I am of two minds about Jm Morrison-he was a very talented guy, who wrecked himself with booze and drugs. His song “Riders on the storm” is supposed to be profound-so what the heck does this rambling mean:“there’s a kiler on the rod…his brain is squirming like a toad”…“tagahela halliday, let your children play”
What was all of this supposed to mean?
The line is actually “take a long holiday,” stressed awkwardly to fit the rhythm of the song.
Morrison was good with words, but far less profound that his fans thought.
But the meaning of the exact words are not really important in the song. It’s the feeling of menace and doom they inspire.
Self-important, pompous, pretentious dreck. This is one of the songs I use to show how often and easily Morrison slipped over to the stoopid side…
I like the song but when you have to add sounce effects and what not it makes it a lot less profound for me. “squirming like a toad” is just stupid.
Why not, “killer on the road…his mind is a dark abode”
Crap also but at least it has some semblance of sense.
I think “toad” works pretty well. It compares the killer’s mind to something slimy, cold-blooded, and unwholesome, that moves quickly, but in an unsettling, spastic manner. That’s pretty good imagery, I think, at least for a pop song.
Funny how things strike people differently. I always thought that the toad thing was great imagery – the madman’s sick brain like a writhing, ugly, poisonous amphibian.
ETA: Or like what Miller said.
True, but find some poetry that isn’t.
I also think “squirming like a toad” is a great lyric. I agree that Morrison was a bit self-important and overrated, but he could turn a great line.
No problem:
“She was just seventeen - you know what I mean”
I don’t really envision a toad as squirming though. Snake or lizard yes but a toad not so much. YMMV.
I don’t know that “Riders on the Storm” was “supposed” to be profound. It does tie in with some concept Morrison seems to have had in mind, probably as a film idea, about a murderous hitchhiker. (There’s a story in a Morrison bio about him calling up a friend and, without identifying himself, going into a rap about hitching a ride and killing the driver.) But a fair number of Morrison’s song lyrics, including “Riders,” were kind of doggerel, though often enlivened by a striking image or interesting word choice. His “real” poetry was mostly free verse, as found in his books, spoken word bits on the records (“Horse Latitudes,” “The WASP”) and occasionally incorporated fully into the more epic songs (“The End,” “When the Music’s Over,” “The Soft Parade”).
I recently watched the Classic Albums DVD on the first Doors album. They had Michael McClure slowly reading over the lyrics of “Break on Through,” including every “yeah” and repeated chorus, and commenting on the poetry of it with this awestruck voice as if he had discovered a lost Shakespearean sonnet. That was pretty silly.
“His brain is squirming like a toad,” though, is pretty awful.
ETA: Man, a lot of people got in their comments on that “toad” line while I was still composing my post!
I don’t think it’s profound, but it’s not dreck either. “Achy Breaky Heart” is dreck. “Cherry Pie” is dreck. “Mmmm Bop” is dreck. The lyrics to “Riders on the Storm” are perfectly servicable, mildly evocative and slightly more literary than the average. They’re not brilliant, but there is whole lot worse out there. It’s not like you even have to look very hard – “My Humps” jumps immediately to mind, or what’s that song that says “Are we human or are we dancer?” Morrison wasn’t Shakespeare, but he was far from the bottom. There’s an awfully low floor out there when it comes to song lyrics. Compared to Jewel, Morrison looks like a genius.
The lyrics in question:
What does it mean? To my mind, the menace of possible fate. You may be on holiday with your kids, but unknown to you, there’s a killer out there, and if you cross his path and fail to take precautions he’ll kill your whole family.
The notion isn’t particularly profound, what makes it memorable is the imagry used to convey it. For example, the killer’s “brain squirming like a toad” - the use of “brain”, not “mind”, creates a feeling of physical disgust - (and as others said, toads are cold-blooded, poisionous, move oddly, etc.)
Also, using “sweet memory will die” - some lyrics sites have it as "sweet family will die - personally, I think “memory” is more clever, a better way of conveying the same message (no family = soon, no happy memories; without your family, you will be forgotten).
You obviously haven’t miss-spent your youth catching amphibians. Toads definitely squirm when caught - and piss on you, in the bargain.
**Dio **- none of the “dreck” songs you mention have tried to be positioned by the artists doing them or critics or fans as “quality art.” They were positioned as dreck and evaluated as such - “hey, that was a decent Big Mac you made” - along those lines, for instance, MMM-Bop isn’t all that bad for a hummable pop confection.
But people put Morrison up on a pedestal as a poet - when in fact, I tend to agree with you: he wrote poetry that was service-able enough to serve as song lyrics, but rarely did/does his stuff transcend to be quality poetry. True, his stuff compares favorably to the dreck you cite, but that’s about it, IMHO…
It’s not poetry, it’s what leaks out when a reasonably intelligent guy consumes hundreds of thousands of micrograms of acid. It’s babbling nonsense.
Heh… I was thinking just the opposite. The toads under the deck used to just sit there looking brown & lumpy. Sure, they wiggled and pee’d if you picked 'em up, but who’s picking up killer brains? 
Hey, if you were eight years old and you saw a killer brain hopping through the bracken …