“On Sundays, when we were off, he would go to bars, get drunk, and crash his car,” wrote keyboardist Ray Manzarek in his 1998 memoir, “Light My Fire: My Life With the Doors.' Still, somehow from this chaos came one of the great songs about Los Angeles.
At the annual radio conglom’s parade of pop stars, BTS got the most shrieks, while Doja Cat and Lil Nas X proved ready to headline arenas on their own.
Across seven epic minutes, the band maneuvers through the measures as if winding along Mulholland at midnight. When the singer hits the words “Mr. Mojo Risin’” — an anagram of “Jim Morrison” — the band moves into the bedroom. They weren’t uniformly lucky on the album, which remains a polarizing listen that often finds Morrison adopting the demeanor of a cigarette-stained prowler who boasts and moans his way through simply written blues lyrics. Capturing the tenor of Manson Family-era L.A., the album’s inner sleeve included an image of a naked, lifeless woman being crucified on a telephone pole. The Doors’ label, Elektra Records, also used the illustration for an eerie Sunset Boulevard billboard.
“One thing that can never be denied Morrison,” wrote Bangs, “is that at his best he had style, and as he was at his best as a poet of dread, desire and psychic dislocation, so he was also at his best as a clown.” Densmore told Morrison that “Riders on the Storm” would be the next single. “He said, ‘Great,’ and that he’d be back eventually.”