Beethoven had his 6th Symphony; the Doors had "Riders on the Storm."

In a way, it's such a simple song, just a little walking bass, a cool ascending organ part, minimal drums, and a melody that is certainly iconic but not too far away from many other crooning Jim Morrison melodies.

It's the atmosphere. It's the dread. It's the way the Doors understood that quietness is to sound what darkness is to sight.

It's the sound of rain, the best foleyed sound effect in rock music.

The lyrics describe a killer on the loose. I've said before, that before the success of the Doors, there might not have been much difference between Jim Morrison and Charles Manson. Jim Morrison clearly had more talent and a handsome face. He was also the well-off son of a Navy rear admiral. But he wasn't entitled to the fame he craved. And if he hadn't found the fame he did, would he have sought it in a different way?

Anyway, there was a cultish vision to Jim Morrison. There was something off. And maybe even he knew it.

The lyrics name check the rather nihilistic idea of "thrownness," which is often expressed, as in this song, through the metaphor of a dog's life. And maybe this song was Morrison's attempt to stop and look at what a wild spot his circumstances had led to, not unlike Paul McCartney's stopping and looking back in "Let It Be." Maybe he acutely felt the random, thrownness in his life, and how maybe he could've ended up on a different track with just slightly fewer things going his way. And maybe, like McCartney, there is just a little ambivalence about the positives and negatives of that.

Like "Let It Be," "Riders On the Storm" seemed to know that the ride was about over. Even Beethoven's 6th was about the end of the beginning, making a creative leap, leaving the nice music of the past for a future of greater maturity.

Beethoven succeeded in his next phase.
McCartney never really surpassed his past.
Morrison never got the chance.