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 Ultimate Band

Here’s the exercise: I’m putting together the ideal band in heaven. That means members can be past their prime or dead. It naturally tends to reflect my own personal tastes; your results may differ.

At lead guitar, I want Mark Knopfler. I grant that Eric Clapton is a better guitarist, and so is Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix though is essentially a solo performer; he is too big for a band. And Clapton belongs in the blues, and the rest of this band does not end up pulling in that direction. Knopfler is ideal because he does not take over; he is laid back in his style. He also has a truly wonderful voice, and great songwriting talent.

At rhythm guitar, I want Willie Nelson. With due respect, anyone competent can play rhythm guitar, but Willie Nelson’s voice is unique. He’s good at harmony and backup, so he works well in a band. He’s good enough on guitar to do a second lead if the song calls for it.

At bass, I put Stephen Stills. Paul McCartney is a better bassist and a better vocalist, but he does not really fit here because his songwriting style does not mesh with the rest of the group. It is too pop flavoured, and this group ends up looking kind of country. I really like Stills’ sense of funkiness, which is the essential trait for a bassist. He brings the added advantage of a good voice for harmonies and the talents of a multi-instrumentalist. Having a multi-instrumentalist keeps things from getting stale.

At drums, I want Levon Helm. The main thing in a drummer, I think, is someone who is not going to showboat. That’s not what drumming is for. So anyone competent will do. But Helm also brings a great country voice, and the talents of another multi-instrumentalist.

At keyboards, I want Norah Jones. I want her mostly for her unique voice, but it is also great to have keyboards, the most versatile of all instruments, and it gives her something to do when she is not lead vocalist. Norah’s voice goes particularly well with Willie Nelson’s; the inflection is quite similar. They are the two best country voices around, in my opinion.

I want Alison Krauss on violin. I strongly believe in having the sound of a violin, the most expressive of all instruments, and Alison Krauss’s voice is perfect for the high, pure feminine sounds, I hope contrasting well with Jones’s lower register.

What this band still lacks is a vocal belter in the lower register; everybody here has a laid back quality. In country, there is definitely something missing if you cannot cover the lower register strongly. We need someone who can also play an instrument, because with so many great voices, any pure vocalist is liable to find himself underemployed. Johnny Cash comes to mind; but I have a better idea. I think Johnny is a solo act. Too much personality. I propose, as lead singer and third guitar, the great Stan Rogers. We know he is great as a choral singer. He also brings, of course, magnificent songwriting talent.

Chelsea Hotel

Okay, so two Canadians walk into the Chelsea Hotel in New York City. They're both great songwriters, and in particular great lyricists. In fact, they both seriously vie for the title of best lyricist ever. Remarkably, they are both staying in the Chelsea Hotel at the same time, are lovers, and they both, at about the same time, write a song expressing their experience of the place.

So who's the greatest? Leonard Cohen?

Or Joni Mitchell?

You decide...

Personally, although Joni Mitchell's lyrics are wonderful, I have to go with Leonard Cohen. While brilliantly evocative, her words are mostly ornamental. Nice picture. Cohen's strike through, as they always seem to do, to touch the central mystery of life.

As a bonus, here's the never-officially-recorded original version of Cohen's song: Chelsea Hotel #1:

Best Album Titles of All Time

Ian Tyson, And Stood There Amazed
Joni Mitchell, The Hissing of Summer Lawns
Joni Mitchell, Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm
Joni Mitchell, Turbulent Indigo
Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks
Bob Dylan, Slow Train Coming
Neil Young, Rust Never Sleeps

Missing any?

The amazing thing is that Rolling Stone chose "The Hissing of Summer Lawns" as the worst album title of the year in which it was issued.

More on Morality and Rock and Roll

Please allow me to introduce myself ...

We have discussed here whether rock musicians are leftist: no. We have discussed whether rock music is immoral: no. But are rock musicians immoral?

This is the common perception. “Sex, drugs, and rock and roll.” Is it correct?

Concerning drugs, Keith Richards explains this quite simply: musicians feel they need them to keep going. Without them, performing on a stage and he fishbowl life of being famous can be too intimidating and too emotionally exhausting. You take one drug to get the energy for the performance, then you need another drug to calm down afterwards and get some sleep. So drugs are everywhere. Then, of course, many get hooked.

Is this sinful? No, perhaps just foolish. Perhaps just unfortunate.

Then there's the sex. Here, I think it is difficult for a non-performer to cast stones, because we face nothing like the same temptations. it is just the way of things that women will throw themselves at anyone they see on stage. How many of us could say no every time?

Keith Richards:

Nothing like a good ten, fifteen minutes of pubescent female shrieking to cover up all your mistakes. Or three thousand teenage chicks throwing themselves at you. Or being carried out on stretchers. All the bouffants awry, skirts up to their waists, sweating, red, eyes rolling.

