The last Top 10 hit The Doors had before the death of Jim Morrison could have had a much different feeling and title if Morrison hadn’t gotten his way. “Touch Me”, which the band released on their 1969 album, The Soft Parade, was a Robby Krieger composition originally inspired by the card game blackjack, in which the dealer “hits” the player with new cards.
Thus, Krieger originally wanted to call the song “Hit Me”. Lines like “C’mon, hit me, I’m not afraid,” had a totally different meaning in this first version. “I wrote it about a game of blackjack we were playing in Hawaii,” Krieger recalled to Uncut in 2026. “But Jim really didn’t like the idea.”
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Krieger said that Morrison was worried “Hit Me” would incite violence. “He thought people might actually come on stage and hit him,” Krieger said. And you know—Morrison was probably right to be worried about that.
Jim Morrison Had Good Reason for Opting Out of “Hit Me”
In hindsight, one can see why Jim Morrison had concerns over songs encouraging people to hit him. By the late 1960s, he had developed quite a reputation for raucous, lewd, and upsetting stage banter. Morrison nearly incited a riot during a 1967 homecoming performance at the University of Michigan, during which he repeatedly insulted and taunted the crowd. (Interestingly, this concert would serve as a major inspiration for Iggy Pop, who was in the audience at the time.)
Considering Morrison’s testy dynamic with his audiences, it’s understandable why he wasn’t keen on openly inviting the crowd to hit him. Because frankly, a lot of them probably would take him up on that offer. And in either case, changing “Hit Me” to “Touch Me” made the song more romantic. It not only gave Morrison’s fans something to fawn over. The title change also tied into the lyrical section in which Morrison sings, “Now I’m gonna love you ‘till the heavens stop the rain.”
Most importantly, it was a hit. “Touch Me” peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, marking the band’s last Top 10 hit. The song also topped the charts in Canada and broke into the Top 10 in South Africa and New Zealand.
“I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we called it ‘Hit Me’,” engineer Bruce Botnick mused to Uncut. “It wouldn’t have been a No. 1 record, that’s for sure. It was one of the band’s great singles, and we were still in a Top 40 world where you needed a hook and a memorable lyric.”
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