The Doors released their second album Strange Days in September 1967. Many fans consider it as the band’s most original and creative album. Its second track is a song called “You’re Lost Little Girl,” about a little girl who is lost, but knows what to do. For this song, the singer Jim Morrison was requested to relax, not to shout, so that his voice would sound like that of Frank Sinatra.
Here is a video from the official YouTube channel of The Doors:
There is also a 2017 remastered version from that same channel. I give below the lyrics, adapted from Genius and AZLyrics:
You’re lost little girl
You’re lost little girl
You’re lost
Tell me who
Are you?
Think that you know what to do
Impossible? Yes, but it’s true
I think that you know what to do, yeah
Sure that you know what to do
You’re lost little girl
You’re lost little girl
You’re lost
Tell me who
Are you?
Think that you know what to do
Impossible? Yes, but it’s true
I think that you know what to do, girl
Sure that you know what to do
You’re lost little girl
You’re lost little girl
You’re lost
One often considers that this song is inspired by the passionate love relation between the band’s singer Morrison and Pamela Courson. However, as indicated by Genius, the song probably refers to William Blake’s poem “A Little Girl Lost” in his 1794 collection Songs of Experience. Indeed, Jim Morrison, a poet in his own right, knew William Blake very well, and several of his songs seem to contain references to works by the visionary poet.
It’s from 11:54 to 11:56. I know this person. They were 6 in the video. From ages 3-8, she was allowed to roam NYC, Greenwich Village, and Brooklyn, the 3 places she lived from 1964-1968. She would engage many adults in conversation, and, her tested I.Q. was 155. During this time period, her family lived on top of clubs where bands would play in the area, and she and her little friends would hang out with hippies in the same parks that these bands hung out. Jimi Hendrix took a picture for his Electric Ladyland LP with some local kids invited onto the Alice in Wonderland statue during this time period. This girl was on the streets, walking to school, playing, running from horrific abuse at home, riding the subways and buses, all alone, daily. They moved to L.A. of all places, in 1969, where the girl lived behind Desilu studios and attended West Hollywood Elementary.
How do you know this girl? Any idea of how things worked out for her after moving g to CA?
It was written about a 6 year old little girl the band saw in NYC, Summer of 67. There is a video clip of her made by a man named Hertz, in a stream he made of a Manhattan street scene/college demonstration/event. The little girl is wearing an oversized grey coat and is trying to look grown up and alert, as she furtively and deliberately makes her way across the city, alone. Google Hertz Manhattan/NYC YouTube, she’s about 1/3 of the way in, and again in the chalkwalk scene on the square.
Thank you. It would be good to give a precise reference, with the URL of the video and the time of the scene. I found on Google a video of “Manhattan, New York, 1967” by Ben-Artzi Hertz (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T670oRYd-_4), with a little girl appearing from 14:56 to 15:08, but the scene does not correspond to your description.