Yes, The River Knows

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Please believe me
The river told me
Very softly
Want you to hold me, ooo

Free fall flow, river flow
On and on it goes
Breathe under water 'till the end
Free fall flow, river flow
On and on it goes
Breathe under water 'till the end
Yes, the river knows

Please believe me
If you don't need me
I'm going, but I need a little time
I promised I would drown myself in mystic heated wine

Please believe me
The river told me
Very softly
Want you to hold me, ooo

I'm going, but I need a little time
I promised I would drown myself in mystic heated wine

Free fall flow, river flow
On and on it goes
Breathe under water 'till the end
Free fall flow, river flow
On and on it goes
Breathe under water 'till the end

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Robby Krieger saw the way to writing lyrics for the Doors as drawing on the four elements as Morrison did.
Earth, Air, Fire water.
This was one of his water songs.

The music is rather pleasant with Ray's tinking piano reminicent of water cascading along the course of a river. Krieger demonstrates a fine example of how he was not the atypical rock guitar player.
Drifting seemingly aimlessly through the song he delivers some excellent examples of just how good a guitar player he was.
Densmore with his retrained brushes and a solid bass to support him provides a strong backbeat to what is essentially a decent example of The Doors at work.
Morrison's vocal talents on display here are excellent and put paid to any idea he was just a screamer as he had rather an astonishing vocal range for a rock singer and was at ease doing Robert Plant or Frank Sinatra.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

“Yes, the River Knows”

“This is a Doors song that originally appeared on Waiting for the Sun. It was one of the deep cuts from that album.
On most of my solo albums, I try to do at least one Doors song, but I do them differently. Arthur Barrow and I were talking about which one to do, and he said that he always liked this one.

“He said, ‘Ray plays the most beautiful piano parts on that song.’ And it’s true.
People always talk about Ray’s playing on ‘Light My Fire’ and ‘Riders on the Storm,’
but on ‘Yes, the River Knows’ he’s playing something that could be a stand-alone classical piece.

“Arthur wrote the piano part note for note, and we got Tommy Mars to play it.
And then we did an instrumental version where I played slide guitar to simulate the voice. We also did parts of the vocal line on a fretless bass. I used different chords from the original under the solo, which I improvised. I could have played the exact same solo as before, but I wanted to do something different.

“I just can’t see redoing a song the same way as you once did it. Let’s face it: You’re never going to sound as good as the original, so you might as well take it somewhere new.”



Doors guitarist Robby Krieger wrote the majority of this ballad, and said it was one of the favourites among his songs.