The Doors’ John Densmore and Robby Krieger recently teamed with Playing for Change, the multimedia project connecting the world through music, for a new version of The Doors’ classic “Riders on the Storm.” It features artists from eight countries, including Don Was, Lukas Nelson and Foo Fighters’ Rami Jaffee, and also incorporates the original vocals of late Doors frontman Jim Morrison – something one of the project’s creators feels was “clearly meant to be.”
“We filmed Robby and John, and they just played it like they’ve played it all their lives,” Playing for Change partner and producer Sebastian Robertson tells ABC Audio of the video.
“And as we were going and adding more people and traveling around the world, it started to get so exciting that The Doors management said, ‘Why don’t we give you Jim’s original vocal and see what happens?’ And, like the mystical ways of The Doors, it was the exact right tempo and it just fit in.”
“It was an honor. And it was breathtaking to hear [Jim’s vocals] isolated,” he says. “It just worked. It was clearly meant to be. And I think Jim and Robby and John are still in sync, and I think Jim approves.”
The video’s since racked up over 2 million views and raised thousands of dollars for the Playing for Change Foundation’s music program for indigenous artists in South Dakota. It was chosen due to John’s support of indigenous arts and rights, and Sebastian’s own Mohawk heritage via his late father, Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Robbie Robertson.
Sebastian says of the video’s success, “This is a very important song for a lot of people. And I think we treated it that way in the video.”
The next Playing for Change video, Sebastian teases, will “take place ‘on a dark desert highway."”
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