In a recently surfaced BBC Radio Scotland interview, where Alan Pell from Mercury Records and music journalist Billy Sloan talked about the making of Texas‘ fourth studio album ‘White on Blonde,’ the pair also discussed how Blondie became a guiding light for Texas.

Blondie’s unique style and sound have had a significant influence on the music scene, and their lead singer Debbie Harry added to the band’s powerful presence with her striking look and strong vocals. Besides that, she has also been a great role model for young female artists who wanted to pursue a career in music.

So, it is not surprising that many singers, including Talking Heads’ Tina Weymouth, cited Harry as one of their biggest inspirations. It seems like there was another band that took Blondie and Harry as their role model, as Pell and Sloan revealed in a newly surfaced conversation.

Pell recalled that he was with the band Texas while they were recording at home one night. Then, he told the Texas members that they should follow Blondie as an example, which became Texas’ turning point. According to Pell, everybody knew Blondie was a band, but it was eventually Debbie Harry and the rest, as she was the most prominent member.

Here is what Alan Pell said about Blondie:

“I do remember being in a house one night when they were recording with the band. We got talking about Blondie, and I do remember saying that you guys should take a leaf out of the whole Blondie book, which is like Blondie were a great band, and everyone knew that Blondie were a band, but it was basically Debbie Harry and the rest to the outside world.”

Sloan then added:

“It was almost as if overnight walk up to the fact that they had this great frontwoman and the group.”

So, like Blondie, Texas is also led by a female lead vocal, Sharleen Spiteri. It looks like they’ve followed in the footsteps of Blondie as a role model, although they couldn’t be commercially successful as them. Texas has still been actively making music and touring in different parts of the world.

https://youtu.be/25ZV6SYrUug

Ted Nugent‘s wife, Shemane Nugent, recently appeared on the rocker’s the Nightly Nuge and shared a memory from one of their hunts together in Africa, where the singer saved Shemane’s life when he realized that there was a female lion stalking his wife.

It is publicly known that Nugent is an avid hunter and an outspoken advocate for hunting, and the Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms in the United States. He also has been the subject of controversy for his practices, which many, especially animal rights activists, find unethical. So, not surprisingly, the rocker has lots of memories from his hunting trips.

In a recent episode of his YouTube show, the singer’s wife, Shemane, recalled that they had gone to Africa right after they got married. He was videotaping Ted while he was up in the tree with his bow and arrow. Yet, all of a sudden, he climbed down the tree to save Shemane’s life, as a female lion was stalking her. Ted had a gun with him, so he was ready to neutralize the lion if it got any closer.

Here is how Shemane remembered the day his husband saved his life:

“Right after we first got married, we went to Africa, and I was videotaping Ted back when we had those big video cameras. I knew enough about hunting to know that I had to stay videotaping him until the sunset, like that was the bewitching hour that everybody talked about. So, I’m on the ground by a tree, and on the other side of this, what they call a water hole which is a pond.

Ted’s up in the tree, and he’s up there with his bow and arrow. The sun starts coming down; it is beautiful, and all of a sudden, he gets out of the tree, and he starts walking toward me, and it is not even close to sunset yet. I said, ‘Why did you get out of the tree?’ and he said, ‘There was a lion stalking you.’”

Nugent stepped into the conversation and added:

“I was watching a female lion literally crouching like in the videos on Discovery Channel, and what we saw live in South Africa along the Limpopo River, there was a female lion. I was carrying Smith & Weston model 29 44 Magnum at the time, which I carried religiously everywhere. So, even though I was about 80 yards from Shemane, I was prepared to neutralize the lioness threat, but it was literally moving in on her, and I got down to make sure that the lion didn’t get my sweetheart.”

Thus, the veteran rocker literally saved his wife’s life when he realized a lioness was watching her while he was up in a tree. Luckily, the couple managed to leave before anything dangerous happened to them, but apparently, it was a scary moment for Shemane.

