Jim Morrison: Renew Subscription To Resurrection

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"Jim Morrison, 1981: Renew My Subscription To The Resurrection."
Rolling Stone #352 1981
by Rosemary Breslin

Kelly's mother picked up the phone for the fifth time
that night. It was for sixteen-year-old-Kelly, "Who's
speaking?" the mother asked. "Eddie," the boy answered. "I've got it." Kelly shouted. When Kelly hung up the phone, her mother inquired, "Who's Eddie?" "A friend," Kelly replied. "Where is he from?" She didn't like the sound of the accent. "Oh, I think he's from Spain,"
Kelly said and slid out of the den.

The next day, she was cleaning Kelly's room. In a small wooden fame on the bureau was a picture of a young man. His hair was long and curly. He wore no shirt. His arms were spread out as if he were being
crucified.

When Kelly arrived at her Long Island home that
afternoon, her mother confronted her with the picture. "Is this the animal you're going out with?" she asked. Kelly glanced at the picture and laughed. "Mom, that's Jim Morrison. From the Doors. A band," she said,
tripping upstairs to her room. "And he's dead anyway,"
Kelly continued as her mother stood in the doorway,
still waving the picture. Kelly was relieved that she
hadn't noticed the other pictures of Morrison on her
fireplace mantel.

Kelly will tell anyone who asks that her favorite group is the Doors. She even bought
Eddie-from-Spain a black T Shirt with her favorite picture of Morrison on the front. Kelly can't always name any of the Doors songs, but if you sing one, she'll know
it.

Just why Kelly's into Jim Morrison is difficult to
explain, but there's no doubt that she and most of her
friends can recite, in great detail, the story of his
life. Their talk centers on the drinking, the drugs,
the performances that ended in near riots. An arrest
in Las Vegas for a fight with a cop. Trouble on an
airplane bound for Phoenix, resulting with Morrison in
hand-cuffs. An onstage bust in New Haven for rapping about a backstage confrontation with police. And the most famous bust of all, his arrest after a show in Miami on several counts of indecent exposure and lewd and
lascivious behavior. Most of these teenagers couldn't care less whether Morrison actually exposed himself or not; they simply adore the fact he would even think of
doing it.

The new generation of Doors fans, many of whom were in kindergarden when the band peaked in the late Sixties, is attracted to Morrison's unabashed sexiness, the lure of his voice and the hot, ornery lyrics. A song like "The End" in which Morrison, in an Odeipal rage, screams, "Father I want to kill you/Mother, I want to fuck you," is heady stuff for a seventeen-year-old. To these kids, Morrison's mystique is simply whatever he did, it was something they've been told is wrong. And for that they love him.

The extraordinary distance between his life, his
stardom and their own youth likely fuels the worship;
maybe if these kids saw Morrison today, they wouldn't
be so certain all his activities were godlike. But
in death, he remains their ageless hero, the biggest
of them all.

"It's amazing," said Bryn Bridenthal, vice-president of public relations for Elektra/Asylum Records, the Doors' label. "The group is bigger now than when Morrison was alive. We've sold more Doors records this year than in any year since they were first released." The statistics are impressive.

Every album in the Doors catalog, for instance, doubled
or tripled its sales in 1980 over the previous year.
Aided by Elektra's decision to drop the list price of
The Doors, Waiting For The Sun and The Soft Parade
from $8.98 to $5.98, kids all over America began
scooping up the old records. In fact, of twelve Doors
albums, ten have now been certified gold or platinum.
"The Doors catalog is an amazing success," affirms Joe
Smith, chairman of Elektra Records. "No group that isn't
around anymore has sold that well for us."

