Lavender Country

Today's act has a record that will never be broken; their debut album is the first known gay-themed album in country music history. Patrick Haggerty, the band's founder, released the remarkable self-titled album Lavender Country in 1973. It’s a breezy, old-school-outlaw country record. The 10-song collection, funded and released by Gay Community Social Services of Seattle, with funding and production assistance from activist Faygele Ben-Miriam, sold the 1,000 copies that were released at the time, but the 2014 reissue by the North Carolina label Paradise of Bachelors has contributed to an unexpected resurgence. It’s easy to see why: These songs are played with a great 70s country twang, and their politics resonate way past the final notes, especially in today's culture of expanding equalities.

Patrick Haggerty

Based in Seattle, Washington, Lavender Country consisted of lead singer and guitarist Patrick Haggerty, keyboardist Michael Carr, singer and fiddler Eve Morris and guitarist Robert Hammerstrom (the only straight member). Patrick Haggerty was the heart and soul of the group and it is through his interviews for Hornet (by Matt Baume) and for Pitchfork (by Brandon Stosuy) that we'll get the story.

At the core of Patrick (an activist as much as an artist) Haggerty's being is the relationship he had with his father, a deeply caring Washington State dairy farmer who realized his son was gay early on and tenderly let him know he was OK with it, without ever actually saying those words. In the 50s and 60s, Haggerty's father allowed him to dress up in girls clothes, and to try out for the high school cheerleading team with glitter on his face.

"I always loved my father and knew that my father loved me, but when I was a child, I thought was he was just another dad who loved his kid. There wasn’t anything exceptional about him. Because he never went to a place and said, 'Aren’t you lucky you have a father like me? Don’t I stand out? Aren’t I different from all the other fathers, because I’ll put up with behavior from you and no one else will.' He never went there. He never represented himself that way."

"I had no gay consciousness, I didn’t know I was going to be homosexual, I didn’t know what it meant. My dad couldn’t discuss that issue with me. He had to show the love that he had for me regarding my sexual orientation in all kinds of subtle ways. It wasn’t something you talked about. It was something you did. It was a sparkle in his eye."

"When I was 30, and I was out, I’d talked to so many different gay men about their relationships with their own fathers. Then, 10 years after he died, I began to realize what a truly unusual and remarkable man he was for his time and place. It’s incredible. I was so blessed to have a father who loved me. And he knew very well what I was going to be when I was six years old. I didn’t know it, but he did. Which sissy’s father in rural America in 1960 is telling them, 'Whatever you do, don’t sneak because you’ll ruin your immortal soul?' One in a million, one in three million, one in 10 billion? So I didn’t know it at the time, but I’m 70 now and I’m looking back and going, 'You had a really, really amazing father.' When he said 'don’t sneak,' I said, 'You’re right dad, I’m not going to sneak.' And then here comes Lavender Country, fuck all of you. If you would’ve had my dad, the patron saint of all sissies everywhere, for a dad, you would’ve written Lavender Country too. You’re supposed to write Lavender Country with a dad like that."

The Haggerty family in 1945

However, his father was an exception. As Patrick says:

"I was pissed off at straight men in 1970, not because they were straight. That had nothing to do with it. In 1970, almost all straight men were educated to believe that 'fags' were dirty and sick and that’s the way they treated us for the most part. It was, in fact, dangerous to come out to probably 50 percent of straight men at the time and another 30 percent were homophobic as hell."

"There were a few straight men at the time who 'got it', but not many. Many, many straight men at the time honestly believed that they had and deserved more rights than women, blacks, gays, elderly, disabled etc. You must remember that civil rights legislation didn’t happen until the mid-1960s. Before that, straight white men were for all intents and purposes the only group who did have civil rights."

Where did he record Lavender Country?

"I was in Seattle when I made the album. At the time, it was one of the best places in the country to come out. I doubt anybody in 1973 'felt comfortable' being out and gay anywhere; it was testy and sharp for most of us, and we all had to be prepared for 'a fight' wherever we were."

"It took a full 15 years after Stonewall for anybody to 'feel comfortable' being gay anywhere in the country. Certainly, Seattle led the way nationally for gay rights. I would say Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Boston were the leading cities for gay right in the 1970s."

"It was my idea to record the album. But as soon as I proposed it, I got a lot of support from the out lesbians and gays in Seattle. Without community support, it would have been impossible spiritually, psychologically, financially and every other kind of way. I cannot overemphasize the importance the community-backing played in producing the album. It truly was a community effort in every way."