,,, And I remember walking back out onto the stage after the show, and they'd cleaned up all of the underwear and everything, and there was one old janitor, night watchman, and he said, "Very good show. Not a dry seat in the house."

... You stand as much chance as in a pool full of piranhas.

On the other hand, there is something else quite noticeable about rock stars once you start to read the autobiographies. They are, almost invariably, models of the virtue of forgiveness. Somebody will have messed them over pretty badly, and they will not seem to hold it against them. They will be back playing with them a couple of years later.

Keith Richards, in his autobiography, revealed affairs with the paramours of Mick Jagger, claiming that they preferred him because Jagger's penis was too small. Hard to imagine anything more perfectly calculated to break up a friendship. Yet two years later, they are back on a big tour together, giving joint interviews.

Ian Tyson has absolutely nothing bad to say about his ex-wife and ex-partner Sylvia. Neil Young and Steve Stills reputedly fought endlessly in Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young; Young has walked out on Stills, at great financial cost, at least twice. Yet they still are best friends, and Stills says he still trusts Young more than anyone in the world. They still perform together often. Eric Clapton famously stole George Harrison's wife. Still best of friends. Half of the Byrds sued the other half over use of the name. Careers were at stake. Still best of friends. Bob Dylan slept with Liam Clancy's wife while he was on tour. Still best of friends. There seems to be no guile there, and no grudges.

What virtue is more important than the virtue of forgiveness?

I think that music—art in general—fosters that virtue.

It takes a Pharisee not to see that.

Met him at the crossroads ...

Rock and Roll is Sacred Music

St. Johnny Rotten.

Look up “Christian rock” on YouTube, as I just did, and you will get a glimpse of an old controversy: is rock and roll the Devil's music? A large number of Christians have always believed this—that something about rock and roll makes it intrinsically immoral. In fact, a huge number of rock and roll musicians have thought so themselves. Keith Richards once said in an interview he usually wrote “Luciferian” songs; Neil Young has called rock “God and the Devil shaking hands.” Jerry Lee Lewis has said “I know I am playing for the Devil.”

This seems to me absurd. Why should the Devil get all the good songs?

Is rock beautiful? Does it “strike a chord” in you, as it does in me? Then, by definition, it is from God, not the Devil. Here's why: God is the perfect being. This means he is the perfection of being, reality, or truth. It also necessarily means that he is the perfection of moral good—evil cannot be an aspect of perfection, for it is a flaw. It also follows that he is the perfection of beauty. Ugliness cannot be an aspect of perfection, for it too is a flaw.

From this it follows that the more beautiful a thing is, the more it approaches God. We understand this instinctively, I think, when we experience beauty in nature. Our perception of beauty comes with a sense of awe; it is felt as a communing with the divine intelligence. So too in art. Ergo, as rock is beautiful, rock is divine. (Note too that beauty is not the same as mere prettiness. Real beauty requires the sublime.)

Music, indeed, of all the arts, is most completely justified by beauty alone, because as music it can convey no other message, no didactic content, no "redeeming social importance." This makes it the most sacred of the arts--as in the "music of the spheres." There is a reason that angels are traditionally pictured strumming harps.

Ergo, rock music is intrinsically good, not evil; a thing of God, not the Devil.

Add to that the actual origins of rock. Rock began in Gospel music. This genesis is commonly obscured, largely I think because of the pre-conceived notion that rock is anti-religious in some way. It is commonly claimed that rock began instead as the mogrel child of county and western plus rhythm and blues. But just listen to some of the performances of Sister Rosetta Tharpe. You cannot deny that she was singing and playing rock already in the 1940s. But she was not classed as rock and roll—she was the most popular Gospel singer of her day.

http://youtu.be/JeaBNAXfHfQ

And the first Doo-Wop hit was a flat-out Christian religious song, “Crying in the Chapel.”

http://youtu.be/Qe_tL7aVGE8

The strange emotional energy of rock began as the energy of a revivalist meeting; that characteristic snare beat began as the clapping of the congregation. Rock emerged from exactly the places where gospel was omnipresent, among people who were raised on gospel as their music. Jerry Lee Lewis attended Southwest Bible Institute. Little Richard started out singing in Pentecostal churches, and was eventually himself ordained a minister. Chuck Berry's dad was a Baptist deacon. Elvis Presley learned guitar from the family pastor.

In context, it becomes clear that rock and roll's reputation as “the Devil's music” makes sense only in a Gospel context—only on the assumption that music, or this music, ought to be reserved for sacred places and occasions. Rock was bad because it was the supposed profanation of a sacred musical form.

That still makes it more religious than--just about anything else.