first album, because we loved jazz.

It's something we wanted to

experiment with and go through.

-MUSIC: "Touch Me"

-# Come on, come on, come on, come on now, touch me babe

# Can't you see that I am not afraid

# What was that promise that you made?

# Why won't you tell me what she said?

# What was that promise that you made?...

They have hit records, records that people think are crap.

They've actually done... the lifetime of experience

compressed into less than four years.

'What they did, first on Morrison Hotel and then on LA Woman,

'was they went back to blues.'

-MUSIC: "Roadhouse Blues"

-# Keep your eyes on the road

# Your hand upon the wheel

# Keep your eyes on the road

# Your hand upon the wheel

# Yeah, we're going to the roadhouse, gonna have a real

# Good time...

They were a band appropriate to their times,

on the edge of what was happening,

and the edge is where you wanna be.

MUSIC: "The Changeling"

This is Changeling. This is the first song we recorded

and it turned out to be the first song on the album.

They come out with this kick-ass rocker called The Changeling

and the first thing you hear Jim Morrison say

is "Get loose".

OK! I'm ready to get loose! Let's see what you got!

# Get loose!

I think, in a way, it anticipates

his leaving - he's been through all this stuff.

What else can you do as the singer in a rock band?

# I live uptown

# I live downtown

# I live all around...

'He's talking about himself, that he's a changeling, in that song.'

He's just expressing what was gonna happen -

"You're gonna see me change."

# I had money

# I had none

# But I never been so broke that I couldn't leave

# Town

# I'm a changeling

# See me change

# I'm a changeling...

We had been shot down in the streets in Kent State,

Bobby Kennedy was dead, Martin Luther King was dead,

our great leaders of peace had been assassinated -

it was a terrible time.

The racial problems

in the United States were reaching a head

and in 1970, Cambodia was invaded - the same year

that LA Woman was made.

# Get loose...

Vietnam was, uh, really heating up,

we were trying to get out, there were riots in the streets,

a madness had swept across America.

Jim felt that

you change inside and then that'll change the world.

He was not much on overt politics, but we were in the cyclone.

The Changeling,

to me, represented all these things we'd been going through

for the last few years

and the changes in America and the fact that we were the changeling.

Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix died later in the year,

both of overdoses,

and, uh,

and Jim was overdosing, on his drug,

which was alcohol.

# But I never been so broke that I couldn't leave

# Town...

Morrison, he'd been arrested,

he'd been in court, he'd been crazy drunk,

he had all the women he could want,

he had been through all the things

that a young man looking to take over the world aspires to.

They were providing a kind of soundtrack

for, uh, not only the counterculture,

but for a... liberal consciousness

that was in the process of growing and that they were part of.

# Well, I'm the air you breathe

# Food you eat, friends you greet

# In the sullen street

# Ow!

# Ooh, wow!

# Uh! Ow!

# You gotta see me change!

# See me change

# Yeah, I'm leaving town

# On a midnight train

# Gonna see me change...

It leads the album off and what happens after the album is done?

He leaves town.

He wasn't so broke

that he had to stick around. He could leave everything behind him

and attempt to find a new life

in Paris or perhaps his death.

-MUSIC: "Been Down So Long"

-# Well, I've been down so goddamn long

# That it looks like up to me...

"Been down so long, it looks like up to me" - that's what he sings -

he was feeling the full effect of the American justice system

at a time when the American justice system had an axe to grind.

My whole life with The Doors, they were attacked by the Establishment.

The was a campaign to derail us.

# Yeah, why don't one you people

# Come on and set me free...

The Doors created terror in the hearts of America

because here was this whole generation of kids

that were saying "No, that's not OK with me, I have a life",

and there was no precedent for it.

Miami was definitely a turning point

in the career of The Doors.

What an insane night it was.

Hot and sweaty, 14,000 people,

waiting for the Lizard King to come to Miami.

'Jim is a Florida boy, he was coming home from California.'

You know, I was born here in this state. You know that?

I was born here in Melbourne, Florida, 1943.

Then I got smart.

Went out to a little city named Los Angeles.

And he could see it, not as a performer or a fan,

but almost as a... almost like a social scientist.

The phenomenon of this engagement,

of a rock band and an audience.