Richie Sambora recently joined People, discussing why he felt obligated to reunite with Jon Bon Jovi and the anticipated time of their possible reunion. The rocker also shared updates on the release dates of his upcoming solo projects.

It’s been nearly a decade since Sambora departed from Bon Jovi in 2013, marking the end of their 40 years of partnership. The guitarist had reasoned that his departure was necessary to focus on his family life, stating that his professional commitments were getting in the way of him connecting with his daughter on a deeper level.

Despite Richie’s decision to leave Bon Jovi to prioritize his family, Jon seemed less than thrilled with his former bandmate’s departure. The frontman had even made a snide remark, sarcastically suggesting that his former bandmate ”should get his life together,’ hinting at a bitter relationship between the two. Therefore, whether Sambora would reunite with the band remained unanswered.

However, Richie had recently hinted that a possible reunion was in the works, and he and Jon had been reconnecting. He didn’t specify a set a date for the reunion show as he disclosed that the frontman had vocal problems he needed to fix first.

The rocker seemed more optimistic that a reunion show was in the plans, disclosing that talks were underway. Coming together with Bon Jovi also seemed to carry immense significance for Sambora as he felt a sense of obligation that they owed to the fans. The guitarist then disclosed that his solo music would be released only in a few months.

Sambora on releasing solo projects and reuniting with his former bandmates:

“I’m hoping the end of March or beginning of April [to release solo music.] [And] we’re obviously talking about it [Bon Jovi reunion]. For me, I feel a spiritual obligation to the fans around the world.

And, also, to say thank you to God and the universe for giving me such an amazing life the opportunity to go out and make people happy with what comes naturally to me. I think that I was born understanding that language, the international language of music.”

Even though Sambora is on a solo path and getting ready to release some new music, he felt obligated to Bon Jovi fans worldwide who wished to see the band on tour with their classic lineup. However, as we don’t know when the shows will take place, I’ll leave you to read how Richie almost brought Jon to the brink of the abyss.

The 2023 movie season has kicked it into high gear, but adventure only has one name: Indiana Jones. The iconic archeologist played by Harrison Ford is returning to the big screen one final time this June in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. While it’s exciting to think about Ford back in the fedora or what director James Mangold will bring to the action set pieces, the most recognizable thing about Indiana Jones would be his theme song, composed by the legendary John Williams. Now the composer has revealed the score for Dial of Destiny is finished and that it’s going to be a long one.

In an exclusive interview with Variety centered around his Oscar nominated work in Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, the composer looked ahead to his return to Indiana Jones. “It’s certainly got to be an hour and a half of music, maybe more,” Williams said, “But I’m quite happy with it. There’s a lot of new material. The old material works very well as a touchstone of memory, but I had great fun, and I have a theme that I’ve written for Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the wonderful actress.” Waller-Bridge plays Indy’s Goddaughter Helena in the latest film and Williams debuted her theme at the Hollywood Bowl last summer. Williams would go even further teasing the full score saying the music is:

“Unified by Indy’s theme, and the general style of the film, which is in my mind a kind of action-comedy, because you never take the action seriously. It’s certainly a swashbuckling affair from beginning to end, fashioned more like movies of the ’30s and ’40s where the orchestra is racing along with the action, which you wouldn’t do in contemporary films very much.”

The Final ‘Indiana Jones’ Adventure

The story for any Indiana Jones adventure is also very important, but it looks like fans of the iconic franchise won’t have to worry about Dial of Destiny losing the classic feel of what came before. Williams has assured fans of that and had nothing but praise for Dial of Destiny’s script along with both Ford and Waller-Bridge’s performances. “Harrison is wonderful in it. He looks great, he moves beautifully.” Williams said. “The best part of it for me is the writing and the interplay of dialogue between Harrison and Phoebe, like the old-style Hepburn-and-Tracy kind of bickering. It’s witty and bright and snappy, like a duet that goes on for two hours.” This final film will see Indy on a race against time in 1969 against a former Nazi scientist named Voller played by Mads Mikkelsen during the height of the space age.

