Morrison By: Tom Baker & Legs McNeil - Spin 1990

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Spin Magazine
August 1990


MORRISON
By: Tom Baker and Legs McNeil

Long, Long ago, in a place far, far away, when rock ‘n’ roll was dangerous….

“I’ve always been attracted to ideas that were about revolt against authority. I like ideas about breaking away of overthrowing of established order. I am interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos – especially activity which seems to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom – external revolt is a way to bring about internal freedom…….But the main thing is that we are the Doors……The world we suggest is of a new wild West. A sensuous evil world”<br>-Jim Morrison, from Elektra Records promo biography January 1967.

You want to know what I think? I think the problem with rock and roll today is someone let too much light in. With MTV, commercial advertising and corporate sponsors, somehow all the daylight has been destroyed the mesmerizing darkness. Somehow the shades got pulled and the shadows disappeared.

With the exception of the Velvet Underground, some early Stones, Alice Cooper and Iggy, no band ever celebrated the darkness as successfully as the Doors. Most great rock and roll bands touch on it during their lifetime, but no other band but the Doors spent their entire career lurking in the twilight, and so wonderfully articulated what they found there.

Because no other band had such a beautifully evil host to introduce you to the netherworld. Jim Morrison truly was one of the Fallen Angels. One who had forsaken Heaven in order to fulfill his curiously about what else was out there. Since Mick Jagger looked and acted the part, wiggling his ass, singing “Sympathy For The Devil.” But somehow you knew after the show Mick was headed straight for the party to hang out with movie stars, billionaires and other lords and ladies of the jet set court.

On the other hand, Jim Morrison was probably going to be arrested after his show. In 1981, Tom Baker, who was Jim Morrison’s best drinking buddy and is a prominent character in Oliver Stone’s new movie on the life of Morrison, published a memoir of his times and toilet hugging drunk with the ‘Lizard King’ in High Times magazine. The piece captured the spirit of rock and roll in the 60’s. Join us as we take another look back….


One cold, gray November day, I was on 57th Street near Carnegie Hall, walking with my head down and cursing the hypocrites who kept me from my deserved fame and fortune. I head someone call “Heyyyyyy, Tom,” and looked up to see Jim emerging from a movie house. He had just seen a movie version of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake and he was feeling Irish and poetic. We went to the bar of his hotel, the old Great Northern, and ordered a beer and Irish whiskey.

Soon, we were toilet hugging drunk and remaining upright seemed to defy the law of gravity, when Ray Manzarek appeared along with one of their managers. They had come to collect Jim for a concert that evening. I was amazed he going to do a show. After all the booze, I didn’t see how he possibly could perform. He urged me to come along suggesting I introduce the group and recite some poems. My drunkenness clouded my better judgment and I piled into a long black limo with Jim and the band. After going a few blocks, Morrison had the driver pull over and he dashed into a novelty store, returning with six Brechtian masks, every one a different color. Back in the limo, he handed them out to each of us and we were off. I passed out before we were halfway through the Midtown Tunnel, only to awake an hour later with an excruciatingly painful need to urinate.

The show was to take place in a dull little town called Danbury, Connecticut and the driver was none too swift coming out of chute, and it took longer than necessary to find the place. But he finally figured it out, and I was able to relieve myself.

I looked around and quickly recognized we were a long was from 46th Street. It was a new and ugly building, prison-like in its coldness, and all purpose high school auditorium and gymnasium, very distinctly American heartland. Well, that’s good, I thought, let Jim carry his dark messages directly to the folks.

But the atmosphere made me apprehensive about the introduction. Jim seemed to sense this and chided me about losing nerve. I was wearing a deceptively expensive-looking black fur coat, and with the mask, felt very much out of place.

The band took up their places behind the curtain and I peeked out from the wings, trying to get a fix on the audience. I nearly choked when I saw these prepubescent runts with their Ma’s and Pa’s, clutching Doors albums to their heavily beating breasts.

I took a deep breath and stepped into the spotlight. The image of row after row of beaming, clean-cut faces clashed in my head with the more familiar and expected sights of dark, murky, dope-in-the-air, sex drenched clubs, and I couldn’t help think we had made a wrong exit on the turnpike.

I rushed through the shortest poem I knew, muttered something about having known the boys from the Los Angeles days, then made a quick check behind the curtain and got the hell out of there. I watched from the wings, flanked by local honchos and some of their lovely daughters, who must have pulled their parents by the short hairs to gain access. Jim threw himself into his performance, and the kids loved him. They were on their feet throughout, yelling, “Jimmy, Jimmy,” and begging him to sing “Light My Fire” until he obliged. He was still brilliant and exciting, but for me, much of his magic and dangerous spontaneity were swallowed by the huge hall.

The ride back was exhausting, my head was pounding and I hadn’t eaten all day. It was well after one AM when I was deposited on the corner of 57th Street and Seventh Avenue. Jim and I had not spoken throughout the trip and now he lifted slowly, and nodded at me, saying, “See ya next time.” My hangover increased my paranoia and I worried that he was disappointed by my uninspired beginning.

