"Strange Days" is a song by The Doors. It was released in 1967 and is the first track on the album of the same name. According to a review at Allmusic by Tom Maginnis, the song seems to find lead singer Jim Morrison "pondering the state of the then emerging hippie youth culture and how they are perceived by mainstream or 'straight' society." A visit to New York City by The Doors inspired Jim Morrison to write "Strange Days" and other songs on the Strange Days album, the band's second.
According to No One Here Gets Out Alive, "Strange Days" finds Ray Manzarek recording "one of the earliest examples of the Moog synthesizer in rock." The synth was hooked up with the help of Paul Beaver and played by vocalist Morrison.
Two music videos were made for the song. The first featured footage of the band backstage and onstage, as well as Jim Morrison driving his car into a hole in sand and jumping on the hood in frustration. The second features the same circus performers on the Strange Days cover photo, who would explore New York City. It also included footage of various people, which was made "swervy" and distorted to fit in with the strange theme of the song. All of this new footage was mixed with footage of the old video, and re-released as a re-mixed video.
Famous quotes containing the words strange, days and/or doors:
“To us, men of the West, a very strange thing happened at the turn of the century; without noticing it, we lost science, or at least the thing that had been called by that name for the last four centuries. What we now have in place of it is something different, radically different, and we don’t know what it is. Nobody knows what it is.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“Yet they do have
don’t they like us
their days of grace, they
halt, stretch, a vision
breaks in on the cramped grimace,
inscape of transformation.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his own temple doors and recites fables merely of his brother’s, or his brother’s brother’s God.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)