The three poems that crafted The Doors’ 1970 track ‘Peace Frog’
The Doors‘ ‘Peace Frog’ could not begin on a more upbeat tone.
As guitarist Robby Krieger has explained, ‘Peace Frog’, which appears on the band’s fifth album, 1970’s Morrison Hotel, began with its music written first, before it was completed with Jim Morrison’s lyrics. Krieger’s opening G-chord-driven riff, with John Densmore’s faithful drumming behind him and the hum of Ray Manzarek’s organ, introduced what is presumably a lighthearted song. Leave it to Morrison, of course, to subvert expectations with his opening line, crooning, “There’s blood on the streets, it’s up to my ankles”.
What follows is a blood-soaked tale of unrest and violence, contrasted with choruses of a woman driving away from Morrison, “sunlight in her hair”, punctuated with echoes of “she came”, after every line. He makes reference to current events, singing of “Blood in the street / The town of Chicago”, mirroring the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests, and sings of the town of New Haven, as a reference to his infamous arrest while onstage with The Doors on December 9th, 1967.
To elevate ‘Peace Frog’ from a melody to a fully realised song, Morrison and Krieger consulted the frontman’s poetry books, where one piece glared back at them: “Abortion Stories”. Presumably, Morrison wielded images of blood and limbs in relation to the procedure, as for instance, “The river runs red down the legs of the city”, alongside “Blood in my love in the terrible summer / Bloody red sun of fantastic LA”.
There is also the ever-present image of dead Indigenous persons on a highway, a reference to something that Morrison claimed to have witnessed as a child, while driving through a desert in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his family. Morrison never forgot the incident, and it would continue to resurface in his writing. “Indians scattered on dawn’s highway, bleeding,” he sings, his voice reduced to a hushed drone, “Ghosts cloud the young child’s fragile, eggshell mind”.
Morrison parsed these descriptions from another poem that he had written called ‘Dawn’s Highway’, a retelling of the same story that haunted him. As Morrison wrote, he was driving with his parents and grandparents through the desert when they came upon a car crash: a truck, once filled with Indigenous workers, was wrecked, leaving their bodies scattered along the highway. “That was the first time I tasted fear,” he wrote.
The poem was later set to song on The Doors’ 1978 album An American Prayer, released posthumously after Morrison’s death in 1971, and after the band’s breakup in 1973. The remaining Doors did, however, reunite to record the music that would accompany Morrison’s spoken word. On the album, ‘Dawn’s Highway’ carries Morrison’s voice alone, with only faint sounds of the street and sirens behind him. “The reaction I get now thinking about it, looking back,” he closes, “Is that the souls of the ghosts of those dead Indians… Were just running around, freaking out / And just leaped into my soul / And they’re still in there”.
On An American Prayer, ‘Newborn Awakening’ follows ‘Dawn’s Highway’, and is effectively a sort of continuation of ‘Peace Frog’ in its near-identical melodies and expanded lyrics. In this version, Morrison sings further of the ghosts he envisioned, “The dead are new-born awakening / With ravaged limbs / And wet souls / Gently they sigh / In rapt funeral amazement”.
In his vision, the dead dance, soundtracked by ‘Ghost Song’, a balancing of mourning and euphoria.
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