It's been a long, lonely drive. You haven't seen a car for miles as you cruise down the highway, storm clouds building behind you. You see a figure standing on the side of the road, thumb pointed out. Is this just a weary traveler, or is there something else? Is there a kind of darkness behind him? It's an evocative picture that The Doors paint in "Riders on the Storm," the final track of L.A. Woman, The Doors' last album with Jim Morrison. It is a masterclass in atmosphere, with ethereal keyboards by Ray Manzarek and minimal, cryptic lyrics by Morrison. The Doors set the scene for a twisted journey into the heart of man.
"Riders on the Storm" began as a jam on another dark song, "Ghost Riders in the Sky." The original version of that tune was written by Stan Jones, but it's been covered by countless artists, including Johnny Cash. "Ghost Riders" tells the story of damned cowboys cursed to ride through the skies for eternity. The concept of mortality is still present in The Doors' adaptation, but it heads in a different direction. Jim Morrison decided to change the title from "Riders in the Sky" to "Riders on the Storm." It was a phrase that related to how he had seen himself in the past. In his college years, Morrison was in a long-distance relationship. Whenever he got a chance, he would hitchhike nearly 300 miles to visit his girlfriend. Over these trips, Morrison began to think of himself as a rider on the storm, wandering from place to place, leaving trouble in his wake.
This is an archetype that fascinated Morrison throughout his career. He loved wandering souls and dark, unknown figures, two aspects that came together clearly in the concept of the hitchhiker. For Morrison, the hitchhiker became a symbol of the American identity. It spoke to the American myth of the frontier, uprooting your life, leaving everything you know behind, and pushing onwards toward an unknown future.
The hitchhiker also conjures images of wide-open landscapes and roaring vehicles, but it speaks to a kind of transience too. And perhaps most of all, it speaks to a sense of distrust, the skeletons that might lie in America's closet. Morrison was so fascinated by the concept of a hitchhiker that he even tried making a film about it in the summer of 1969. That film was called HWY: An American Pastoral, and in a lot of ways, it laid the groundwork for the cinematic feelings of "Riders on the Storm." In the film, Morrison plays a hitchhiker who muses on the nature of life. Then it takes a dark turn as you find out that Morrison's hitchhiker is a serial killer. This is something that's mirrored in "Riders on the Storm." The first verse of that song depicts a hitchhiker in the darkness.
Both the film and the song were based on the story of a real hitchhiking serial killer, Billy Cook. In 22 days between 1950 and 1951, Billy Cook murdered six people as he hitchhiked his way between Missouri and California. This twisted story informs the music of "Riders on the Storm" too. While the bass line has a lighter, lounge feel to it, Ray Manzarek's immaculate keyboard work creates a sinister atmosphere echoed by Robby Krieger's guitar. Manzarek's solo in the middle of the song even seems to imitate the falling of rain. More than any of these, one production trick fills the song with unease. The song consists of two vocal tracks, one with Morrison singing and a second with him whispering the same words. The whisper laid over the vocal tracks creates a sense of discomfort and unease.
It's this haunting atmosphere that makes "Riders on the Storm" so memorable. But the lyrics aren't entirely about hitchhiking and murders. Like so many of Morrison's lyrics, "Riders on the Storm" delves into philosophy and muses on human nature. When Morrison was a student at UCLA in the mid-'60s, he took a class taught by the poet Jack Hirschman. Reading writers like Camus, Sartre, and Nietzsche instilled a love for philosophy in Morrison, and one philosophical concept, in particular, seems to have worked its way into the chorus of "Riders on the Storm": the "Werfenheit" or "Thrownness" put forth by Martin Heidegger. The concept of "Thrownness" is the idea that we are brought forth into the world without our consent, that the very act of being born is traumatic; we are pulled from nothingness into a world that we have no choice but to try to make sense of.
This is where the second verse comes in—a desperate plea by Morrison to his girl, asking her to stand by him. Morrison wants her to make him understand, to show him how to find meaning in this dark and strange world because his entire world depends on it. The plea becomes much darker when you realize that this is the last song Jim Morrison ever recorded. Once he had finished the recording, Morrison left the band, going to Paris to spend some time with his longtime partner, Pamela Courson. He entrusted his bandmates to put the recordings together into an album, and they did, placing "Riders on the Storm" at the tail end of L.A. Woman, a dark coda for the album. Two and a half months after that album was released, Jim Morrison was found dead in his bathtub.
Upon his death, a book of poetry that Morrison had written was found. One poem channeled the dark figure that had so enthralled Morrison throughout his career: the hitchhiker. Morrison wrote, "Thoughts in time and out of season. The hitchhiker stood by the side of the road and leveled his thumb in the calm calculus of reason." The hitchhiker was always riding with Jim Morrison, and it became the basis of one of the greatest and final songs of his career. "Riders on the Storm" is everything The Doors do best, rock-solid rhythm by John Densmore behind the musical musings of Robby Krieger and Ray Manzarek, all brought to life by Morrison's twisted philosophical lyrics. And with just two verses and a chorus, it's a song that asks more questions than it answers. It leaves you in Morrison's shoes—a rider on the storm, musing on what it means to be alive.
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