John Williams’ Legacy

While Williams might be better known for his iconic scores for Superman, Star Wars, and E.T., the four Indiana Jones films up to this point arguably showcase the composer’s best work. The “Raiders March” and “Marion’s Theme” in Raiders of the Lost Ark are what fans think of when William’s weighty name is brought up in a conversation. The combination of adventure, intrigue, and romance is next to none. Then there’s his work for the then trilogy capper The Last Crusade. What he added to the emotional weight of Indy and his father’s rekindled relationship in the film, on top of the epic sounds associated with the quest for the Holy Grail, is so emotional it would bring a group of grown men to tears. Williams redefined the modern action adventure sound that has influenced so many other now iconic franchises like Tomb Raider and Uncharted. That’s why it will be so exciting to hear what the composer has in store for the last Indiana Jones adventure.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny releases in theaters everywhere on June 30. While we anxiously wait to hear Williams’ final Indy score, you can watch Dial of Destiny’s teaser trailer down below.

The sound of Canadian prog-rock heroes Rush is defined by the complex combination of Neil Peart’s hard-hitting percussion, Geddy Lee’s grooving basslines and Alex Lifeson’s delicious guitar licks. In many ways, it would be hard to say that Rush were not inspired by England’s finest hard-rock exports, Led Zeppelin.

Describing the first time he got to see the legendary rockers play, Lee said, “Led Zeppelin came to Toronto. I remember staying up all night to get tickets. I think I am right in saying that this album [their debut] had only just been released, and we went to see them. We were very young and, as such, a little bit on edge and eager to sample anything.”

“Then I heard ‘Communication Breakdown’, and a trigger went off in my head,” Lee continued. “That was my punk rock, really. The surge of power was something I had never experienced before. This was just the kind of explosion you can only really enjoy when you are young.”

It’s true that while Zeppelin admittedly nicked an awful lot of music from other musicians without giving them proper credit, there was just something about the band that was so awe-inspiring. Each of Zeppelin’s members were an absolute master of their instruments, from Plant’s voice to Bonham’s pounding drums.

Lee also remembers hearing the closing track of Zeppelin’s debut album that night. He said, “I saw them at a little place called the Rockpile. We were in the second row, and when they played ‘How Many More Times’, it just blew me away. It reaffirmed for me all the creative potential in blending hard rock with progressive music. John Paul Jones was the unsung hero in that band.”

“We’ve got tickets and waited out in the wee hours of the morning,” Lee added. “It only holds 1200 people max. We got into the second row, and I remember when they came out on the stage, they started with a song called ‘Train Kept On Rollin”, which is and old kind of Blues standard.”

Concluding on the concert that changed his life forever and dictated the direction that his future musical career would move in, Lee said, “They literally tore that house down because there were bits of plaster falling from the ceiling that night. To young guys, young musicians, that was just kind of a magical night. One of my favourite concert memories too.”

The Rolling Stones have enlisted the help of a prominent bassist for a new project they’re working on: Paul McCartney.

A source with knowledge of the sessions confirmed McCartney’s involvement in the project, saying he contributed bass to one new Rolling Stones song. The collaboration was first reported by Variety. However, the source denied the initial report’s claim that Beatles drummer Ringo Starr also participated in the sessions.

A rep for McCartney declined to comment.

The Stones have reportedly spent the past several weeks recording new music in Los Angeles with producer Andrew Watt (Post Malone, Ozzy Osbourne, Miley Cyrus, among many others), and the project is nearing the mixing phase. No other details have been shared, including when this music might see the light of day.

The Stones have been steadily building anticipation for new music over the last few years, even releasing a new track, “Living in a Ghost Town,” in April 2020. In a 2021 interview with The Los Angeles Times, Keith Richards said the band might’ve finished a new album had the pandemic not interrupted things, while Mick Jagger added, “We have a lot of tracks done, so when the tour’s finished, we’ll assess where we are with that and continue.”

