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When Jim Morrison got drunk, he liked to sing Blues numbers at their jam sessions. They jammed on a lot of Blues numbers, and came up with this at one of the sessions.
Jim Morrison came up with the line about keeping your "Eyes on the road, your hands up on the wheel" after riding with his girlfriend, Pamela Courson, to a cottage they owned outside Los Angeles. She was driving erratically.
John Sebastian from the Lovin' Spoonful played harmonica. He is identified on the album as "G. Puglese" because he was afraid to be identified with The Doors in light of Morrison's arrest at a concert in Miami when he was accused of exposing himself to the crowd. Morrison was convicted of indecent exposure and sentenced to 6 months in jail, but he died while the case was being appealed. In 2010, Florida governor Charlie Crist granted Morrison a pardon, clearing him of the charges.
Guitar great Lonnie Mack played bass. The Doors usually did not use a bass player.
Doors guitarist Robbie Krieger joined Creed on stage at Woodstock '99, where they performed this. It is on the Woodstock '99 CD.
This was the first song on Morrison Hotel. The album was a return The Doors' earlier style. On their previous album, The Soft Parade, they used a lot of strings and horns. Morrison didn't do much on that album because he was drunk for most of it and had nothing to do while all the instrumentation was being worked out. Before The Doors had a record deal, they played many Blues songs in their long club shows.
Outtakes from one of Morrison's recording sessions were used to dub his voice into a version of this on the 2000 tribute album
Stoned Immaculate, where he duets with John Lee Hooker.
In 2000, the surviving members of the Doors taped a VH1 Storytellers episode with guest vocalists filling in for Morrison. Scott Stapp from Creed sang on this.
This was released as the B-side of "You Make Me Real."
The Doors occasionally recorded old Blues songs, but even though this sounds like it could have been one of them, the wrote it themselves.
This has been called "the ultimate bar song," and it continues to be played by bar bands everywhere.
Krieger recalled to the NME July 17, 2010 how the album title came about: "Ray (Manzarek, keyboards) had been driving around downtown LA, and he saw this place called Morrison Hotel. So we decided to go down and shoot some photos there, but the guy who owned the hotel wouldn't let us inside it. I guess they thought we were hippies. There were a lot of drunks and bums hanging around that area. Anyway, we snuck in there real quick when he wasn't looking and got the shot that became the cover of Morrison Hotel."
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I Morrison singing "Do it, Robbie, do it"?
Or is it as some other lyrics quote it as, "Do it, Lonnie, do it" or even "Do it honey, do it"?
I've always thought it was, "do it, Robbie" sing Robbie Krieger's solo that follows.
..'the future's uncertain and the end is always near'---that about says it all, doesn't it?
Morrison decided to use the line in the song.
I can listen to the doors, and i'm only 12.
All my friends at scool think i'm wierd because i love the doors,and because i borrow books from librarys on the doors, the think i'm even more wierd. when people at school make fun of me (for a reason unrelated to the doors) i just can't wait to go home and listen to the doors because it makes me feel better
>>actually waking up in the morning and grabbing a beer puts a hurtin on a fella after a while.
- Dennis, Moncton, - -<<
Hence the picture of the butterfly on the LA Woman album. See "When the Music's Over"
i like it a lot better anyway. its got more feeling and i think this song sounds better with the amount of feeling the live version has!!
song off Blue Oyster Cult's "Extra-Terrestial Live" album, featuring Robbie Krieger on guitar.