【聽歌練聽力】"Light My Fire" by The Doors

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it truly is, infinite."

  -- William Blake

 

The Doors

 

The doors were an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1965, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger, and drummer John Densmore. They were among the most controversial and influential rock acts of the 1960s; mostly due to Morrison's lyrics and voice, along with his erratic stage persona, and the group was widely regarded as an important part of the era's counterculture.

The band took its name from the title of Aldous Huxley's book The Doors of Perception, itself a reference to a quote by William Blake.

My first dog (she was such a sweet and gentle girl, miss her) was named after Aldous Huxley's grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley, who was a British zoologist and comparative anatomist, and was called the "Darwin's bulldog" for being a pugnacious defender of evolution. 

About the band's vocalist Jim Morrison

Jim Morrison,  also known as The Lizard King, was an avid reader, a poet and a lover of literature to his very core. He was steeped in literature from a very early age and spent much of his formative years with his nose buried in one book or another, transposing his passion for prose into his poetry and his songs later in life. It gave him his undoubted talent for poignant and poetic lyrics, and it also allowed his fans to create wild mythology around his character and intelligence.

Jim Morrison, died in Paris in 1971 at 27, the same age as the other two rock legends, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Jopplin. It's said he died of an unintentional heroin overdose. 

“Light My Fire” Song Facts

This song was written by The Doors late frontman Jim Morrison (1943-1971) and the band’s guitarist, Robby Kreiger. But it is the latter who is recognized as the main writer of the tune. And his inspiration were the songs “Hey Joe” (perhaps as rendered by Jimi Hendrix in 1966) and The Rolling Stones 1965 track “Play with Fire”.

 

More specifically in terms of the latter, Krieger (and the band in general) was encouraged by Jim Morrison to write “something universal” which could withstand the test of time and be interpreted by fans themselves. So Krieger decided to pen a tune about one of the four elements – which are earth, fire, air and water. And he chose fire because he was digging the aforementioned Rolling Stones’ song.

 

It was Jim Morrison though who wrote the song’s second verse. And Ray Manzarek (1939-2013), who plays keyboard on the track, came up with the famous organ intro, which he attributes largely to an act of improvisation. Indeed Krieger conceptualized “Light My Fire” as a folk-rock tune, which was how it sounded before the contributions of his bandmates.

 

This video is over 7 minutes long. In beween two sections of the song, the music is over 4 minutes long, from 1:17 to 5:52.

 

Light My Fire

You know that it would be ()
You know that I would be a ()
If I was to say to you
Girl, we couldn't get much ()

Come on, baby, light my fire
Come on, baby, light my fire
Try to set the night on fire

The time to hesitate is ()
No time to () in the ()
Try now we can only ()
And our love become a () pyre

Come on, baby, light my fire
Come on, baby, light my fire
Try to set the night on fire, yeah

......

 

Here is another great song by The Doors

 

Enjoy! Happy Wednesday!