Last March, Richards told Rolling Stone that the new Stones project would feature some of the final sessions with drummer Charlie Watts (who died in August 2021) but that it would also feature contributions from Watts’ live replacement, Steve Jordan. Additionally, in an Instagram video shared in January, Richards said, “There’s some new music on its way.”

The project will likely mark the Stones’ first with all-new material since their 2005 album, A Bigger Bang. In 2016, they released Blue & Lonesome, which featured only covers of blues songs

Def Leppard and Mötley Crüe are scheduled to play a concert tonight (on February 25, 2023) at Parque Simon Bolivar in Bogota, Colombia. There were some concerns that were raised when Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott was apparently

admitted to a hospital about 24 hours before the scheduled concert with what appears to have been deemed respiratory issues. Elliott has since been discharged from the hospital and the concert is scheduled to go ahead tonight.

There have been numerous posts on Facebook explaining the situation but one of the most detailed can be found on Alejandra Garza Locutora‘s Facebook page earlier today (with slight edits):

“Def Leppard‘s Joe Elliott was hospitalized in Bogota and discharged ahead of his show.

Joe Elliott, vocalist of the British rock band, was hospitalized at the Marly Jorge Cavelier Gaviria clinic, in the municipality of Chía, Cundinamarca.

Through social networks, music portals point out that the British artist would be affected by the height of Bogota, so he would have presented respiratory problems in the evening hours of Friday, February 24. The Brit was admitted for dysnea, a breathing difficulty.

It is said that the vocalist would have been discharged around 10:00 a.m., sources from the Marly Clinic where he was attended confirmed.

Neither the event’s organizing company, nor the Def Leppard band has issued an official statement on the artist’s health condition.”

Def Leppard have confirmed via Facebook that the concert tonight will be going ahead:

the show is still ON for tonight at Parque Simon Bolivar! We’re ready to rock and roll with the fans in Colombia

Perhaps surprisingly, given the iconic status enjoyed by both the artist and the storied venue, David Bowie appeared only once at London’s grand Royal Albert Hall in his career, and then only as a special guest, for a special two-song encore.

The date was May 29, 2006, the opening night of a three-night stand at the South Kensington venue booked to close out the UK leg of David Gilmour’s On An Island tour. The mood of the tour was celebratory, as On An Island, Gilmour’s first solo album in 22 years, had given him his first UK number one album outside Pink Floyd, and across the three evenings in the capital, Gilmour had lined up a number of special guests to join him onstage, among them David Crosby and Graham Nash, Robert Wyatt, his Pink Floyd colleague Nick Mason and long-time Floyd fan David Bowie.

Bowie, by his own admission, was a huge fan of Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, and acknowledged Barrett as a “major influence” on his own career. “His impact on my thinking was enormous,” said Bowie. “A major regret is that I never got to know him. A diamond indeed.”

Ahead of his cameo onstage with Gilmour, Bowie rehearsed two Floyd songs with Gilmour’s band, their 1967 debut single Arnold Layne and Comfortably Numb from 1979’s The Wall. If the singer had any anxieties about returning to the stage two years on from the enforced cancellation of his 2004 Reality tour, he hid them well, talking happily backstage with a camera crew documenting the shows for a future DVD release.

During this conversation, Gilmour appeared through a backstage door, accidentally interrupting Bowie’s fond reminiscing about his teenage love of Pink Floyd, though it was immediately obvious to all watching that 1. the pair had a deep respect for one another, and 2. that the puckish Bowie was in the mood for a little mischief.

“I’d say I’m a big Pink Floyd fan,” Bowie begins, encouraging Gilmour to join him. “The first time I saw them, my parents dragged me along when I was six or seven. I saw them at the Marquee I think.”

“Six or seven,” laughs Gilmour, knowing full well that his friend would have been in his mid-teens when Floyd formed. “I think not..”

