hey, welcome to 12tone! I've always had a weird
relationship with The Doors. I like their music, but I often struggle to connect with it, to
really get it in the way I think it was meant to be heard. it's a product of a very different
era from the one I grew up in, and while I enjoy their songs when they come on the radio, I've
never really felt like it was for me. except for one song. People Are Strange, the lead single
off their second album, is everything I want in a rock song. no, scratch that, it's everything
I want in a song, period. it's got a dark, complex soundscape, a driving groove, and a
cryptic story that's enticing without giving away too many details. and best of all, it does
all that in just over two minutes, so I'm sure it won't take very long to analyze. don't look at the
run time. here's a puppy, look at that instead. it's the one Doors song I really feel like I can
relate to, so when my friend Matt asked me to make a video about the Doors, I immediately knew which
one I wanted to talk about. let's take it apart. (tick, tick, tick, tick, tock) before we get started, this video is a
collaboration with my friend Matt, from The Beat Goes On. he did a whole video about the history
of The Doors as a companion piece to this one, and once you're done here you should really
check it out! there's a link in the description. anyway, the song starts like this: (bang)
immediately previewing the disorienting atmosphere that runs through the whole piece.
guitarist Robby Krieger is playing a simple walk down the E minor scale, but it's
incomplete: after the G, we'd expect F#, but he just skips right over it and goes to the
root early. and it's not just a missing note: it's also a missing beat. the song is in 4/4,
so there should be four quarter notes here. or, ok, technically it's in 12/8, but either
way there's four beats per bar. point is, both metrically and melodically, there's
clearly supposed to be an F# here, but Krieger skips it, so the start of
the verse feels weird and unprepared. but I'm sure some of you are thinking "hold on,
12tone. they don't need an F# there. this could just be the minor pentatonic scale, which doesn't
use that note. and why are we assuming this is the downbeat, anyway? pick-ups often start partway
through the bar. maybe the missing beat is at the beginning, not the end." and to that, I say… yeah.
good point. but I can prove I'm not the only one who hears this note as implied. the cult classic
vampire film The Lost Boys includes this song, but it doesn't use the Doors version. instead,
it has a cover by Echo & The Bunnymen, and that cover starts like this. (bang) I'm not sure if
this was an intentional change, or if they just misremembered the line, but if we compare it to
the original: (bang) you can really hear how the F# makes it feel a lot more balanced. the tension
of the pick-up is basically gone, and that feeds into the entire verse. and that makes sense: the
Echo cover is meant to be part of a movie, so it's going for a more ambient creepiness to support the
rest of the action. but as a stand-alone work of art, the Doors have more space to be aggressively
unstable. dropping this one little note throws everything else into chaos, and the song never
really gives you a chance to catch back up. from there, Krieger launches into the first verse:
(bang) and we need to talk about the 12/8 thing. this is basically just 4/4 with triplets, and he's
playing a shuffle groove, emphasizing the first and third 8ths in each beat while mostly avoiding
hitting the middle one. or, more specifically, he's playing a shuffle tresillo. normally, I
describe a tresillo as what happens when you take a bar with eight 8th notes and try to split
it up into three parts. you can't do it evenly, so you wind up having to shorten this last attack
to fit the barline, giving you this lopsided, galloping rhythm. (bang) but here we have twelve
8th notes per bar, which we can divide evenly into three parts. but that's not actually the point of
a tresillo. the point is that it's supposed to be a little uneven. a more precise description,
then, is that a tresillo is what you get when you place accents on beat 1, beat 4, and then the
note halfway between them. but now 12/8 becomes ambiguous: the halfway point is in between these
two 8th notes, so we have to apply the logic of the shuffle groove. again, in a shuffle, we mostly
hide the middle note, so if we have to pick one of these two, it should probably be the last one.
