Post by darkstar3 on Jul 7, 2011 16:15:50 GMT
Public Misrepresentation and the Malaise of the '60s
Adam Weinreb, English 171
Sages, Satirists, and New Journalists
Brown University, 2007
In Joan Didion’s "The White Album,” her discussion of the legendary rock band The Doors encompasses both an idealized description of what they seemingly meant to a generation of young Americans, and a more realistic view of their incredibly mundane interactions. Sitting in on a recording session, Didion uses the time spent by the band desperately waiting for their public face and lead singer Jim Morrison to show up to wax poetic about the band’s significance. She asserts that The Doors are “Normal Mailers of the Top 40” and “ missionaries of apocalyptic sex” (21). She claims Morrison represents “some range of the possible just beyond a suicide pact”(22). However, when we finally see the much-lauded Morrison’s arrival, and the band’s interactions with their leader, they seem no more than a dull group of young men trying to make music.
It was a long while later. Morrison arrived. He had on his black vinyl pants and he sat down on a leather couch in front of the four big blank speakers and he closed his eyes. The curious aspect of Morrison’s arrival was this: no one acknowledged it. Robby Krieger continued working out a guitar passage. John Densmore tuned his drums. Manzarek sat at the control console and twirled a corkscrew and let a girl rub his shoulders. The girl did not look at Morrison, although he was in her direct line of sight. An hour or so passed, and still no one had spoken to Morrison. Then Morrison spoke to Manzarek. He spoke almost in a whisper, as if he were wresting the words from behind some disabling aphasia.
“It’s an hour to West Covina,” he said. “I was thinking maybe we should spend the night out there after we play.”
Manzarek put down the corkscrew. “Why?” he said.
“Instead of coming back.”
Manzarek shrugged. “We were planning to come back.”
“Well, I was thinking we could rehearse out there.”
Manzarek said nothing.
We could get in a rehearsal, there’s a Holiday Inn next door.”
“We could do that,” Manzarek said. “Or we could rehearse Sunday, in town.”
“I guess so.” Morrison paused. “Will the place be ready to rehearse on Sunday?”
Questions
1. Throughout the essay, Morrison has previously been described as a central, essential figure of “The Doors.” Why, then, does he become entirely invisible once his much-awaited arrival occurs?
2. After being idealized for much of Didion’s descriptive paragraphs, the entirety of this idealized image seems to be broken down as soon as the band members themselves begin to speak. Why do you think Didion uses these contrasting representations?
3. Didion takes time to specifically mention that the woman massaging Ray Manzarek’s shoulders completely ignores Jim Morrison, despite previous assertions of Morrison’s nature as a universal sex symbol. Why does Didion downplay Morrison’s sexual, as well as conversational, impact in this scene?
4. Manzarek and Morrison finally speak for the first time an hour into their recording session, and refuse to agree on such a mundane item as where to travel for the weekend. How does the internal conflict and apparent boredom within the band reflect the youth ideology of the 1960s?
www.victorianweb.org/courses/nonfiction/didion/weinreb1.html
FROM THE WHITE ALBUM
Waiting For Morrison
By Joan Didion
Excerpt from pages 21 thru 25 of The White Album 1979
It is six, seven o’clock of an early spring evening, and I am sitting on the cold vinyl-tile floor of a sound studio on Sunset Boulevard, watching a rock group called The Doors record a rhythm track. On the whole my attention is less than entirely engaged by the preoccupations of rock groups (I have already heard about acid as a transitional stage and also about the Maharishi and even about universal love, and after a while it all sounds like marmalade skies to me), but The Doors are different. The Doors interest me. They have nothing in common with the gentle Beatles. They lack the contemporary conviction that love is brotherhood and the Kama Sutra. Their music insists that love is sex and sex is death and therein lies salvation. The Doors are the Norman Mailers of the Top 40, missionaries of apocalyptic sex.
