Tag: Morrison Hotel

I hope everyone is having a great Sunday. I grabbed the album Morrison Hotel yesterday and was caught off guard by this song. I don’t remember it from when I originally played the album. The music is cool as hell with the guitar in a groove with the drums. I thought this could have been an instrumental and have been good…but the lyrics make it great.

Come to find out…the song started out as an instrumental as Robbie Krieger said: “I had written the music, we rehearsed it up, and it was really happening, but we didn’t have any lyrics and Jim wasn’t around. We just said, ‘Fuck it, let’s record it. He’ll come up with something.’ And he did. He took out his poetry book and found a poem that fit.”

I always liked album cuts…sometimes a little more than hits. This a great song on a Sunday to kick back to. I never thought of the Doors as the ultimate groove band but this one fits. Morrison Hotel peaked at #4 on the Billboard Album Charts, #3 in Canada, and #12 in the UK in 1970.

The lyrics about the Indians supposedly refer to a car accident that happened when he was a child. The accident involved some Indians and Morrisons thought the Indians joined his soul.  The Blood in the streets in the town of New Haven lyric refers to when the singer was arrested in New Haven in 1967. Morrison was backstage with a girl. He explains it in the quote below.

Jim Morrison: “We started talking and we wanted some privacy and so went into this little show room. We weren’t doing anything. You know, just standing there talking, and then this little man in a little blue suit and a little blue cap came in there. He said ‘Whatcha doin’ there?’ ‘Nothin’.’ But he didn’t go away, he stood there and then he reached round behind him and brought out this little black can of something. It looked like shaving cream. And then he sprayed it in my eyes. I was blinded for about 30 minutes.”

Peace Frog

There’s blood in the streets
It’s up to my ankles
There’s blood in the streets
It’s up to my knees

Blood in the street
The town of Chicago
Blood on the rise
It’s followin’ me

Just about the break of day
She came in
And she drove away
Sunlight in her hair

Blood on the streets
Runs a river of sadness
Blood in the streets
It’s up to my thighs

The river runs down
The leg of the city
The women are crying
Red rivers of weeping

She came in town
And then she drove away
Sunlight in her hair

Indians scattered on dawn’s highway bleeding
Ghosts crowd the young child’s fragile
Egg-shell mind

Blood in the streets
In the town of New Haven
Blood stains the roofs
And the palm tress of Venice

Blood in my love
In the terrible summer
Bloody red sun of
Fantastic L.A.

Blood screams her brain
As they chop off her fingers
Blood will be born
In the birth of a nation

Blood is the rose of
Mysterious union

There’s blood in the streets
It’s up to my ankles
Blood in the streets
It’s up to my knees

Blood in the street
The town of Chicago
Blood on the rise
It’s followin’ me