Mr. Mojo Rhymin' Trivia Quiz

Answer: Like she did one thousand times before

"Love Her Madly", from their final album before Jim died in 1971, "L.A. Woman."

Actually, much of this song was written by guitarist Robby Krieger, inspired by the many times his girlfriend had left him and returned.

Answer: Penetrate the evening that the city sleeps to hide

The opening words to "Moonlight Drive."

This was one of the first songs Jim wrote and the Doors recorded, but they felt it wasn't good enough to include on their first album; it wound up on "Strange Days," their 1967 followup album.

Morrison and keyboardist Ray Manzarek had a chance meeting in 1965; Morrison sang "Moonlight Drive" to him and this partially served as an impetus for starting the band.

Answer: Blood on the rise, it's following me

The blood-soaked imagery of "Peace Frog" from 1970's "Morrison Hotel."

The "Blood in the streets in the town of Chicago" refers to the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, in which there were numerous violent clashes between police and demonstrators. The song also invokes bloody references to Jim's 1967 onstage arrest in New Haven, CT, and to an episode from his childhood in which he came upon a truckload of dying Indian workers who had been in an auto accident.

Answer: Trying to tell me no one understands

"Five to One" from 1968's "Waiting for the Sun."

The title of the song has been explained as the ratio of a number of things in the United States at the time: whites to blacks, those who didn't smoke pot to those who did, old to young.

The opening lines of the song, "Five to one baby, one in five, no one here gets out alive," provided the title for "No One Here Gets Out Alive," the first extensive biography of Jim Morrison.

Answer: Break on through to the other side

"Break On Through," the first song on their 1967 self-titled debut album, and the first single released from it.

The record company edited the audio so that Morrison's lyric "She gets high" came out sounding like "She gets auugghhhh," although most Doors fans knew what he was saying.

Answer: Our casual joys

Title song from "Strange Days," the Doors' second album. Full of great music, and considered by several critics to be the band's best work, "Strange Days" is also noteworthy for its cover.

Their debut album featured "pinup-type" closeups of the band on the cover. "Strange Days" had a slightly weird scene of circus street performers, with the only reference to the band being a small poster (actually a reproduction of their first album's cover) in the background. It was Morrison's way, and the band's, of saying that the group's music, and not its looks, would do the talking for them from that point forward.

Answer: Bullet strikes the helmet's head

"The Unknown Soldier" from "Waiting for the Sun."

The song was promoted with a video in which the Doors escort Morrison along a beach and he is executed by firing squad, blood pouring from his mouth as he falls. Needless to say, the video didn't receive much airplay. The band also recreated the firing squad in their concerts, with Krieger's guitar acting as a gun and a drum rimshot for the sound of the gun. No blood though.

Answer: We'll meet again, we'll meet again

"The Crystal Ship" from their debut album.

A pretty song, it has been interpreted to have been inspired by a breakup with a girlfriend, a drug trip, and an oil tanker that Jim once saw, among probably dozens of other things.

Answer: If I get my hand on a number two come back home and marry you

"Land Ho" from "Morrison Hotel." What're the odds that the first bill Jim found had George Washington's picture on it?

Answer: To the East to meet the Czar

From "Waiting for the Sun's" "Not to Touch the Earth."

"Not to Touch the Earth" is actually a musical excerpt from "The Celebration of the Lizard," a poem Jim often performed in concert. The "Lizard" poem was typically 15 minutes to more than half an hour in length in performance. Depending on one's attitude (or drug intake), it was either Jim's masterpiece, or a self-indulgent mess.

Not sure where I stand on any of that - but I'm glad that the man who wrote "Dead president's corpse in the driver's car, the engine runs on glue and tar" never dated my sister.

Answer: Last me all through the week

"Love Me Two Times" from "Strange Days," another song with lyrics from Robbie Krieger.

Answer: Waiting for the summer rain

From "The End," the final song on their first album.

"The End" was the first and greatest of the Doors' performance songs. It begins as a sad and moving, but pretty standard-sounding, appeal to a departing friend or lover. The lyrics get stranger and evolve into weird poetry that combines drug trip references with hints of mythology. This transitions into a blunt and brutal Oedipal section, giving way to jarring and trippy music, before easing back into the song's ending, as standard as its beginning.

"The End" got the group noticed when they were performing it in their club shows. Later, Francis Ford Coppola included it in his 1978 film "Apocalypse Now," winning the Doors attention from a new generation of fans seven years after Morrison died.

Answer: Do you hope to pluck this dusky jewel?

Another of the Doors' earliest songs, "Hello I Love You" was written in 1965 before being included on "Waiting for the Sun."

Jim had seen an attractive black girl on the beach and been warned off by Ray that she was too young for him, so he wrote the song to memorialize her.

The music in the song was similar enough to the Kinks' song "All Day and All of the Night" that Kinks guitarist Ray Davies sued the Doors and won the British royalties for "Hello I Love You."

Answer: Sweet family will die

"Riders On the Storm" from "L.A. Woman."

