Hear Jim Morrison Psych Up the Doors in ‘Roadhouse Blues’ Alternate Take
- by Kory Grow
BEFORE THE DOORS recorded the first take of “Roadhouse Blues,” the boogieing lead-off to their fifth album, Morrison Hotel, frontman Jim Morrison set the scene for the band by describing a vivid scene with his natural gusto.
“Now the subject of this song is something that all of you have seen at one time or another, it’s an old roadhouse,” he told the band, as heard in the previously unreleased recording premiering on Rolling Stone. “We’re down in the South or in the Midwest or maybe on the way to Bakersfield, and we’re driving in a ’57 Chevy to an old roadhouse. Can you dig it? It’s about 1:30 and we’re not driving too fast, but we’re not driving too slow either. We’ve got a six-pack of beer in the car, and a few joints, and we’re just listening to the radio and driving to the roadhouse through nature. Dig it?” He offers up a few more mots of wisdom, and guitarist Robby Krieger kicked things into gear with a buoyant riff.
“I can’t remember him ever doing that before,” Krieger tells Rolling Stone, referring to the Morrison monologue. “Actually, the real roadhouse was this place that was right down the street from our studio. It was kind of across the street from the Troubadour and a little bit east. It was a bar — I forget what it was called — but it was where Jim spent quite a bit of time with his drinking buddies. Even though it was in the city, this place looked like it could have been out in the desert. To me, that was what he was singing about.”
