Break On Through
Examining the Content, Comportment, and Quantum Entanglement of the Doors
In the beginning, there were four elements: Water, Earth, Air, and Fire. In 1967, the world was introduced to another set of four: John Densmore, Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek, and Jim Morrison. Apart, they were insignificant. Together, they were the Doors.
Ray Manzarek’s playing best mimicked water’s movement. With fingers that flowed across the organ like waves on a beach, he produced baselines and chord progressions both gritty and graceful. Manzarek embodied water in another sense, too: as the “material cause of all things,” in the words of Werner Heisenberg. In Physics and Philosophy, Heisenberg summarizes theories from various ancient Greek scholars: “Water is the condition for life. Therefore, if there was such a fundamental substance, it was natural to think of water first.” Often cited as the band’s mastermind, Manzarek approached Morrison on Venice Beach in the summer of ’65 and suggested they start a rock-and-roll band.
Drummer John Densmore embodied the earth. Rhythm connects the listener to the song’s pulse—first through the heartbeat, then reverberating through the fingers and toes onto the dirt below.1 In addition to grounding the band in a steady pocket, Densmore connected the Doors to diverse rhythmic traditions worldwide.
Robby Krieger assumed the role of air, both for his role as the primary writer of the band’s biggest hits (thus giving the music its first breath) and for his ability to fly away with a melody during his guitar solos to an ethereal plane.
Jim Morrison—elusive vocalist, songwriter, and poet—brought the fire. Philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus “regarded that which moves, the fire, as the basic element.” Though all members were essential to the band’s success, Morrison was undoubtedly the Doors’ uniting force.
In both content and comportment, the Doors embodied quantum entanglement. First, I will focus on content—the lyrics, music, and structure of two of their most famous songs, “Break on Through (To the Other Side)” and “Light My Fire,” both released in 1967 on their self-titled debut album. Keeping Heisenberg, Rovelli, and Nietzsche front of mind, I will expand my analysis to include comportment, examining how the group’s behavior and dynamics also reflected quantum entanglement. Ultimately, interdependency helped the Doors, and the less entangled they became, the more their art and lives suffered.
“Break on Through,” the first song on The Doors, blends seemingly disparate musical traditions and techniques to make unity out of diversity. The song is up-tempo, with a time signature of 4/4, where each measure contains four quarter note beats. Often called “common time,” 4/4 is a tried-and-true time signature for any rock and roll track. However, though it fits within common time, Densmore pats a Bossa nova groove, borrowing from Brazilian musical tradition. At the time of release, such syncretism would have been considered almost avant-garde. The song also takes inspiration from Cuban mambo, especially noticeable in the organ solo, which mimics features of a mambo horn section.
Further, setting tender, poetic lyrics in a gritty, rock-and-roll context establishes cognitive and sonic dissonance in the listener. Despite the up-tempo rhythm, the use of minor chords produces an overall gloomy feel. The track unifies seamlessly despite its diverse elements. Or perhaps the song achieves its sublime status not despite this dissonance, but because of it.
In the same way that “Break On Through” brings together contrasting musical traditions, lyrically, it embraces ideas that initially seem at odds. The first lyric (“You know the day destroys the night / Night divides the day”) establishes a binary between day and night, and, by extension, light and darkness. In doing so, the Doors occupy the space between the twilight—the infinite shades of gray—the crack where the light gets in.
The second lyric (“Tried to run / Tried to hide”) etches a line between running and hiding. These concepts are opposites in that one is in motion and the other is stagnant, but the same in that both actions serve as a means of escape from fear. The famous chorus lyric, “Break on through to the other side,” establishes a division between This Side and The Other Side: a threshold between worlds.
In Physics and Philosophy, Heisenberg explains how, according to Anaximander, “there is ‘eternal motion,’ the creation and passing away of worlds from infinity to infinity.” The chorus of “Break On Through” articulates this idea, as the repetitiveness of the main chorus lyric (“Break on through to the other side”) suggests the existence of an infinite time loop.
In Verse 2, the first lyric (“We chased our pleasures here / Dug our treasures there”) presents three different comparisons: Chase vs. Dug, Pleasures vs. Treasures, and Here vs. There.
The Chase/Dug binary contrasts linear movement with vertical movement—the act of chasing, or running, occurs on a horizontal plane, whereas digging is a vertical movement that goes down beneath the earth. The lyric rejects a linear conception of space. Both actions are in motion and in pursuit of some object. In this case, the objects of interest are pleasures and treasures.
The Pleasures/Treasures binary deconstructs swiftly. Pleasures belong to the immaterial world, treasures to the material one. Pleasures are joyous feelings not necessarily attached to physical objects, while treasures are the material incarnations of pleasures.
Lastly, the Here/There binary references the duality of any given spot in the universe—everything is at once here and there, everywhere and nowhere.