And "what can I do with that? How can I mess with that?"

You're all a bunch of fucking idiots!

AUDIENCE SCREAMS AND SHOUTS

You're all a bunch of slaves!

Let the people tell you what you're gonna do!

How much longer you gonna let 'em push you around?!

There are no rules.

There are no laws. Do whatever you wanna do. Do it!

And Jim finally said to them

"What do you want from us? We're a rock'n'roll band,

"we play good songs, but you want something more, don't you?"

"Yeah..."

You believed Jim would do whatever he talked about.

That was frightening to people.

'Then Jim Morrison goes on to say "How about if I show you my cock?"'

"Is that what you want?" And I'm going "Oh, my God,

"the guy is drunk, he's gonna expose himself,

"we are in some deep shit here, this is gonna be disastrous."

This was torturing me because I had found my path in life

and I loved music

and our singer was... had a pact with the devil.

They came looking for a riot and when they got one,

the biggest fallout was on him.

He got busted for indecent exposure,

public profanity, public drunkenness

and, my favourite - simulation of oral copulation.

First the concert and then the aftereffect and then the trial

weighed heavy on Jim's shoulders.

'He determined that he would turn it into a test case.'

What we're testing down there

is the issue of artistic freedom of expression.

He was found guilty on two counts, facing three years, perhaps less,

a year and a half, in Raiford.

Raiford Penitentiary.

Jim was a free spirit,

it was almost an insurmountable

assault on his consciousness to threaten him with that.

The tour was cancelled. We had a tour of 20 cities -

Miami was city number one.

We couldn't play anywhere. The hall owners' association had a meeting

and banned us from most of the major halls in the United States.

It almost killed the band and it probably killed Jim.

It completely destroyed

that thing an artist has when they know they're making a difference

and suddenly, he's on the defensive.

# Set me free!...

"Well, OK, we can't play. Let's just record."

I think going back into the studio was a way to get them refocused

because... when they were in the studio,

the reason they came together in the first place is obvious to them.

'We get together at The Doors' workshop on the corner

of La Cienega and Santa Monica.'

The first question is "Anybody got any songs?"

and Jim and Robby have a whole bunch, like they always did!

The Doors had been... in rehearsal

trying to get the new album together,

what was to become the LA Woman album.

I went to several rehearsals

and Jim especially was really bored.

Couldn't really get himself up for it.

'Paul was not happy and when he left, the band was not happy

'because he told them that he was not happy with what he had heard

'and, uh, he walked out of that session.'

I understand later that he convened the band and listened again.

We played extremely badly.

Riders On The Storm wasn't good.

Which Paul Rothchild thought sounded like cocktail music.

You couldn't get a good take of any kind of feel whatsoever.

I said "This album is going to be a disaster."

One moment, I just got up, went into the studio

and said "Hey, listen, I'm bored."

First time I've been in the studio and had my head on the console.

And I told them "I love you guys and I love the music,

"but it seems you're not turning me on and I'm not turning you on."

Paul went home, we all just stood around in shock.

So we decided "Hey, we'll do it ourselves,

"we know how to make records by now, we've done five of 'em."

"We got Bruce Botnik, who's probably the best engineer in town."

Jim then says "Do we have to record here? I don't wanna record here."

I said "What about your rehearsal studio? Would that work?

"Are you comfortable there?" He said "We love it there."

It was the room we had rehearsed in for ever.

Our music was seeped into the walls

and so it was very comfortable, it was home.

They were cooking, working together, in the pocket all the time,

they liked each other,

they were getting along with each other,

they just seemed happy.

When they were playing downstairs and this stuff was just crackling,

it was amazing to me, I was really excited about the new music.

We just did it like a garage-band record.

Now, that was brilliant. And it worked exquisitely.

MUSIC: "Crawling King Snake"

# Well, I'm the Crawling King Snake

# And I rule my den

# Well, I'm the Crawling King Snake

# And I rule my den

# Oh, give me what I want

# Ain't gonna crawl no more...

'We always loved to do Crawling King Snake,

'it was one of our favourite John Lee Hooker songs.'

I think we meant to do it years before and never got around to it

and it being more of a bluesy album, it was the perfect time for it.

