Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Mar 9, 2011 10:28:59 GMT
This is something I placed on the Densmore forum on the Talk To John section in December 2008 and later July 2009. It was aimed squarely at Himself and was placed there out in the open. It, I am glad to say, started a lively and mostly well mannered debate.
Of course John never joined in!
The photos are from that day.
When The Music's Over .........
I was standing next to Jim Morrison's grave when suddenly.....
December 8th 2008 : 40 years down the road
"You can stay here forever, and never see the sun
don't you realise the price you're paying
It's just that I can remember
When your heart was young
Don't you understand the song I'm singing"
It was on a particular dull, dreary day that I found myself on a very cold Paris afternoon leaning on a less than unassuming metal fence in a sad quiet little corner of one of the town's cemeteries. The chill in the air was more than palpable and permeated through my old bones like an unwelcome party guest that you were unable to distance yourself from because you were too drunk to move.
The place looked like the set of The Blair Witch Project but slightly less welcoming and it did go through my mind that a bit of nice snow would brighten up the atmosphere of such a poignant and affecting setting even though it would likely reduce the temperature even more.
A large tortoiseshell cat sat on a nearby tomb as if the menacing guardian of this morose tableau and I have to admit I did wonder why I was actually here.
I was standing next to the grave of rock icon Jim Morrison on the 8th December around about 3pm lost in my own thoughts when for no particular reason I suddenly realised that I myself had managed to reach a milestone too this year as it was 40 years ago in September 1968 that I noticed The Doors properly and began my lifelong journey as a Doors fan.
Be aware dear reader that this will go on quite a bit so if you are one of those rather sad little pseudo-Doors fans who whine and moan about posts that take more than 30 seconds for you to read then stop now and I am sure you will find some utter banality somewhere else on this forum that will amuse someone as one-dimensional and superficial as yourself for less than a minute. ## NB this was a reference to the Densmore forum NOT this one there is a bit of banality here I must confess but not as much as Official Doors forums.
Back to the gist of the posting.
As I wished ole Jim a happy retirement I pondered, leaning on the fence deep in thought, how much had changed since I had first heard HILY on radio Luxembourg.
40 years had gone by, 2008 was coming to an end, Jim was dead and living in a cemetery in Paris, the Doors internet community I loved being part of was all but a memory and my heroes had forgotten everything that had made them a legend in the first place and now preferred the comforts only greed can bring and had fallen from being the most cool band in the Universe to instead a laughing stock throughout the music world.
Bloody sad if you ask me.
You may ponder yourself that if someone like me has only the negative to contribute nowadays why don't I just shut up and bugger off to an S Club 7 forum?
Probably dear reader because I care TOO much about this band and have never been one too cowardly to not speak out when I see something that is fundamentally, totally and utterly wrong.
The Doors to me have always stood for something that the hundreds and hundreds of great bands and artists I liked, loved, admired and revered over the last nearly 50 years never ever did.
They were unique and honest and showed an integrity and set of values that was rare in the world of music I was an inhabitant.
OK the lead singer was rather crazy sometimes, a bit pretentious, was an alcoholic and could be a total arcehole when he chose to be and the less said about the other three the better but the band itself as an entity was something rather special and even a kid like me who knew nothing much of French poetry, philosophy, Greek drama or the art of film making could figure that one out.
I can't really trace the moment when it began to go so horribly wrong as it’s like an Ice Age in terms of geological time.
One moment it's there and the next it's gone.
And for me that's what happened to the Integrity of The Doors. It would be easy to blame it on the day ROTS/D21C crawled out from beneath their rock but I think the rot had set in long before that really.
One minute they were three guys who even for all their faults knew the value of the Art of The Doors and the integrity that went with that and the next they were a collective of shallow liars, hypocrites and greed mongers who would sell any principle as long as it brought in a dollar.
Perhaps that is unfair to JD and I imagine he would argue just that as did he indeed not fight the good fight for Doors integrity?
A fight I supported from day One BTW.
Well Yes & No, But Overall Not Really.
Least I Don't Think So But Am Not Really Sure.
JD sure did fight to protect his 25% but what actual percentage of that fight was for Doors Integrity I must admit I do not really know anymore.
I thought I did a couple of years ago but 2008 has made everything rather nebulous and I am no longer sure of what I thought I saw.
Perception is a bitch ain't it?
And that dear reader is one of the things that is a constant puzzle when you have the occupation of being a Doors fan.
I mean here I was freezing my ass off standing over a gravestone on a bloody cold Paris afternoon, suffering a headache from the previous nights drinking, with a mere handful of fellow Doors fans, because I chose to travel hundreds of miles to come along and wish happy birthday to a dead bloke I never met, never saw perform, never knew in the slightest, but did for all that happen to admire a great deal for his energy, honesty, talent and for all his faults (of which he had a lot) his complete integrity as an artist.
Let's face it not many guys in the 60s would have turned down 70 grand to sell a song to a car company by threatening the people offering it with a sledgehammer.
But Jim was a true one off and there has never been anyone quite like the guy either before or more importantly since and for me he deserved a bit better than a paltry bunch of fans like us standing aimlessly around his grave on what would have been a milestone for him, he certainly deserved better than Densmore/Kreiger/Manzarek on what would have been his 65th birthday.
But we will get to those three shortly.
For now back to Paris.
I first came here in 2002 as for the previous 30 years I had not felt any urge to visit France as I thought the idea rather tacky. Luckily I was talked round and have enjoyed the company of Doors fans on many occasions ever since.
One of the things I noticed during my first July and December was how forlorn Jim's plot was in its unassuming corner of the cemetery far away from the 'big' name artists and poets that made the cemetery's name famous and how appropriate this was for arguably rocks greatest ever exponent of the art form.
The Doors were always isolated from the rest of the mainstream rock community and could never in a million years be compared to any of their 60s contemporaries and even though they have influenced generations of musicians throughout the 80s 90s and to the present day not ONE has ever been able to capture just whatever the Hell it was that made the Doors so intrinsically different from the rest of the great artists of that era and beyond.
Another thing I noticed was that apart from the odd bunch of flowers from the family there never seemed to be any sign of even the slightest acknowledgement from the guys who ended up with the cash on Jims sad little grave site.
That has always bothered me a great deal.