Opening the album, “Break on Through” offered the public its first glimpse into the world of the Doors. With this song, the group positioned themselves as the glimpse itself—the door between worlds. They set themselves squarely in the middle—existing at twilight—between day and night, dark and light, calm and fright.
The Doors sought to occupy this liminal space artistically. They wanted to talk about love, but they also wanted to talk about death. Seemingly taking notes directly from Heisenberg, the Doors “[recognized] that the strife of the opposites is really a kind of harmony.” The band never shied from darker topics, yet love remained ever-present in their work. One song demonstrating their commitment to portraying the dualistic relationship of love and death is “Light My Fire.”
Arguably their most famous song, “Light My Fire” was written primarily by guitarist Robby Krieger. In 1967, the hit earned them the #1 ranking on the Billboard Hot 100, and years later secured spot #35 on Rolling Stone’s list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” Structurally, musically, and lyrically, “Light My Fire” exemplifies quantum theory.
The structure of “Light My Fire”—which sandwiches a dynamic extended solo section between two sets of mirrored, identical verses—proposes a recursive understanding of time. Breaking the structure down into a letter key helps to illuminate these patterns. Assigning the letter I to the intro, A to the verse, B to the chorus, C to the bridge, and O to the outro, a basic song typically follows an [IABABCBO] structure. “Light My Fire” operates a bit differently, utilizing an [IABABCBCABABO] structure. The latter form is significantly longer due to the extensive instrumental solo section in the middle of the track.
After the solos, they invert the structure, placing Verse 2 first and Verse 1 second. Instead of operating in a more linear fashion, which would include a new Verse 3 and Verse 4, the Doors recycle their earlier verses, creating a mirror effect to approach the center of the song from both directions. The song’s future (the final outro) and past (the intro) approach the centerpiece of the song (the dynamic instrumental solo) from both ends, just as the future and past approach the present moment from both ends in recursive time. The crux of the song, therefore, exists in what lies between.
The instrumental section of “Light My Fire,” begins at 0:54, and finishes at 5:45 when Morrison starts singing again. Throughout the 7:09 minute song, he sings for just 2 minutes and 18 seconds. The instrumental solo section, in comparison, lasts nearly 5 minutes. Compared to most songs, both then and now, this is an extremely long solo section, especially for a recorded version.
As Manzarek recounts in his memoir Light My Fire: My Life with The Doors, when touring and playing this song live in concert, the instrumental section sometimes stretched out triple the length of the recorded version, as both he and Krieger would extend their solos for up to 15 minutes. He writes, “It was such a joy to float over that repeating figure and to interact with each other that we never got bored with the piece, even though we played it at every concert.” Notably, Manzarek refers to this process of improvisation as a sort of “floating”—a floating of notes, sounds, relationships, and waves—Manzarek certainly embodies Water here.
Improvisation is an undeniably quantum endeavor—musicians make spontaneous decisions based on moment-to-moment interpersonal interactions. Like the subtle movement of one particle colliding with another and sending it on a slightly different path, every spontaneous choice informs the next.
Though “Light My Fire” is mostly instrumental, it’s considered the Doors’ most popular song. Though Jim Morrison is often considered the band’s cornerstone, his role in this essential song is minuscule. Manzarek, Krieger, and Densmore were not just along for the Morrison show. Morrison may have incited a fire-like infatuation among fans, but he was nothing without his bandmates.
As Nietzsche articulates in Will To Power, “The properties of a thing are effects on other ‘things’: if one removes other ‘things,’ then a thing has no properties; there is no ‘thing’ without other ‘things’; there is no ‘thing-in-itself’.” The unified entity of the Doors only existed due to their relationships with one another. To create meaningful art, they depended on each member’s distinct musical capabilities, talent, and vision.
The “Greatest of All Time” song-list status of “Light My Fire” never could have been achieved by just one Door alone. Morrison is responsible for coming up with the prodigious second verse, which added an element of darkness to the song’s ethos: “The time to hesitate is through / No time to wallow in the mire / Try now, we can only lose / And our love become a funeral pyre,” which contrasts sharply with the pro-drug, pro-love, carefree sentiment of the first verse, written by Krieger: “You know that it would be untrue / You know that I would be a liar / If I was to say to you / Girl, we couldn’t get much higher.”
The song would be incomplete without Manzarek’s masterful organ intro, which establishes the recurring melodic lick. Densmore’s steady drumming grounds the song, providing the foundation for the quintessential psychedelic rock experimentation that is Krieger’s guitar soloing. The final moment of the extended instrumental ends with a series of perfectly synchronized melodic and rhythmic hits that guide the listener back to Morrison’s voice with exquisite fluidity.
If Morrison himself is Fire, then through these lyrics, he entreats another to light the spark. Perhaps he’s addressing Krieger, the songwriter, asking him to provide the lightning bolt of creativity through which Morrison can be set aflame. Or maybe Morrison is requesting a lover to light him up sexually. In any case, by asking someone to provide him with the light that he needs to operate, he admits codependency. Importantly, he does so with conviction and free of shame. When he roars, “Come on baby, light my fire” he embraces entanglement and imbues it with seductiveness.