taken together, this gives us a tresillo-like figure where every accent is spaced slightly
differently: (bang) adding even more complexity to an already exciting pattern. I should note
that no one else in the band plays this pattern, it's just Krieger and basically just in this
first verse, but we'll get into that later. next, let's talk chords. he plays just enough
E minor to establish the key: (bang) moves to A minor for most of the phrase: (bang) and
then ends with a quick turn-around from B back to E. (bang) spending so long on the IV chord
gives it a haunting, directionless vibe. the IV chord is like a harmonic liminal space,
meant to shuttle you from the I to the V, but here it hangs for an interminably long
time, with only a ghost of a resolution at the end when the song finally remembers
where it's supposed to go. there's… ok, there's actually a little more going on in
this progression, but in order to see that, we have to stop thinking of it as chords
and start thinking about arpeggios. the first bar lays out the basic pattern:
he starts by walking up an E power chord: (bang) before hitting an open G string on that
accented tresillo beat. he hangs there for a moment, then starts walking back down the
voicing, adding in this Bb passing tone to set up the next chord root. (bang) if he just
repeated the B: (bang) the following A would sound a little disjointed. you wouldn't get such
a strong landing, so the out-of-key passing tone not only adds to the dark, spooky atmosphere of
the track, it also glues the chords together. the second bar follows roughly the same
shape, again walking up a power chord, in this case A5, before hitting that same open
G. (bang) this turns it into an A minor 7, except… no, it doesn't. if I'm gonna be
really precise in my transcription here, there's one other thing that happens at the
same time. here, I'll play it again. I'll even digitally remove the G to make it easier to hear
what's going on with the A string. (bang) did you catch it? the root of the chord seems to slide up
to B. it's really subtle: my best guess is that, instead of just lifting up his finger to get that
open G, he actually returns his entire hand to the E minor shape from the first bar, resulting
in a tiny little hammer-on as the impact of his finger sets the A string in motion. he doesn't
pluck it, but that sounds like where his hand is. but this move doesn't appear in any
transcription or tutorial video I could find, including a guitar lesson uploaded in 2020 by
Robby Krieger himself, and with good reason: it's pretty much impossible to hear in
the full mix. it's a notation ghost, there in principle but not in practice. so… does
it matter? not really. at least, not on its own. but it does tell us something about how Krieger is
thinking about the harmony: I said the middle two bars were one long A minor chord, but based on
what his hands are doing, he's probably viewing this open G as a return to E minor. and we can
see that again in the next bar: (bang) where he skips the G and instead plucks a double-stop of B
and E. and later on, once the full band comes in, they also play an E chord here, so while at
first it might seem like a long, static A minor, it's actually got this rapid oscillation
back and forth between the IV and I chords, giving it depth without really compromising
the wandering nature of the progression. on top of that sits Jim Morrison's vocals:
(bang) and hey, look, it's a melodic motif! I love a good melodic motif. each bar of
this melody works basically the same way, loosely following Krieger's arpeggio.
Morrison starts on the same note, but while Krieger walks up a power chord, Morrison
just does this upper neighbor tone instead: (bang) to keep the line comfortably within his
relatively limited vocal range. just for fun, here's what it'd sound like if he actually
followed Krieger exactly. (bang) that could work, I guess, but it'd be annoying to sing. it loses
the relaxed, conversational tone you get from such a small, contained melody. he almost sounds
like he's speaking the line, which, actually, he does wind up doing later on. after the neighbor
tone, regardless of the notes they were on, he then moves to a G, mirroring the harmony's
return to E minor. the only exception is in the final bar: (bang) where he instead resolves
it back to the root to complete the phrase. it's a simple little figure, well-suited for
a not-very-technical singer like Morrison. it gives the character of his voice a chance to
shine without having to wrestle through a bunch of unnecessary vocal gymnastics. there's
enough flourishes to keep it interesting, but he's mainly a storyteller, and this
melody lets him focus on telling his story. in the first bar, he stops after the G, but in
the second, we see him introduce his main rhythmic figure. it's like Krieger's shuffle tresillo, but
he sings that last syllable an 8th note early. (bang) in a tresillo, the last attack is the
shortest, so it feels like it's getting cut off by the barline. by pulling it forward a bit, that
pressure is released, giving the line a greater sense of closure even as the syncopation adds some
extra bounce. in this section, with just voice and guitar, you can also hear a sort of rhythmic
hand-off, as Morrison ends his phrase early, passing the baton to Krieger to take the spotlight
for a second in the gaps between vocal lines. (bang) it's a nice little back-and-forth
moment that keeps the song moving forward. but, of course, this section doesn't last forever.
