You know that it would be untrue
You know that I would be a liar
If I was to say to you
Girl, we couldn't get much higher

Come on baby, light my fire
Come on baby, light my fire
Try to set the night on fire

The time to hesitate is through
No time to wallow in the mire
Try now we can only lose
And our love become a funeral pyre

Come on baby, light my fire
Come on baby, light my fire
Try to set the night on fire

The time to hesitate is through
No time to wallow in the mire
Try now we can only lose
And our love become a funeral pyre

Come on baby, light my fire
Come on baby, light my fire
Try to set the night on fire

You know that it would be untrue
You know that I would be a liar
If I was to say to you
Girl, we couldn't get much higher

Come on baby, light my fire
Come on baby, light my fire
Try to set the night on fire

Try to set the night on fire
Try to set the night on fire
Try to set the night on fire



When Robbie Krieger joined the Doors in the fall of 1965, the band quickly fell into a steady rehearsal schedule, and both Jim and Ray became increasingly eager for the band to develop more original material. At a rehearsal in December 1965, Ray made it clear he felt all four of the band members should try their hands at songwriting. Robbie has stated in numerous interviews that he felt if his songwriting was to have a chance to stand up to Jim's he had better stick to the basics, so he thought about the four elements, and came up with Light My Fire.

The basic melody, lyrics and chord progressions all came from Robbie, but the resulting hit is a perfect example of the Doors' group approach to crafting and arranging their material.

As the group first played the song, Ray was feeling it began too abruptly. Asking Robbie, Jim and John to take a break, he worked on an intro. Borrowing a melody from a classical piece, he worked it into what would become the musical signature of the Doors. John developed it further, using a modified Latin beat for the verses, a straight-ahead rock approach for the chorus, and the final addition of the single snare crack for the intro.

Jim added a lyric to complete Robbie's efforts and there it was - the song which would begin it all for the Doors.

There is a long performance history of Light My Fire, which was continually re-invented onstage in an effort to keep it fresh. Various live versions of the song include jams of Summertime, Heatwave, Saint James Infirmary and My Favorite Things, in keeping with the inspiration John Coltrane provided Robbie and Ray. On December 12, 1970, Light My Fire became the last song Jim Morrison ever sang onstage at the Warehouse in New Orleans.


The heart of Light My Fire is driven by instrumental solos, based, according to Robbie and John on a chord structure similar to John Coltrane's jazz version of My Favorite Things. The rudimentary structure from which Manzarek and Krieger build their interplay between the organ and guitar is quite similar to that between Coltrane's soprano sax and McCoy Tyner's piano on their rendition of... this Rogers and Hammerstein song... from The Sound of Music.

[Coltrane's version of My Favorite Things catapulted the song into instant jazz standard status. It has long been a favorite of mine, and I have been delighted to find references to it in Robbie's solos in various live versions of Light My Fire and Summertime. So I was absolutey delighted to find an AMAZING version of Light My Fire which takes us through My Favorite Things, Fever, Summertime, St. James Infirmary and back to Fever from the June 6, 1970 Vancouver show. Robbie works My Favorite Things into his solo, and the entire band, including Jim, join him for the rest of these jazz standards. It is a TASTY TREAT! ~laciefae]

Song Notes on the impact of Light My Fire: Since the release of The Doors in January, the first single Break On Through has received quite a bit of airplay on the west coast, but has met with less enthusiasm elsewhere on AM radio. FM radio progressive rock stations discovered the album version of Light My Fire and it has been receiving extensive airplay. Requests from AM deejays started pouring in for an edited version of the song, and in late April, 1967 the edited version of Light My Fire is released with The Crystal Ship as the B side. And so it all began...

"The first album was like number ninety, and that was about all it was going to be, and then came Light My Fire and it went way up to #1...it happened so fast that we were still playing The Scene when the song hit the top ten. We could have been playing giant places and here we were stuck at The Scene for twenty bucks a night." - Robbie

Song Notes: The Single

Dave Diamond is the disc jockey who convinced the Doors to release an edited version of Light My Fire as the second single from The Doors LP. He showed Robbie and John "piles of letters" (John Densmore's words) he had received requesting Light My Fire to be played on his Psychedelic Diamond Mine show. He suggested an edited version could fit AM radio format stations. Though Robbie and John didn't like the idea of shortening the solos, they approached Paul Rothchild with the idea. Paul grudgingly edited the song, believing the record didn't have a chance. On July 29, 1967, Light My Fire replaced Windy as the #1 selling song in America.



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