The Doors Songs - Moonlight Drive Lyrics

The Doors - Moonlight Drive

The Doors - Moonlight Drive Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Strange Days
Released: 1967

Moonlight Drive Lyrics

Moonlight Drive Song Chart

Jim Morrison wrote the lyrics while he was living on a rooftop in Venice Beach, California. At night everything was clear, so he would look into peoples windows, study what they were doing, and watch their TV sets. (thanks, Shelby - Lincoln City, OR)

Jim Morrison recited this as a poem to Ray Manzarek when they ran into each other on a beach in Southern California in 1965. Manzarek, who knew Morrison from UCLA film school, thought it was great and convinced him to form a band.

This was the first song recorded by The Doors. It was left off their first album because they felt it wasn't good enough. Speaking with Gibson.com in a 2011 interview, Manzarek recalled there was chemistry straight away: "I knew instantly we had found 'it,' that indefinable, transcendent something that Kerouac refers to," he said. "I remember showing Robby the chord changes for a simple 'G' progression. He pulled out his bottleneck and said, 'I've got an idea for this, something sort of liquid-like.' A lot of The Doors music came to be like that – water-y. That came from living on the beach. We were actually there, whereas even The Beach Boys, for instance, didn't really live on the beach."

The Doors started recording this as more of a Blues song. Ray Manzarek got the idea during recording to do it as "a rock tango."

The lyrics are about a tryst on the beach under the moonlight.

This was one of 6 songs The Doors recorded for a demo at Aura records in 1965. They didn't get a record deal out of it, but signed with Elektra 2 years later.

This was released as the B-side of "Love Me Two Times."