The Morrison revival began about three years ago and has grown from a modest renaissance into a landslide. Though the roots of this posthumous popularity are not perfectly clear, music-industry executives tend to trace its orgins to the 1979 release of Francis Ford Coppola's
Apocalyse Now which prominently featured "The End." This unexpected bit of reexposure was soon followed by the appearance of An American Prayer, an album of Morrison reading his own poetry (recorded in 1971) with
instrumental backing added years later by the remaining Doors. Though sales were poor, it stirred further interest in this disembodied voice, this drone from the past. But the big push came with the publication of No One Here Gets Out Alive, by Daniel Sugarman and Jerry Hopkins. To date 740,000 trade and mass-market-paperback copies have been printed, and the book made the best-seller lists. Its last chapter, which raises numerous questions about the circumstances of Morrison's death and the disposition of his remains, is just the sort of dark, eerie, mysterious tale that tends to set impressionable minds dreaming.

"It's a whole new audience," says Bob Gelms, music director of WXRT in Chicago. His station, along with many other FM rock outlets, is playing Doors songs with the frequency of many current popular bands. As Ted Edwards, music director at WCOZ in Boston, points out, many younger kids are hearing the Doors for the first time. "The Doors sound perfect next to Van Halen," says Hugh Surratt, music director of KMET in Los Angeles. "We treat them as a very viable part of our programming. It's amazing to find a band like that has gone on for so long. It's as if they're still recording. It says something for their durability and for the cynical nature of things. Everything comes back around."

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Yet all this chronology, all these facts and figures pall beside the most important aspect of Morrison Resurrectus: the need today for kids - perhaps for us all - to have an idol who isn't squeaky clean. Someone rebellious, someone with a smirk that's more cynical than mean, someone whose sexiness is based on steamy eroticism, not all-American good looks. James Dean, not Shaun Cassidy; handsome with problems gets them always.

When Gloria Stavers worked at 16 Magazine during the sixties, she championed the Doors and once or twice even managed to slip Jim Morrison into a publication that counted as its top attraction the likes of Bobby Sherman, the Mod Squad's Michael Cole and the Monkees. "Morrison was never one of our big draws," says Stavers. But things have changed. "Now, I get calls from my fourteen-year-old godson to send him pictures of Morrison," Stavers says. "A friend's sixteen-year-old daughter in the suburbs has pictures of Morrison on her wall. She's gone on Morrison and the Doors."

John Densmore, the Doors drummer is amazed by the fact that he's asked for autographs wherever he goes these days - mainly fifteen-year-olds far too young to have ever heard the band perform. "About three years ago, my nieces in Boston - who were thirteen - told me that their classmates were into the Doors," says Densmore. "It isn't like it stopped for ten years, but in the last few years, it's been big business again." In fact, some of Densmore's friends have begun asking him to sign their old Doors records. As one told him: "Shit, you guys are famous again."

There has been some spillover from the younger
listeners to a slightly more adult crowd, but it seems
largely caused by proxoimity rather than taste. A
trickle-up theory, you might say. "A few at school listen to the Doors," says one Brown University student, "but
nothing like the little kids. Everywhere I go this
summer, I hear the Doors. You can't help it. And my
girlfriend just bought an old album; she'd never listened to them before at all."

"I think it's fifty-fifty with kids," suggests Gloria Stavers. "Half of it is their fascination with the music, half is with Jim. Talk about the living dead." Or, you might say, his identifiable, aspirational aura. The common lore about Morrison's life is full of the sorts of things that kids imagine could only have happened in the sixties. And they wish they'd been there.

Within a few years, the Doors got all the sucess Morrison had predicted. But he soon discovered he wanted more. He became disenchanted with his Lizard King image, that of the beautiful delinquent in black-leather pants whose audience screamed
for "Light My Fire" everytime he bounded on stage.
Morrison hadn't even written the lyrics for that trademark song; they'd come from Robby Krieger, the group's guitarist. It was the scene, the milieu of outrage that the fans would come to witness. And Morrison ultimately rejected it, undertaking a self-destructive path, as if to mock his strange glory. He really wanted to be recognized as a poet. Maybe he would have been, had he not quietly died in a bathtub in Paris that July night ten years ago. Of the two experimental films Morrison made, Feast Of Friends was generally panned and HWY a movie about hitchhiking, was considered an incomplete work. Morrison's one published book of poetry, The Lords and the
New Creatures, was issued in 1970 by Simon and
Schuster. More than 5000 copies remain in stock.

