Jim Morrison N13 Notebook COTL

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Jim Morrison N13 Notebook titled 'Lizard' at the top of its cover and 'Celebration' in the middle.
Non consecutive pages with Jim's notes relating to his COTL poem.
This has an early draft with some crossed out and parts not seen on the WFTS LP cover.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

[zaval80]

So here we have it - some draft out of who knows how many, but Draft 2 of two working versions we are given; close enough to the demo we've got, and the next step would obviously be the printed 1968 LP version and the final version published in TAN (one page of which, the last one, can be found in Frank's first book).

What is remarkable here is the care with which JM wrote out every last line of his 1965 opus (which wasn't COTL as such, but rather a prototype). The poetry between "Insane" and "The Hill Dwellers" was published in the latest anthology book as "The Lion Roars" and just this fact shows how clueless the compilers were - you won't find JM title of this kind anywhere! neither in the "Green Songbook", nor in "Notebook #15" where Jim made a revision of his GS material. There was never anything like an unpublished JM song under "The Lion Roars" title. What is interesting - this material is clearly juvenile, very possibly of the same kind as the joint writings of young Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa. But here, he writes out every last line of it and at a later moment crosses it out, again line by line. Wasn't lazy, our favorite author. I can think of only one explanation: somehow he cherished the memory of that concert in his head, and the COTL prototype most definitely was a part of that concert. Later he told Jerry Hopkins that he would have liked to recreate that concert one day. Maybe even if the poetry is juvenile, he had heard some worthy music underneath it.

The inclusion of "Accident - Ensenada - Bird of Prey" is telling as the link to the original design of COTL which had no hint of an intervention of the enemy forces upon the "sin city" in "The Hill Dwellers", just relying on the Lizard King gaining his supernatural abilities through an accident. The earlier Draft 1 has missing pages, and the missing page 92 of "Notebook #11" could be very important. Like, we have no proofs that Draft 1 relied on the 1965 prototype, although it can be seen he designated inserts for "Wake Up" and "Insane" there. But what about "The Hill Dwellers" and the "Lion Roars" middle part?

Lastly, it would be very interesting to know what he did upon recording the demo (17 min; some repetition of verses in there). He just had to produce some neat ending to that demo, and the "President - Czar" verse (missing here as well), and he'd have his final version. Only it wouldn't last 23-24-25 or more minutes. If the talk of 23-24-25 and moreso, 36 minutes is true, this would mean he tried to experiment further, and no wonder these longer versions were rejected. (And what about the musicians? it wouldn't be reasonable to expect them producing a worthy piece of that length in no time.)