Doors' song, "Horse Latitudes"

[barbrainey]

The Doors once had song on one of their first albums, in either late 1967 or early 1968. I don't think it was ever released as a single. It was entitled "Horse Latitudes." (The term "horse latitudes" refers to a latitudinal region in the Carribean where ships would become becalmed. In the 16th and 17th centuries the Spanish used to jettison their horses to save water.)

Well, anyway, this Doors song was really weird. My brother owned the album and whenever he played it, I would overhear this song. The lead singer, Jim Morrison would not really be singing, but rather talking loudly in a mournful voice. In a portion of the song, he says something like "King Satan is dead." And then the song would end with a lot of wailing and crying. There isn't much music in this song, either.

Does anyone know what the heck this song was about?

Barbara R.

[snopes]

The line is: "True sailing is dead."

In a literal sense, the song is a poem about the horse latitudes, an area of doldrums in the Atlantic where becalmed ships would sometimes have to jettison their cargoes (including horses destined for the New World). The lyrics describe the process of throwing a horse over the side.

- snopes

[Horse Chestnut]

When the still sea conspires an armor
And her sullen and aborted
Currents breed tiny monsters
True sailing is dead
Awkward instant
And the first animal is jettisoned
Legs furiously pumping
Their stiff green gallop
And heads bob up
Poise
Delicate
Pause
Consent
In mute nostril agony
Carefully refined
And sealed over

Always makes me feel a little sick when I read that one.

[I'mNotDedalus]

According to the popular Morrison/Doors biographer, Jerry Hopkins, the poem was written when Jim was still in high school: "He filled up notebooks with poems. Some of them survived, becoming songs years later when he sang with the Doors. One was about horses being jettisoned from sailing ships becalmed in the Sargasso Sea." (The Lizard King: The Essential Jim Morrison, pg 40).