"When we made Lavender Country, the line was between who's straight and who's gay. It was a faulty division in the first place because scientifically we all know there's a lot of blur. People are crossing over all the time, and in their actual sexual behavior, there's not really a discrete line between homosexuals and heterosexuals. In fact, sexual behavior runs on a continuum. That's the truth. The gay-straight line is a little artificial in the first place and it's a-historic. Politically, there hasn't really been a grouping of gay people in a lot of different cultures, though of course, gay behavior has been there all along. So there's an artificial line, but it's one that was necessary to move the movement forward. And now the line has shifted."

"My guitar player, a guy I've been running with for years, lives in San Francisco, and his sexuality is somewhat of a blur. Right now, he's involved in a heterosexual relationship, but I know his history very well and he's a crossover. He said the line has shifted from who you love to who you hate. It’s an anti-bigotry line. The bigots are on one side and the rest of us are on the other. That’s the new line. Gay or straight is out the window. It’s a non-issue. That’s not what’s real, that’s not what’s happening. The issue is: Do you hate somebody or not, and why."

"Of course, the people who hate homosexuals are also the ones who hate black people and women and any kind of equal rights movement. That’s where we are. Lavender Country is resonant to everybody now on one side of the line. Now, anybody who doesn’t want to be a bigot can listen to Lavender Country and hear what it’s saying. The pool of people who are ready to hear Lavender Country has skyrocketed exponentially in the last 10 years. It all just took me by complete storm. The really exciting part, of course, is how it’s a big fat ego trip, but that’s ridiculous. I’m too old for that shit. The real bottom line point is that it’s fabulous I’ve lived long enough to see this shift. It’s a huge victory that Lavender Country is making a splash. And before I go to my grave I'm getting the last laugh, because Lavender Country is going to outlive me."

Did he stay in touch with the other people who worked on Lavender Country?

"Yes, I did. (Keyboardist) Michael Carr and I remained great friends for years and years, as he was a gay activist with a politic very similar to mine (I mean radical Marxist). Michael married his longtime partner, Henry, and they live in Philadelphia. They both remain active in the gay and Jewish communities, and have consistently maintained their Marxist political views."

"I lost touch with (lead guitarist) Robert Hammerstrom for years, as he was not gay nor radical, but I have hooked up again with him recently. He went on to have a great career in country music. He remained in Seattle and has a recording studio in North Seattle. He joined us last year for a Lavender Country show. (Fiddle-player) Eve Morris was a lesbian activist in Seattle for years, though not a Marxist. We remained in contact for many years, but she moved to Miami, then Europe in later years, and I have been unable to locate her for about a decade now, though I have tried."

"Robert Perry, the main producer, and fundraiser of Lavender Country was a dear friend and housemate for years. He lives in California now but we have remained good friends throughout the years. He has helped out a lot in recent years with the rebirth of Lavender Country and remains a dedicated and loyal fan. Another person I would mention who was a great supporter of the project was Faygele Ben Miriam, noted radical gay activist in Seattle for decades. He has passed on. Faygele and I were fabulous friends, co-activists housemates and soul mates for a lifetime. I miss him terribly."

"Lesbian activists Rae Larson, Lois Thetford and Ann Manly were also great supporters of the Lavender Country project and we have remained lifetime friends. Lois and I share a daughter born in 1973, the year the album came out. I could mention many other people who played critical roles in the production and distribution of Lavender Country. Again, it was a community project from inception, fundraising, production, recording, sales and Lavender Country performances at the time."

What does it mean to be a "country" person?

"To me, being truly country means coming from a rural, farming/country background, gardening, farming, milking cows and chopping chicken’s heads off for family consumption; stuff like that. Many people in the industry who profess to be country, actually aren’t. Most people who are country music fans are actually lifetime city dwellers. Thinking country people are 'bumpkins' is a ridiculous stereotype. I grew up just like Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn: poor, lots of kids, great mom and pop. I milked cows hundred of times and chopped of chicken’s heads hundred more. I know how to grow a garden and set irrigation pipe, plow a field etc. etc. I doubt anybody would describe me as a 'bumpkin', certainly not a conservative one. But I am as country as they come; so are a lot of other progressives and radicals."