Though Morrison's life is prehistory to Kelly and her
cohorts, they discuss it with great interest. They'll talk
about the Doors' songs, too, though with varying
degrees of familiarity. "I really do listen to the
music," Kelly said. "An old boyfriend got me into it last
year. We'd listen to it at his house. The music knocks
you out when you're high. Oh yeah, I know "Light My
Fire" and "The End" the best."

Kelly is also heavily into Doors paraphernalia. Buttons that cost two dollars ("We steal them from the mall.") T Shirts and denium jackets emblazoned with Morrison's face. Posters for their bedrooms. Bumper stickers for cars they don't have yet. Most of the girls say they love Jim Morrison, but they have no idea why. Yet when Kelly and her friends tick off the names of the other groups they listen to, it becomes clearer why they're so into
Morrison. "Oh, the Who, the Stones, Styx, REO Speedwagon," Kelly said. With the newer bands, especially, most kids don't and many can't name an individual member; no one personality sticks out from the pack. Even when Mick Jagger's name is mentioned, it's obvious he doesn't appeal to teenage girls today like he did a decade ago. The band might be as big as ever, but Jagger isn't, and that's the point. Mick Jagger, at thirty-six, is too old for them, his nine-year-old daughter, Jade is just a few years younger than some of Kelly's friends. Jagger himself is as old as some kid's parents. Not Morrison. The Jim Morrison the girls fall in love with, the one in the pictures, is about twenty-five and always will be.

After the attraction of a face that spells pure sex and the sultry voice that goes with it, there's the air of mystery that surrounds Morrison. "You know, nobody saw his body," Kelly said. She glanced out the window of the bus as it rolled toward the beach and then turned to her friend Harry. "I heard that Morrison might be living in Brazil. Or maybe it was in Africa. When I want to play games with someone's head, I
tell them Morrison might not be dead," said seventeen
year-old Harry, who was wearing a worn white t-shirt with a picture of Morrison and the words Morrison Lives!
written in red.

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"Yeah," added Harry, "only Pamela saw the body." To these kids, it is a great thing that nobody close to Morrison, aside from Pamela, his wife, saw the body. It makes for a very good story. Furthermore, "Pamela ODed three years after Jim died," Harry noted. "So now there's no one alive show saw his body."

"Harry knows everything about The Doors," Kelly said. She lowered her voice: "I broke his heart in eighth grade." "He's probably over it," a friend said. "I don't think so," Kelly answered, shooting a glance at Harry. "Ray Manzarek said if anyone could pull off disappearing, Morrison could," Harry continued. After he'd carefully arranged his beach blanket, Harry took a snapshot out of his beach bag. "I took this picture of Manzarek at Rock Ages, a rock & roll flea market." Kelly grabbed the photo. It was clear from the impatient look on her face that she had no idea who the guy was."

"I have a picture of Morrison's grave at home," Kelly said. "My sister's friend, Leslie, visited it last
summer."

At Pere La Chaise, one of Paris' most famed
cemeteries, Leslie was looking at the graves of Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, Blazac and Chopin when she saw "Jim-spray painted on a tombstone from the early 1700's. Leslie followed the arrow underneath the name to another grave, where another spray painted arrow pointed her to the plot where Jim Morrison rests. A little past Morrison's grave was one more arrow and the words You Passed It. Go Back. "The graves in the background of Morrison's looked like a subway wall," said Leslie, an international law student. On one grave was a dome-shaped piece of concrete with a pair of fancy, made-up eyes and big red lips painted on it. Beneath it was written L.A. Woman. On another tombstone, a picture of Morrison had been spray-painted through a stencil. Another bore the legend KILL PEOPLE OVER THIRTY. At Morrison's grave, four fans stood smoking cigarettes and reading the words on the other graves. Pills wet from the rain, were scattered on his burial site, along with cigarette butts. So were an old pair of brown boots and empty bottles. The scene compelled Leslie to return more than once. "People came to party at Morrison's grave. From going there, I realized people were starting to trip again. And everybody could find significance in every little thing around the grave."