Right now they are gathered together in uneasy symbiosis to make their album, and the studio is cold and the lights are too bright and there are masses of wires and banks of ominous blinking electronic circuitry with which the new musicians live so casually. There are three of the four Doors. There is a bass player borrowed from a group called Clear Light. There are the producer and the engineer and the road manager and a couple of girls and a Siberian Husky named Nikki with one gray eye and one gold. There are paper bags half filled with hard boiled eggs and chicken livers and cheeseburgers and empty bottles of apple juice and California ros’e. There is everything The Doors need to cut the rest of this third album except one thing, the fourth Door, the lead singer, Jim Morrison, a twenty four year old graduate of UCLA who wears black vinyl pants and no underwear and tends to suggest some range of the possible just beyond a suicide pact. It is Jim Morrison who describes The Doors as “erotic politicians.” It is Morrison who defines the group’s interests as “anything about revolt, disorder, chaos about activity that appears to have no meaning.” It is Morrison who got arrested in New Haven in December for giving an “indecent” performance. It is Morrison who writes most of The Doors lyrics, the peculiar character of which is to reflect either an ambiguous paranoia or a quite unambiguous insistence upon love death as the ultimate high. And it is Morrison who is missing. It is Ray Manzarek and Robbie Krieger and John Densmore who make The Doors sound the way they do, and maybe it is Manzarek and Krieger and Densmore who make seventeen out of twenty interviewees on American Bandstand prefer The Doors over all other groups, but it Morrison who gets up there in black vinyl pants with no underwear and projects the idea, and it is Morrison they are waiting on now.
Ray Manzarek is hunched over a Gibson keyboard. “You think Morrison’s gonna come back?” he says to no one in particular.
No one answers.
“So we can do some vocals?” Manzarek says.
The producer is working with the tape of the rhythm track they just recorded. “I hope so,” he says without looking up.
“Yeh,” Manzarek says. “So do I.”
It is a long while later. Morrison arrives. He has on his black vinyl pants, and he sits down on a leather couch in front of the four big blank speakers, and closes his eyes. The curious aspect of Morrison’s arrival is this: No one acknowledges it by so much as a flicker of an eye. Robbie Krieger continues working out a guitar passage. John Densmore tunes his drums. Manzarek sits at the control console and twirls a corkscrew and lets a girl rub his shoulders. The girl does not look at Morrison, although he is in her direct line of sight. An hour or so passes, and still no one has spoken to Morrison. Then Morrison speaks to Manzarek. He speaks almost in a whisper, as if he were wrestling the words from behind some disabling aphasia.
“It’s an hour to West Covina,” he says. “I was thinking, maybe we should spend the night out there after we play.”
Manzarek puts down the corkscrew. “Why?” He says.
“Instead of coming back.”
Manzarek shrugs. “We were planning on coming back.”
“Well, I was thinking, we could rehearse out there.”
Manzarek says nothing.
“We could get in a rehearsal, there’s a Holiday Inn next door.”
“We could do that,” Manzarek says. “Or we could rehearse Sunday, in town.”
“I guess so.” Morrison pauses. “Will the place be ready to rehearse Sunday?”
Manzarek looks at him for a while. “No,” he says then.
I count the control knobs on the electric console. There are seventy six. I am unsure in whose favor the dialogue was resolved or if it was resolved at all. Robbie Krieger picks at his guitar, and says he needs a fuzz box. The producer suggests that he borrow one from the Buffalo Springfield in the next studio. Krieger shrugs. Morrison sits down on the leather couch again and leans back. He lights a match. He studies the flame awhile and then very slowly, very deliberately, lowers it to the fly of his black vinyl pants. Manzarek watches him. The girl who is rubbing Manzarek’s shoulders does not look at anyone. There is a sense that no one is going to leave this room, ever. It will be some weeks before The Doors finish recording this album. I do not see it through.
END.
The Shaman as Superstar by Richard Goldstein
From The Waiting For The Sun songbook 1969.
While Jim squats behind the control panel a roughly recorded dub of his 'Celebration Of The Lizard' comes over the loudspeakers.
Gently almost apologetiaclly Ray tells Jim the thing does not work. Too diffuse, too mangy. Jim's face sinks beneath his scaly collar. Right then you can sense 'Celebration Of The Lizard' will never appear on record......certainly not on the new Doors album. There will be eleven driving songs and snatches of poetry read aloud. But no Lizard King. No monarch crowned with lovebeads and holding a phallic sceptre in his hands.
'Hey bring your notebook to my house tomorrow' Rothchild offers. 'Yeah' Jim answers with the look of a dog who's just been told he's missed his walk."