You said that your music has the following message in common with punk rock: "A lot of things wrong with the establishment. Fuck you guys." Do you feel like any contemporary LGBT-musicians are conveying this sentiment?

"There are a lot of musicians who are gay, and many of them are out on the job and to families etc. But almost none of them actually SING about it. It’s still the big no-no to get up and sing it. Those of us who do, do tend to have a radical view of society and ourselves, and we are consequently unrecognized if we do. Lavender Country is a huge breakthrough in this regard."

"Almost all the gay people I know who sing about it are still unrecognized by the larger society, and even unrecognized in the gay community. Here is a real element of homophobia in and out of the gay community when it comes to openly gay music, especially gay male performers. In fact, the gay community has been decidedly unfriendly to gay performers who actually get up and sing about it. We are almost always 'bumped off the stage' by straight so called up-and-coming 'hip' musicians, even at gay prides etc. This is a very sore point among gay musicians who actually do gay music. It would help a lot if we were actually supported by the community, but we are not, for the most part. This is a hurdle we need to overcome."

"The recent upsurge in Lavender Country is due, not to the gay community, but to the young, progressive punker, fuck-you types who recognize Lavender Country for what it is and think it needs to be broadcast to the population as a whole. Lately, this has broadened out to include up-and-coming straight country music artists, for example in St. Louis and Portland, who have been helping me out immeasurably. I would say the musician's community - not necessarily the gay community - is responsible for the Lavender Country upsurge. This is certainly true for my label, Paradise of Bachelors, who are a straight label and come, interestingly, from the south (North Carolina).

Let's listen to the music now: Haggerty is a musician and activist who wanted to use music as a means of passing along what he called "the information," basic social and cultural communication in a time when the LGBT community (which didn't even have that name yet) was still struggling to find out what was going on from city to city. He had grown up listening to country music, and he began writing songs that reflected his own experiences, as well as the larger concerns of the gay community in Seattle, his adopted hometown. 

Haggerty also built these songs around simple but sturdy melodies, and his voice (which suggests Will Geer's hipper younger brother) had a sly insouciance that expresses humor and anger equally well. And if the rest of the band isn't quite as memorable, pianist Michael Carr, fiddler and vocalist Eve Morris, and guitar picker Robert Hammerstrom give this music a loose but committed feel that speaks to political commitment as well as the desire to get the crowd hollerin'. 

The album opens with Come Out Singing, which speaks of randy pleasures:

"The corners of our bed
That's full of your flirtin' fingers
Your body odor lingers
In my toes and in my nose and in my head"

Then comes Gypsy John, a tale of a lover who's gone:

"Was I just a restless caress
A slippery kiss, O Gypsy John
In your scrambles for the squire of Avalon?"

Waltzing Will Trilogy tells three dark tales of institutional abuse.

"Walzing Will was soft and sweet

The way he waltzed was too effete

For psychiatrists to think was fittin'

So they said, "Hey son, we think we should

Sneak you a slug of raw manhood

The State Hospital's just the place to get one"

Now they call him a queer sickie

They herd him to group therapy

They lock him up at night so he don't escape

And if they hear any gay talk

A sizzle of electro-shock

Keeps his fantasies in fascist shape

They call it mental hygiene

But I call it psychic rape

And he won't get no restitution

Till we're dealing with the fact

That all the mental institutions

Are backed by a pack of straight white honky quacks"

Here's a live version with the recent line-up of Lavender Country:

The most popular song in the album is Cryin' These Cocksucking Tears, a screed against sexual gamesmanship.

"Sharing and caring isn't quite daring
Enough for a spiff such as you
Spread your pollen about, then you bug out
When there's railing and wailing to do
How long you been thinking that your shit ain't stinking?
Well Mama's done wiping your rear
You may need a wife sir, but I won't spend my life sir
Crying these Cocksucking Tears"

Back in the Closet Again carries bitter political messages:

"The Revolution started outright
Black Panthers were leading the fight
The Lords were in the left flank
The women drove a Sherman tank
And the workers were a hunk of dynamite
A battalion of Gay men brought up the rear
Packing two grenades in each brassiere
Every purse was filled with mace
Carbine rifles trimmed with lace
Them campy Gay guerrillas knew no fear"

"But the liberation forces got uptight
They screamed, "You fags ain't got no human rights
We think you guys are sick
'Cause all you want's a prick"
And while we scrapped, pigs stole the whole damn fight
That was the end of the revolution, my friend
'Cause all of us are going to the pen
They're rounding up the Blacks
Then they're after Gay folks next
So I'm Back in The Closet Again"

I Can't Shake the Stranger Out of You is probably my favorite song on the album. There's an emotional weariness in the melody and lyrics that fit my current state of mind.