near the end of it, Morrison starts to abandon the melody, falling to a low B and then just speaking
the final line. (bang) that change in tone is a signal for the rest of the band that it's time
to start the chorus, and everyone comes crashing in at once. Krieger backs off, switching to
just backbeat chord stabs to make space for everyone else: (bang) and he stays there for
most of the rest of the song. Morrison's melody becomes even simpler, mostly just alternating
between G and B to match the harmony. (bang) but what is the harmony? for that, we have
to turn to Ray Manzarek. (bang) or, actually, first, let's talk timbre. he's double-tracked
here, playing two instruments. the sound of his part is a mix between a Vox Continental organ
and a tack piano. this is like a normal piano, but with thumbtacks applied to the ends of the
striking hammers, so when they hit the strings you get this harsh, metallic, inharmonic buzz
alongside the note. it's meant to evoke a sort of old-timey, slightly out-of-tune piano sound, and
combined with the ethereal, slightly tinny tone of the organ in the background, the section takes
on an almost carnival-like sound, transforming the piece from merely dark into something
otherworldly. it's a visceral, audible sense of strangeness that provides a window into the
deeper potential meanings of Morrison's lyrics. but ok, harmony. there's no E minor here: that's
still the key, but the chord itself is missing. in its place, we have B7, the V chord, and then
G major, the bIII. avoiding the I chord amplifies that otherworldly atmosphere, leaving the harmony
feeling ungrounded and a little unreal, like we've stepped through a portal to some new dimension of
spooky clowns. but as for the chords we do have… ok, so the devil on my shoulder that tells me to
use fancy academic words to sound smart wants me to say that Erno Lendvai's axis theory provides
a satisfying analysis of this resolution. if you know what that means, great. if not, I've got
you. basically, if we want to resolve to G major, the most obvious way to do it is with D7.
(bang) that's your classic V-I resolution, also called a dominant resolution. although since
we're in E minor, this isn't actually the I chord, so if we want to get technical, and, y'know,
why stop now, it's what's called a secondary dominant. that just means we stole the V
chord from a different key. but D7's not the only chord we could steal. we could, instead,
do a tritone substitution, where you replace the V chord with another dominant 7th whose root
is a tritone away. in this case, that's Ab7: (bang) and it works because the 3rds and 7ths
of the two chords are the same: D7 has F# and C, while Ab7 has C and Gb, which is the same thing
as F#. these two notes drive the resolution, so we can swap back and forth between the two chords and
still resolve to all the same places. but we're still not there yet. the next option is a backdoor
resolution, where we approach the target chord with a dominant 7th a whole step below it, in this
case F7: (bang) and we can, again, swap that out for its tritone substitution: (bang) which finally
gets us to B. it's the tritone substitution of the backdoor variation on a secondary dominant.
easy. do you see how smart this makes me look? but still. why do this? why use such a convoluted
harmonic relationship instead of just, like, normal chords? well, that's why I don't usually
listen to that devil on my shoulder, because these absolutely are normal chords. B7 is the V
chord in E, and it's there to imply a resolution back to E minor, just like it did in the verse.
it's just that resolution gets subverted. which is interesting: G is the relative major here,
which means it shares all the same notes with the key of E minor. G could, in theory, be the
root of this song, and all the notes and chords would still make sense. it's not, but it could be.
