"But the idea Morrison sought 'fame' for attention is contradicted by so many incidents with Morrison."
I'd love to hear more about this. What incidents come to mind ?
Come on Kristy you are way way smarter than that we both know that. This makes my point on another thread about Doors fans being lazy and not employing their brain when the answer is staring them in the face.
The allegation DiCillo makes is that Morrison was an attention seeker who needed that to survive.
Correct?Yet this is contradicted by Morrison's actions.
He has just seen his band get to #1 with a pop tune and is one of the most beautiful and sought after people in America.
So what does he do?
For the next album he demands that his face not be on the cover. Put dogs on it he says. Why? he is asked. It spells God backwards he playfully replies. Anything but our fucking faces on it.
Once LMF hits #1 he is the darling of the US audience and in demand for interviews and TV shows.
So what does he do?
He is so disgusted with the way artists are treated by TV companies he refuses to turn up for a popular TV show Malibu U and mime LMF, the song which has brought him all the attention, and as a result the band have to replace him with their roadie.
LMF is the most popular tune in the US and this avenue would allow him to receive the adulation he craves so what does he do a little over six months later?
He pushes real hard to have the bands third album taken up with a poetry composition that the mainstream audience would look at with incredulity.
He has an image that is also bringing him fame and adulation which results in a showcase gig at the Hollywood Bowl.
The audience is filled with people looking for sensation from the Lizard King including some of his peers like Mick Jagger and is an opportunity to feed on the audiences attention as they expect one helluva show.
What does he do?
He stands stock still at the mike and just sings.
His Young Lion image has enchanted America and brought The Doors and Jim Morrison attention by the bucketload.
So what does he do?
He asks to quit the band and when that does not work gets fat and grows a beard and destroys his audiences adulation by becoming the most unpopular man in the US after Miami.
The band cannot find gigs because of the Miami fall out.
The band get a prestige PBS slot a perfect opportunity to garner again the attention Jim Morrison supposedly seeks.
All he has to do is play his hits such as HILY and LMF and the audience might once more forgive him.
What does he do?
Turns up with a beard and a cigar and sings Build Me A Woman and the long track The Soft Parade.
He finds himself at an arts symposium in San Diego in the summer of 1969 with many of his poetical peers, which gives him a chance to hog the limelight.
After all he is Jim Morrison the Lizard King.
So what does he do?
He turns to friend Babe Hill and says. 'These guys are really talented and have more talent than me. I look up to these guys but nobody knows them.'
There are many examples of his kindness and humility towards people he respected such as the LA Art Squad who he gave money to and bought pamphlets from to give to friends. He made prints of his Brian Jones poem and handed them out at the Aquarius because he thought that audience would understand.
This fame obsessed attention seeker knew he was only invited to the San Diego bash because he was Jim Morrison the Lizard King. This made him sad as he wanted to be there on merit to stand beside people he respected and receive their respect based on his work not his image.
There are dozens more examples of this and to understand why Jim Morrison got so drunk after 1968 Doors fans need to understand what it was Jim Morrison sought from The Doors.
Imbeciles like DiCillo read a few books and then conclude Morrison was an attention-seeking moron who craved adulation above all else. They are too stupid to see anything but the thin veneer that was Morrison’s image.
Morrison saw that image as a mistake. That is obvious to anyone with a brain that has the capacity to use it.
For 40 years I have been trying to get a handle on this guy and I have been guilty of all the things I rail about on this forum. When young and daft I would have been in the audience screaming for LMF and wondering why this guy was reading a poem instead of singing a hit song. Maturity does not come with age it comes with the ability to reason and understand. I was lucky as by the 80s I had figured out there was something wrong with the picture I was presented with.
I did not know what but I did know that I wanted to know.
I am not claiming to be smarter than anyone else as I am no great academically educated person who loves literature and understands poetry.
There is a lot about Jim Morrison I do not understand.
But one ability I did have was the capacity to question and reason from the answers I receive.
I do not take an answer and stop asking a question.
Over the last 20 odd years I have seen a different Morrison to the one of NOHGOA.
I do not doubt that book contained truths as I have no doubt every Doors/Morrison account contains truths. But over the years a picture began to emerge that contradicted the one we all take to be the truth.
DiCillo’s WYS was a chance to examine Jim Morrison with new eyes.
In the hands of someone who was not an idiot and did not just want to suck up to the band and it’s fans we might have gotten that. The opportunity was lost.
Perhaps forever.
But that does not prevent Doors fans from getting off their butts and trying to challenge the paradigm that is Jim Morrison today and figure out a different story.
2011 will see the same old tales trundled out by the survivors.
Doors fans are like ducks in a park that huddle around in a group as bread is thrown to them by someone on the bank.
They need to avoid the man on the bank and seek out their own sustenance.
For the last decade it has seemed to me that Doors fans have gotten dumber by the year. The LL, once a place of intelligent debates is a toilet full of turds passing for discussion. Idiots like Jeff Jampol have dragged fans down to their own level with their attempt to brand The Doors.
Tom DiCillo has attempted to reduce Jim Morrison to a cipher to represent the archetypal rock star. Full of his own shit and desperate for more attention.
But that was the complete antithesis of Jim Morrison.
He wanted ‘renown’ not ‘fame’.
It’s in the meaning of the words that we find the real story of Jim Morrison.
We understand Fame as we see it everyday with sad people behaving like idiots on TV for a few minutes of attention. Renown is different. Jim Morrison wanted recognition as a Poet not the fame of being a rock star.
He wanted to be remembered for his work from people who made an effort to understand, not how he was perceived by fans that just sought sensation.
I am sure many would argue that he enjoyed the adulation success brought and of course that is true. What young person would not have their head turned after being picked out of the crowd and regarded as an icon.
But Morrison was smart as well and soon realised where this was leading him. In the bands earliest days he was carried along by the wave of adulation but then he realised the price that this 'fame' brought.
First in March 1968 when COTL his new hope for The Doors was crushed in it's infancy.
Then later that year when he realised that the men who had allowed him to take all the pressure for them had sold him out to a car company.
The pressure remained for the rest of his life but he tried his best to kill The Lizard King. Sadly for him it cost him his life and as a result The Lizard King flourished as the artist diminished.
It's the analogy I touched on in one of my Jim threads that he was like Baron Frankenstein, he had created a monster out of his own flesh and blood and this Monster had rampaged through his dreams of becoming a poet and a writer. When he tried to destroy the Monster it only got stronger as he got weaker.
Drink was a way to block out the Monster's rampage.
No matter where he went people saw the Monster not the Man.
The Monster was all they wanted and all many of them remember.
40 years on what do you dear reader remember most?
the Man or the Monster?
I have said this somewhere else on the forum but it’s worth saying here too.
For 40 years this man has been reviled and ridiculed as a rock star who had pretentions of being a Poet, when in fact he actually was a Poet who did NOT want to be a rock star.
An important difference and one that is the first step to understanding just what the fuck the guy was about.
