Riding out the Storm

“Riders on the Storm/

Riders on the Storm/

Into this house were born/

Into this world were thrown.”

These opening lines from the Doors’ “Riders on the Storm” form a simple, powerful, yet ultimately ironic message of the song when looked at through the frame of lead singer and songwriter Jim Morrison’s life. Morrison is considered one of the most influential and talented rock musicians of all time though he died at the young age of 27 due to a suspected heroin overdose and suffered from alcoholism for much of his young life.  While this element of his life can be seen clearly in many of the Doors’ songs, it is especially interesting to look at through a close reading of these lyrics.

“Riders on the Storm” while certainly a little ambiguous at first, seems to point to people in general having to ride out the storm of life. The fact that riders is used indicates that we are not simply leaves in the wind, completely at the mercy of the forces around us with no power of our own. Indeed, despite the fact that the Storm is a powerful, unpredictable, and at times, frightening place to be, we are still the daring Riders, always willing to fight back and cut our own path through the chaos. The repetition of this line here and throughout the song helps to emphasize and remind us of this message: that we are riding out this storm of life and one can’t stop doing so without being taken by it.

“Into this house were born” offers a more subtle and soft tone to build upon this message as a way to contrast the line that follows it. “House” and “born” almost makes one picture a baby being born and placed into a cradle in their home with family and friends around to welcome them into the world. Yet it also makes it a point to show that we are not in control of our destiny in this regard because it uses the passive voice to explain that we have no power over how, where or why we enter this world when we do.

Furthermore, this contrasts greatly with “Into this world were thrown” showing how despite the seeming comforts and lack of responsibility in our early lives, we are not closely guided through our whole lives and must at some point be thrown to the wind to learn on our own how to ride out the storm. With no real power of our own in the matter, each of us is thrown into our world of life and must either ride out the storm, or get swept up in it like so many leaves.

Morrison himself was thrown to the wind frequently in his life, forced to move often due to his father’s military career. However, despite his message here that we all must be the Riders and not the leaves in this storm of life, Morrison died young from a drug overdose because he could not handle the vices that life threw at him. His inspirational lyrics will remain long after his death though to echo the storm of his life and remind us to ride it out better than he did.