Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Feb 10, 2005 12:55:22 GMT
The Doors: a profile of Jim Morrison
IN THREE YEARS Jim Morrison went from being a rock icon to dying a bloated alcoholic at just 27 years old. But in that time he became rock and roll's most important rebel ever, mixing poetic pretensions and belligerent good looks. As cinema audiences prepare for Oliver Stone's biopic of Morrison's short life, the unequivocal powerhouse rock of the Doors, led by his sexual vocals, is as much a symbol for the '90s as it was for the '60s generation.
Malcolm McLaren once described Johnny Rotten as, "that scruffy kid that used to hang around the shop in the King's Road with Doors albums stuffed under his arm." The fact that punk's vitriolic figurehead — the one who used to perform in his "I hate Pink Floyd" T-shirt — wasn't ashamed of that other musical phenomenon of the '60s, is testimony to the nihilistic hipness that has kept the Doors' music current long after most of their contemporaries have become forgotten fossils.
Although they emerged in the era of peace and love, and shared its openmindedness, the Doors always had an anti-hippy streak. They were more surreal than psychedelic, more anguish than acid — which is why they've since been so influential on groups like Joy Division — and Morrison used to recommend Nietzsche, hardly flowerchild reading, to anyone who would listen.
Jim Morrison never invoked teenage angst in the clumsy manner of so many rock phonies, he personified it. In his finest moments he embodied rebellion as perfectly as any cultural icon ever has, which is why every eligible pop and film star would give their eye teeth to star in his life story. In the eight years since plans for the Doors' biopic were announced, Hollywood smoothies as improbable as John Travolta and Tom Cruise have chased the lead role with a desperation that highlights Morrison's evergreen credibility.
But though his wilder excesses may paint him as a rebel without a cause, Jim often pursued rebellion in a conscious, articulate manner. "When you make peace with authority you become an authority," he wrote in the group's first biography. "I like ideas about the overthrowing of established order — I am interested in revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that seems to have no meaning." It may be hard to perceive as intellectual a man who went from being the musical saviour of the western world at 24, to being a bloated alcoholic lying dead in a bath in a Parisian hotel at 27, but that's exactly what Jim was.
Everyone who taught him still remembers an academic mind, far sharper than his classmates. At college he did courses on revolt and crowd psychology and handed in papers on books so obscure that one tutor had to go to the Library of Congress to check they existed. And in his reading taste, from Sophocles to French existentialists, from Nietzsche to Kerouac, Morrison provided a thousand hints and literary blueprints for the lifestyle he was to lead.
Jim's intellectual side was a crucial part of his appeal. Subsequent rock idols have emulated Morrison's drug excesses, but never in conjunction with such a sharp, probing, life-affirming mentality. He named the group after a William Blake quote in an Aldous Huxley book — "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it truly is, infinite" — and lived out his mission to break through those doors with a gusto that led biographer Danny Sugerman to remark: "Nobody made getting loaded look more romantic than Jim Morrison."
For someone with such a phenomenal appetite for illegal drugs, Jim had a strangely carefree attitude towards the police. He provoked them at every opportunity and was beaten up countless times as a result. In one of a hundred backstage incidents at concerts, Jim told a troublesome cop to suck his dick. The cop pulled out a can of mace and said, "This is your last chance to move." "No man," Jim replied, cupping his genitals with his hands, "this is your last chance to eat it." Jim got maced and, after humiliating policemen from the stage, was later beaten up and arrested.
Jim had no concept of expediency. Arrested in the desert, he taunted the redneck cops though his cell bars, calling them the ugliest motherfuckers he'd ever seen. Only the arrival of a friend with bail money saved him from a severe beating. Another time he was lucky to escape unscathed after goading a cop, "C'mon, muthafucker, chickenshit asshole, shoot me!"
The wild behaviour Jim exhibited at UCLA — like urinating between the shelves at the public library —returned with a vengeance in his later, severe alcoholic phase. He started playing matador in moving traffic, crashing cars, trashing studios and singing with any band playing in the bars he got drunk in. At a Hendrix gig he poured a table full of drinks over Janis Joplin, then leapt onstage and started hugging Jimi's legs. And when Andy Warhol gave him a gold and ivory French telephone, minutes later Jim hurled it out of the limo into a public wastebin in front of him.