END.
Adam Weinreb, English 171
Sages, Satirists, and New Journalists
Brown University, 2007
In Joan Didion’s "The White Album,” her discussion of the legendary rock band The Doors encompasses both an idealized description of what they seemingly meant to a generation of young Americans, and a more realistic view of their incredibly mundane interactions. Sitting in on a recording session, Didion uses the time spent by the band desperately waiting for their public face and lead singer Jim Morrison to show up to wax poetic about the band’s significance. She asserts that The Doors are “Normal Mailers of the Top 40” and “ missionaries of apocalyptic sex” (21). She claims Morrison represents “some range of the possible just beyond a suicide pact”(22). However, when we finally see the much-lauded Morrison’s arrival, and the band’s interactions with their leader, they seem no more than a dull group of young men trying to make music.
It was a long while later. Morrison arrived. He had on his black vinyl pants and he sat down on a leather couch in front of the four big blank speakers and he closed his eyes. The curious aspect of Morrison’s arrival was this: no one acknowledged it. Robby Krieger continued working out a guitar passage. John Densmore tuned his drums. Manzarek sat at the control console and twirled a corkscrew and let a girl rub his shoulders. The girl did not look at Morrison, although he was in her direct line of sight. An hour or so passed, and still no one had spoken to Morrison. Then Morrison spoke to Manzarek. He spoke almost in a whisper, as if he were wresting the words from behind some disabling aphasia.
“It’s an hour to West Covina,” he said. “I was thinking maybe we should spend the night out there after we play.”
Manzarek put down the corkscrew. “Why?” he said.
“Instead of coming back.”
Manzarek shrugged. “We were planning to come back.”
“Well, I was thinking we could rehearse out there.”
Manzarek said nothing.
We could get in a rehearsal, there’s a Holiday Inn next door.”
“We could do that,” Manzarek said. “Or we could rehearse Sunday, in town.”
“I guess so.” Morrison paused. “Will the place be ready to rehearse on Sunday?”
Questions
1. Throughout the essay, Morrison has previously been described as a central, essential figure of “The Doors.” Why, then, does he become entirely invisible once his much-awaited arrival occurs?
2. After being idealized for much of Didion’s descriptive paragraphs, the entirety of this idealized image seems to be broken down as soon as the band members themselves begin to speak. Why do you think Didion uses these contrasting representations?
3. Didion takes time to specifically mention that the woman massaging Ray Manzarek’s shoulders completely ignores Jim Morrison, despite previous assertions of Morrison’s nature as a universal sex symbol. Why does Didion downplay Morrison’s sexual, as well as conversational, impact in this scene?
4. Manzarek and Morrison finally speak for the first time an hour into their recording session, and refuse to agree on such a mundane item as where to travel for the weekend. How does the internal conflict and apparent boredom within the band reflect the youth ideology of the 1960s?
www.victorianweb.org/courses/nonfiction/didion/weinreb1.html
FROM THE WHITE ALBUM
Waiting For Morrison
By Joan Didion
Excerpt from pages 21 thru 25 of The White Album 1979
It is six, seven o’clock of an early spring evening, and I am sitting on the cold vinyl-tile floor of a sound studio on Sunset Boulevard, watching a rock group called The Doors record a rhythm track. On the whole my attention is less than entirely engaged by the preoccupations of rock groups (I have already heard about acid as a transitional stage and also about the Maharishi and even about universal love, and after a while it all sounds like marmalade skies to me), but The Doors are different. The Doors interest me. They have nothing in common with the gentle Beatles. They lack the contemporary conviction that love is brotherhood and the Kama Sutra. Their music insists that love is sex and sex is death and therein lies salvation. The Doors are the Norman Mailers of the Top 40, missionaries of apocalyptic sex.