“So, really, I have to blame my parents for this great love I’ve got of the Floyd,” a smirking Bowie continues, before the two men embrace.Onstage later that night, the pair’s mutual respect was evident to all in attendance, with Bowie absolutely nailing his cameo. “He really let it all out, didn’t he?” Gilmour noted approvingly.

As the frontman of Radiohead, Thom Yorke has carved a unique and impressively sprawling career over three decades of high-quality output. The band rose to prominence from the obscurity of Abingdon School in Oxfordshire with a friendship spawned from a shared desire for sanctum. In the music room, the aspiring five-piece sought refuge from belligerent teachers and fellow students.

One song that arose from the high school’s gilded Dickensian walls was the 1990s loner anthem, ‘Creep’. Despite being later derided by both the band and its hardcore fans, the anxious misfit mood created in ‘Creep’ became their trademark and was taken on an unprecedented journey through Radiohead’s soaring 1990s catalogue.

This early, rock-orientated phase reached its pinnacle in 1997, and while many bands stick to the comfort of the beaten track, Radiohead have taken every opportunity to add something new to their sound. It is within these moments of daring experimentation that both Yorke and the band flourished into the creative icons we know them as today. The first and most significant sidestep came in 2000 with Kid A, a wholly unique album that benefited from Yorke’s interest in electronic music.

Since the millennium, Radiohead have continued through five further albums, maintaining an insatiable thirst for creative exploration. During this time, the five members of Radiohead have embarked on various solo projects and collaborations on the side that have been highlighted by Jonny Greenwood’s award-winning film scores and Yorke’s acclaimed solo career.

Today, we’re creating a list of ten songs that provide the perfect Thom Yorke starter pack, including some of his greatest moments with Radiohead, a couple of collaborations and a track from his current project, The Smile.

10 songs to prove Thom Yorke is a genius:
‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)’ – The Bends (Radiohead)
Following their uneven debut of Pablo Honey, Radiohead returned for their second album, The Bends, in 1995. The more refined sound established the band as a serious force in British rock music, and its maudlin cynicism perfectly juxtaposed the more enthusiastic Britpop wave of the time.

‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)’, released as a single in January 1996, is undeniably one of Radiohead’s early essentials. It reached number five on the UK Singles Chart, Radiohead’s highest position up to that point. Yorke once said the slow brooding ballad was inspired by R.E.M. and Ben Okri’s 1991 novel The Famished Road.

Radiohead – Street Spirit (Fade Out)
‘Paranoid Android’ – OK Computer (Radiohead)
Radiohead maintained an admirable creative trajectory as they entered actor Jane Symour’s mansion to record a third record. If The Bends carried a cloud of dread and cynicism for its loose concept, OK Computer took another step thematically. While still not a strict concept album, OK Computer evokes familiar feelings of dread and anxiety associated with the technological revolution and social incompetence.

OK Computer is often regarded as Radiohead’s finest album, and while it holds a dynamic spread of immersive music, ‘Paranoid Android’ stands out as its defining moment. The title alone appears to sum up the album as a whole, and thanks to its ambitious multi-section composition, it’s widely “considered the new ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ whatever that means,” as David Byrne said in his 2019 speech while inducting Radiohead into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

‘Rabbit in Your Headlights’ – Psyence Fiction (UNKLE)
In the OK Computer track ‘Airbag’, Yorke made use of a programmed drum beat influenced by the pioneering work of DJ Shadow. This infatuation with electronic music would later take Radiohead’s sound by storm, but even before Kid A, Yorke was mixing with the burgeoning IDM scene of the late 1990s.

In 1997, the year OK Computer arrived, UNKLE, the project established by James Lavelle, recruited DJ Shadow to collaborate on his debut album, Psyence Fiction. For the project, UNKLE brought in The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft, Badly Drawn Boy, The Stone Roses’ Ian Brown and Thom Yorke, among others, to perform on the tracks. For one of the album’s most memorable moments, Yorke co-wrote and sang ‘Rabbit in Your Headlights’.

