THE DOORS' "MY WILD LOVE": A MYSTICAL WORK SONG
By April 1968, The Doors were wrapping up the recording sessions for their third studio album, “Waiting for the Sun”. The LP, debuting that July, eventually topped the U.S. charts to mark the absolute commercial peak of the band’s career. The last track to be recorded for this album was "My Wild Love", an idea conceived by the lead singer, Jim Morrison. The difficulty in framing his intuition within a suitable arrangement led the group to experiment with a rather unusual song form. They ultimately settled on the steady, evocative rhythms of work songs that had spread across America from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century. In particular, the structure of “My Wild Love” can be placed within the context of the gloomy, rhythmic motifs common among prisoners forced into hard labor and chained together in a long line (the latter known as “chain gang”). This type of work song centers on the repetition of a call-and-response vocal pattern, used to mark and coordinate the ...