I learned from people who had been there every year since the early 80s that this was indeed always the case.
And that bothered me even more and actually angered me a bit.
Maybe this December because there was hardly a fan in the city and the distractions of a feast of friends and a cornucopia of alcohol with them was not there and I saw things a little clearer than I had previously.
Maybe I was in a bad mood because I had a headache from boozing?
But looking down on Jim's grave and the state of the site of rocks most iconic singers I felt a bit sad and angry especially when I considered what a great wheeze his three mates (I told you we would get back to them eventually) had come up with to 'celebrate' the day back in Jim's adopted home town.
It’s been going on for a few years really but the grave is looking decidedly despondent and dejected as if Jim himself is rebelling against the greed that is the Doors of the 21st century (no NOT those idiots) and deliberately falling into decay.
Probably not but it still looks like its been used as a passing toilet by a herd of wildebeest and even the honest, well meaning and respectful attempts of Doors fans to brighten it up from time to time cannot hide the abject despair the gravesite exudes especially I presume when we Doors fans have buggered off home.
And as I stood there leaning on the fence I wondered aloud to a couple of Dutch mates whether the Three Amigos actually cared or felt any kind of obligation toward the site that regularly keeps them in biscuits.
The consensus from what was indeed a very small poll of Doors fans was a resounding NO!!!
Jim’s grave seems to be sinking fast under a weight of sorrow and anguish at the idiotic antics of those he left behind mourning all that has been lost during the new century.
It now has a very noticeable list to the left as the ground below has sunk leaving a sad empty hollow inside the stone border of the grave.
Which itself has been eaten away by grubby little souvenir hunters some whom I am ashamed to say may well have even been Doors fans.
The headstone itself is turning gangrenous and is in dire need of a wash and brush up and is itself off-kilter by several degrees due to the base being out of alignment.
When you consider that these three idiots we worship have wasted millions suing each other for what basically in essence were utter trivialities born purely of greed and ego that should never ever have even seen the light of day and have stumbled from one PR disaster to another since the dawn of the third millennium culminating in the shambolic Matrix and 'piss plaque' catastrophes, which rendered my favourite band an utter and complete discredited laughing stock around the rock world, its fair to imagine that these three could spare a few bucks every three or four months to send a squad to give Jims grave a damn good valeting.
But of course the answer in this buck passing 21st century triumvirate would be that the guys family have that little job and if they don't do it then its not our fault at all.
To which my reply would of course be 'bollocks to you mate'.
Only a complete fool would argue that Jim was The Doors and the other 3 nothing more than a backing band to his genius.
And I am certainly no fool and recognise as any half decent Doors fan would that the contribution of John, Ray and Robby was equally as important as the singers in making the band what it was. The Greatest Damn Rock band On Earth.
But for all that you guys do indeed owe this dead bloke everything you have.
Not one of you has had a proper job in nigh on 40 years and everything you do that ever makes any decent money has a Morrison reference to it and likely as not Jim's face from his 'pretty' period so the least you can do is take an interest in the grave site.
But of course you guys have rather a poor record when it comes to Jim Morrison's final resting place dating right back to May of 1972 when seemingly you collectively could not be arced to travel 2 mile and pay your respects.
We know JD and Robby could not as it's in JD's book but Ray has never said when he first went there so maybe he put the other two to shame and went and said hello to his bestest ,mate. Maybe not? If he did my respects to him!
I have met people who have come from the US, Australia and even Africa just to visit the grave and the thought that at least two of his mates could not make that two miles has always bothered me a great deal.
In 1981 we saw the three preen themselves at the gravesite to cash in on the 10th anniversary and we have had various sales pitches at the grave for albums, books, DVD's and even a rather silly tribute band but 1972 has always perturbed me as a Doors fan since I discovered it reading ROTS.
Ray is always waffling on about ancient cultures during his insane ramblings to journalists and I remember well the famous tale of how he suggested the band wear Japanese Oni masks at the Hollywood Bowl only to be met with scorn from Morrison who said something along the lines of 'you wear what you want just give me a microphone'
I have always liked that tale but wonder if Ray (as well as the other two) is/are familiar with another Japanese custom called 'Giri'?
A 'burden of obligation' and something our Japanese friends take very seriously.
We Westerners on the other hand have a term we endear to 'Duh' which is roughly translated into 'couldn't give a rat's ass'.
The Doors surely have a 'burden of obligation' to James Douglas Morrison both as the caretakers of the legacy he left as an artist and one to him as a friend.
Did he not all those years ago come up with the original idea that the ogre of money should not be part of the equation and shared the wealth he could have easily gotten from the lucrative songwriting royalties equally with his three friends.
He didn't have to do that. And true he had no idea what it would be worth as at the time the band was nobody really.
But I for one believe he would have done the same if he had been shown beyond doubt the millions that his writings would have been worth.
That was the kind of bloke he was.
Yes he was a drunk, sometimes a total arcehole and at times he was very cruel to the women in his life but he could be the exact opposite and capable of great generosity such as the way he would keep the LA Art Squad in paint and writing materials by providing cheques and emptying The Doors petty cash for them or by buying all their poetry pamphlets and giving them to his friends.
The man was an artist and resides in an artists grave with many of the fellow artists he revered in a city he seemed to love.
But 'Giri' rears its head and we see The Doors seem more concered with the other Western term as the man's grave sinks into the Paris earth and is pecked at by vultures.
Hell all it needs is a squad of men to go in for a day or two and realign the stone base properly refill the centre with the stones that have been swiped over the years, give the whole thing a damn good wash and clean and generally tidy up the site (Hell I supervise construction sites and could do it in half a day with a couple of lads from Stockton) and then three or four times a year especially before the big anniversaries in July and December have a squad tidy up the place keep the stones at a decent level give it a wash and ready for the influx of fans.
Cost? A couple thousand bucks a year.
I was talking to fans who wanted to donate their time to the upkeep of the grave but that particular task should fall onto the three guys who benefit the most.
And it should be a welcome obligation not a chore. Not buck passed to the guy's family who were not in the least any part of this great enterprise but embraced by those who shared the journey from the obscurity of 1965 to the triumphs of 6 great musical documents and a place in the highest echelons of the Rock Pantheon.
An obligation at the very least for the dead guy allowing his face to adorn the myriad of lucrative Best Of albums that have ultimately made my fave band such a joke in the rock world.