this gives the bIII chord a very similar harmonic function to the I, but because it doesn't contain
the root, it's harder to resolve to. we have to bust out a pretty esoteric theoretical model in
order to explain why the D# doesn't just go up to E like we'd expect. so if I was gonna try to
explain these chords in a way that was actually useful, I'd say it's a harmonic misdirect,
combining the implied function of the B7, the relative brightness of the G major, and the
tenuous but plausible resolution between the two in order to keep you off balance. it's like a
funhouse mirror version of the V-I resolution, distorted just enough to sound uncanny without
stretching so far as to be unrecognizable. The Doors didn't have to know about Axis Theory. they
couldn't have: Lendvai hadn't even published it yet. all they had to do was find a cool chord
motion that resolved but not quite right. and that effect is amplified by the phrase
structure. you probably know that, in Western popular music, we like groups of two, so phrases
are typically 2, 4, or 8 bars long. but here, that's… sort of what's happening? like, there's
a clear 2-bar phrase, but then instead of getting the next one right away, there's this big rhythm
stop: (bang) as if they just realized they played the wrong chord and are looking to reset and
try again. Krieger punctuates this stop with a high bend that aims toward a B but doesn't always
make it all the way there, while Manzarek drops a quick chord stab on B7 again, and then Morrison
comes into fill the gap: (bang) with this brief jump up to… I mean, I think he's going for
a D# but it winds up as a sort of blue note, sitting in between D and D# for expressive
effect. this uneven start-stop pattern throws off any sense of normal metric behavior here,
instead calling to mind the sort of awkward, outsider character portrayed by the lyrics.
those empty pauses give you space to reflect on the strangeness of the song, and, to my
ears at least, the moments of silence actually highlight the unusual timbre of the tack piano,
preventing it from simply starting to feel normal. turning to John Densmore's drums: (bang) it'd be
easy to mistake this for a straightforward rock beat. but it's not. or, I mean, the bones
are there: we've got a kick on 1 and 3, a ride cymbal on all the quarter notes,
and then, like, something on the backbeat. but it's not a snare. in fact, it's not
even consistent: on beat 2 of each bar, he does this little bounce on the low tom:
(bang) which sort of blends into the mix, while beat 4 has a cross-stick: (bang)
that cuts through much more effectively, giving the impression of only one drum accent per
bar. and that accent lines up really beautifully with Manzarek: in the first bar, at least, he
plays this ascending line through the upper structure of a B7 chord: (bang) anticipating the
last attack, and then Densmore's cross-stick comes in right after to punctuate it. it's a lovely
little conversation between the two rhythms, kinda like we saw between Morrison and Krieger in
the verse. these fake snare hits also make it way more impactful when, during the rhythm stop, he
finally plays an actual snare hit: (bang) along with Krieger's bend and Manzarek's stab. it's
a small touch, and this part would've worked fine with normal snare hits throughout, but
it's a clever idea and I feel like I don't highlight the drums enough in these videos so I
wanted to mention the cool thing he was doing. and finally, there's the bass. now, you might
be thinking "hold on, 12tone. what are you talking about? The Doors famously didn't have
a bassist." and yeah, that's sort of true. they never had a permanent member playing bass, and
for live performances, Manzarek would typically handle the low end on his organ, but, well, here's
what that sounds like. (bang) don't get me wrong, it's fine, certainly good enough for live, but
it's a little thin for such a dark, brooding song. Manzarek's electric organ doesn't have the
same weight or power as a real bass guitar, so for most of their studio albums, the band brought
in a session bassist, in this case Doug Lubahn, to fill it out. (bang) this sort of melodic
quarter-note pattern played against a shuffle groove calls to mind a walking bass, a staple of
jazz, used to give the music more of a forward trajectory than you'd get from just hitting the
root over and over. but there's a really subtle, important choice going on with the notes.