Leslie's friend, also a law student, went to pick up guys
at Morrison's grave. "Aside from lots of American's,
she met Germans. The Germans loved Morrison. Lots of
the graffiti was in German," said Leslie. "Some of it
was even in Latin." She met one German guy there and
they went away together. "I thought the grave was an
example of how there is an eternal flame for Jim
Morrison. Most of them came only to see his grave. They
didn't know that anyone else of importance was buried in Pere Lachaise. Me, I was wondering how Morrison had gotten into the place."

I saw some better pictures of Morrison's grave than the one Leslie gave me," Kelly said. "In a book of rock stars graves." She turned and inspected her muscular legs. "I have to watch out for my hips."

"Hi Claude," Kelly said to a boy who walked past. "Quaaludes and beer," Claude said. "No," Kelly said and turned away. Kelly put her
unfinished Coke back into Harry's cooler. "I only smoke a
little pot." Inside the cooler were Kelly's three
Cokes and forty-eight bottles of Schmidt's beer. Harry
took one out of the cooler and walked over to his $200
JVC radio-cassette player. He was only playing the
radio this afternoon because his batteries were almost
gone and eight size D's cost eight dollars. Besides,
"they play so much Doors on the radio, you don't even
need the cassette." "And they play New Wave," Kelly
said of their favorite station. She scrunched her face
as if she were chewing aspirin. That's about how
much she likes New Wave. She'll listen to Frank
Sinatra's rendition of "New York, New York" and even Harry likes Anne Murray, his religious mother's favoritie.
But forget New Wave. It doesn't even get a first
chance with a lot of kids. Only Harry showed even a
little interest in X, the band Ray Manzarek now
produces. But the kids do love rock, Last year, the Doors
Greatest Hits package sold almost a million copies. "It
was basically an album that had been released
already, but we remastered, remixed and cleaned it up,
says Joe Smith. All totaled, the Doors sold 2.5
million albums in 1980.

According to Ray Manzarek, the worst years for Doors record sales were 1974-1976. "Everything was swept away by disco. I think Saturday Night Fever sold 26 million records," Manzarek says. By comparison, the Doors catalog averaged about 100,000 per year. But as Manzarek points out, "Disco dissipated; the Doors are still here."

Aside from buying the records, kids love merchandise, which is Danny Sugarman's department. Sugarman, co-author of No One Here Gets Out Alive, manages Ray Manzarek's career and runs the management-public relations firm in Los Angeles. Now twenty-five, he started out handling Jim Morrison's fan mail at age thirteen. He was paid ten cents for each letter answered. "He gave me hope. He was my hero, my friend," Sugarman says.

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Addressing the recent Doors boom, Sugarman contends, "No one is selling the Doors. Business is great. We don't need to take advantage of anything." Sugarman initiated an official Doors fan club because of the demand for product, and because "we want to keep the quality and class. There's an incredible amount of bootlegging." Among the legitimate offerings, a shiny, French-design T shirt with airbrushed picture of the Doors. A cable TV-documentary about Morrison and The Doors will soon be aired. A live album is planned, using tapes that have surfaced of Doors performances on the Isle Of Wight and in Amsterdam. And there's been persistent talk concerning a feature length movie about Morrison. Sugarman throws out the names of David Essex, Rodger Daltrey and John Travolta as among those who won't play the singer. Sugarman's already at work on a new book about Morrison - coffee-table size - with 30,000 words and lots of pictures. "He's bigger in death than in life," says Sugarman. "My dream was to manage Jim, and this is as close as I could get. I do everything with a lot of concern and responsibility. What Jim would want."

At the time of Morrison's death, his estate was estimated to worth about $300,000.
The Doors' music is owned by the three surviving
Doors and the Jim Morrison estate, which is
administered by Morrison's deceased wife's parents and his own mother and father. Pamela Courson Morrison's dad is a retired high-school principal, Jim's father a retired admiral. "They buy condos and cars," Sugarman says. "Jim would have given it to Andy." Andy is Morrison's younger brother. However, Sugarman and most others associated with the band prefer not to discuss monetary matters. When asked how much in royalties is presently coming in, Sugarman says, "I don't like to talk about money."