This song establishes yet another conceptual relationship: Light and Fire. Light connotes innocence and purity, whereas Fire implies a scorching, lustful excitability. Light provides guidance, whereas Fire burns and destructs. But Light can also blind. Fire can also purify. What first seems to be a contrast is a similarity: both can damage and both can heal. The two are unquestionably entangled. Fire cannot exist unless someone or something lights it in the first place.
Though Krieger principally penned the song, the band shared composer credits equally. This was not the case for subsequent albums. Additionally, with each new project, though the Doors’ popularity remained cemented into the cultural consciousness, their songs charted lower and lower. Morrison once stated in an interview, “It was funny, the first album we did in about two days. And each succeeding album took longer and longer.” It’s no coincidence that their most collaborative, stream-of-consciousness album achieved the most success.
In the song’s final chorus, Morrison repeats “Try to set the night on fire” a total of four times—one for each member of the Doors, one for each of the ancient elements. He asks them to bring their energy and passion to the song as a collaborative organism—they can only deliver to their fans as a unit. In this lyric, Morrison invites both his bandmates and the audience to set the night on fire with him.
Just as with their creative content, the band’s comportment took on a dualistic quality. For evidence, look no further than the relational dynamics between Morrison and the other band members. First, Morrison must be considered in isolation to understand the significance of his interactions with the rest of the band. Morrison was the human embodiment of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. At any given time, he was both wave and particle—tender and fierce, peaceful and violent, calm and chaotic, lewd and loving.
Equal parts brooding intellectual and ravenous hedonist, Morrison often showed up to performances high, sometimes inciting chaos among crowds of fans. Always on high alert, his fellow band members never knew when he might explode.
Manzarek, Krieger, and Densmore learned to embrace this uncertainty. They had no choice—they needed Morrison just as much as Morrison needed them. Perhaps, Fire’s uncertainty is resolved by its inseparability from Water, Earth, and Air—each element nourishes and depends upon all the rest.
The band thrived when they leaned into these fundamental truths of quantum. Embracing Jim’s unpredictability resulted in a higher level of success for the band. Fans bought tickets both because they liked the Doors’ music and for the spectacle. Morrison’s erratic behavior was part of the draw.
After Morrison’s untimely induction into the 27 Club, the band flailed. His husky, soulful voice had held everything together. Much to the chagrin of critics and fans, Manzarek, Krieger, and Densmore forged on without him, releasing two more original albums before calling it quits. 1971’s aptly titled Other Voices came out just three months after Morrison’s death, and a year later, they released another sans-Morrison album entitled Full Circle. Neither received rave reviews.
Realizing that Morrison’s voice was integral to commercial success, the band clung tightly to the final remnants of their late frontman: a series of poems Morrison recorded before his death. The band composed musical backing for the poems, releasing An American Prayer as a spoken-word album in 1978.
Even in death, Morrison was the band’s lifeline. Though critics remain divided on An American Prayer, it did peak at number 54 on the US Charts and earned a Grammy nomination in the “Spoken Word” category. Posthumously, from deep beneath the earth of the Père Lachaise Cemetery, Morrison sustained his bandmates with his Delphian reputation.
As Nietzsche and Rovelli elucidate, there are no things—only relationships. When the band’s relationships disintegrated (on account of Morrison ceasing to exist on earth), so did their music—the “thing” they were known for doing so well. But the music is not, and never was, a “thing.” It was always entanglement. The entanglement of four relationships. Four band members. Four bodies. Four minds. Four elements.
Quantum theory is present in every aspect of the Doors’ career, from the element each member embodied to the lyrics they wrote, the music they played, and the way they behaved as a band. The less entangled the Doors became, the more their art and lives deteriorated—musically, commercially, and perhaps even cosmically.
We can look to the Doors as evidence of the success of interconnectedness and the destructiveness of hyper-individualism. For a time, their fire burned so brightly it seemed almost eternal. But once disentangled, they crumbled, breaking apart rather than “on through.” But a flicker can always turn into a flame, and the Doors’ immortal blaze still lives on today in the hearts of all those their music has touched—inextinguishable and infinite.
I am no graphic designer, but I have attempted to distill my observations about the song’s structure into a color-coded lyric visual (see above), basing my representation on a simple recursive time diagram (see below). I have taken the lyrics and highlighted each distinct section: Verse 1 is shown in pink, Verse 2 in blue, and the central instrumental section in yellow. As I attempted to portray in my graphic, the song’s past and future approach each other from both directions, converging right at the start of the instrumental section, during which Krieger and Manzarek had to think spontaneously, embrace uncertainty, and exist in the moment while trading solos.
The human tendency to tap one’s foot on the ground to the beat of the music illustrates this concept.