# Yeah, don't mess round with my mate

# Gonna love her

# Myself...

That blues element of The Doors

kept them somewhat grounded, yet they were able to turn it

into an other-wordly event,

so Crawling King Snake was a call back to that roots that they loved.

Jim thought of himself as an old blues man -

he was a big fan of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and those blues guys -

he loved the truth in the songs

and the rawness of it and he related to it

and if he had had a choice, he would've done that all the time.

# Crawl

# Come on, crawl

# Get on out there on your hands and knees, yeah

# Crawl all over me

# Just like the spider on the wall

# Yeah, crawl...

Crawling King Snake is a wonderful costume for Jim to wear.

He's playing a part,

he thinks, but he is also the part.

Invariably, Robby Krieger would have something - a genius.

The Doors' secret weapon. He would always have something.

And he'd say "I got one, it's called Love Her Madly."

Like Duke Ellington would always say at the end of a concert,

"We love you madly."

Robby twists it to make Love Her Madly, plays it on the guitar...

HE PLAYS "Love Her Madly

# Don't you love her madly

# Don't you need her badly

# Don't you love her way

# Tell me what you say

# Don't you love her madly

# Wanna be her daddy

# Don't you love her as she's walking out the door #

I knew that Love Her Madly, when it happened, was a hit.

I just knew it. We all knew it.

MUSIC: "Love Her Madly"

I was fooling around on a 12-string guitar and the melody came to me.

'My girlfriend, who became my wife, Lynn -

'every time we had an argument, she used to go out the door

'and she'd slam it so loud, the house would shake.'

That's where I got the line "Walking out the door".

A Minor. HE PLAYS CHORDS

Tempo's like this.

And... I've got it.

'And then Jim starts to sing...'

# Don't you love her madly

# Don't you need her badly...

Robby, uh, again,

underestimated, not only as a guitar player, but as a songwriter.

Look at all the hits he wrote - Light My Fire, Love Her Madly,

Love Me Two Times, Tell All The People...

# Don't you love her face

# Don't you love her as she's walking out the door

# Like she did one thousand times before

# Don't you love her ways

# Tell me what you say

# Don't you love her as she's walking out the door...

Don't you love her madly as she's walking out the door -

what a great line! Of course you do!

"I don't want to see you again! We're done! Oh, wait a minute..."

I hear "Oh, God, I can put the Vox Continental in here!"

HE PLAYS VOX CONTINENTAL ORGAN

# Seven horses seem to be on the...

# Mark

HE PLAYS ORGAN SOLO

# Yeah, don't you love her

# Don't you love her as she's walking out the door...

The Doors' greatest strength as songwriters

is that they didn't think of themselves as individual writers

coming in with their bit,

they thought of themselves as a songwriting band.

I thought it was, uh, a little too commercial,

you know, for the first single.

There was a special advantage to my not being at the sessions -

I got my own first-blush reactions to things

and when the hair stands up at the back of my neck on a song,

that's one I pay attention to, and it happened for Love Her Madly.

That was the first time we'd tried playing with another guitar player,

with a rhythm-guitar player,

we wanted to feel live so we figured we'd get this guy Mark Benno

and he just played the perfect rhythm stuff,

which allowed me to go ahead and play my leads at the same time.

And Bruce Botnik brings in Jerry Scheff, Elvis Presley's bass player.

Jim just lit up like a... He was happy as a camper -

"Elvis Presley's bass player, with us?" I said "Yeah",

so I called Jerry and he said "I'd love to do it."

'He did some brilliant stuff - that bass line on LA Woman? Holy cow!'

HE PLAYS RISING CHORD

'LA Woman, in some respects, is film noir -

'rock'n'roll film noir.'

I remember going downtown LA when you just walked the streets

and it smelled like one of those old black-and-white film-noir movies.

'For me, a Los Angeles native,

'it's our anthem.'

What describes LA better than LA Woman? Answer - nothing.

The quintessential expression of what living in California was like.

Women took him in and fed him.

But women fed him in many ways, not only with food, but with support,

with sex, with emotion, with booze,

and he was thanking them in this song, but he was leaving them,

leaving the city he loved.