You're a romping Bronco, I must admit

Stomping while your lips are chomping at the bit

Sure I'll kiss you, but who's gonna miss you

When you're chasing midnights through?

Be glad to be your one-shot pleasure

Even leave you grieving at your leisure, babe

But I Can't Shake the Stranger Out of You

Straight White Patterns is about the straitjacket of gender roles and sexual politics:

"We need these fears to vanish
But it seems like we've been banished
To the roles that mold these mannish
Modes of distance
We never seem to comprehend
That love is not some dividend
A plot to get more than we spend
Till out resistance
Gets ground down to the bone
Our hearts are out on loan
To strangers locked in stilted pantomime
But we buy them Straight White Patterns
Spend our lives in the five-and-dime
Where the price for Straight While Patterns
Is surrender to our gender one more time"

The youtube version that I've found is a live one; after 8 minutes of Patrick talking about his dad and honoring him, they go on to sing Straight White Patterns:

Lavender Country closes the album in a more upbeat fashion - it's an invitation to let your inhibitions go and have fun:

"You all come out, come out, my dears!

To Lavender Country

Sashay out and give our way a try

Whether you tuck in or dangle

When you hear that glad gay tango

You'll just spread you spangled wings and fly."

After disbanding Lavender Country in 1976, Haggerty ran two unsuccessful campaigns for political office, once for Seattle City Council and once as an independent candidate for a seat in the Washington House of Representatives, and continued to work as a gay rights and anti-racism activist.

In 2000, the Journal of Country Music published an article on gay country musicians, focusing in large part on Haggerty and Lavender Country. As a result of the renewed attention, the album was re-released on CD in December 1999, and in 2000 the band released a five-song EP, Lavender Country Revisited, which featured three re-recordings of songs from the original album and two new songs. The band reunited briefly in 2000, performing the album in its entirety at Seattle's Broadway Performance Hall in January 2000, and at that year's Seattle Pride. In addition, the album was archived at the Country Music Hall of Fame by former Journal of Country Music editor Chris Dickinson.

Their song Cryin' These Cocksucking Tears was included in the 2012 compilation album Strong Love: Songs of Gay Liberation 1972–1981. The 1973 album was re-released on independent label Paradise of Bachelors in 2014, and the band has played several reunion shows in 2014 to support the reissue.

Lavender Country - today

Haggerty still performs and is delighted that the significance of Lavender Country has finally been acknowledged. “Of course I’m disappointed in the homophobia in the country music scene, historically. On the other hand, Lavender Country is banging on the door! I never thought I would live to see it. It’s getting to the point where the country music scene is going to be dragged kicking and screaming into reality whether they want to go there or not. It’s exhilarating to be putting on my boots and kicking down the door. It’s time.”

Haggerty also recorded a story for StoryCorps about coming out to his father in 1959, which was adapted into the animated short film The Saint of Dry Creek in 2015. In 2016, director Dan Taberski directed a short film titled These Cocksucking Tears which starred Haggerty and told the story of his life and career.

Here's The Saint of Dry Creek. You should watch it. It's only 3 minutes long.

I'd like to close with Patrick Haggerty's answer to the following question:

You said that having a “bucket of sex” was never an issue for gay men; having a relationship was. In this age of mobile phone hookup apps, has that changed for the better or worse?

"Trust me, we didn’t need the Internet in 1970 to have a lot of anonymous sex - it was everywhere. The Internet has made it easier and less time consuming, perhaps. It’s not about sex, but about learning how to be intimate with men, something we were not trained to do, and we’re sorely lacking in skills because of it."

"While there is still rampant sex going on, I would say that the younger generation of gay men have done a little better at actually having intimate, loving relationships. We are learning along the way. I don’t regret all the anonymous sex I had. I do regret the lack of intimate connection that seemed to go along with it. As I said this is improving."

"I do not have negative judgments about having anonymous sex. I do have negative judgments about men’s ability to love one another truly, whether gay or straight. The world would be a lot better off if men knew how to love each other."

This is a sentiment I fully agree with...

