“Riders on the Storm” by The Doors

"Riders on the Storm" was the Doors' last will and testament, though nobody knew it yet: released by Elektra in June 1971 as the second single from L.A. Woman, their sixth album, it was the final song Jim Morrison recorded before he died suddenly in Paris on July 3, 1971.

It's a long, slow, rain-soaked drift of a record. Ray Manzarek's Rhodes piano drips and shimmers, Robby Krieger's guitar slides in like a stranger in the headlights, John Densmore keeps a hushed, jazzy pulse on the drums, and Jerry Scheff's bass rolls underneath like distant thunder. Morrison sings it low and close, half whisper and half warning, and the menace in his voice is all the more chilling for being so quiet. All four Doors share the writing credit, and they produced it with Bruce Botnick.

It was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic, reaching number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 22 in the UK, and it climbed to number seven in the Netherlands. Heard now, it plays like a slow fade to black.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.