The quiet and brooding keyboards in the song got it derided as "cocktail music," although it's unlikely too many popular lounge songs involve a demented killer on the road scheming to kill a family who offers him a ride.

Jim wrote a screenplay or poem, in which he plays such a killer. A recording exists from this, of him making a phone call saying he'd killed someone in the desert. This is on 1978's collection, "An American Prayer." It's pretty chilling to listen to.

Answer: True sailing is dead

The poem "Horse Latitudes" from "Strange Days."

Inspired by a book cover illustration he'd seen as a child, showing horses being thrown off Spanish galleons to lighten their load in stormy seas, "Horse Latitudes" describes that very act. Let's just say that it doesn't have a good beat and you can't dance to it. Disturbing stuff.

Answer: Starin' into a hollow idol's eyes

"Wild Child" from 1969's "The Soft Parade."

A number of women from Jim's past, and men who worked with the Doors, have since come forward claiming that the song is about them.

Answer: Never saw a woman so alone, so alone

"L.A. Woman's" title song, a trip through the seamier sides of Los Angeles.

Jim Morrison loved word games, and he invokes one of his most famous ones in this song. He often called himself "Mr. Mojo Risin'," an anagram of the letters in his name. Toward the end of "L.A. Woman," he starts chanting the words "Mr. Mojo Risin'," speeding up and building up to the song's last verse.

This quiz title ("Mr. Mojo Rhymin') lends itself to some interesting anagrams as well:

Hmm join Mr. Roy - Would have worked better had Roy Orbison died before Jim.

Roomy Jim hymn - Perhaps a solemn song commemorating the days when he was overweight?

Jimmy mo' horny - Okay, let's move on!

Answer: And our love become a funeral pyre

"Light My Fire," of course. The Doors' first and biggest hit, the song that probably forever defined them and Jim in the minds of most casual music fans - and it was Robbie Krieger who wrote most of the lyrics, the memorable organ introduction, and the hypnotic keyboard/guitar duet in the middle.

Two classic Doors moments center around the song.

In the first, they appeared on the popular Ed Sullivan television variety show in September 1967. They had been asked by the network to change the words "girl we couldn't get much higher" - to what exactly, I've never read - and were banned from appearing on the show again after leaving the lyrics intact in their performance.

In the other one, General Motors had proposed an advertising campaign for 1970, built around the slogan "Come on Buick, light my fire." The other three Doors had already agreed to accept $75,000 for the use of the words and song in the campaign when Jim got wind of it and killed the deal.

I think he'd have liked my "I've just gotta buy some Goodyear tires" lyric though!

Answer: Tell you 'bout the maiden with wrought iron soul

"The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)" from "L.A. Woman."

The song was really music added to a poem that Jim had written years before, about Mexican radio stations that blasted their signals into Texas.

From it, we get two of Jim's more memorable lines: "Out here on the perimeter there are no stars, out here we is stoned - immaculate," and "No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

Answer: Welcome to the soft parade

From the mysterious title song to "The Soft Parade."

The song opens with Jim channeling a fiery preacher lecturing about petitioning the Lord with prayer, then shifts into several tempo changes as a backdrop for word games and nonsense rhymes from Jim.

Answer: Stumblin' in the neon groves

"Soul Kitchen" from "The Doors" album.

Morrison wrote the song in 1965 as a tribute to an inexpensive soul food restaurant near where he lived with Ray Manzarek. Manzarek later ran the lyrics of the song by John Densmore, successfully enticing him to join the group as its drummer.

Answer: Streets are uneven when you're down

"People are Strange" from "Strange Days."

Feeling depressed one day, Morrison walked up a hill that offered wonderful views of the city of Los Angeles. His mood brightened by the view, he walked down, feeling like a stranger to the world he'd known, and made up many of the song's lyrics on the return trip.

Answer: The scream of the butterfly

"When the Music's Over" from "Strange Days."

"When the Music's Over" was another poetic performance piece from the group, similar to "The End," with a listener-friendly beginning and end, and a disturbing middle with Apocalyptic poetry and lyrics from Morrison. He would sometimes outright stop in the middle of the song for minutes at a time, hoping to incite the audience.

"I want to hear, I want to hear, the scream of the butterfly" - man, Jim, heavy stuff.

Answer: The future's uncertain, and the end is always near

The jauntily rocking "Roadhouse Blues," the opening song on "Morrison Hotel."

Lovin' Spoonful singer John Sebastian played the prominent harmonica on the recording, listing himself as "G. Puglese" in the credits because of the negative reputation the band had at the time - Morrison's lewd behavior trial in Miami was underway at the time the album came out.

Answer: Prefer a feast of friends to the giant family

From Jim's poem "Feast of Friends," part of the eclectic 1978 collection "An American Prayer." There is a scorching live rendition of "Roadhouse Blues" on "An American Prayer," but the all the rest of the album is Jim's spoken poetry - sometimes not for the faint of the heart, and generally for only the most passionate of Morrison fans.