The Doors Top 50 Countdown (#05-01) & This Week's Statistics

Today is our last day of the Doors' Top 50 Countdown, so it's as good a time as any to talk about the schedule in the immediate future. First of all, in a week from now, a new top 50 countdown will begin, as a companion piece to the week's statistics. It will involve another one of the biggest rock groups of all-time. I hope that Pep from AfterElton is still following us because he will be pleased.

We have 11 more acts from the 70s to present on the weekdays, acts that belong to a variety of different genres. After we finish with these, the long-awaited thematic unity dedicated to disco music will begin. It will last as long as there are interesting songs to play - and then we will return to the 21st century to present a bunch of contemporary acts. After that, we'll have a number of divas who embraced and were embraced by LGBT+ people, which will eventually lead us into the 80s and the 90s.

As far as the Oscar-winning songs are concerned, they will continue. I know that you like that series, but it's a lot of work and that's the reason that there were less of it in the summer. It will continue, hopefully on a more regular schedule during the winter. But enough talk, time for the Top 5 songs of the Doors!

If you wanted to craft the perfect rock debut, the most obvious route wouldn't be to meld Bavarian oompah with Willie Dixon's Chicago blues, Bach minuets with John Coltrane charts, 12th-century Celtic myths with ancient Greek tragedy, topped off with plenty of existential angst and a healthy dose of psychedelics. But even with influences touching on all of the above, the Doors' 1967 self-titled debut would soon make the band immortal, thanks to songs like Break on Through (to the Other Side), The End and the immortal Light My Fire. All three of these songs are in our Top 5.

As the opening track on the band’s first album and their debut single, Break On Through (To The Other Side) was the song that introduced the world at large to The Doors. It’s a taut, potent track, fizzing with energy from Densmore’s opening bossa nova beat that drives the song. The lines that speak of love - “I found an island in your arms/Country in your eyes” - are swiftly undercut in the next stanza as the Lizard King sings about “Arms that chained/Eyes that lied.” Morrison's vocals, a mixture of feral drawl and perfect diction, sound even more ferocious in the unedited version of the song, available on the 2006 reissue of the album and 2003 set Legacy: The Absolute Best, where he sings “She get high” - the word “high” was mixed out on the track’s original release, due to its drug connotations.

"If it hadn't been for Butterfield going electric, I probably wouldn't have gone into rock & roll," Robby Krieger recently admitted on his website. The Doors guitarist spent his early years emulating flamenco masters like Mario Escudero, Carlos Montoya, and Sabicas before moving into the blues. From there he discovered the raw Chicago sound of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, bolstered by the searing twin guitars of Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop. Their work would have a marked influence on his playing style, particularly on the track Break on Through (to the Other Side).

When the Doors began arranging the Morrison composition, Krieger found a familiar line falling out of his guitar. "I got the idea for the riff from the Paul Butterfield song Shake Your Money-Maker, which was one of my favorites," he says in Classic Albums. "We just changed the beat around." The Butterfield version of the song – first recorded by Elmore James in 1961 – was a track off their self-titled 1965 debut, produced by future Doors collaborator Paul Rothchild.

In the same documentary, Manzarek also demonstrates how he lifted the keyboard bass line from Ray Charles' What'd I Say, as well as elements of his organ solo. "We'd steal from anybody!"

It's a dynamite song and manages to blow up our notions of safety in just two-and-a-half minutes. It is our #5 song.

This is the uncensored version:

Here's a good cover by the Stone Temple Pilots:

This is the Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog's version:

Roadhouse Blues is a bar-stomper so raucous you can smell the spilled booze and the sawdust on the floor just by listening to it. The Doors’ reputation is that of an acid rock, psychedelic band, but they were all fans of the blues. They could get down and dirty with the best of them, creating a song you can imagine them vamping on for hours (as they do on the outtakes). That driving bass line is played by session man Lonnie Mack, who was on the downturn at the time, working at Elektra Records and selling bibles. John Sebastian of The Lovin’ Spoonful, adds a wailing harmonica and Morrison’s vocal barrels out of the starting gate at full throttle, though the freewheeling mood is tempered by the unease in the lines “The future’s uncertain/and the end is always near.”

The song, which appeared on the B-side of You Make Me Real, was first released as a single from the album Morrison Hotel in March 1970 and peaked at #50 on the US Hot 100. It took two days to record it (November 4–5, 1969) with producer Paul A. Rothchild striving for perfection.The song quickly became a concert staple for the group. One of the ideal driving songs, it's at #4 on our list.

