The Doors “Roadhouse Blues” charted

Roadhouse Blues The Doors

Writer(s): John Densmore, Robbie Krieger, Ray Manzarek, Jim Morrison (see lyrics here) First Charted: April 11, 1970 Peak: 50 BB, 76 CB, 41 CN, 1 CL, 1 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): -- US, -- UK, 0.04 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 192.90 video, 273.25 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: Morrison Hotel (also known as Hard Rock Café) was the fifth studio album released by the Doors. Like its predecessors, it was a million-selling, top-ten album. Each of the four previous albums produced at least one top-40 hit, among them “Light My Fire” (#1 BB), “People Are Strange” (#12 BB), “Love Me Two Times” (#25 BB), “Hello, I Love You” (#1 BB), and “Touch Me” (#3 BB). This marked the first time the Doors didn’t produce a top-40 hit from an album. “Roadhouse Blues” (technically the B-side of “You Make Me Real”) only reached #50 on the Billboard Hot 100. Even so, it became a staple on album rock radio. In 2022, Time Out ranked it the #11 classic rock song of all time. WK Sound engineer Bruce Botnick called it “the all-time American bar band song.” WK While the Doors fit in more “with the psychedelic denizens of Jefferson Starship and Donovan” TO “Roadhouse Blues” showed that “when they let loose on the blues, they made a massive crater in the soundscape.” TO It is “a droning, repetitive, swampy wallow through 12-bar debauchery in which Jim Morrison…screams gleefully about roadhouses. Behind him, bandmates Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger fill the empty spaces with so much sonic bravado it almost feels like getting hit by a truck on a lost highway.” TO Morrison apparently came up with this song during a drunken jam session. SF The roadhouse in the song may be the Topanga Corral, a nightclub in Topanga Canyon where Morrison lived. SF Alice Cooper said he was the inspiration for the line “Woke up this morning and I got myself a beer.” He said he was hanging out with Jim, said that line, and Jim wrote it down. Alice said, “So they go in and they’re doing the song and the next thing I hear is ‘woke up this morning and I got myself a beer’ and I went ‘I just said that a second ago!’” WK Resources: SF Songfacts TO Time Out (11/4/2022). “The 28 Best Classic Rock Songs of All Time” by Andy Kryza WK Wikipedia Related Links: First posted 4/28/2024.