MUSIC: "LA Woman"

# Well, I just got into town about an hour ago

# Took a look around, see which way the wind blow

# Where the little girls in their Hollywood bungalows?

# Are you a lucky little lady in the city of light?

# Or just another lost angel

# City of night

# City of night

# City of night

# City of night, whoo! Come on!...

'"City of night" is a reference to John Rechy's LA homosexual novel,

'great novel, called City Of Night.'

So he's got his literary reference in there - another lost angel

in the city of night - wow.

The lyrics were so good and they were so... so Raymond Chandler,

so, uh, Nathanael West,

so 1930s, '40s,

dark, seamy side of Los Angeles,

a place where Jim would easily go.

# LA woman

# LA woman

# LA woman, Sunday afternoon

# LA woman, Sunday afternoon

# LA woman, Sunday afternoon

# Drive through your suburbs

# Into your blues

# Into your blues, yeah

# Into your blues, blues, blues...

Here we go with the raised piano solo.

PIANO SOLO

-HE FADES OUT ACCOMPANIMENT

-And this was an overdub.

It works perfectly with his Wurlitzer piano.

FADES INTO ORGAN SOLO

Al Kooper's band, Blood, Sweat & Tears,

play a song called Day In The Country - that's what I play.

HE PLAYS SOLO

HE FADES ACCOMPANIMENT BACK IN

'I think he liked that part of LA, that you could be a stranger in LA.'

You could hide behind the beard and get away with it.

# I see your hair is burning

# Hills are filled with fire...

"I see your hair is burning, hills are filled with fire" -

that's what poetry is - in a few words, you create this entire world.

This guy who... who had words -

they were so percussive, I immediately heard rhythms.

Here's John on drums, you hear what he's doing.

# ..I never loved...

DRUMS WITHOUT ACCOMPANIMENT

This is all on one track.

We had to decide in those days, it was recorded on eight-track.

HE PLAYS BASS AND DRUM TRACK

So we locked it in.

This is how they're locked together, John and Jerry Scheff.

Great player, great feel.

Drummers and bass players

are... brothers

in the basement, cooking up the groove.

'They're bonded.'

# Motel money, murder madness

# Change the mood from glad to sadness...

And then Morrison says the classic line - an anagram of his name -

Jim Morrison, play with the letters, turn them around,

and you come up with...

# Mr Mojo Risin...

# Mr Mojo Risin...

It was that quality of being stronger than everything around you

and of climbing up out of that -

Mr Mojo risin - it's a brilliant image.

And it comes from blues -

"I got my mojo workin'", Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon.

"Mojo" was a blues term for sexuality

and so I thought "Well,

"what if I slowly increase the tempo like an orgasm?"

-TEMPO GRADUALLY QUICKENS

-# Keep on risin'

# Ridin', ridin'

# Gone ridin', ridin'...

Listen to this scream from Jim.

(GUTTURAL) # I gotta ridin', ridin'

# Yeah, ridin', ridin'

# I gotta whoo! Yeah! Ridin'!

# Oh!

# Yeah...

He was obviously having fun, enjoying himself.

Yeah! The energy level in the room went from here to... whoa!

Overhead... We were operating up here.

Energy is up here. Doors operated up there, the four of us, quite a lot.

The song LA Woman was totally put together in the studio,

just from sitting around jamming,

you know... So I always say that's the quintessential Doors song

because of the way we wrote it.

Here comes Robby's solo.

HE PLAYS SOLO

HE BRINGS ACCOMPANIMENT BACK IN

You need to be

in a car... with that on 10

and screaming down the freeway,

in Los Angeles, listening to LA Woman - you'll get that song.

# LA woman

# LA woman

# You're my woman

# Oh, little LA woman...

'LA Woman, you know,

'the metaphor of the city as a woman is brilliant.'

"Cops in cars", "Never saw a woman so alone" -

this is just great stuff.

It's metaphoric, he's looking at the physicality of the town

and thinking of "her"

and, uh... we need to take care of her.

It's my hometown.

So let's nurture the LA Woman.

MUSIC: "The Wasp (Texas Radio And The Big Beat)"

I wanna tell you about Texas Radio and the Big Beat.

It comes out of the Virginia swamps, cool and slow,

with a backbeat, narrow and hard to master.

Some call it heavenly in its brilliance,

others, mean and rueful of the Western dream.