A studio version of the song with John Lee Hooker sharing vocals with Jim can be found on the Stoned Immaculate: The Music of The Doors album. Here it is, for your pleasure:

Here's a cover version by Frankie Goes To Hollywood:

Blue Öyster Cult performed the song on their Extraterrestrial Live album, with Robby Krieger joining the band.

At #3 is the song that for film lovers is the Apocalypse Now song, while for Rock History buffs is the song that got the Doors fired from the Whisky a Go Go on August 21, 1966, when Morrison added an explicit retelling and profanity-laden version of the Greek myth of Oedipus during a performance of The End.

Morrison originally wrote the song about breaking up with his girlfriend Mary Werbelow, but it evolved through months of performances at the Whisky a Go Go into a nearly 12-minute track on their self-titled debut album. It was first released in January 1967. The song was recorded live in the studio with no overdubbing. Two takes were done and it has been held that the second take is the one that was issued. However, there is also a view that the issued version of the song was an edit of both takes, with at least one splice. The band would perform the song to close their last live performance as a foursome on December 12, 1970, at The Warehouse in New Orleans.

The song centers around an Oedipal fantasy, in which the protagonist murders his father and has sex with his mother, the recording of which in near-darkness led producer Paul Rothchild to later describe as the singularly most exciting moment in his studio career. It was long believed that Morrison’s dip into Greek mythology – via Freud’s Oedipus complex – was the Lizard King’s way of addressing a troubled childhood under a military father. However, Densmore recalls the singer explaining to him that “kill the father, fuck the mother” section was essentially about getting rid of the “alien concepts” which society instills in us as human beings. Morrison himself once suggested that the song had a different meaning for him each time he sang it, from the death of childhood innocence to the final curtain. “It’s strange that people fear death,” he considered, towards what indeed was the end. “Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over.” There are several officially released live versions of The End, each of them very different.

The End was the Doors' showstopper, an extended tour de force that blurred the lines between music and theater. The piece was especially exhausting for Morrison; performing The End before a live audience was enough of a challenge, but summoning the energy in a sterile recording studio took considerable effort on the part of the band, producer Paul Rothchild and engineer Bruce Botnick.

"The lights had been dimmed and the candles were burning right next to Jim, whose back was to the control room," Rothchild remembers in Stephen Davis' Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend. "The only other illumination came from the lights on the VU meters. The studio was very dark." To further set the mood, Morrison apparently took a tab of LSD.

At first, the hallucinogen had an overall positive effect on the performance, but during the playback, it became apparent that Morrison was, by Krieger's estimation, "too high to continue the session." Three of the Doors decided to continue work the following day. Morrison had a different idea.

"He trashed the studio after we did The End," Krieger told author Mick Houghton. "Jim was on a lot of acid, and when we finished recording, he didn't want to go home. The rest of us left, but he snuck back into the studio and got pissed off that there was no one else around, so he sprayed the place down with a foaming fire extinguisher."

Botnick elaborates on the episode in Mick Wall's Love Becomes a Funeral Pyre. "[Jim had] gone across the street to the Blessed Sacrament, a Catholic Church, and he had an epiphany over there. He came back to the studio and the gate was locked. He climbed over the gate, got in, but he couldn't get into the control room. That was locked. But the studio was open and the red lights were on." The red-hued work lights seemingly registered as a fire in Morrison's psychedelicized brain. "He thought it was on fire, so he grabbed a fire extinguisher and knocked over the ashtrays that were full of sand and tried to put out the fire."

Manzarek recalled the story slightly differently. In his memoir, Light My Fire, he claims that Morrison began ranting about a fire while being driven home from the studio by his girlfriend, Pamela Courson. He was so persistent that Courson reluctantly returned to the studio, and Morrison immediately bounded over the fence. "He took the fire extinguisher and hosed the whole place down," Manzarek told Houghton. "Not in the control room, thank God, just in the area where the band was ... just blasted the whole place man, just to cool it down." Much of the band's equipment was ruined, including a full sized harpsichord.

The following day, a single boot, belonging to Morrison, was found among the destruction. "The studio people just absolutely freaked," says Manzarek. "Paul [Rothchild] said, 'Uh, don't worry, don't worry, Elektra will pay for it. No reason to call the police.' He knew right away who did it, you know. We all knew right away what had happened." The only one who claimed ignorance was, predictably, Morrison himself. "I did that? Come on, really?" Densmore recalls him saying over breakfast the next day.

