In the summer of 1967, The Doors burst open onto the Billboard Hot 100 with their chart-topping signature tune “Light My Fire.” The classic tune, from the band’s self-titled debut album, spent three weeks at No. 1 in late July and August of that year.
Just about a year later, the Los Angeles rock band returned to the top of the Hot 100 for what turned out to be the last time with the pop-rock gem “Hello, I Love You.” The song was the second single from The Doors’ third studio album, Waiting for the Sun.
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The first single released from Waiting for the Sun was “The Unknown Soldier,” an ominous anti-war song. The tune just scraped the bottom of the Hot 100, reaching No. 39.
Follow-up single “Hello, I Love You” ascended to the top of the chart on August 3, 1968, replacing South African trumpet player Hugh Masekela’s jazzy instrumental “Grazing in the Grass.” After two weeks at No. 1, “Hello, I Love You” was replaced by The Rascals’ “People Got to Be Free.”
Origins of “Hello, I Love You”
“Hello, I Love You” dates back to the early days of The Doors. The band recorded a demo of the tune in 1965, before guitarist Robby Krieger had joined the group. Frontman Jim Morrison wrote the song’s lyrics after seeing a beautiful woman walking on the beach. The tune, of course, is basically sung by a guy trying to pick up a woman he’s never seen before by telling her he loves her.
Plagiarism Accusations
The music for “Hello, I Love You” became a source of controversy for The Doors. The song’s melody bears a resemblance to The Kinks’ 1964 hit “All Day and All of the Night.” In a 2012 interview with Mojo magazine, Kinks frontman Ray Davies recalled that his publisher wanted to sue The Doors for plagiarism, but he had a different opinion about the matter.
“I said rather than sue them, can we just get them to own up?” Ray remembered. “My publisher said, ‘They have, that’s why we should sue them!’ Jim Morrison admitted it, which to me was the most important thing. The most important thing, actually, is to take [the idea] somewhere else.”
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In a 2014 Rolling Stone interview, Davies suggested that some out-of-court settlement about the matter had been reached at some point.
“I think they cut a deal somewhere, but I don’t know the details,” he commented.
Meanwhile, Krieger denied that The Doors ripped off The Kinks with “Hello, I Love You” in his 2021 memoir, Set the Night on Fire.
“Nothing could be further from the truth: we ripped off Cream!” Krieger wrote. “The song’s feel comes from me telling [drummer] John [Densmore] to emulate Ginger Baker’s rumbling tom-tom pattern from ‘Sunshine of Your Love.’”
More Info About “Hello, I Love” and Waiting for the Sun
“Hello, I Love” was certified gold by the RIAA in 1968 for sales of more than 500,000 in the U.S. Waiting for the Sun became The Doors only album to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200. It spent four non-consecutive weeks at the top of the chart in September and October of 1968.
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