I love the friends I have gathered together on this thin raft.

We've constructed pyramids in honour of our escaping.

This is the land where the Pharaoh died...

Texas Radio And The Big Beat.

Jim used to recite that as poetry

in concert.

But he didn't have the little bridges

that he sang.

'And I remember Ray saying "What about Texas Radio?

"We've never really done it."

Forget the night.

Live with us in forests of azure.

Meagre food for souls forgot...

There was that thing about Morrison all the time.

It wasn't so much about the music,

but about what this guy represented.

What was he talking about?

What was he saying? What was he trying to tell us?

"I wanna tell you about Texas Radio and the Big Beat."

There's Jim eating his microphone.

"It comes out of the Virginia swamps, cool and slow,

"with plenty of precision

"and a backbeat, narrow and hard to master..."

And then a solo...

John and... Jim, so you can hear how they're working together.

"Some call it heavenly in its brilliance,

"others, mean and rueful of the Western dream."

-STEADY BASS AND DRUM RHYTHM

-"I love the friends I have gathered together in this thin raft."

"We have constructed pyramids in honour of our escaping."

"This is the land where the Pharaoh died..."

HE BRINGS KEYBOARDS IN

This is a great example of a song starting as a seed

and flowering and becoming a complete song

and not doing it over a period of days.

It was a poem

and this lick - # Da-da boom boom boom da da-da

# Da da-da-da dum... # I don't know why, I kept the beat...

HE PLAYS STEADY BEAT

But then I decided to follow the melody

with my snare drum.

HE PLAYS RHYTHM

HE SINGS AND PLAYS RHYTHM

# ..loss of God

# I'll tell you about the hopeless night, the meagre food for souls forgot

# I'll tell you about the maiden with wrought-iron soul...

You know, those stations in Mexico,

they broadcasted across the border.

'Wolfman Jack broadcasted from south of the border across the south,

'playing wild R&B and howling at the moon

'and a lot of kids Jim's age would've heard these things.'

"Let me tell you about Texas Radio And The Big Beat",

"the negroes in the forest" -

that scene that he paints is so primal.

# The negroes in the forest, brightly feathered

# And they are saying "Forget the night

# "Live with us in forests of azure

-HE FADES OUT ACCOMPANIMENT

-# "Out here in the perimeter, there are no stars

# "Out here, we is stoned, immaculate"...

Man, that is one of the greatest lines ever written

because when you are stoned and you are out there on the perimeter,

you are immaculate.

This is psychedelics, this is expanding one's consciousness,

this was a journey to become immaculate.

Jim's... life

was poetry

with all of the tumult,

the lack of rhyme,

the free style that life has.

I don't think there was a better poet of Jim's age, of Jim's time.

# Now, listen to this, I'll tell you about Texas

# I'll tell you about Texas radio

# I'll tell you about the hopeless night, wandering the Western dream

# I'll tell you about the maiden with wrought-iron soul #

Near the end of the mixing,

Jim... said that he wanted to go to Paris.

In one of my photos of the recording studio,

there's a chalkboard and written on it are the words "A clean slate".

'Jim needed a clean slate.'

I think that was his gift to the band - he could go do what he wanted

if he worked with them on this... next album,

which, I think, he thought would be his last.

He said "I'm going to Paris" and we said "We're not finished!

"We haven't mixed all the songs!"

He said "Everything is fine, I've done my vocals,

"it's sounding great, I'm going to Paris with Pam."

I did not really think, especially after I said goodbye to Jim,

that he would ever come back as a member of any band.

No question - Jim announced he was resigning.

He was going to be a writer.

And it wasn't "I'll never talk to you again",

it was "This is what I'm gonna do with my life and see what happens."

Obviously he was kind of messed up

and we said "Hey, man, great,

"do what you have to do

"and when you come back, we'll worry about this", you know.

So, I mean, it sounded like a good idea to us.

Unfortunately, it didn't turn out that way.

And off he went to Paris.

I never saw him again. I never even talked to him again.

He was only there three, four months.

We're all riders on the storm.

I think that's everybody

who... has had vicissitudes in life,

love in life, disappointments,

uh... never knowing exactly what's going to happen next,

facing everything, a bravery that we all have just to be alive.