Jim was never legally married, but he did wed one of his regular girlfriends, Patricia, in a Wicca ceremony (like the one rumoured to have taken place between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn) in which souls are fused on a karmic and cosmic plane, and death, therefore, does not part the lovers. The sharing of blood involved in the ceremony so excited Jim, that he later persuaded an aristocratic German girlfriend to cut her thumb so that they could make love smeared in blood.
As a schoolboy Jim wrote numerous obscene journals, and as a major star in the last age of innocent promiscuity he got to act out all his sexual fantasies with a limitless selection of willing partners. "Butt-fucking" was a favourite, and one of the sound experiments the Doors tried on Strange Days was Jim singing while being given a blow job. The group's producer was so keen on this idea, that he offered to go out and get a prostitute to do the job, but Jim's oldest flame, Pamela, pitched in. In the event, the pair emerged satisfied from the recording booth after 20 minutes without Jim having sung a note.
Other anecdotes that shed light on Morrison's complex, turbulent personality could fill (and have) several books, but sifting through them is made difficult by the vested interests of the tellers. Biographer Danny Sugerman was the Doors' press officer and owes much of his career to the memories of his days as Morrison's confidant, while founder member Ray Manzarek (whose career Sugerman now manages) bought the rights to all the Doors music from the surviving members after Morrison's death. This means that Sugerman and Manzarek have everything to gain from promoting the Morrison myth, and their pretentious eulogizing contrasts revealingly with the more down-to-earth reminiscences of Robbie Krieger and John Densmore.
But one thing is quite clear: though Jim Morrison was the larger-than-life star and leader of the Doors, without the other three we would probably never have heard of him. Some of his lyrics could be claimed to be among the finest ever in rock music, but even at the height of his fame Jim couldn't make his extracurricular careers as poet, playwright, actor and filmmaker take off. As a foursome however, the Doors had a unique chemistry that allowed them to fuse blues and classical structures into configurations whose freshness will never be dulled by the passage of time.
IN THREE YEARS Jim Morrison went from being a rock icon to dying a bloated alcoholic at just 27 years old. But in that time he became rock and roll's most important rebel ever, mixing poetic pretensions and belligerent good looks. As cinema audiences prepare for Oliver Stone's biopic of Morrison's short life, the unequivocal powerhouse rock of the Doors, led by his sexual vocals, is as much a symbol for the '90s as it was for the '60s generation.
Malcolm McLaren once described Johnny Rotten as, "that scruffy kid that used to hang around the shop in the King's Road with Doors albums stuffed under his arm." The fact that punk's vitriolic figurehead — the one who used to perform in his "I hate Pink Floyd" T-shirt — wasn't ashamed of that other musical phenomenon of the '60s, is testimony to the nihilistic hipness that has kept the Doors' music current long after most of their contemporaries have become forgotten fossils.
Although they emerged in the era of peace and love, and shared its openmindedness, the Doors always had an anti-hippy streak. They were more surreal than psychedelic, more anguish than acid — which is why they've since been so influential on groups like Joy Division — and Morrison used to recommend Nietzsche, hardly flowerchild reading, to anyone who would listen.
Jim Morrison never invoked teenage angst in the clumsy manner of so many rock phonies, he personified it. In his finest moments he embodied rebellion as perfectly as any cultural icon ever has, which is why every eligible pop and film star would give their eye teeth to star in his life story. In the eight years since plans for the Doors' biopic were announced, Hollywood smoothies as improbable as John Travolta and Tom Cruise have chased the lead role with a desperation that highlights Morrison's evergreen credibility.
But though his wilder excesses may paint him as a rebel without a cause, Jim often pursued rebellion in a conscious, articulate manner. "When you make peace with authority you become an authority," he wrote in the group's first biography. "I like ideas about the overthrowing of established order — I am interested in revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that seems to have no meaning." It may be hard to perceive as intellectual a man who went from being the musical saviour of the western world at 24, to being a bloated alcoholic lying dead in a bath in a Parisian hotel at 27, but that's exactly what Jim was.
