Songfacts®:

• The subject matter of this song is Jim Morrison. It is a combination of a dream Patti Smith had about the late Doors singer and her visit to Morrison's grave in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.
• In Patti Smith's dream, she helps Jim Morrison, bound like Prometheus, to break free. She recalled in her lyric collection Complete:
  
  "I had this dream. I came in on a clearing. There were natives in a circle bending and gesturing. I saw a man stretched across a marble slab. Jim Morrison. He was alive with wings that merged with the marble. Like Prometheus, he struggled, but freedom was beyond him. I stood over him chanting, break it up break it up break it up... The stone dissolved and he moved away. I brushed the feathers from my hair, adjusted my pillow, and returned to sleep."
• This is about as close as Smith's debut album, Horses, comes to a conventional hard rock track. It is therefore no surprise to learn that it was co-written with by Smith with Television's Tom Verlaine, who was then her lover. Verlaine also contributed guitar to the track.