Right now they are gathered together in uneasy symbiosis to make their album, and the studio is cold and the lights are too bright and there are masses of wires and banks of ominous blinking electronic circuitry with which the new musicians live so casually. There are three of the four Doors. There is a bass player borrowed from a group called Clear Light. There are the producer and the engineer and the road manager and a couple of girls and a Siberian Husky named Nikki with one gray eye and one gold. There are paper bags half filled with hard boiled eggs and chicken livers and cheeseburgers and empty bottles of apple juice and California ros’e. There is everything The Doors need to cut the rest of this third album except one thing, the fourth Door, the lead singer, Jim Morrison, a twenty four year old graduate of UCLA who wears black vinyl pants and no underwear and tends to suggest some range of the possible just beyond a suicide pact. It is Jim Morrison who describes The Doors as “erotic politicians.” It is Morrison who defines the group’s interests as “anything about revolt, disorder, chaos about activity that appears to have no meaning.” It is Morrison who got arrested in New Haven in December for giving an “indecent” performance. It is Morrison who writes most of The Doors lyrics, the peculiar character of which is to reflect either an ambiguous paranoia or a quite unambiguous insistence upon love death as the ultimate high. And it is Morrison who is missing. It is Ray Manzarek and Robbie Krieger and John Densmore who make The Doors sound the way they do, and maybe it is Manzarek and Krieger and Densmore who make seventeen out of twenty interviewees on American Bandstand prefer The Doors over all other groups, but it Morrison who gets up there in black vinyl pants with no underwear and projects the idea, and it is Morrison they are waiting on now.
Ray Manzarek is hunched over a Gibson keyboard. “You think Morrison’s gonna come back?” he says to no one in particular.
No one answers.
“So we can do some vocals?” Manzarek says.
The producer is working with the tape of the rhythm track they just recorded. “I hope so,” he says without looking up.
“Yeh,” Manzarek says. “So do I.”
It is a long while later. Morrison arrives. He has on his black vinyl pants, and he sits down on a leather couch in front of the four big blank speakers, and closes his eyes. The curious aspect of Morrison’s arrival is this: No one acknowledges it by so much as a flicker of an eye. Robbie Krieger continues working out a guitar passage. John Densmore tunes his drums. Manzarek sits at the control console and twirls a corkscrew and lets a girl rub his shoulders. The girl does not look at Morrison, although he is in her direct line of sight. An hour or so passes, and still no one has spoken to Morrison. Then Morrison speaks to Manzarek. He speaks almost in a whisper, as if he were wrestling the words from behind some disabling aphasia.
“It’s an hour to West Covina,” he says. “I was thinking, maybe we should spend the night out there after we play.”
Manzarek puts down the corkscrew. “Why?” He says.
“Instead of coming back.”
Manzarek shrugs. “We were planning on coming back.”
“Well, I was thinking, we could rehearse out there.”
Manzarek says nothing.
“We could get in a rehearsal, there’s a Holiday Inn next door.”
“We could do that,” Manzarek says. “Or we could rehearse Sunday, in town.”
“I guess so.” Morrison pauses. “Will the place be ready to rehearse Sunday?”
Manzarek looks at him for a while. “No,” he says then.
I count the control knobs on the electric console. There are seventy six. I am unsure in whose favor the dialogue was resolved or if it was resolved at all. Robbie Krieger picks at his guitar, and says he needs a fuzz box. The producer suggests that he borrow one from the Buffalo Springfield in the next studio. Krieger shrugs. Morrison sits down on the leather couch again and leans back. He lights a match. He studies the flame awhile and then very slowly, very deliberately, lowers it to the fly of his black vinyl pants. Manzarek watches him. The girl who is rubbing Manzarek’s shoulders does not look at anyone. There is a sense that no one is going to leave this room, ever. It will be some weeks before The Doors finish recording this album. I do not see it through.
END.
The Shaman as Superstar by Richard Goldstein
From The Waiting For The Sun songbook 1969.
While Jim squats behind the control panel a roughly recorded dub of his 'Celebration Of The Lizard' comes over the loudspeakers.
Gently almost apologetiaclly Ray tells Jim the thing does not work. Too diffuse, too mangy. Jim's face sinks beneath his scaly collar. Right then you can sense 'Celebration Of The Lizard' will never appear on record......certainly not on the new Doors album. There will be eleven driving songs and snatches of poetry read aloud. But no Lizard King. No monarch crowned with lovebeads and holding a phallic sceptre in his hands.
'Hey bring your notebook to my house tomorrow' Rothchild offers. 'Yeah' Jim answers with the look of a dog who's just been told he's missed his walk."
END.