It's not easy out there.

THUNDERCLAP

MUSIC: "Riders On The Storm"

Riders On The Storm -

a little more jazzy, darker, has that melancholy,

but it has that rolling feel of a band playing together.

# Riders on the storm

# Riders on the storm

# Into this house we're born

# Into this world we're thrown

# Like a dog without a bone, an actor out on loan

# Riders on the storm

# There's a killer on the road

# His brain is squirming like a toad

# Take a long holiday

# Let your children play

# If you give this man a ride, sweet family will die

# Killer on the road...

Riders... has this mood,

it originally came from us jamming

-on this Ghost Riders In The Sky...

-HE HUMS TUNE

# An old cowpoke went riding out one dark and windy day

# Upon a ridge he rested as he went along his way

# When all at once a mighty herd of red-eyed cows he saw

# A-ploughing through the ragged sky

# And up the cloudy draw

# Yippee-ay-ayyyyy

# Yippee-ay-ohhhh

# The ghost riders in the sky... #

We're jamming and it's got this Western, Clint Eastwood mood...

HE PLAYS "Ghost Riders" TUNE

And from there, it morphed into more of like a...

HE PLAYS VARIATION

HE PLAYS RHYTHMIC MELODY

And it kind of turned into Riders On The Storm.

Jim changed the words from Ghost Riders In The Sky

to Riders On The Storm.

I said "That's great, Riders On The Storm,

"but we can't do Vaughn Monroe -

"the old cowpoke went riding out one dark and windy day"."

So I said "Let me see what I can do" and here's what I came up with.

HE PLAYS INTRODUCTION We gotta put some jazz to it, make it dark.

And sure enough, this is what happened.

HE PLAYS MELODY

# There's a killer on the road

# His brain is squirming like a toad

# Take a long holiday

# Let your children play

# If you give this man a ride, sweet family will die

# Killer on the road...

Jerry Scheff says "What's the bass line?" I say "Like, simple." HE PLAYS BASS LINE

E Minor, A Major.

He said "That's impossible." I said "What? For you?!"

Here's Jerry Scheff by himself.

BASS LINE

And he's basically playing what Ray would've played on his left hand

if he was playing a piano bass, but with some latitude,

because what Ray could play with his left hand

couldn't always translate into a bass, like those little slides.

At this point, singing this vocal, he knew he was going to Paris

and he was singing his love

to Pam.

# Girl, you gotta love your man

# Girl, you gotta love your man

# Take him by the hand

# Make him understand

# The world on you depends, our life will never end

# Gotta love your man, yeah...

-KEYBOARD SOLO

-And here's Ray's solo.

He was taken direct, which means he wasn't playing through an amplifier

and it was direct injection into the console.

HE FADES OUT ACCOMPANIMENT

KEYBOARD SOLO

HE PLAYS KEYBOARD SOLO

More thunder, bring in the thunder.

THUNDER ROLLS IN

The loneliness

that that song conjures up

about how we are here

in this... torment that we call the world,

trying to keep our heads above the fray,

above the surf, above the storm.

(WHISPERING) Riders on the storm...

Riders on the storm...

That whisper voice that's just singing "Riders on the storm" -

you can hear that in the last two "Riders on the storms".

That's Jim's spirit whispering to us from the ether,

from the beyond.

MUSIC: "Cars Hiss By My Window"

# Whee-ooh

# The cars hiss by my window

# Like the waves down on the beach...

My last message to Jim after he'd gone to Paris,

I told him I'd just quit drinking and it was time for him to quit too.

He sounded... lonely and distant, as if it wasn't panning out for him.

'Maybe it was the cycle of alcoholism

'that ended his life there.'

# But she's

# Out of reach

# Headlight through my window

# Shining on the wall...

Jim went in to take a hot bath

and she describes finding him the next morning - she'd gone to sleep

and he had died in the bathtub, on his back.

She said he was smiling - I'm glad to hear that.

When I heard, I didn't believe it,

because he just, uh...

seemed like this Irish drunk who was gonna party till 80.

Jim was so larger than life.

The way he was, I couldn't imagine him dead.

We knew from the gravity of the reports from Paris

and hearing from Bill Siddons, the manager,

who had gone there to help to arrange the burial,

that this was all too real.

