This is it- they are different mediums, albeit similar in some ways. When read as poetry, Riders is not great, but also not dreck, I have seen much worse. there is also a significant taste factor mixed in… some people just don’t like his music or lyrics.
As far as the music standing up, that is a 50/50 proposition with much of the Doors music, since there are some songs written specifically for the climate of the time. And Morrison can be extremely sophomoric at times. The guy loved to stir up trouble just for the sake of stirring things up to see what happens. There is some brilliance there, but also some WTF?!
Trap most things in your hads though and they’ll tend to squirm. Ever pick up a cat or a fish? They squirm too. Heck, pick up a child that doesn’t want to be picked up…wait, don’t do that. That’d be creepy
Does anybody remember a recording of Riders on the Storm, where there are spoken words about someone calling from a telephone booth saying he had just killed a man? I used to hear it on the radio in the late 70s.
Yes. It’s “The Hitchhiker”, the eleventh track on the “An American Prayer” album. IIRC it’s a recording of Jim making a faux-serious play-acting phone call to poet Michael McClure.
Jim Morrison wasn’t as pompous or as crazy as people like to think, or as Oliver Stone portrayed. Listen to some interviews with him sometime. He comes off quite down to Earth for someone who was as famous as he was. I don’t think the role of rockstar ever truly fit him well; and I think some of his more outrageous statements or moments were him trying to play a part that was expected of him, and that he didn’t really fit or feel comfortable in - hence the ever growing alcohol abuse. Jim was a film student and a filmmaker at heart - he knew his position expected a certain level of theater, and at times he delivered, leading to the outsized image he left behind. But the real man, the man you hear in interviews - not in print - comes off to me as thoughtful, rather intelligent, aloof, but most of all, shy. Yes, shy.
He was an awkward fat kid who never quite got over being such. He was much less pompous, pretentious and annoying to me than people like Cobain or Lennon, honestly. He never came off holier than thou or as if his way was the best, the most enlightened and only way, and those who disagreed were meathead peasants who “just don’t get it, man.” Lennon and Cobain I feel had a certain level of contempt for their audiences - and especially for those they disagreed with socially or politically. Jim, from what I have read, was rather open-minded, and agreeable. If he disagreed with you a tad he’d preface it by saying, “Yes, but…” Much more likable to me than Cobain or Lennon who put down their opposition as villains to be despised.
Interesting analysis, Reddy. Makes me think of another shy lead singer, R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, though I don’t know if Stipe* is more “down to earth,” or more like how you described Lennon and Cobain. I would hope the former (and that is the impression I get).
Brian Wilson is another shy band leader/songwriter, but his case is sui generis.
*Like Morrison with his obesity, Stipe had said he was embarrassed about his acne as a teen. And, they both had itinerant military-base childhoods, IIRC.
Like Coleridge was on opium when he wrote most of his major poems, then.
Coleridge wrote a lot more lines of beautiful verse than Morrison ever did, but only because he was living in a time when gentlemen did not write songs.
Yes. When he was still alive, I read an interview where he said (I’m paraphrasing here from aging memory) “I meant it as theatrical performance, but I guess people thought I was crazy.” I think he was referring specifically to the silliness that resulted from the line “I am the Lizard King. I can do anything.”
The lyric on this song is great. I get a sinatra crooning vibe about something very dark. And the lyric enhances it and doesn’t get in the way. That’s the job of a lyric. It’s not to be poetry. Or unpretentious for that matter.
Lyrics aren’t poetry, they’re lyrics, and meant to be sung. And ‘Riders on the Storm’ is a much more entertaining tune when you sing it in Fred Schneider’s voice.
I honestly never listened to the lyrics. This is one of The Doors’ songs I consider basically an instrumental and Jim Morrison is just additional percussion.
When this was bumped, I somehow got “Riders on the Storm” confused with “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” So I was very confused that anyone would think the lyrics of the latter were poetry.
Yes, this is even though I participated in the thread during it’s initial run.
