Jim Morrison was so drunk when he recorded this song, he needed help from the studio staff on when to begin singing. If you listen closely on the studio recording, you can hear someone in the background say "One more time" before Jim starts his first verse. "Five to one" was supposedly the approximate ratio of whites to blacks (whose constituency was a minority group comprising only one-sixth of the U.S. population and were hence outnumbered by non-blacks by a five-to-one ratio. Actually, in the mid-1960s the percentage of blacks in the U.S. population was several points lower than one-sixth), young to old (refers to the bulging proportion of “young people” to “old people” brought about by the post-WW II baby boom, hence the song’s declaration that “the old get old, and the young get stronger”), and non-pot smokers to pot smokers in the US in 1967 (unsubstantiated). It was also the amount of Vietnamese to American soldiers in Vietnam (In November 1965, just months after President Lyndon Johnson had escalated U.S. involvement in Vietnam, 450 members of the air cavalry were sent into the la Drang Valley in the Central Highlands to ferret out Viet Cong troops that had retreated to the nearby mountains. On the ground, [Lt. Col. Hal] Moore and his second-in command, Sgt. Maj. Basil Plumley, were soon aware that the Americans were outnumbered five to one), although Jim Morrison said the lyrics were not political, he referred to the group as “erotic politicians”. Doors song explicator Chuck Crisafulli noted, Morrison “seemed to be interested in revolution but at the same time disgusted by the revolutionaries”.
The part of the song about "Shadows of the evening" is an adaptation of the Victorian-era hymn "Shadows of the Evening," whose first verse is:
Now the day is over
Night is drawing nigh
Shadows of the evening
Steal across the sky
Reworded by Morrison as:
Your ballroom days are over, baby;
night is drawing near.
Shadows of the evening
crawl across the years.
Jim Morrison was so drunk when he recorded this song, he needed help from the studio staff on when to begin singing. If you listen closely on the studio recording, you can hear someone in the background say "One more time" before Jim starts his first verse. "Five to one" was supposedly the approximate ratio of whites to blacks (whose constituency was a minority group comprising only one-sixth of the U.S. population and were hence outnumbered by non-blacks by a five-to-one ratio. Actually, in the mid-1960s the percentage of blacks in the U.S. population was several points lower than one-sixth), young to old (refers to the bulging proportion of “young people” to “old people” brought about by the post-WW II baby boom, hence the song’s declaration that “the old get old, and the young get stronger”), and non-pot smokers to pot smokers in the US in 1967 (unsubstantiated). It was also the amount of Vietnamese to American soldiers in Vietnam (In November 1965, just months after President Lyndon Johnson had escalated U.S. involvement in Vietnam, 450 members of the air cavalry were sent into the la Drang Valley in the Central Highlands to ferret out Viet Cong troops that had retreated to the nearby mountains. On the ground, [Lt. Col. Hal] Moore and his second-in command, Sgt. Maj. Basil Plumley, were soon aware that the Americans were outnumbered five to one), although Jim Morrison said the lyrics were not political, he referred to the group as “erotic politicians”. Doors song explicator Chuck Crisafulli noted, Morrison “seemed to be interested in revolution but at the same time disgusted by the revolutionaries”.
The part of the song about "Shadows of the evening" is an adaptation of the Victorian-era hymn "Shadows of the Evening," whose first verse is:
Now the day is over
Night is drawing nigh
Shadows of the evening
Steal across the sky
Reworded by Morrison as:
Your ballroom days are over, baby;
night is drawing near.
Shadows of the evening
crawl across the years.
(post is archived)