Everyone who taught him still remembers an academic mind, far sharper than his classmates. At college he did courses on revolt and crowd psychology and handed in papers on books so obscure that one tutor had to go to the Library of Congress to check they existed. And in his reading taste, from Sophocles to French existentialists, from Nietzsche to Kerouac, Morrison provided a thousand hints and literary blueprints for the lifestyle he was to lead.
Jim's intellectual side was a crucial part of his appeal. Subsequent rock idols have emulated Morrison's drug excesses, but never in conjunction with such a sharp, probing, life-affirming mentality. He named the group after a William Blake quote in an Aldous Huxley book — "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it truly is, infinite" — and lived out his mission to break through those doors with a gusto that led biographer Danny Sugerman to remark: "Nobody made getting loaded look more romantic than Jim Morrison."
For someone with such a phenomenal appetite for illegal drugs, Jim had a strangely carefree attitude towards the police. He provoked them at every opportunity and was beaten up countless times as a result. In one of a hundred backstage incidents at concerts, Jim told a troublesome cop to suck his dick. The cop pulled out a can of mace and said, "This is your last chance to move." "No man," Jim replied, cupping his genitals with his hands, "this is your last chance to eat it." Jim got maced and, after humiliating policemen from the stage, was later beaten up and arrested.
Jim had no concept of expediency. Arrested in the desert, he taunted the redneck cops though his cell bars, calling them the ugliest motherfuckers he'd ever seen. Only the arrival of a friend with bail money saved him from a severe beating. Another time he was lucky to escape unscathed after goading a cop, "C'mon, muthafucker, chickenshit asshole, shoot me!"
The wild behaviour Jim exhibited at UCLA — like urinating between the shelves at the public library —returned with a vengeance in his later, severe alcoholic phase. He started playing matador in moving traffic, crashing cars, trashing studios and singing with any band playing in the bars he got drunk in. At a Hendrix gig he poured a table full of drinks over Janis Joplin, then leapt onstage and started hugging Jimi's legs. And when Andy Warhol gave him a gold and ivory French telephone, minutes later Jim hurled it out of the limo into a public wastebin in front of him.
Jim was never legally married, but he did wed one of his regular girlfriends, Patricia, in a Wicca ceremony (like the one rumoured to have taken place between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn) in which souls are fused on a karmic and cosmic plane, and death, therefore, does not part the lovers. The sharing of blood involved in the ceremony so excited Jim, that he later persuaded an aristocratic German girlfriend to cut her thumb so that they could make love smeared in blood.
As a schoolboy Jim wrote numerous obscene journals, and as a major star in the last age of innocent promiscuity he got to act out all his sexual fantasies with a limitless selection of willing partners. "Butt-fucking" was a favourite, and one of the sound experiments the Doors tried on Strange Days was Jim singing while being given a blow job. The group's producer was so keen on this idea, that he offered to go out and get a prostitute to do the job, but Jim's oldest flame, Pamela, pitched in. In the event, the pair emerged satisfied from the recording booth after 20 minutes without Jim having sung a note.
Other anecdotes that shed light on Morrison's complex, turbulent personality could fill (and have) several books, but sifting through them is made difficult by the vested interests of the tellers. Biographer Danny Sugerman was the Doors' press officer and owes much of his career to the memories of his days as Morrison's confidant, while founder member Ray Manzarek (whose career Sugerman now manages) bought the rights to all the Doors music from the surviving members after Morrison's death. This means that Sugerman and Manzarek have everything to gain from promoting the Morrison myth, and their pretentious eulogizing contrasts revealingly with the more down-to-earth reminiscences of Robbie Krieger and John Densmore.
But one thing is quite clear: though Jim Morrison was the larger-than-life star and leader of the Doors, without the other three we would probably never have heard of him. Some of his lyrics could be claimed to be among the finest ever in rock music, but even at the height of his fame Jim couldn't make his extracurricular careers as poet, playwright, actor and filmmaker take off. As a foursome however, the Doors had a unique chemistry that allowed them to fuse blues and classical structures into configurations whose freshness will never be dulled by the passage of time.