WCSX Classic Cuts
The Doors: “When the Music’s Over”
The Hook: The three instrumentalists knew how to react musically when Jim Morrison got poetic.
Album: Strange Days
Year: 1967
Writers: Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore
Stats: The ten-minute-plus track has never been released as a single, but has remained a rock radio favorite.
Background: “When the Music Over” was Jim Morrison at his poetic best. Doors drummer John Densmore says he was enough of a student of music that reacting to Morrison, whether it was on stage or in the studio, was pretty much second nature to him.
Doors drummer John Densmore on backing Jim Morrison on “When the Music’s Over.” OC:…did it. :30
“I was on the same page musically to match what he was saying lyrically. I think all of us were, Ray and I and Robby, and it took three Apollos to match this Dionysian energy. So when Jim sang, ‘What have they done to the earth? What have they done to our fair sister?’ I knew what to do. I knew, after watching Elvin Jones with Coltrane, that I could stop the beat and just flail away having a conversation with Jim and then go back into the beat. I didn’t process that, I just did it.”
