Post by darkstar3 on Mar 25, 2011 16:12:19 GMT
ONE AFTERNOON IN NEW YORK
Joel Brodsky, Photographer
Brodsky has taken many of The Doors best known photos. He stot the back cover of the first album, the award winning cover of Strange Days, and the jackets of The Soft Parade and the Greatest Hits LP. In addition, he shot the famous inner sleeve of Strange Days (which, alas, is no longer part of that album in its recent pressings). Below Brodsky describes that famous session, which yielded the lengendary “Young Lion” photo of Morrison.
I always thought it was sort of funny that in the pictures of Morrison from that session that were most used, Jim was totally plastered. The session started out normally. We were talking group shots and they were all being very cooperative. The Doors were among the brighter groups I’d shot at that point. They had a visual orientation and seemed to understand the potential of a good photo session. Initially, there seemed to be a little jealousy that Morrison was being put so up front in the photos, but bascially the others understood that Jim was the sex symbol and an important focus for the band.
After we’d done group shots, I shot some individual pictures of each member saving Morrison for last. I knew I was going to be spending the most time with him, so I didn’t want them to have to sit around and wait to long. Well, while this was going on, Jim was drinking quite a bit. So by the time I got to shooting the individual shots of him, Morrison was pretty loose. The shot on the inner sleeve of the Greatest Hits album was pretty near the end, I think. By that time, he was drunk – actually he was kind of quiet – but his equilibrium wasn’t too terrific. Still, he was great to photograph because he had a very interesting look.
It seemed like a good session to me, and then a week or so later, we ran one of the photos in the Village Voice. They story I’ve heard is that they got something like ten thousand requests for the picture. You know, Morrison never really looked that way again, and those pictures have become a big part of The Doors’ legend. His hair never looked that good again, and he got jowly and then later grew a beard. I think I got him at his peak.
END.
Jim Morrison Interview With Howard Smith (Village Voice)
November 1969
Howard: Back at the beginning of The Doors you seem to be model of the year. You couldn’t pick up a fashion magazine or some magazine without those sultry pictures.
Jim: Sulky too.
Howard: Sulky?
Jim: Well you know…..I was so…..in vogue.
Howard: What did it mean to you at that time?
Jim: I must have been out of my mind. To do….can you imagine? Can you imagine doing that?
Howard: No, that’s hwy I’m asking you.
Jim: Posing for a picture. Can you imagine? And you know, really looking in the camera and posing. It’s insane. I must have been out of my mind. If I had the whole thing to do over again…..I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t do it.
Howard: What did you think during that time?
Jim: I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought I knew what I was doing. And the whole thing about a photograph is once it’s done you can’t destroy it. It’s there forever. So can you imagine when I’m 80 years old and I have to look at myself posing for those pictures. It’s to late. This guys trying to put me on a bummer man.
Jim: (Pause) That’s alright Howard go ahead.
END.
Teenset – September 1968
Mail Scene Column
I just read your article on Jim Morrison. Are you sure the poet J.M. said cut up his poems was William Burroughs? If so, this means Jim Morrison is the twin brother of a hypocritic brick wall, practices pornography, lives in the treasures of hate and death, sleeps with his own sex, eats with the other in the dirt, and glorifies unfeeling love. Are you SURE that’s what he said?
Also, why do you say he’s so sexy? Everyone says he is, but I’m very naïve. He does have a strong build, a nice voice and face, but so do millions of other boys/men. Why is HE so sexy? As a matter of fact, he seems rather cold to me.
Not that I’ve lived enough to be a great philosopher (I’m eleven) but I see nothing sexy about rock. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Elizabeth Stott
New York, New York
Jim Morrison Interview With Howard Smith (Village Voice)
November 1969:
Howard: Un, also back in the beginning there was also all this talk about your sex appeal. About how all women of different ages…..I wrote that in the Voice way before…..you know, pretty early.
Jim: That’s another thing see….talk gets around crazy talk like that and what happens, you know? (pause) That’s a difficult burden to bear. It is…cause we all know no one is any sexier than anyone else, right? Everyone’s got the same equipment unless biologically you got mixed up or something. We’re all about the same. (phone rings)
Howard: (sarcastically) Yeah well there you were with the leather pants….