For God's sake you guys even released one in 2008.
A responsibility born of the supposed friendship with this guy you are constantly barraging Doors fans with whenever you guys are selling something.
Hell I don't begrudge you guys being millionaires. If talentless crap from reality TV shows can be loaded then surely the greatest band the world has ever seen should be rich from their efforts. I simply advocate that an obligation exists to the dead bloke who is the ultimate reason for the fame in the first place, your own legacy and maybe even to the fans, who some would argue you guys owe nothing to but for me if you think that then all really has been lost.
We don’t own you it is indeed true but Doors fans young and old share the same journey and as such walk the same path. I did it as a kid discovering that this band was more than just four blokes who played a bit of kick ass music.
It takes years to discover The Doors and a shitload of effort.
I been along for the ride 40 years and I am still finding stuff out that fascinates me.
So if you guys feel no obligation to us then it really is The End.
The Legacy and History of The Doors is rich and layered and deserves to be treated with respect but sadly 2008 has become a new low of which I myself thought I would never see the day.
I mean just between fan and band. Do you guys wake up in a morning and think 'I have a really cheesy idea that will make Jim Morrison look a total dick' speed dial 'manager'.
I mean the endless best of's paled into insignificance when you guys came up with the idea of sticking Jim on a shoe. I saw a Converse sneaker similar to the Doors ones in a shop in Paris earlier this month and frankly they are a pile of crap, which I would not buy as a present for a dog to chew.
So Jim must have been well pleased to be honoured by a bunch of spivs on one of their really crappy shoes. I notice none of your faces are adorning these shabby bits of footwear just Jim.
How could you ever top that for dumbass ideas?
I should have known.
I felt anger and shame this December 8th being a Doors fan.
I am absolutely serious in this that you guys should collectively have been arrested for the day thrown in a cell together and not allowed to even speak to anyone else until the 9th.
To use Jim Morrison's 65th birthday as a way to sell the most discredited album ever released by The Doors was abominable and the Barneys Beanery fiasco the most repulsive thing I have ever heard of in The Doors world. And that’s saying something with you lot.
Regardless of the excuses, bullshit and buck passing surrounding Barney's, the plaque (regardless of what it NOW says) stuck on the bar will always be known as the 'Morrison Piss Plaque'.
Rock fans have had one of the laughs of the year taking the piss out of the greatest band that ever lived. The rock media here in the UK shit itself laughing at The Doors.
Barney's was just an overblown advert for The Matrix with a cake.
Fans as usual excluded from the 'celebration' except for the elite and worst of all the utterly obscene YouTube images of a FAN daring to ask first for an autograph outside the official area and maybe a picture with his hero Robby Krieger on Jim's 65th only for some huge lumbering idiot to drag RK away from THE FANS telling them no autographs or pictures.
The summing up by the fans mate for me an indictment of what you guys have become. 'Its OK' he consoles his friend who had probably stood outside looking in for HOURS hoping for a word or a glance 'fuck 'em.....
How incredibly crass, insensitive and stupid to encourage Doors fans to travel to LA to take part in the most tacky idea ever conceived and then to snub them in the street.
For me that fan spoke for all Doors fans around the world and if I ever met him I would shake his hand and buy him a drink.
I wonder whether our host saw that one?
But he himself was little better.
The much-lauded 'John speaks' radio interview was just another advert for The Matrix CD and shamelessly plugged the album whilst saying nothing remotely interesting.
Where was the Jim Morrison The Poet, The Artist, The Human Being on his 65th birthday?
No room really for him as we had an album to sell!
'Jim was this great artist who checked out at 27 and that was his fate' piped up JD with as utterly stupid a pronouncement as some silly old fool in Barney's the same day encouraging kids to take drugs 'Open the doors of perception! That's what we tried to do, we’d sit around and talk with the doors of perception open. When you open those doors of perception, all kinds of things come in! All kinds of things go in and out.'
When will you pampered idiots grow up and realise that Jim Morrison was not Dionysus, was not a shaman, that he was not really possessed by dead Indians and that death due to drugs, booze, disillusionment and possibly depression was not some kind of karmatic inevitability but really a sad and rather pathetic end to one of the 60s brightest ever stars.
And that a 70 year old bloke advocating that young kids should take drugs is so WAY NOT COOL!
I would have rediscovered respect for all 3 of you guys if you had celebrated the blokes 65th birthday and not even mentioned ANY product at all, had shut up about booze and drugs and had discussed Jim Morrison the Poet and Human Being rather than the Crazy Guy. After all the bloke was supposed to be your friend.
That would have been true integrity.
I mean do you people actually really think that Jim Morrison would have been such a Crazy Guy at 40 years old let alone 65?
Hell you could have bored us shitless every other day before and after about how cool your latest best of album or the Matrix was but surely the guy deserved ONE day without a sales pitch?
Just ONE day in a year where he was discussed as a person NOT as a meal ticket.
It’s not that difficult. We fans do it all the time.
We don't mind the buying bit but it's the constant selling that gets up our noses.
Integrity is hard. It's dead easy to be a liar, a hypocrite and a greedy bastard but keeping integrity intact is bloody hard.
Especially when you are an artist trying to make a living.
The Doors managed it for so long which amazed me over the years but the fall from grace was so rapid it took my breath away.
The tribute band farce, the subsequent endless trial farce, the never ending ultimate best of The Doors farce, Rhino & Mr Hand, the screw ups with box sets and BMR releases culminating in the ridiculous Matrix catastrophe which saw Doors fans up in arms when The Doors turned what should have been a simple release of an album that was a half decent jump above the best bootleg, nothing more nothing less, into a farce of 'Carry On Up The Khyber' proportions with the bands manager leaving himself completely discredited all over the internet and the band once again a laughing stock.
Not because the product was that bad. It was a decent upgrade to a boot I for one quite like it.
But fans were not at all pleased at the amount of deceit involved in this release as it is in no way what it was marketed as.
What was The Doors reaction? A pledge to do better?
This is The Doors of the 21st century we are talking about here.
Nope they attack the fans as insane zealots, when in fact these guys were well respected throughout Doors trading circles who, unlike the bands manager, actually knew what they were talking about, then stifled any debate (even seemingly attacking wikipedia and Amazon.com) and threw their toys out of the pram with their manager, who should have kept his trap shut in the first place, threatening to pull the plug on BMR if the fans did not shut up.