The phone rang, Monday morning at 4.30,

and my wife Cheri sat bolt upright when the phone started ringing

and said "Jim's dead."

And I looked at her and went "What?" and I answered the phone

and it was Clive Selwood, our label manager in the UK

telling me that three different journalists had called him

and told him that Jim had died.

'I got the 3.30 plane and was in Paris at 6.30 the next morning.'

'I just held her for a minute and the coffin was in the living room.'

I literally spent hours with Pamela, just talking.

And she said "He told me when he was there, when he died,

"he wanted to be buried in Pere Lachaise." It was beautiful,

he knew that that's where he wanted to be buried.

'I thought there was something completely right about doing this

and I was clear, having been through a number of press debacles,

that the best thing was to not tell anybody.

'We're gonna do it our way, we're gonna bury a poet.'

I lost the best writing partner anybody's ever had,

our whole life was gone.

I loved, uh... playing music to his words

and, uh...

and that's what I miss terribly. I don't miss his self-destruction.

'For him, they went hand in hand.'

Whenever we lose a creative person, we lose something

that can be added to the culture

to make the culture

richer and brighter.

'I think with Jim's death,

'one of the lights of the '60s... went out.'

HE PLAYS INTRODUCTION TO "Hyacinth House"

Hyacinth House was the loneliest song Jim ever wrote.

"What are they doing in the Hyacinth House to feed the lions these days?"

"I need a brand-new friend who doesn't bother me,

"who doesn't need me."

MUSIC: "Hyacinth House"

# What are they doing in the Hyacinth House?

# What are they doing in the Hyacinth House

# To please the lions

# Yeah, this day?...

-HE PLAYS VOCAL TRACK

-# I need a brand-new friend

-# Who doesn't trouble me

-HE FADES ACCOMPANIMENT BACK IN

# I need someone

# Yeah, who doesn't need me...

"I don't want friends that need me or people who are leaning on me,

"I'm only 27, let me go, I need a new friend who doesn't need me."

Is he referring to... his main squeeze

or is he referring to his friends like me, to the band?

I think he's referring to everybody,

he's saying "Let me be somebody else."

To be frank, the last few years of his life,

there were several "friends" he was hanging with

that were kind of... you know,...

..idolising him and didn't discourage his substance abuse.

So, were those friends?

Losing some of the hangers-on who were dragging him down,

if you hang out with drug takers, you're not necessarily getting

French symbolist poets,

you get creeps and weirdos.

HE PLAYS ORGAN TRACK

Here's a chance for me to quote one of my fellow people,

man from Poland, Mr Chopin,

so I'm doing a little Chopin Polonaise, my solo.

HE PLAYS ORGAN SOLO

And Jim sings...

# And I'll say it again

# I need a brand-new friend...

I spent time in the studio with them and they were having a good time.

They were wonderful songs.

Uh, The Changeling was kind of a tribute to James Brown.

Uh, Love Her Madly

was clearly the single, so I knew I had a single for AM radio

and LA Woman and Riders On The Storm for FM radio -

those were guaranteed.

It was a terrific record.

MUSIC: "LA Woman"

If you're gonna have an epitaph, one last record,

then, that was the record to make.

The Doors are a living energy -

when I play them tonight, they will mean something to my audience -

that music speaks to you and me,

it speaks to kids and to people older than us.

It was an incredible statement of how strong they were as a band

and what a unique and extraordinary partnership they were.

# Took a look around, see which way the wind blow...

You can feel the warmth and the liveness of it,

it was a most spontaneous album.

Jim got empowered by us producing LA Woman ourselves, you know -

we all did - cos we made all the decisions

and it was inspiring.

I don't think that imagination,

inspiration, beauty

and high spiritual level ever go out of style,

whether it's Bach

or Skryabin or The Doors.

People are still listening to all of them.

"His world on you depends, our life will never end".

The ultimate statement - "our life will never end".

And the ancient Egyptians used to say that if you say a man's name,

he is alive.

So I take this opportunity to say... Jim Morrison.

# LA woman

# LA woman

# LA woman, Sunday afternoon

# LA woman, Sunday afternoon

# LA woman, Sunday afternoon

# Drive through your suburbs

# Into your blues... #

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd