Each day, Rich Terfry and Radio 2 Drive wraps up your day with music and stories about the interesting things going on in the world.
REAR VIEW MIRROR:
Every week, Rich Terfry looks back in our Rear-view Mirror at a great song from the good ol’ days. This week, The Doors and "Light My Fire."
Ten facts about The Doors' "Light My Fire":
Listen to Rich Terfry tell you 10 incredible facts about `Light My Fire`by The Doors
- This song gave The Doors their breakthrough. Before its release, they were little-known outside of the Los Angeles area.
- It became The Doors first hit and it was a big one, reaching #1 on the Billboard chart.
- Many years after the song's release, it was discovered by a university professor that the song appeared on The Doors' debut album slowed down by 3.5%. This put the song in a key half a step lower than the key in which it was written. It wasn't until 2006 that a corrected version was released.
- The band agreed to licence the song to Buick for a commercial without singer Jim Morrison's approval. When he heard about it, he threw a fit. He contacted Buick and threatened to destroy one of their cars on live television if the spot ever aired. It never did.
- When the band was invited to perform the song on The Ed Sullivan show, they were asked by the show's producer to change a lyric with a drug reference. The band agreed, but Morrison sung the original lyric anyway. For that, they were never invited back to the Sullivan show.
- Keyboardist Ray Manzarek said that the song's keyboard intro was inspired byBach's Two and Three Part Inventions and that the bassline was taken from Fats Domino's hit "Blueberry Hill".
- The guitar and organ solos performed in the song are based on John Coltrane's jazz rendition of "My Favorite Things" from the Sound of Music soundtrack.
- This was the last song Jim Morrison performed before he died. That last show was in Baltimore on December 12th, 1970.
- According to his diaries, Jim Morrison wasn't a fan of the song and disliked performing it live. It's speculated that this is because he wasn't the song's primary writer and he resented the fact that it was the band's most popular song.
- The Door's record company was against the idea of releasing it as a single, saying it was too long for radio play at over six minutes long. Sure they had a hit on their hands, the band agreed to a radio edit that cut the song's length in half.
Here's the song that went to number one on the charts in July of 1967. It was knocked off three weeks later by "All You Need Is Love" by The Beatles - here's "Light My Fire" by The Doors on Rear View Mirror.
Here are some other great editions of Rear-view Mirror:
Bob Dylan & Jimi Hendrix/All Along The Watchtower
Phil Spector and the Ronnettes/Be My Baby
Os Mutantes/Ando Meio Desligado
Captain Beefheart/Yellow Brick Road
Elton John/Bennie and the Jets
Hank Williams/Long Gone Lonesome Blues
R.E.M./What's the Frequency, Kenneth?
Tom Waits/Jockey Full of Bourbon
Buffalo Springfield/For What It's Worth
Five Man Electrical Band/Signs
Band Aid/Do They Know It's Christmas
The Pursuit of Happiness/I'm An Adult Now
Big Joe Turner/Shake Rattle and Roll
Martha and the Muffins/Echo Beach
Wilson Pickett/In The Midnight Hour
The Band/The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
The Animals/House of the Rising Sun
Ian and Sylvia/Four Strong Winds
James Brown/Please Please Please
John Cougar Mellencamp, 'Pink Houses'
The Ramones/I Wanna Be Sedated
U2/I Still Have't Found What I'm Looking For
Janis Joplin/Me and Bobby McGee
Gordon Lightfoot "If You Could Read My Mind"
Simon and Garfunkel "The Sound of Silence"
Bill Haley and his Comets "Rock Around The Clock"
The Velvet Underground "I'm Waiting For The Man"
Johnny Cash "Folsom Prison Blues"
Bobby Fuller "I Fought The Law"
Joy Division "Love Will Tear Us Apart"
Booker T and the MGs "Green Onions"
Neil Young "Rockin' in the Free World"
The Left Banke "Walk Away Renee"
Lou Reed "Walk On The Wild Side"
The Clash "Should I Stay or Should I Go"
The Animals "We Gotta Get Out of this Place"
Dusty Springfield "Son of a Preacher Man"
Screamin' Jay Hawkins "I Put A Spell On You"
Mott The Hoople "All the Young Dudes"
New York Dolls "Personality Crisis"
George Jones "He Stopped Loving Her Today"
Bruce Springsteen "Born in the USA"
The Beatles "With A Little Help From My Friends"
James Brown, 'Hot (I Need to be loved loved loved)'
Ray Charles, 'I Don't Need No Doctor'
Curtis Mayfield, 'Freddy's Dead'
Gang Starr, 'Beyond Comprehension'
CCR, 'Have You Ever Seen the Rain'
Howlin' Wolf, 'Smokestack Lightning'
Bobby Womack, 'Across 110th Street'
Foggy Hogtown Boys, 'Man of Constant Sorrow'
Pink Floyd, 'Wish You Were Here'
Neil Young, 'Cortez The Killer'
Bob Dylan, 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'
Elvis Costello, 'Watching the Detectives'
Jimmy Cliff, 'The Harder They Come'
The Verve, 'Bittersweet Symphony'
Roberta Flack, 'Killing Me Softly with his Song'
Rolling Stones, 'Beast of Burden'
Glen Campbell, 'Wichita Lineman'
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