A truly shameful and shambolic end to 2008.
So what will 2009 hold for us?
We now have a new film in which The Doors harp on about answering Oliver Stone as if there is a need to answer some bloke who made a Hollywood movie that made the three of you a shitload of cash and put The Doors back up where they belong during the 90s.
What is needed is not some rebuttal of Hollywood simply the History told with some semblance of truth, respect and that old integrity.
Hopefully we will see that in 2009.
The signs are not good of course as we already have the new Doors Sell Site on line and that is full of the History of The Doors isn't it?. Well actually No it isn't.
'Awake, shake dreams from your hair my pretty child, my sweet one, choose the day, choose the sign of your day, the days divinity....first thing you see'
Sadly the first thing we see on the new Doors site is a way to buy stuff.
And once inside there is little information about The Doors but plenty of ways to buy stuff.
The saddest thing for me in this ocean of sadness is perhaps the fact that when I first came to the Net and discovered a whole new Doors world it was populated with thousands of really cool and intelligent people. Hundreds of Doors fan sites most of them active, and I know this as I was friendly with many many of the webmasters, adorned the Net. Forums abounded filled with interesting and intelligent Doors fans discussing the intricacies of the band with a level of smartness I loved being part of .
We argued, laughed and put The Doors world to right and as such I met a lot of really nice people including many that I am at odds with nowadays over the events of the last few years but even for that I respect them as Doors fans. The Doors community was vibrant, vivacious, effervescent, pulsating and alive and had been for long before I got there. I loved being a part of this Feast Of Friends.
Now its all over, the forums gone, the sites closed down, the people disillusioned by what the band they invested so much time in had become.
Seen now as nothing more than walking wallets by a band that has so fallen from grace in the Third Millennium they have disappeared in droves.
Very few left on the Net nowadays and the few forums left not in the hands of The Doors themselves devoid of Doors discussion and even those Official Forums dull and uninteresting as any real discussion was silenced long ago.
I sometimes wonder where all these folks went. I wonder if they still listen to the music and get the old feeling when they hear it.
I also wonder if The Doors actually care a damn that their fanbase has lost such a human treasure due to their headlong push for the Gravy Train.
It happens to all great artists I guess but I have to admit I never thought it would happen to The Doors.
I remember reading one cutting comment on the LL from a fan who disgusted at the way the Matrix album had been delivered said 'at least look on the bright side the shoe was delivered on time' I laughed at that because that for me was the essence of the fans; we may piss and moan and we may argue but we can also find humour in the worst catastrophes. Have we reached the tipping point of this journey of discovery of The Doors? I think we are probably well past it. Oliver Stone has been held up as the villain of the last 17/18 years when the real villain was a lot nearer home.
Probably the worst things to happen to The Doors paradoxicaly was Apocalypse Now, the success of NOHGOA and the Stone movie as they propelled the band into the stratosphere and ultimately set an agenda for money making unlike nothing I have ever seen in rock music. The Phenomenon of Jim Morrison the Shaman & Superstar make it impossible to ever really discover Jim Morrison the Human Being which I find infinitely more interesting. We get glimpses but the headlong rush to get the juicy bits of Jim as some kind of mystical figure and the obligatory drunken buffoon obscure any chance of ever seeing the man behind the Oni mask.
I would have loved to see the History of The Doors 1965 to 1967 explored in a book similar to the hopelessly inept Doors By The Doors.
I would have loved to have seen the band History explored instead of the force feeding of The Doors Myth down the throats of the new generation of gullible teenagers the way it was forced down the throats of my generation of gullible teenagers when I was young.
Sadly stuff like that only gets in the way of the T Shirt Jim who got drunk a lot and did crazy things.
For me the ultimate betrayal of Jim Morrison by his bandmates has got to be the Morrison poetry. What better way to have celebrated Jim Morrison at 65 than to devote the whole of 2008 to Morrison The Poet.
His poetry recordings even though incomplete and rough around the edges would have been a far greater testimony to the Man than an image on a shitty shoe and a complete fuck up over an old bootleg.
A new published Lost Writing III of all the work contained in the Fascination box as well as Paris Journal and anything else lying around would have been infinitely more respectful than his bandmates competing for a bit of attention on his birthday and sounding like complete arces trying to flog an album.
Discussing the bloke as the Poet he aspired to be rather than the drunk on a downward spiral to oblivion as Ray recently did in Uncut magazine would have been something special for 2008. We all know he was an out of control drunk and could be a total tit but the guy who sat on Dennis Jakob's roof and wrote some wonderfully profound poetry wanted to be remembered for his words rather than his actions.
How much I am sure we as fans would have loved to hear the stories of The Doors chatting about poetry, film and drama in 1965 and 1966 and hearing about the hopes and aspirations of a band of young lads who knew the future was uncertain but the possibilities were there if they just found the courage and a bit of luck to take them.
Of course this kind of thing would have taken time and effort to secure with all the competing factions by 2008 hating each other and scrabbling around the money trough for their cut.
"In that year there was
an intense visitation
of energy.
I left school & went down
to the beach to live.
I slept on a roof
At night the moon became
a woman's face.
I met the Spirit of Music."
That was the Morrison we should have been exploring in 2008.
Instead we got another Best Of album, a tatty little overpriced shoe, a badly marketed bootleg, a radio sales pitch on the guy's birthday.
This was you guys idea of a celebration of what would have been your mates 65th year.
As I added my own contribution to brighten up Jim's grave on his birthday in the form of Michael White's excellent 2001 poem JDM which I have been tying to the fence for years now since he wrote it for my old fanzine's 30 year gone tribute to Jim, I looked around at the bleak, foreboding Paris afternoon and thought a silent thank you to some bloke I did not know for the gift of '40 years of something rather special' and then inevitably the poignancy of the day which hung around the small gathering of devotees, which included a 53 year old man from Teesside who was not 12 anymore, seemed to dissipate into the mellon collie and the infinite sadness of what would soon become another dark, cold, lonely Pere Lachaise winter evening for the spirit of James Douglas Morrison.
As the light began to fade and my boots no longer told lies about the cold around my feet I decided I needed a drink and some good company to lift my mood.