Jim: (raises voice) Yeah and it’s guys like you man….it’s the reporters…it’s the press, people like that that create this insanity. That make up this stuff and then people start believing it.
Howard: You weren’t consciously playing that?
Jim: Hell no.
Howard: And you didn’t dig it?
Jim: (pause) Well I must admit that there were occasions when uh….having a reputation like that did help me out in some tight situations. Plus I got to meet a lot of groovy ladies that uh…otherwise you know…they probably wouldn’t have noticed me. So in that respect it was all to the good.
END.
From the archives of Teenset Magazine. 1968 (Reprinted Excerpts from BAM Magazine Issue No. 107 - July 3 1981)
The Doors were one of the few bands who attracted both teenyboppers and the youth culture intelligensia. While Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy and other ‘hip’ magazines keyed on The Doors as artists, ‘fan’ magazines such as Teenset cashed in with articles clearly designed to reach young girls in love with Jim Morrison. Below are brief excerpts of vintage teenybopper coverage of The Doors. - Blair Jackson
July ’68
“This Is Your ABC Book of The Doors.
D is for drugs. Once there was a big rumor about how The Doors used to take drugs Do you think the rumor is true?
E is for end. Jim Morrison sings a song called “The End.” At the end of “The End,” (?) Jim says he would like to kill his father. His father is a career man in the Navy. The feeling may be mutual.
G is for grab. Sometimes when Jim is performing, girls go up on stage and grab him. In one city the police went up to the stage and grabbed him. Everyone to his own hang-ups.
N is for nuts. The Doors were once fired from a big Hollywood club. They were fired because the management said they were nuts. Now the club has to pay The Doors $12,000 to appear there. Who do you think is nuts?
END.
In reading this old excerpt from "Teenset" Magazine back in '68 there really isn't much difference between what is said today in the hopes of exploiting the Jim Morrison myth. Ray Manzarek is what? 72 years old now and he continues to exploit Jim Morrison in the same manner that the teenybopper magazines did back in the 60's. Exploitation was what Jim Morrison himself began to loath in the latter years of his career and of which became one of the deciding factors for Morrison heading to Paris.
Joel Brodsky, Photographer
Brodsky has taken many of The Doors best known photos. He stot the back cover of the first album, the award winning cover of Strange Days, and the jackets of The Soft Parade and the Greatest Hits LP. In addition, he shot the famous inner sleeve of Strange Days (which, alas, is no longer part of that album in its recent pressings). Below Brodsky describes that famous session, which yielded the lengendary “Young Lion” photo of Morrison.
I always thought it was sort of funny that in the pictures of Morrison from that session that were most used, Jim was totally plastered. The session started out normally. We were talking group shots and they were all being very cooperative. The Doors were among the brighter groups I’d shot at that point. They had a visual orientation and seemed to understand the potential of a good photo session. Initially, there seemed to be a little jealousy that Morrison was being put so up front in the photos, but bascially the others understood that Jim was the sex symbol and an important focus for the band.
After we’d done group shots, I shot some individual pictures of each member saving Morrison for last. I knew I was going to be spending the most time with him, so I didn’t want them to have to sit around and wait to long. Well, while this was going on, Jim was drinking quite a bit. So by the time I got to shooting the individual shots of him, Morrison was pretty loose. The shot on the inner sleeve of the Greatest Hits album was pretty near the end, I think. By that time, he was drunk – actually he was kind of quiet – but his equilibrium wasn’t too terrific. Still, he was great to photograph because he had a very interesting look.
It seemed like a good session to me, and then a week or so later, we ran one of the photos in the Village Voice. They story I’ve heard is that they got something like ten thousand requests for the picture. You know, Morrison never really looked that way again, and those pictures have become a big part of The Doors’ legend. His hair never looked that good again, and he got jowly and then later grew a beard. I think I got him at his peak.
END.
Jim Morrison Interview With Howard Smith (Village Voice)
November 1969
Howard: Back at the beginning of The Doors you seem to be model of the year. You couldn’t pick up a fashion magazine or some magazine without those sultry pictures.
Jim: Sulky too.
Howard: Sulky?
Jim: Well you know…..I was so…..in vogue.
Howard: What did it mean to you at that time?
Jim: I must have been out of my mind. To do….can you imagine? Can you imagine doing that?
Howard: No, that’s hwy I’m asking you.
Jim: Posing for a picture. Can you imagine? And you know, really looking in the camera and posing. It’s insane. I must have been out of my mind. If I had the whole thing to do over again…..I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t do it.
Howard: What did you think during that time?
Jim: I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought I knew what I was doing. And the whole thing about a photograph is once it’s done you can’t destroy it. It’s there forever. So can you imagine when I’m 80 years old and I have to look at myself posing for those pictures. It’s to late. This guys trying to put me on a bummer man.
Jim: (Pause) That’s alright Howard go ahead.
END.
Teenset – September 1968
Mail Scene Column
I just read your article on Jim Morrison. Are you sure the poet J.M. said cut up his poems was William Burroughs? If so, this means Jim Morrison is the twin brother of a hypocritic brick wall, practices pornography, lives in the treasures of hate and death, sleeps with his own sex, eats with the other in the dirt, and glorifies unfeeling love. Are you SURE that’s what he said?
Also, why do you say he’s so sexy? Everyone says he is, but I’m very naïve. He does have a strong build, a nice voice and face, but so do millions of other boys/men. Why is HE so sexy? As a matter of fact, he seems rather cold to me.
Not that I’ve lived enough to be a great philosopher (I’m eleven) but I see nothing sexy about rock. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Elizabeth Stott
New York, New York
Jim Morrison Interview With Howard Smith (Village Voice)
November 1969:
Howard: Un, also back in the beginning there was also all this talk about your sex appeal. About how all women of different ages…..I wrote that in the Voice way before…..you know, pretty early.
Jim: That’s another thing see….talk gets around crazy talk like that and what happens, you know? (pause) That’s a difficult burden to bear. It is…cause we all know no one is any sexier than anyone else, right? Everyone’s got the same equipment unless biologically you got mixed up or something. We’re all about the same. (phone rings)
Howard: (sarcastically) Yeah well there you were with the leather pants….
Jim: (raises voice) Yeah and it’s guys like you man….it’s the reporters…it’s the press, people like that that create this insanity. That make up this stuff and then people start believing it.
Howard: You weren’t consciously playing that?
Jim: Hell no.
Howard: And you didn’t dig it?
Jim: (pause) Well I must admit that there were occasions when uh….having a reputation like that did help me out in some tight situations. Plus I got to meet a lot of groovy ladies that uh…otherwise you know…they probably wouldn’t have noticed me. So in that respect it was all to the good.
END.
From the archives of Teenset Magazine. 1968 (Reprinted Excerpts from BAM Magazine Issue No. 107 - July 3 1981)
The Doors were one of the few bands who attracted both teenyboppers and the youth culture intelligensia. While Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy and other ‘hip’ magazines keyed on The Doors as artists, ‘fan’ magazines such as Teenset cashed in with articles clearly designed to reach young girls in love with Jim Morrison. Below are brief excerpts of vintage teenybopper coverage of The Doors. - Blair Jackson
July ’68
“This Is Your ABC Book of The Doors.
D is for drugs. Once there was a big rumor about how The Doors used to take drugs Do you think the rumor is true?
E is for end. Jim Morrison sings a song called “The End.” At the end of “The End,” (?) Jim says he would like to kill his father. His father is a career man in the Navy. The feeling may be mutual.
G is for grab. Sometimes when Jim is performing, girls go up on stage and grab him. In one city the police went up to the stage and grabbed him. Everyone to his own hang-ups.
N is for nuts. The Doors were once fired from a big Hollywood club. They were fired because the management said they were nuts. Now the club has to pay The Doors $12,000 to appear there. Who do you think is nuts?
END.
In reading this old excerpt from "Teenset" Magazine back in '68 there really isn't much difference between what is said today in the hopes of exploiting the Jim Morrison myth. Ray Manzarek is what? 72 years old now and he continues to exploit Jim Morrison in the same manner that the teenybopper magazines did back in the 60's. Exploitation was what Jim Morrison himself began to loath in the latter years of his career and of which became one of the deciding factors for Morrison heading to Paris.