"A promoter offered us ten or twenty grand to play
in some arena. Without Jim," says John Densmore. "He
didn't care who sang. Just that he could advertise the
Doors. I'm worried. I'm waiting for some backlash. Will
it get saturated? Is this going to turn against us?"

When "Riders On The Storm" came on the radio, five
young boys laying on beach blankets began singing
in-out-of-tune voices. Only Kelly didn't know every word of the song, but she gave it her best shot. "Most girls think they're into the Doors, but all they listen to us
Greatest Hits," Harry disparagingly. He's been into the
Doors for three years now, ever since he shared a room
with his older brother. "My brother's in the marines
now. Morrison got him through boot camp. He'd go to
sleep singing Doors." Harry listens to about three
Doors albums each day. On July 4th, Harry's best
friend, Jim, said Led Zeppelin was the best rock group
ever and "Stairway To Heaven" the best song. Harry
hasn't spoken to him since. Harry's father once ventured
to listen to the Doors, but he left the room after
quickly deciding that Morrison was a crazy man. Harry's
favorite baseball player is Jim Morrison, a third baseman
for the Chicago White Sox.

Harry was seven when Jim Morrison died. He was three when "Light My Fire" reached number one in Billboard magazine. The closest anyone has come to seeing the Doors is a "tribute band" called Crystal Ship. They're just one of at least four such groups cashing in on the revival. In Detroit, there's Pendragon. In L.A. there's Strange Daze. "I had a good time listening to Strange Daze," John Densmore says. "They had every lick, every drum beat down. The singer even had some of Jim's rap down. Every note was copied exactly. They're making a living. They usually play clubs, but now I hear they're going to play a thousand seater in the valley."

Harry couldn't have picked a safer idol than Morrison. That's the greatest thing about the guy: he's not going to change. He's not going to go Christian on you. He's not going to preach against liquor and drugs. Morrison is
going to stay twenty-seven and keep saying the things
he always did, the things teenagers like to hear. If
Morrison's death is a hoax, which few kids actually believe, the best thing he could do is remain dead. He'd be thirty-eight now. Probably out of shape and with a
burnt-out-voice. For Jim Morrison, there's nothing quite like being dead to keep him popular.

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With kids, Morrison hits home in a lot of ways. "He was always rebellious," said Harry. "He hated school. He hated cops." What more do you need? Rebellion is a very popular word when you're growing up. Even if you've never had an encounter with a cop, at seventeen you've got to say you hate them.
"You know, Morrison could drink a quart of Jack
Daniel's," said Harry. "He must have had some stomach. And drugs. He could get unbelievably wasted and still write. He was a genius. He read books."

"The lyrics are really the thing," Kelly said. "I can understand the words when I hear them. When I listen to the Stones, I can only make out a word here or there. You know how you listen to a record and you think they're saying one thing, but when you see the words on the cover, they're not what you thought? You feel really stupid. Well, I usually understand Morrison's words." "You listen to the words and relate to then," Harry said.

To be honest, most kids can't articulate what it is
about the lyrics that they "relate" to. But that
doesn't mean they ought to be written off as losers. At
seventeen, it's just that you still haven't figured out a
way to get what's in your brain out of your mouth. So
you end up sounding a little ignorant, and everybody
else talks about you as going nowhere. "I think the
kids are getting the message. I think they understand
the words and the music," Ray Manzarek says. "I'm
very proud of them. They're not a bunch of little
idiots. All hope is not lost. Morrison introduced them to
a bit of literature. Obviously, he was a poet. They
might want to know what he read. Maybe from the
popularized account of a wild poet, a crazy guy, they might go buy Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" or pick up
William Blake. One of them might even read Nietzsche.
Hope is in the kids."

[jym]

One of the first 'BIG' articles I saw about The Doors after getting into them, good to see this oldie, uh, resurrected. ;D