the first bar is leaping all over the place, but if we ignore this first B, it spends the
whole time on F# in different octaves. F# is the 5th of the chord, which isn't usually
not very important: it's really stable, so basslines often emphasize it to avoid
sounding dissonant, but as we said before, the main notes driving a dominant resolution are
the 3rd and 7th. or, at least, that would be true if we were going to E minor, but we're not. we're
feinting away to G, and while F# is a stable, boring 5th under a B7, it also happens to be a
half-step below the root of that target chord, serving as a sort of pseudo-leading tone to make
that tenuous resolution a little bit stronger. they repeat that awkward 3-bar phrase twice,
starting and stopping like an engine that's about to die, then they get stuck in a holding
pattern, looping the B7 bar over and over for a bit: (bang) before setting up the next verse
with that same walkdown from the beginning, except this time they do include the F#: (bang)
and all I have to say about that is I told you so. so, right. second verse. the whole band is
in now, creating a wildly different texture. Krieger sticks with his chord stabs: (bang) so
the arpeggio from the beginning is gone for good. Manzarek is a lot more explicit about those E
chords in the A minor bars: (bang) confirming our theory that this was the intended harmony
all along, and in the second half he starts to double Morrison's melody: (bang) which'll
come up again later. Densmore does switch to a basic rock groove, punctuating the end
of each four-bar phrase with a big fill to maintain momentum. (bang) and Morrison's part is
basically exactly the same until the very end, where instead of dropping low and speaking the
last lines, he sits on a relatively high note and wails them out instead: (bang) to build energy
for the coming solo. the most interesting part, though, is actually Lubahn's. (bang) remember
how, in the first verse, Krieger's arpeggio used that open G as a consistent high point to
anchor the harmony? Lubahn does a similar thing, first walking up an E power chord to a high E
on beat 3, then arpeggiating an A minor triad, topping out on that same high E on the same
beat. this obscures the changing harmony: it's the root of the new chord, but also the
logical next step in the previous arpeggio. the end of this verse builds up again like it's
about to return to the chorus, but instead Krieger comes in with a guitar solo. underneath him,
Manzarek is laying out a new set of chords: he starts on B7 again, like the chorus: (bang)
but instead of G major, he drops into this low, crunchy voicing of an E minor 7 sus 4. (bang)
it's an interesting subversion of the chorus progression: in principle, going to an E chord
is a stronger resolution, but the sudden change in register, along with the voicing that
puts the A and B right next to each other, gives it its own kind of disquiet,
strange in a new and different way. but ok, solo time! Krieger starts by unbending
from B to A, then a rapid run down an octave, before bending back up from A to B. (bang) both
bends are slow enough to give you a moment on Bb, the tritone of the key, so clearly he's
thinking blues scale. that's not surprising, but it is important. from there he slides back up
to the higher register, launching all the way up to a high G. (bang) when I'm analyzing solos,
I often like to think about directionality: solos are typically pretty goal-oriented, so where
they end and how they approach that ending are hugely important to their impact. starting low
and working your way up leads to a triumphant moment of catharsis, whereas starting high and
slowly gliding down allows for a smooth transition out. this solo does neither. or it does both.
I dunno, whichever. it starts out kinda high, and while there is an immediate drop,
overall, it seems to be trending upward: this G is noticeably higher than the B he
started on. and it's easy to imagine an alternate version of this solo where that keeps
going, building intensity up to a piercing, climactic high root at the very end. but instead,
he walks down the scale, and never really makes it this high again. the next phrase starts lower
than either of them, with these bends from E to F#: (bang) then even lower to B: (bang) before
ending up on a low E. (bang) we get our moment of catharsis early, with that ecstatic high G,
then trail off. which makes sense: those big, screeching high solos with explosive endings carry
a lot of energy with them into the next section, so they need a next section that can absorb
that energy. but that's not this song. instead, the solo ends with another bar-long rhythm
stop: (bang) releasing a lot of the solo's excitement and resetting back to a more muted
level that supports Morrison's conversational delivery. Krieger needs to wind back down
so the transition doesn't feel too jarring. once it picks back up, the second chorus is
basically the same as the first. the only big difference I could find is that those stopping
bars tacked onto the first couple phrases have become a bit more lively: (bang) with Densmore
playing a couple hits and Krieger stretching out his bend from a short stab into a slow wail
that fills most of the bar. then they do the walk-down again, and it's Manzarek's turn to
take a solo over the verse progression. or, I say solo, but instead of following Krieger's
lead, Manzarek basically just plays the melody again. (bang) this is one of my favorite types
of solo, because it feels so closely connected to the rest of the music. something like
Krieger's solo could work in a lot of songs, but this one really only works in People
Are Strange. it ties itself beautifully to the rest of the song's musical identity.