Cheers Jim and thanks for everything.
Alex Patton
Stockton On Tees
December 24th 2008
Of course John never joined in!
The photos are from that day.
When The Music's Over .........
I was standing next to Jim Morrison's grave when suddenly.....
December 8th 2008 : 40 years down the road
"You can stay here forever, and never see the sun
don't you realise the price you're paying
It's just that I can remember
When your heart was young
Don't you understand the song I'm singing"
It was on a particular dull, dreary day that I found myself on a very cold Paris afternoon leaning on a less than unassuming metal fence in a sad quiet little corner of one of the town's cemeteries. The chill in the air was more than palpable and permeated through my old bones like an unwelcome party guest that you were unable to distance yourself from because you were too drunk to move.
The place looked like the set of The Blair Witch Project but slightly less welcoming and it did go through my mind that a bit of nice snow would brighten up the atmosphere of such a poignant and affecting setting even though it would likely reduce the temperature even more.
A large tortoiseshell cat sat on a nearby tomb as if the menacing guardian of this morose tableau and I have to admit I did wonder why I was actually here.
I was standing next to the grave of rock icon Jim Morrison on the 8th December around about 3pm lost in my own thoughts when for no particular reason I suddenly realised that I myself had managed to reach a milestone too this year as it was 40 years ago in September 1968 that I noticed The Doors properly and began my lifelong journey as a Doors fan.
Be aware dear reader that this will go on quite a bit so if you are one of those rather sad little pseudo-Doors fans who whine and moan about posts that take more than 30 seconds for you to read then stop now and I am sure you will find some utter banality somewhere else on this forum that will amuse someone as one-dimensional and superficial as yourself for less than a minute. ## NB this was a reference to the Densmore forum NOT this one there is a bit of banality here I must confess but not as much as Official Doors forums.
Back to the gist of the posting.
As I wished ole Jim a happy retirement I pondered, leaning on the fence deep in thought, how much had changed since I had first heard HILY on radio Luxembourg.
40 years had gone by, 2008 was coming to an end, Jim was dead and living in a cemetery in Paris, the Doors internet community I loved being part of was all but a memory and my heroes had forgotten everything that had made them a legend in the first place and now preferred the comforts only greed can bring and had fallen from being the most cool band in the Universe to instead a laughing stock throughout the music world.
Bloody sad if you ask me.
You may ponder yourself that if someone like me has only the negative to contribute nowadays why don't I just shut up and bugger off to an S Club 7 forum?
Probably dear reader because I care TOO much about this band and have never been one too cowardly to not speak out when I see something that is fundamentally, totally and utterly wrong.
The Doors to me have always stood for something that the hundreds and hundreds of great bands and artists I liked, loved, admired and revered over the last nearly 50 years never ever did.
They were unique and honest and showed an integrity and set of values that was rare in the world of music I was an inhabitant.
OK the lead singer was rather crazy sometimes, a bit pretentious, was an alcoholic and could be a total arcehole when he chose to be and the less said about the other three the better but the band itself as an entity was something rather special and even a kid like me who knew nothing much of French poetry, philosophy, Greek drama or the art of film making could figure that one out.
I can't really trace the moment when it began to go so horribly wrong as it’s like an Ice Age in terms of geological time.
One moment it's there and the next it's gone.
And for me that's what happened to the Integrity of The Doors. It would be easy to blame it on the day ROTS/D21C crawled out from beneath their rock but I think the rot had set in long before that really.
One minute they were three guys who even for all their faults knew the value of the Art of The Doors and the integrity that went with that and the next they were a collective of shallow liars, hypocrites and greed mongers who would sell any principle as long as it brought in a dollar.
Perhaps that is unfair to JD and I imagine he would argue just that as did he indeed not fight the good fight for Doors integrity?
A fight I supported from day One BTW.
Well Yes & No, But Overall Not Really.
Least I Don't Think So But Am Not Really Sure.
JD sure did fight to protect his 25% but what actual percentage of that fight was for Doors Integrity I must admit I do not really know anymore.
I thought I did a couple of years ago but 2008 has made everything rather nebulous and I am no longer sure of what I thought I saw.
Perception is a bitch ain't it?
And that dear reader is one of the things that is a constant puzzle when you have the occupation of being a Doors fan.
I mean here I was freezing my ass off standing over a gravestone on a bloody cold Paris afternoon, suffering a headache from the previous nights drinking, with a mere handful of fellow Doors fans, because I chose to travel hundreds of miles to come along and wish happy birthday to a dead bloke I never met, never saw perform, never knew in the slightest, but did for all that happen to admire a great deal for his energy, honesty, talent and for all his faults (of which he had a lot) his complete integrity as an artist.
Let's face it not many guys in the 60s would have turned down 70 grand to sell a song to a car company by threatening the people offering it with a sledgehammer.
But Jim was a true one off and there has never been anyone quite like the guy either before or more importantly since and for me he deserved a bit better than a paltry bunch of fans like us standing aimlessly around his grave on what would have been a milestone for him, he certainly deserved better than Densmore/Kreiger/Manzarek on what would have been his 65th birthday.
But we will get to those three shortly.
For now back to Paris.
I first came here in 2002 as for the previous 30 years I had not felt any urge to visit France as I thought the idea rather tacky. Luckily I was talked round and have enjoyed the company of Doors fans on many occasions ever since.
One of the things I noticed during my first July and December was how forlorn Jim's plot was in its unassuming corner of the cemetery far away from the 'big' name artists and poets that made the cemetery's name famous and how appropriate this was for arguably rocks greatest ever exponent of the art form.
The Doors were always isolated from the rest of the mainstream rock community and could never in a million years be compared to any of their 60s contemporaries and even though they have influenced generations of musicians throughout the 80s 90s and to the present day not ONE has ever been able to capture just whatever the Hell it was that made the Doors so intrinsically different from the rest of the great artists of that era and beyond.
Another thing I noticed was that apart from the odd bunch of flowers from the family there never seemed to be any sign of even the slightest acknowledgement from the guys who ended up with the cash on Jims sad little grave site.
That has always bothered me a great deal.
I learned from people who had been there every year since the early 80s that this was indeed always the case.
And that bothered me even more and actually angered me a bit.