Elektra head Jac Holzman immediately cut a very large check to studio owner Tutti Camarata. "I rushed over and said, 'I agree, it's out of control. I'll pay for the damages," he told Mojo. The incident was smoothed over, but Krieger felt the moment marked a turning point in Morrison's psyche. "I thought Jim [felt], 'Well, I got away with that, I can get away with anything."

For all you film lovers out there, here's how the song figures in the opening scene of Apocalypse Now:

At New York’s Felt Forum in 1970, a year before his death, Morrison begins the song with a bloodcurdling cry of “Bring out your dead!”, as used by corpse collectors during the Great Plague.

Morrison's one-time lover Nico covered the song for her fourth album (1973), which shared the song's title.

Glorious on Strange Days (1967) and equally as good on Absolutely Live (1970), When The Music’s Over (our #2 song) was the ideal final encore: that’s your lot. But by then you’ve already heard Jim screaming ‘Persian night, babe. See the light, babe. Save us. Jesus. Save us.’ According to Krieger, his two guitar solos were “a real challenge because the harmony is static. I had to play 56 bars over the same riff.” It was worth the effort.

This 11-minute piece - far too sprawling to be considered a conventional song for radio play - doesn’t have the psychological underpinnings of something like The End but is just as dramatic in its own right. A simple keyboard intro from Manzarek leads to a shout from Morrison that’s quickly matched by Krieger’s wailing guitar. But however improvisational the piece feels, it never meanders aimlessly. Some of Morrison’s most recognizable phrases appear ("feast of friends," "alive she cried," "scream of the butterfly" "cancel my subscription to the Resurrection"), in a number that also takes a detour into environmental awareness ("What have they done to the earth?/What have they done to our fair sister?/Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her/Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn/And tied her with fences and dragged her down"), as well as making a demand that would be taken up by a generation: "We want the world, and we want it now!" It’s Morrison’s manifesto, perhaps, with a suitably downbeat conclusion.

Here's the studio version:

This is the version from Absolutely Live:

Here's a cover version by Gov't Mule:

It's time for my favorite song by the Doors. I guess that most of you have guessed what it is by now. Despite its familiarity, Light My Fire doesn’t smolder. It’s a conflagration of über-cool acid rock. Simply put, this is The Doors’ signature song.

After defining the art of the rock frontman every bit as influentially as Mick Jagger, Morrison has been subsequently blamed for every leering wannabe in leather trousers. However, love or loathe him, Morrison brought theatrical excitement to 60s rock and the Doors albums continue to sell in significant quantities. Artists from Echo and the Bunnymen to the Stranglers to Skrillex and Chase and Status have taken something from their organ-heavy sound, while Morrison’s fusion of rock and poetry inspired Patti Smith, among many others. Light My Fire – the band’s signature song – still best represents their adventurous creativity. In the absence of a bass player, Ray Manzarek used a Vox Continental organ as a lead instrument while his left hand played bass sounds on a Fender Rhodes piano bass – a similar set-up to that of Sky Saxon’s punkier Seeds, but the Doors took it somewhere more dreamlike and transcendental. Morrison sang about classic themes of sex and death, but Manzarek’s playing equally captured the fairground aspect of Los Angeles. Penned by guitarist Robby Krieger, the single version of Light My Fire has undoubtedly been slightly dulled by radio ubiquity. However, the much longer version from their classic eponymous 1967 debut – the first of six albums inside just four years – still sounds glorious, not least the thrilling moment where Krieger’s beautifully economical guitar solo crashes back into Manzarek’s waterfalling signature melody. The three-minute edit gave them an international number one and a standard that has been covered by everyone from Shirley Bassey to Will Young. As of December 1971, it was the band's best-selling single; with over 927,000 copies sold.

The Doors' guitarist may have had the greatest beginner's luck in rock history. Having never completed a song, the 20-year-old composed Light My Fire, the Number One smash that continues to evoke the Summer of Love's sensual heat.

"That was the first one I wrote because up until then Jim had been writing the songs," he told Reverb in 2016. "But we realized we didn't have enough originals, so Jim said, 'Why don't you write some? Why do I have to do all the work!?' So I said, 'OK, what should I write about?' And he goes, 'Write about something universal. Write about something that will last, not just about today.' So I decided I'd write about [either] earth, air, fire or water." Citing Play With Fire as one of his favorite Rolling Stones songs, he settled on fire.

