The Sounds Of Summer: Day 66 of 95: “Light My Fire”- The Doors. The Summer of Love was full of great music. The Beatles album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was released in the final week of May that year and was a dominating turntables that summer. One of the singles from that summer that rank as one of the greatest songs from that summer both in popularity and quality has to be “Light My Fire” the first big hit- and what would be in the end the biggest hit single in The Doors career. It spent 3 weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100- the last week in July and the first two weeks in August. It was on the chart all summer. Having no memory of the radio that summer I would have to imagine if you turned a radio on for any length of time chances are you heard “Light My Fire.” Below- the album version of the song and the shorter single version.
slicethelife 
I’ve always loved this song, even though one could perhaps argue it has been overexposed.
Ray Manzarek nicely illustrates that it doesn’t always take a mighty Hammond to create a cool organ sound. In my view, this song is the perfect for the comparatively simple Vox Continental. No wonder there was a time when touring musicians loved that keyboard, which was much easier to transport and set up than a bulky Hammond. Yes, its capabilities were much more limited, but it still could be quite effective.
Great song off of a great album- and I love Jose Feliciano’s version that came shortly after the original.
Yes, very true. And it’s funny you should say this, since I was going to mention Feliciano’s version as well. But I guess I got too much carried away with raving about the keyboard sound that I forgot! 🙂
I just listened to The Doors. While I am overall not a huge fan of the band- their debut is great.
When it comes to The Doors, I primarily know and like them based on about a dozen or so songs. In terms of their albums, I think I’ve only heard the debut and Morrison Hotel in their entirety. Between those two, I think the debut would be my preference. In addition to “Light My Fire,” I dig “Break On Through” and “The End.”
The Doors/ Strange Days and their final album LA Woman are my favorites- the others- so-so IMO.
The extended album version is my 2nd favorite song of all time, after ‘Stairway to Heaven’.
The extended version much superior to the single version- I was kind of shocked when I saw the actual length of the album version- it doesn’t seem that long.
This song was a turning point for something. It is in a class by itself. I like Jose F’s version also.
I remember listening to Light My Fire at 17 years old in sultry summer South Florida constantly on AM radio. Morrison was a god in those days to my peers.
That album was fantastic.