Maybe this December because there was hardly a fan in the city and the distractions of a feast of friends and a cornucopia of alcohol with them was not there and I saw things a little clearer than I had previously.
Maybe I was in a bad mood because I had a headache from boozing?
But looking down on Jim's grave and the state of the site of rocks most iconic singers I felt a bit sad and angry especially when I considered what a great wheeze his three mates (I told you we would get back to them eventually) had come up with to 'celebrate' the day back in Jim's adopted home town.
It’s been going on for a few years really but the grave is looking decidedly despondent and dejected as if Jim himself is rebelling against the greed that is the Doors of the 21st century (no NOT those idiots) and deliberately falling into decay.
Probably not but it still looks like its been used as a passing toilet by a herd of wildebeest and even the honest, well meaning and respectful attempts of Doors fans to brighten it up from time to time cannot hide the abject despair the gravesite exudes especially I presume when we Doors fans have buggered off home.
And as I stood there leaning on the fence I wondered aloud to a couple of Dutch mates whether the Three Amigos actually cared or felt any kind of obligation toward the site that regularly keeps them in biscuits.
The consensus from what was indeed a very small poll of Doors fans was a resounding NO!!!
Jim’s grave seems to be sinking fast under a weight of sorrow and anguish at the idiotic antics of those he left behind mourning all that has been lost during the new century.
It now has a very noticeable list to the left as the ground below has sunk leaving a sad empty hollow inside the stone border of the grave.
Which itself has been eaten away by grubby little souvenir hunters some whom I am ashamed to say may well have even been Doors fans.
The headstone itself is turning gangrenous and is in dire need of a wash and brush up and is itself off-kilter by several degrees due to the base being out of alignment.
When you consider that these three idiots we worship have wasted millions suing each other for what basically in essence were utter trivialities born purely of greed and ego that should never ever have even seen the light of day and have stumbled from one PR disaster to another since the dawn of the third millennium culminating in the shambolic Matrix and 'piss plaque' catastrophes, which rendered my favourite band an utter and complete discredited laughing stock around the rock world, its fair to imagine that these three could spare a few bucks every three or four months to send a squad to give Jims grave a damn good valeting.
But of course the answer in this buck passing 21st century triumvirate would be that the guys family have that little job and if they don't do it then its not our fault at all.
To which my reply would of course be 'bollocks to you mate'.
Only a complete fool would argue that Jim was The Doors and the other 3 nothing more than a backing band to his genius.
And I am certainly no fool and recognise as any half decent Doors fan would that the contribution of John, Ray and Robby was equally as important as the singers in making the band what it was. The Greatest Damn Rock band On Earth.
But for all that you guys do indeed owe this dead bloke everything you have.
Not one of you has had a proper job in nigh on 40 years and everything you do that ever makes any decent money has a Morrison reference to it and likely as not Jim's face from his 'pretty' period so the least you can do is take an interest in the grave site.
But of course you guys have rather a poor record when it comes to Jim Morrison's final resting place dating right back to May of 1972 when seemingly you collectively could not be arced to travel 2 mile and pay your respects.
We know JD and Robby could not as it's in JD's book but Ray has never said when he first went there so maybe he put the other two to shame and went and said hello to his bestest ,mate. Maybe not? If he did my respects to him!
I have met people who have come from the US, Australia and even Africa just to visit the grave and the thought that at least two of his mates could not make that two miles has always bothered me a great deal.
In 1981 we saw the three preen themselves at the gravesite to cash in on the 10th anniversary and we have had various sales pitches at the grave for albums, books, DVD's and even a rather silly tribute band but 1972 has always perturbed me as a Doors fan since I discovered it reading ROTS.
Ray is always waffling on about ancient cultures during his insane ramblings to journalists and I remember well the famous tale of how he suggested the band wear Japanese Oni masks at the Hollywood Bowl only to be met with scorn from Morrison who said something along the lines of 'you wear what you want just give me a microphone'
I have always liked that tale but wonder if Ray (as well as the other two) is/are familiar with another Japanese custom called 'Giri'?
A 'burden of obligation' and something our Japanese friends take very seriously.
We Westerners on the other hand have a term we endear to 'Duh' which is roughly translated into 'couldn't give a rat's ass'.
The Doors surely have a 'burden of obligation' to James Douglas Morrison both as the caretakers of the legacy he left as an artist and one to him as a friend.
Did he not all those years ago come up with the original idea that the ogre of money should not be part of the equation and shared the wealth he could have easily gotten from the lucrative songwriting royalties equally with his three friends.
He didn't have to do that. And true he had no idea what it would be worth as at the time the band was nobody really.
But I for one believe he would have done the same if he had been shown beyond doubt the millions that his writings would have been worth.
That was the kind of bloke he was.
Yes he was a drunk, sometimes a total arcehole and at times he was very cruel to the women in his life but he could be the exact opposite and capable of great generosity such as the way he would keep the LA Art Squad in paint and writing materials by providing cheques and emptying The Doors petty cash for them or by buying all their poetry pamphlets and giving them to his friends.
The man was an artist and resides in an artists grave with many of the fellow artists he revered in a city he seemed to love.
But 'Giri' rears its head and we see The Doors seem more concered with the other Western term as the man's grave sinks into the Paris earth and is pecked at by vultures.
Hell all it needs is a squad of men to go in for a day or two and realign the stone base properly refill the centre with the stones that have been swiped over the years, give the whole thing a damn good wash and clean and generally tidy up the site (Hell I supervise construction sites and could do it in half a day with a couple of lads from Stockton) and then three or four times a year especially before the big anniversaries in July and December have a squad tidy up the place keep the stones at a decent level give it a wash and ready for the influx of fans.
Cost? A couple thousand bucks a year.
I was talking to fans who wanted to donate their time to the upkeep of the grave but that particular task should fall onto the three guys who benefit the most.
And it should be a welcome obligation not a chore. Not buck passed to the guy's family who were not in the least any part of this great enterprise but embraced by those who shared the journey from the obscurity of 1965 to the triumphs of 6 great musical documents and a place in the highest echelons of the Rock Pantheon.
An obligation at the very least for the dead guy allowing his face to adorn the myriad of lucrative Best Of albums that have ultimately made my fave band such a joke in the rock world.
For God's sake you guys even released one in 2008.
