Willie Dixon's Back Door Man

I was having lunch with my colleagues last week, trying to make sense of the current political turmoil in Kuala Lumpur, when I asked around: "Does anyone remember that Led Zeppelin song, Whole Lotta Love? I've half a mind to reproduce part of the lyrics on my blog." You see, there's this part of the song that goes: "Shake for me, girl, I wanna be your backdoor man".

But then I was told that The Doors actually had a song that's called Back Door Man. That intrigued me because the title sounded so very familiar and it was not because of any political flavour or favours. I decided to run a check on this song to see what information could turn up. Yes, definitely, it was in The Doors' self-titled first album way back in 1967.

Among my music collection was this compact disc of that legendary blues song-writer, Willie Dixon. He wrote Back Door Man in 1960 or 1961. Howlin' Wolf (1962), John Hammond (1964), Black Oak Arkansas (1975), Sugar Blue (1994), Robby Krieger Organisation (1995), Quicksilver Messenger Service (1999), James Blood Ulmer (2001), Arno (2004), Little Bob (2005) and Nelsen Adelard (2006) had all covered this song and The Doors were just one of them.

There's nothing suggestive at all about the lyrics to Back Door Man. I doubt Dixon would have meant it the way it's being bandied around now. A "Back Door Man" is just a guy who has relations with a woman while her husband is out slaving away to provide for her. The usual guilty party is a regular tradesman caller like a milkman, plumber or an insurance salesman, etc, who would run out the back door as the husband entered the front door.