Written in 1970 and featured on the Morrison Hotel album, Roadhouse Blues is one of the Doors songs that best showcases their blues roots. In fact the whole Morrison Hotel album carries a bluesy flavor and that’s not an accidental thing. After the wavering reception of their previous album – The Soft Parade – which was written in the psychedelic rock genre, The Doors decided to experiment with a couple of blues-oriented albums, in order to see whether they will provoke better reactions among fans and critics.
The experiment was extremely successful, with Morrison Hotel peaking at #4 on the US album chart and at #12 on the UK album chart, which made it The Doors’ highest charting album in the United Kingdom ever. The album also received positive feedback from both critics and fans, thus reestablishing the band as one of the leading and most influential acts of the 70s.
The recording of Roadhouse Blues by The Doors took 2 days in total. It’s worth mentioning that guest musicians Lonnie Mack (guitar) and John Sebastian (harmonica) played a key role during the studio sessions. Not only Lonnie Mack handled all the bass parts, but he also played the guitar solo. However, he wasn’t credited for that in the album notes, probably in an attempt to spare Robby Krieger (the original Doors guitarist) from eventual embarrassment. It’s funny though that even Jim Morrison shouts “Do it, Lonnie! Do it!” right before the guitar solo, Doors fans commonly misheard that as “Do it, Robby! Do it!”, so the decision of not crediting Mack for the solo proved to be an effective one.
John Sebastian was also not credited in the album notes, at least not with his own name, but with the pseudonym “G. Puglese”, probably because he didn’t want to be affiliated with The Doors Miami controversy caused by rumors that Jim Morrison exposed himself intentionally on one of the concerts from the band’s 1969 tour. This questionable accident was followed by the cancellation of nearly all of their remaining dates, so Sebastian probably thought that such affiliation may affect his own career.
Roadhouse Blues is definitely one of the popular Doors guitar songs and as such has been covered by many bands throughout the years. The list is long, but it includes renowned names like Status Quo, Blue Öyster Cult, Creed, Ministry and many more. The song itself has some interesting guitar licks in it as well, so it won’t be a mistake if you decide to learn how to play Roadhouse Blues by The Doors on your own guitar – you will surely learn some new stuff.
Don’t forget that Roadhouse Blues is in the key of E Minor, so you can easily use the E Minor Pentatonic to improvise and/or test some new licks that you’ve learned. You can even make your own – after all E Minor Pentatonic is one of the most used guitar scales, so you have to be really comfortable with it and Roadhouse Blues is a great song to use as an exercise.
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Each Song Includes Step By Step Videos For Lead & Rhythm Guitar
Learn to play this complete song and Jam with our live band. You can choose to learn and play either the Rhythm Guitar or Lead Guitar and Jam with us. Each song has separate step by step tuition videos to take you through every single part of the song.
Plus all our songs have accompanying downloads for full Song Structure, Chord Diagrams and Tab for lead solos. And all the teaching and Jam session videos can either be viewed online, or downloaded to your PC.
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Tags: Andy Partridge, BandJammer, Guitar Songs, Learn Guitar, Roadhouse Blues, The Doors
May 9, 2012 at 7:41 am 
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