A responsibility born of the supposed friendship with this guy you are constantly barraging Doors fans with whenever you guys are selling something.
Hell I don't begrudge you guys being millionaires. If talentless crap from reality TV shows can be loaded then surely the greatest band the world has ever seen should be rich from their efforts. I simply advocate that an obligation exists to the dead bloke who is the ultimate reason for the fame in the first place, your own legacy and maybe even to the fans, who some would argue you guys owe nothing to but for me if you think that then all really has been lost.
We don’t own you it is indeed true but Doors fans young and old share the same journey and as such walk the same path. I did it as a kid discovering that this band was more than just four blokes who played a bit of kick ass music.
It takes years to discover The Doors and a shitload of effort.
I been along for the ride 40 years and I am still finding stuff out that fascinates me.
So if you guys feel no obligation to us then it really is The End.
The Legacy and History of The Doors is rich and layered and deserves to be treated with respect but sadly 2008 has become a new low of which I myself thought I would never see the day.
I mean just between fan and band. Do you guys wake up in a morning and think 'I have a really cheesy idea that will make Jim Morrison look a total dick' speed dial 'manager'.
I mean the endless best of's paled into insignificance when you guys came up with the idea of sticking Jim on a shoe. I saw a Converse sneaker similar to the Doors ones in a shop in Paris earlier this month and frankly they are a pile of crap, which I would not buy as a present for a dog to chew.
So Jim must have been well pleased to be honoured by a bunch of spivs on one of their really crappy shoes. I notice none of your faces are adorning these shabby bits of footwear just Jim.
How could you ever top that for dumbass ideas?
I should have known.
I felt anger and shame this December 8th being a Doors fan.
I am absolutely serious in this that you guys should collectively have been arrested for the day thrown in a cell together and not allowed to even speak to anyone else until the 9th.
To use Jim Morrison's 65th birthday as a way to sell the most discredited album ever released by The Doors was abominable and the Barneys Beanery fiasco the most repulsive thing I have ever heard of in The Doors world. And that’s saying something with you lot.
Regardless of the excuses, bullshit and buck passing surrounding Barney's, the plaque (regardless of what it NOW says) stuck on the bar will always be known as the 'Morrison Piss Plaque'.
Rock fans have had one of the laughs of the year taking the piss out of the greatest band that ever lived. The rock media here in the UK shit itself laughing at The Doors.
Barney's was just an overblown advert for The Matrix with a cake.
Fans as usual excluded from the 'celebration' except for the elite and worst of all the utterly obscene YouTube images of a FAN daring to ask first for an autograph outside the official area and maybe a picture with his hero Robby Krieger on Jim's 65th only for some huge lumbering idiot to drag RK away from THE FANS telling them no autographs or pictures.
The summing up by the fans mate for me an indictment of what you guys have become. 'Its OK' he consoles his friend who had probably stood outside looking in for HOURS hoping for a word or a glance 'fuck 'em.....
How incredibly crass, insensitive and stupid to encourage Doors fans to travel to LA to take part in the most tacky idea ever conceived and then to snub them in the street.
For me that fan spoke for all Doors fans around the world and if I ever met him I would shake his hand and buy him a drink.
I wonder whether our host saw that one?
But he himself was little better.
The much-lauded 'John speaks' radio interview was just another advert for The Matrix CD and shamelessly plugged the album whilst saying nothing remotely interesting.
Where was the Jim Morrison The Poet, The Artist, The Human Being on his 65th birthday?
No room really for him as we had an album to sell!
'Jim was this great artist who checked out at 27 and that was his fate' piped up JD with as utterly stupid a pronouncement as some silly old fool in Barney's the same day encouraging kids to take drugs 'Open the doors of perception! That's what we tried to do, we’d sit around and talk with the doors of perception open. When you open those doors of perception, all kinds of things come in! All kinds of things go in and out.'
When will you pampered idiots grow up and realise that Jim Morrison was not Dionysus, was not a shaman, that he was not really possessed by dead Indians and that death due to drugs, booze, disillusionment and possibly depression was not some kind of karmatic inevitability but really a sad and rather pathetic end to one of the 60s brightest ever stars.
And that a 70 year old bloke advocating that young kids should take drugs is so WAY NOT COOL!
I would have rediscovered respect for all 3 of you guys if you had celebrated the blokes 65th birthday and not even mentioned ANY product at all, had shut up about booze and drugs and had discussed Jim Morrison the Poet and Human Being rather than the Crazy Guy. After all the bloke was supposed to be your friend.
That would have been true integrity.
I mean do you people actually really think that Jim Morrison would have been such a Crazy Guy at 40 years old let alone 65?
Hell you could have bored us shitless every other day before and after about how cool your latest best of album or the Matrix was but surely the guy deserved ONE day without a sales pitch?
Just ONE day in a year where he was discussed as a person NOT as a meal ticket.
It’s not that difficult. We fans do it all the time.
We don't mind the buying bit but it's the constant selling that gets up our noses.
Integrity is hard. It's dead easy to be a liar, a hypocrite and a greedy bastard but keeping integrity intact is bloody hard.
Especially when you are an artist trying to make a living.
The Doors managed it for so long which amazed me over the years but the fall from grace was so rapid it took my breath away.
The tribute band farce, the subsequent endless trial farce, the never ending ultimate best of The Doors farce, Rhino & Mr Hand, the screw ups with box sets and BMR releases culminating in the ridiculous Matrix catastrophe which saw Doors fans up in arms when The Doors turned what should have been a simple release of an album that was a half decent jump above the best bootleg, nothing more nothing less, into a farce of 'Carry On Up The Khyber' proportions with the bands manager leaving himself completely discredited all over the internet and the band once again a laughing stock.
Not because the product was that bad. It was a decent upgrade to a boot I for one quite like it.
But fans were not at all pleased at the amount of deceit involved in this release as it is in no way what it was marketed as.
What was The Doors reaction? A pledge to do better?
This is The Doors of the 21st century we are talking about here.
Nope they attack the fans as insane zealots, when in fact these guys were well respected throughout Doors trading circles who, unlike the bands manager, actually knew what they were talking about, then stifled any debate (even seemingly attacking wikipedia and Amazon.com) and threw their toys out of the pram with their manager, who should have kept his trap shut in the first place, threatening to pull the plug on BMR if the fans did not shut up.
