Videos Classics: 'Riders on the Storm'

To honor WNEW's legendary Firecracker 500, every day we are highlighting the music that populated the 1991 and 1996 lists, with classic videos, live performances and little-known facts about the songs and how they came to be...

Riders on the Storm was the last song recorded by Jim Morrison to be released. The cryptic, often-controversial frontman for the Doors would be dead less than a year after recording the single and only a month after it was released in June of 1971. Originally appearing on the album L.A. Woman, the shortened single version went to #14 on the charts, and comes in at a Top 100 #89 on the 1991 Firecracker 500 (falling to #310 on the 1996 list).

Though the band would officially stay together for almost two years after Morrison's death, Riders on the Storm is considered by no less of an authority than Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek to be the band's final song. It is an appropriately haunting piece, mixed with sounds of falling rain (indeed, Manzarek's keyboards were intended to emulate rainfall) and with Morrison recording a second, whispered vocal track to be dubbed over his lead vocals to create a very distinctive and chilling effect.

Inspired by the earlier song, Ghost Riders in the Sky, the song's lyrics allude to the killing spree of Billy Cook, who posed as a hitchiker and murdered an entire family, though a popular urban legend persists that it refers to the killing of Navajo tribesmen by a reckless driver, or possibly to the French surrealist poem Chevaliers de l'Ouragan (literally, "Riders of the Hurricane"), by Louis Aragon.

In 2002 original bandmembers Manzarek and Robby Krieger attempted to reform the Doors and for a short time toured as "The Doors of the 21st Century", but former bandmate John Densmore and Morrison's estate won an injunction to prevent the Doors' name from being used. Thereafter, Manzarek and Krieger chose to tour under the name Riders on the Storm.

The video below accompanies the edited single version of the song. For those wanting to hear the longer album release, with its extended instrumental riffs, check out after the jump.

Have memories of this song or the Firecracker 500? Add your thoughts to the comments below or take a look at Video Classics past...