Krieger labored over the song for several days, determined to conjure up something more than a standard rock progression. "Up until then the Doors were doing three-chord type songs that were pretty simple like I Looked at You or End of the Night," he told Clash Music. "I wanted to write something more adventurous. I decided I was going to put every chord I knew into this song – and I did! There are about 14 different chords in there." For a melody, he looked to Hey Joe, then a recent hit for Los Angeles band the Leaves.

With a verse and chorus under his belt, he brought the work-in-progress before his bandmates. The song had a folk-rock flair in this early state, leading some in the group to derisively compare it to a Sonny and Cher number. But Morrison saw its potential and offered to contribute some extra lyrics. "Jim came up with the second verse about the funeral pyre," Kreiger remembered in Classic Albums. "I said, 'Jim, why is it always about death? Why do you always have to do that?' And he said, 'No man, it'll be perfect. You'll have the love part of it and then you'll have that death part of it.' And he was right."

Manzarek added the cartwheeling Bach-like introduction and bass line (borrowed from Fats Domino's Blueberry Hill) while Densmore lent the Latin rhythm. When it was released the following year, the song would be jointly credited to the Doors.

The Doors' September 17th, 1967, appearance on the The Ed Sullivan Show infamously resulted in a lifetime ban after Morrison disobeyed the CBS Standards and Practices department and sang the original lyric to Light My Fire – "Girl we couldn't get much higher" – instead of their decidedly lackluster suggestion/demand: "Girl, we couldn't get much better." Producers and network executives were infuriated, and a stone-faced Sullivan denied Morrison the traditional post-performance handshake, instead cutting straight to a commercial for Purina Dog Chow.

The band was unbothered by the incident. "They said, 'You'll never do this show again!'" recalled Densmore in the Classic Albums documentary. "And we said, 'Well, we just did it. We only wanted to do it once. Cheers!'"

Buick offered The Doors vast sums to use the song in a car advert. The other band members agreed to the deal in Morrison’s absence. Morrison’s reply was: “Only if I can smash a Buick on stage with a sledgehammer.”

The song is #35 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It was also included in the Songs of the Century list and was ranked #7 in VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of All Time list.

Here's the full-length album version:

This is the shortened version that was used for the single:

This is a very good live version:

José Feliciano recorded Light My Fire in a Latin style and released it as a single, and in the summer of 1968, it reached #3 on the US pop charts with over one million copies sold in the US market alone. The song became a big hit in many countries, including Canada, Brazil, Sweden, the UK, and Australia and was awarded a gold record.

... And since we've mentioned it, here's Dame Shirley Bassey's powerful version:

Now, let's continue with last week's statistics; it was a good week for us: The number of total visits doubled from last week, an impressive feat. All of last week's stories did very well, but still at #1 for the week is the story that's obviously very attractive to many of you, the one of George Maharis. If somebody can get in touch with Mr. Maharis, please tell him how popular he is with us, I'm sure he'll be glad.

Each recent week, there is a country that is the protagonist as far as visits are concerned. This week it was Russia's turn to shine; not in the weekly top 10 at all last week, comfortably sitting at the top this week. The United States is at #2 but still decreasing their lead in the all-time list. The United Kingdom, on the other hand, is constantly doing well lately. There were minor changes in the percentages of the other countries. Canada, a former all-time top-tenner continues to do well and it may soon reclaim its position in the all-time chart. Speaking of former all-time top-tenners, this time it was Ireland that entered this week's top 10.

Here are this week's Top 10 countries:

1. Russia

2. the United States

3. the United Kingdom

4. France

5. Greece

6. Canada

7. Cyprus

8. the United Arab Emirates

9. Italy

10. Ireland

Here are the other countries that graced us with their presence since our last statistics (alphabetically): Argentina, Australia, Austria, Barbados, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Denmark, Egypt, Georgia, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, Turkey, Ukraine, and Vietnam. Happy to have you all!

And here's the all-time Top 10:

1. the United States = 40.8%

2. Greece = 8.9%

3. the United Kingdom = 8.4%

4. France = 7.3%

5. Russia = 4.8%

6. Germany = 3.8%

7. Cyprus = 1.35%

8. Italy = 1.25%

9. the United Arab Emirates = 0.66%

10. Belgium = 0.63%

That's all for today, folks. Till the next one!