A truly shameful and shambolic end to 2008.
So what will 2009 hold for us?
We now have a new film in which The Doors harp on about answering Oliver Stone as if there is a need to answer some bloke who made a Hollywood movie that made the three of you a shitload of cash and put The Doors back up where they belong during the 90s.
What is needed is not some rebuttal of Hollywood simply the History told with some semblance of truth, respect and that old integrity.
Hopefully we will see that in 2009.
The signs are not good of course as we already have the new Doors Sell Site on line and that is full of the History of The Doors isn't it?. Well actually No it isn't.
'Awake, shake dreams from your hair my pretty child, my sweet one, choose the day, choose the sign of your day, the days divinity....first thing you see'
Sadly the first thing we see on the new Doors site is a way to buy stuff.
And once inside there is little information about The Doors but plenty of ways to buy stuff.
The saddest thing for me in this ocean of sadness is perhaps the fact that when I first came to the Net and discovered a whole new Doors world it was populated with thousands of really cool and intelligent people. Hundreds of Doors fan sites most of them active, and I know this as I was friendly with many many of the webmasters, adorned the Net. Forums abounded filled with interesting and intelligent Doors fans discussing the intricacies of the band with a level of smartness I loved being part of .
We argued, laughed and put The Doors world to right and as such I met a lot of really nice people including many that I am at odds with nowadays over the events of the last few years but even for that I respect them as Doors fans. The Doors community was vibrant, vivacious, effervescent, pulsating and alive and had been for long before I got there. I loved being a part of this Feast Of Friends.
Now its all over, the forums gone, the sites closed down, the people disillusioned by what the band they invested so much time in had become.
Seen now as nothing more than walking wallets by a band that has so fallen from grace in the Third Millennium they have disappeared in droves.
Very few left on the Net nowadays and the few forums left not in the hands of The Doors themselves devoid of Doors discussion and even those Official Forums dull and uninteresting as any real discussion was silenced long ago.
I sometimes wonder where all these folks went. I wonder if they still listen to the music and get the old feeling when they hear it.
I also wonder if The Doors actually care a damn that their fanbase has lost such a human treasure due to their headlong push for the Gravy Train.
It happens to all great artists I guess but I have to admit I never thought it would happen to The Doors.
I remember reading one cutting comment on the LL from a fan who disgusted at the way the Matrix album had been delivered said 'at least look on the bright side the shoe was delivered on time' I laughed at that because that for me was the essence of the fans; we may piss and moan and we may argue but we can also find humour in the worst catastrophes. Have we reached the tipping point of this journey of discovery of The Doors? I think we are probably well past it. Oliver Stone has been held up as the villain of the last 17/18 years when the real villain was a lot nearer home.
Probably the worst things to happen to The Doors paradoxicaly was Apocalypse Now, the success of NOHGOA and the Stone movie as they propelled the band into the stratosphere and ultimately set an agenda for money making unlike nothing I have ever seen in rock music. The Phenomenon of Jim Morrison the Shaman & Superstar make it impossible to ever really discover Jim Morrison the Human Being which I find infinitely more interesting. We get glimpses but the headlong rush to get the juicy bits of Jim as some kind of mystical figure and the obligatory drunken buffoon obscure any chance of ever seeing the man behind the Oni mask.
I would have loved to see the History of The Doors 1965 to 1967 explored in a book similar to the hopelessly inept Doors By The Doors.
I would have loved to have seen the band History explored instead of the force feeding of The Doors Myth down the throats of the new generation of gullible teenagers the way it was forced down the throats of my generation of gullible teenagers when I was young.
Sadly stuff like that only gets in the way of the T Shirt Jim who got drunk a lot and did crazy things.
For me the ultimate betrayal of Jim Morrison by his bandmates has got to be the Morrison poetry. What better way to have celebrated Jim Morrison at 65 than to devote the whole of 2008 to Morrison The Poet.
His poetry recordings even though incomplete and rough around the edges would have been a far greater testimony to the Man than an image on a shitty shoe and a complete fuck up over an old bootleg.
A new published Lost Writing III of all the work contained in the Fascination box as well as Paris Journal and anything else lying around would have been infinitely more respectful than his bandmates competing for a bit of attention on his birthday and sounding like complete arces trying to flog an album.
Discussing the bloke as the Poet he aspired to be rather than the drunk on a downward spiral to oblivion as Ray recently did in Uncut magazine would have been something special for 2008. We all know he was an out of control drunk and could be a total tit but the guy who sat on Dennis Jakob's roof and wrote some wonderfully profound poetry wanted to be remembered for his words rather than his actions.
How much I am sure we as fans would have loved to hear the stories of The Doors chatting about poetry, film and drama in 1965 and 1966 and hearing about the hopes and aspirations of a band of young lads who knew the future was uncertain but the possibilities were there if they just found the courage and a bit of luck to take them.
Of course this kind of thing would have taken time and effort to secure with all the competing factions by 2008 hating each other and scrabbling around the money trough for their cut.
"In that year there was
an intense visitation
of energy.
I left school & went down
to the beach to live.
I slept on a roof
At night the moon became
a woman's face.
I met the Spirit of Music."
That was the Morrison we should have been exploring in 2008.
Instead we got another Best Of album, a tatty little overpriced shoe, a badly marketed bootleg, a radio sales pitch on the guy's birthday.
This was you guys idea of a celebration of what would have been your mates 65th year.
As I added my own contribution to brighten up Jim's grave on his birthday in the form of Michael White's excellent 2001 poem JDM which I have been tying to the fence for years now since he wrote it for my old fanzine's 30 year gone tribute to Jim, I looked around at the bleak, foreboding Paris afternoon and thought a silent thank you to some bloke I did not know for the gift of '40 years of something rather special' and then inevitably the poignancy of the day which hung around the small gathering of devotees, which included a 53 year old man from Teesside who was not 12 anymore, seemed to dissipate into the mellon collie and the infinite sadness of what would soon become another dark, cold, lonely Pere Lachaise winter evening for the spirit of James Douglas Morrison.
As the light began to fade and my boots no longer told lies about the cold around my feet I decided I needed a drink and some good company to lift my mood.
Cheers Jim and thanks for everything.
Alex Patton
Stockton On Tees
December 24th 2008
