Riders on the Storm

In the copious annals of awful lyrics, few can measure up to Jim Morrison. Ironically, Morrison considered himself a poet, and had books of his poems published separately.

Pretension makes bad poetry worse.

The Doors had three legitimately memorable original songs: “Light My Fire,” “Love Me Two Times,” and “Love Her Madly.” None were written by Morrison. All were by Robby Krieger, the guitarist, whom nobody ever noticed. Yet Morrison is remembered as the dark genius behind the band. It was all hype and self-promotion.

Consider the Morrison classic "Riders on the Storm," the last song he recorded before killing himself in Paris with a heroin overdose:

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 alone
Riders on the storm

An expression of existential angst: “like a dog without a bone.” Geez, that's deep. We are all here just to have our urges satisfied.

An what does “An actor out alone” mean? Surely it is just a self-evident commonplace?

There's a killer on the road
His brain is squirmin' like a toad
Take a long holiday
Let your children play
If ya give this man a ride
Sweet memory will die
Killer on the road, yeah

Referring to brains or mind in a poem is always pretentious. Cheap fake profundity. Brains do not squirm; he could have made it work easily enough by writing “His brain is like a squirmin' toad.” But he was too stupid or literal-minded to see the difference.

The reference to a “killer on the road” sounds like a cheap B-flick thriller. Pulling up the image of a toad just makes it sillier. Cheap thrills.

Then what does this have to do with the next two lines, about going on holiday? And memories kind of by definition do not die. So what is he talking about?

Girl ya gotta love your man
Girl ya 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

And what does avoiding hitchhikers have to do with loving your boyfriend? Just sounds like Morrison is suddenly asking for sex. Using a cheap manipulative trick: “It's a dangerous world out there, according to me, so snuggle up to me and I'll protect you.”

Wanna feel his toad?

Note the awkward phrasing of “the world on you depends.” We see a painful stretch to make a rhyme that was not worth making: it is not as though “Our life will never end” was some great line, some deep sentiment. It means nothing in this context.

An that's as much effort as Morrison is prepared to put in. The rest is repetition.

Yeah! 

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 alone 

Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm

Awful stuff. A lousy little poet coming round trying to sound like Charlie Manson.

The Dynamics of a Rock Band

Remember him? He founded The Byrds.

There is a certain inevitable dynamic to rock bands that usually leads to them breaking up soon after achieving fame. The original leader of the band almost never ends up as the final leader of the band, and he usually quits in bitterness towards the others, most often at about this point.

Some famous examples: Who was the original leader of the Rolling Stones? Brian Jones—who left the band in 1969. Now the Stones are run by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. The Byrds? Gene Clark—who left after two years. The Band? Levon Helm, who stayed with the band, but due to bad feelings towards the others, did not appear for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Band had enough cohesion from many years of playing together to weather the storm of fame better than most. The Who? Roger Daltrey put the band together, not Pete Townsend. The Doors? Ray Manzarek, not Jim Morrison. Remember Paul Revere and the Raiders? Wasn’t it confusing how Paul Revere was just the guy on keyboards, while the leader was obviously Mark Lindsay?

Did he ever make the cover of The Rolling Stone?

The original leader is generally a practical guy, an organizer. His skill is in pulling a bunch of guys together, giving them a direction, getting them their first engagements. A businessman, an entrepreneur; possibly a musical director of sorts. But these skills matter very little once a band gets off the ground, because they move to professional management. On the other hand, once the group becomes well-known, the essence of their value as a commercial enterprise becomes whatever makes their sound unique and identifiable. If this person walks, the group is dead; so whatever they say goes.

Who this person is going to be is not altogether predictable in advance. It is most likely to be the songwriter of the group. Next most probable is the lead singer, because voices are the instruments most likely to be distinctive, and the lead singer tends to be the focus of attention on stage. After that, in a rock band, the lead guitarist, if he has a truly distinctive style. Bassists, drummers, and rhythm guitarists are easily interchangeable.

The original name was going to be The Levon Helm Sextet.

Brian Jones was dead in the water—if you’ll pardon the expression--because he could not sing very well and could not compose. Outsiders naturally went to Jagger first, as both singer and co-composer. The amazing thing is that Keith Richards managed to hold his own—this indicates who the real songwriting talent is in that band. In the Byrds, Gene Clark was both a singer and a songwriter, but was doomed when producers decided to go with McGuinn’s more distinctive voice. Because it was distinctive, it became the group’s signature, along with McGuinn’s truly unique guitar playing. Even with his songwriting talents, Clark, who played no instrument, was left with nothing to do when the group was on stage. And their biggest hits were cover tunes; Clark’s songs were never a critical asset.

In The Band, Levon Helm was also a singer, but not the lead singer. That was Richard Manuel. But Manuel did not really dominate, because he was one of three good voices used regularly—himself, Helm, and Rick Danko. Robbie Robertson came to lead the band because of his dominant songwriting abilities, and a powerful stage presence. With three singers, he was the one consistent point around which everything else on stage seemed to revolve. When he left the Band, and the Band nevertheless tried to continue, it got nowhere—because it could not generate any new songs.

The Doors' founder and best musician (r), and best songwriter (l) trying to give autographs.

When Jim Morrison died, similarly, The Doors could not carry on. They retained a distinctive sound in Manzarek’s organ, and considerable songwriting talent with Robbie Kreiger, but Morrison’s voice and his outrageous stage personality were too much the essence of the band in the public eye. For The Who, Pete Townsend surpassed Roger Daltrey when he started writing songs. Daltrey stayed in the band, but the feuds the two got up to were legendary.

As the examples suggest, all this is fairly unpredictable; it is hard to know when the band is just setting out what in what they do will strike a public chord and become their marketable essence. But it is always most likely that the original leader will be supplanted. If the odds are random, and there are four or five members of the band, the original leader has only a 20 to 25% chance of ending up on top.

But organizational skill does not generally come along with artistic talent; more often the opposite. Serious artists tend to be quite impractical in their view of the world. It is the unique and original artist who will end up dominating in this situation. The odds are stacked against it being the same guy who has the organizational skill.