‘Everything In Its Right Place’ – Kid A (Radiohead)
By the end of the 1990s, Yorke and his bandmates found themselves completely worn out following an extensive OK Computer touring schedule. After chugging away on guitars for over a decade, Yorke found himself somewhat disillusioned with rock music as he increasingly welcomed cutting-edge electronic music by the likes of Aphex Twin, Autechre and Squarepusher into his listening habits.

The first song recorded for the groundbreaking post-rock masterpiece, Kid A, was its first track, ‘Everything In Its Right Place’. The track’s intro hears Yorke on the keyboard with sampled vocals blurting out, “Kid A, Kid A”. This track was the first step of a brazen deviation from Radiohead’s preconceived style and marked a pivotal moment in Yorke’s development as an artist.

‘Life in a Glasshouse’ – Amnesiac (Radiohead)
Kid A arrived in 2000 as a shock to the system as Radiohead began to welcome influences outside of rock, namely electro and jazz. A year later, they released Amnesiac, another similarly sprawling set of pioneering tracks mostly collated from the Kid A sessions. Amnesiac boasts a varied sound, but jazz-style drumming and brass instrumentals remain the most memorable thread.

‘Life in a Glasshouse’, the album’s closing song, brought one of the album’s finest and most all-encompassing moments. Yorke’s stellar vocal performance builds with suspense through a dramatic build-up that reaches a brass-infused climax as he sings: “Well, of course, I’d like to sit around and chat/ Well, of course, I’d like to stay and chew the fat”.

‘Weird Fishes/Arpeggi’ – In Rainbows (Radiohead)
After the impressive yet less progressive Hail to the Thief arrived in 2003, Radiohead left fans waiting for four years before their seventh studio album, but it was worth the wait. 2007’s In Rainbows marked another peak for Radiohead as Yorke and the group gifted fans with another diverse set of alt-rock hits.

The album ebbs and flows through upbeat moments like ‘Bodysnatchers’ and Jigsaw Falling Into Place’ and sentimental, downbeat areas like ‘Nude and ‘Videotape’. In many ways, ‘Weird Fishes/Arpeggi’ marks the album’s finest and most representative moment, as the enveloping arpeggio sends us to some strange subaquatic environment with the “weird fishes” and lets the listener dive into the purity of the Yorkian oceans.

‘Ingenuine’ – AMOK (Atoms for Peace)
In 2009, Yorke formed the supergroup Atoms for Peace to perform songs from his acclaimed debut solo album, The Eraser. The band consisted of the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, Radiohead’s longtime producer Nigel Godrich, Joey Waronker of Beck and R.E.M., and the percussionist Mauro Refosco.

After a successful tour in 2010, the group decided to hit the studio to record an album. AMOK was the dazzling product of combining Yorke’s electronic musings with the supergroup’s jamming sessions. The album’s most memorable moment was ‘Ingenuine’, a strange concoction of electro sounds that somehow tesselate seamlessly as Yorke gives a characteristically angsty vocal performance.

‘Decks Dark’ – A Moon Shaped Pool (Radiohead)
Seven years ago, Radiohead treated us to their ninth studio album and the first since 2011’s uneven The King of Limbs. The album boasts a fine sonic balance with ambient orchestral soundscapes and intense beat-driven climaxes. David Byrne is one of many admirers of the album and described it as “cinematic” during his speech at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019.

The album is undoubtedly one of Radiohead’s finest discographic entries; with such a diverse collection of equally enchanting tracks, it’s difficult to pick just one to get stuck into. However, ‘Decks Dark’ feels like a great place to start with the album as it’s the most representative of the collection as a whole. Its quaint atmospheric build up morphs into something eerier as the beat rises and the guitar and choir textures enter the fray.

