The Doors – Riders on the Storm

“Riders on the Storm” – Single by the Doors from the album L.A. Woman
Released: June 1971
Songwriters: John Densmore, Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek, Jim Morrison

“Riders on the Storm” has been classified as a psychedelic rock, jazz rock, art rock song, and a precursor of gothic music. According to guitarist Robby Krieger and keyboardist Ray Manzarek, it was inspired by the country song “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky: A Cowboy Legend”, written by Stan Jones and popularized by Vaughn Monroe. The lyrics were written and brought to rehearsal by Morrison, of which a portion of it refers to hitchhiking killer Billy “Cockeyed” Cook, who was the subject of the 1953 film, The Hitch-Hiker. Manzarek noted that some lines express Morrison’s love to his companion Pamela Courson.

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Doors - Riders on the Storm

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The song was recorded at the Doors Workshop in December 1970 with the assistance of Bruce Botnick, their longtime engineer, who was co-producing the recording sessions.

The Doors brought in bass players Marc Benno and Jerry Scheff to play on the album. Scheff came up with the distinctive bass line after Manzarek played him what he had in mind on his keyboard. It took a while to figure out, since it was much harder to play on a bass than a keyboard.

Ray Manzarek used a Fender Rhodes electric piano to create the effect of rain.
This was the last song on the last Doors album with Morrison. Fittingly, it ends with the storm fading slowly to silence.

The remaining Doors released two more albums without Morrison before breaking up in 1972. In 2002, Kreiger and Manzarek reunited as “The Doors Of The 21st Century.” Densmore, who says he wasn’t invited to join them, went to court and eventually got a ruling preventing the group from using The Doors in its name, so they changed their name to “Riders On The Storm” after this song.

If you listen closely, you can hear Jim Morrison whispering the lyrics over his own singing, which causes a kind of creepy effect.

This was Morrison’s final contribution as a rock star. Ray Manzarek told Uncut magazine September 2011: “There’s a whisper voice on ‘Riders on the Storm,’ if you listen closely, a whispered overdub that Jim adds beneath his vocal. That’s the last thing he ever did. An ephemeral, whispered overdub.”

The Doors’ longtime producer Paul Rothchild famously quit on the band during the recording of L.A. Woman referring to the new songs as “cocktail” music, which created an opportunity for the band to relocate to their rehearsal studio to record the album themselves with longtime engineer Bruce Botnick.

This is the earliest known recording of “Riders on The Storm,” recorded at Sunset Sound Studios in those early days.

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