but he's not literally copying Morrison: he starts out that way, but in the second half,
he starts to harmonize the line in thirds, then changes the melodic shape, breaking
off from the main motif and switching to an ascending figure. (bang) it's based on the main
melody, but it's evolving it in interesting ways. this also results in a very different contour:
Krieger's solo ran all up and down the neck, covering a little over two octaves in total. but
since Manzarek is basically trapped by Morrison's melody, his solo stays in a much smaller
space. it doesn't have the same peaks and valleys that Krieger does, but in as much as it
has a trajectory, it's clearly pointing up: the addition of a higher harmony line on the second
half and the melodic changes that go along with it both gesture in that direction, because the final
chorus they're setting up is much bigger. here, I'll play you the vocals, see if you notice
anything different. (bang) yeah, it's a huge gang-vocals choir. that was pretty obvious. some
sources I've found say this is Morrison tracked a bunch of times, others say it's the rest of
the band. I'm inclined to believe the latter, but I don't know for sure. anyway, none of them
seem to be harmonizing or anything, it's just on big unison line with a bunch of voices. it's a
simple way to ramp up the dynamics for a final chorus, but it's also a satisfying conclusion to
the song's narrative: the lyrics are all about being an outsider, and while the words haven't
changed here, layering in this many voices seems to say that we're all outsiders, strangers in
our own strange ways. the album cover for Strange Days shows a bunch of what look like circus
performers doing their thing, celebrating their collective uniqueness together, and this final
chorus feels like we've finally arrived there. but that's not the only change: the stopping
bars are now completely filled in: (bang) and Krieger finally drops the chord stabs and starts
arpeggiating again: (bang) tying us back to the intro. at the end, they do one last stop, with
everyone but Morrison dropping out, then Krieger comes back in by himself, arpeggiating a B7
chord. (bang) then he leans into the whammy bar, raising the pitch slightly so it's no longer
even pointing back to E, and hangs on it, forever, leaving you with an ambiguous
dissonance that never fully resolves. and that's pretty much it! if you want to
know more about how this song fits into the overall history of The Doors, check
out the video by The Beat Goes On for a lot more information on that! there's a link
in the description, it's a really fun video. and beyond that, thanks for watching! this
was a really fun video to experiment with, I'd been wanting to talk about The Doors for
a really long time, but as I mentioned at the start of the video, I feel a little weird about
presenting myself as an expert on them, for most songs, so when Matt came to me with this idea, it
seemed like a great opportunity to dive into some music that I liked, but wasn't as familiar with
as I might want to be. I do usually select these songs by Patreon poll, and I did this one as well,
I just put four Doors songs on there to make sure that I would get one of them. uh, I know I said
at the beginning that this is the one I definitely wanted to talk about, so Patreon patrons, if
you were wondering about that, that is true. I just wanted to make sure y'all were cool with
this being the song I talked about too, so I gave some other options, just to make sure. speaking of
patrons, I do need to thank my Featured Patrons, Susan Jones, Jill Sundgaard, Howard Levine, Warren
Huart, Damien Fuller-Sutherland, Jon Hancock, Neil Moore, and Geoff, all of whose contributions
go a long way toward making this channel continue to work. these videos, as I've mentioned before,
are my full-time job, and even though I didn't have any in January, I was working ahead on other
things… I was also at MAGFest, I don't know if any of you watching this were at MAGFest, that was
super fun. I'm not gonna go into too much detail on that here, because this is the end of a video
that's not about that, but I might wind up making a video later about some of the stuff I did there.
if you were there and you saw that, feel free to let me know if that would be something you'd want
to see. but yeah, beyond that, I'm just gonna go with the typical ending, y'know. you know how
it goes, you could probably say it with me. uh, like, share, comment, subscribe, and above all,
as always, keep on rockin'. eugh, my voice kinda stumbled there, had a little thing in my throat,
I'm gonna try that again. keep on rockin'.