‘Suspirium’ – Suspiria (Solo)
In 2018, Yorke was commissioned to provide a score for Luca Guadagnino’s modern reimagination of the classic Dario Argento horror movie, Suspiria. The Radiohead frontman initially declined the job, but after Guadagnino’s persistence, he consented. The critically revered soundtrack was released in October 2018 alongside five singles.

The album was Yorke’s first-ever film score, and in keeping with the mood of the film, it’s almost totally void of upbeat energy. Instead, the tracks meander through the eerie and sentimental realms of ambient and melodic piano music. The soundtrack’s defining moment is its lead single, ‘Suspirium’, a beautiful piano-driven piece and an essential of the Yorke catalogue.

‘The Smoke’ – A Light for Attracting Attention (The Smile)
Radiohead have been on hiatus since concluding their A Moon Shaped Pool touring commitments in 2018. In a first glimmer of hope for Radiohead fans, Yorke joined forces with Jonny Greenwood and the Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner to form a side project, The Smile, in 2020.

After releasing a sporadic run of singles, the trio released their debut album, A Light for Attracting Attention, in May 2022. As Radiohead fans have grown to expect, the album delivered a broad spread of music from the riotous punk-derived ‘You Will Never Work In Television Again’ to the beautifully mournful ‘Free In The Knowledge’. For The Smile, Yorke has opted to play the bass guitar as his primary instrument, and no song represents this era better than ‘The Smoke’.

From day one, the Doors always wanted to make music outside the norm. As the rest of the California rock scene was tuning in and dropping it, Jim Morrison was looking to expand listeners’ minds differently, showing them the darker side of what the hippy generation was dealing with. Although the idyllic dream for hippies was to bask in the sunshine, Morrison was always drawn to the night.

Morrison already had songs written and fleshed out during the band’s first jam sessions. The only problem? He didn’t know how to play any instruments. Though a song like ‘Moonlight Drive’ was fully formed in his mind, it took the rest of the band to turn it into a proper song, filling in the musical ideas that Morrison couldn’t translate.

While a song like ‘Moonlight Drive’ reads better as a straight love song, ‘End of the Night’ was written around the people who lived on the wrong side of the tracks. Although Morrison came up with the melody on the spot, the lyrics are lifted verbatim from poet William Blake. Inspired by his generation’s beat poets, the bridge comes from Blake’s Auguries of Innocence, which features the line (via Songfacts), “Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to the endless night”.

For Morrison, music and poetry always went hand in hand. Outside the recording studio, some of the Doors’ first performances would morph into jam sessions as Morrison recited poetry alongside the music. This would often be where songs would form, like taking Morrison’s ‘Texas Radio and the Big Beat’ and turning it into ‘The WASP’ on LA Woman.

Though Morrison’s chilling vocals provide the backdrop for the story, the unsettling aspect of the tune comes from Robbie Krieger’s guitar. The arrangement of the song is primitive, but Krieger’s slide guitar gives a layer of menace to the track, almost like a ghost is caught between the grooves of the record.

While the band gained more attention after their debut album was unleashed upon the world, Morrison was only getting started. Across the next album, Strange Days, half of the tracklisting could be songs about people born to the end of the night. ‘Unhappy Girl’ details a woman’s life in her own mental prison, and the title track could be the unofficial sequel to ‘Night’. After spending so much time reaching the night’s end, the only logical next step is to end at ‘Strange Days’.

Despite its reputation as one of the Doors’ moodier tracks, a restless spirit is at the heart of ‘End of the Night’. Even on his debut album, Morrison was talking about the need to fade into the night and never be heard from again.

When talking about his music during an interview, Morrison mentioned identifying with these people on the wrong side of the tracks, saying: “the mood I get from most of it is a kind of a heavy kind of a sort of gloomy feeling, you know. Like someone not quite at home. Or, you know, or not quite relaxed, and you know, aware of a lot of things but not quite sure about anything, you know?”. Morrison never felt that comfortable as a rock god, but everything seemed to make sense when reciting poetry and performing music.