The limo disappeared into the flow of traffic, and I headed down the subway stairs. He was going on to piles of money and great adulation. I was faced with door pounding and job searching. I pondered the ironic reversal of our fates in the past year as I rode down to Greenwich Village on the BMT. As I approached my apartment, I remembered my girlfriend had been waiting for me since early in the day. “Christ,” I thought. “What am I going to tell her? She’ll never believe I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing. Shit! Another problem. Fuck Pam! Fuck Jim the Doors!

Whenever we went to the rock clubs such as The Whisky or The Experience, Jim would cause a stir as we walked in and the kids gathered around him. Morrison was usually in a semiconscious stupor and seemed oblivious to the fans. As soon as we sat down, the resident groupie would pounce on him. Sometimes, I would share in the spoils, other times I would be ignored as though I were invisible, and still other times Jim would be so comatose, I would get them all to myself.

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One night we went to the grim little Hollywood flat of two of these creatures and sat up till dawn drinking and talking. One girl soon revealed herself to be a practicing junkie and she brought out a plastic vial of pills, blue tablets called New Morphine, a strong synthetic morphine. We crushed them with a tablespoon and sniffed the powder. The high was speedy and euphoric and Jim became loose and talkative, telling us endless tales about himself, including the story about his body being inhabited by the spirit of an old Indian who died by the side of a New Mexico highway. The junkie offered us use of her outfit but we declined. Jim was inclined to use downers and hated the thought of using a needle on himself. Aside from this night, I only saw him use cocaine or hallucinogenics.

After a while, I went to bed in the front room with the junkie and the other girl began to wrestle Jim into her room. He had become somewhat inert and sat with his head on the kitchen table. After a great effort, she got him into her bed and shut the door. About 10 minutes later, she joined the junkie and me, complaining about Jim’s lack of interest. Soon, the three of us were engaged in a robust bout of interchanging sexual positions and then I passed out, exhausted and content.

I awoke at the crack of noon, alone. I sat in the kitchen drinking instant coffee and smoking cigarettes for about 15 minutes, then curiosity got the best of me and I slowly opened the door and looked in. The little beggars had abandoned me for Jim and he and the junkie were asleep alongside one another. The other girl was feverishly giving Jim head, trying to pump some life into his pathetically limp dick, looking not unlike a lioness feeding on her fallen prey. She glanced over at me for a moment, then went right back to work. I returned to the kitchen and crushed up another pill. Late one night, in the Elektra recording studios, after listening to the just completed mix of the Soft Parade album, we were typically drunk and Morrison was more than a little apprehensive about the album. For the first time the Doors had recorded with horns and strings, and only a few of the songs were Jim’s own. I began to break his chops about the sleek and expensive looks of the studio and offices, which had been financed almost entirely from the profits of the first two Doors albums.

“Jesus, look at this place, Morrison. It’s fucking disgusting. You did this Jim, you financed this whole round-haircut-establishment. Why’n fuck don’t you just move your whole corporate operation up to Sacramento with the rest of the bureaucrats? I mean, look at this, man – your songs, your words paid for all this.”<br>
I indicated a brand new latest model IBM typewriters and shiny file cabinets and desks. Jim had a slight smile and was silent but I could see I was getting to him. He looked at the equipment as the others with us tried to suppress nervous laughter. Next thing we knew Jim hopped on top of a desk and began to heel-stomp down on it, then pouring beer over papers and files. I thought sure there would be hell to pay, but the next day the mess was cleaned up and nothing was ever mentioned about it.

In the late 60’s, the Living Theatre returned from a long period in exile during which they wandered over Europe performing their radical and revolutionary brand of theatre. At the end of the show, members of the cast would confront the audience in their seats, shouting slogans of protest, encouraging everyone to join them on stage and take off their clothes and reject “uptight” society. About three-quarters of the people joined in, and things were getting very chaotic when the school authorities called in the dogs and pissed on the fire. At one point, Jim turned to me and said, “Let’s start a fire in the balcony, or something. Get a riot going.”<br>
He had a madder than usual look in his eyes, though I knew he was sober. He left his seat and walked to the edge of the stage for a few minutes, then left, telling me he was leaving town for Miami early in the morning.

It’s too bad he did not get some of “crazies” out of his head before he left, because the next night, his concert in Dade County resulted in a riot; he would later be charged with indecent exposure and other outrageous behavior.

It’s possible no one knows what really happened that ridiculous night. Jim was guarded and stoic, saying only that he felt confident his lawyers could take care of it. I’m convinced he was influenced by the antics of the Living Theatre from the night before. But more significantly, I believe he was, simply, tired of it all. I have never met anyone whose sensibilities were more unsuited to the rigorous demands of being a rock star and sex symbol. No doubt, he had enjoyed the music and the explosive reaction of the young people he so strongly identified with, as well as savoring the rush of success and sense of power and manipulation. But Jim was a scholar and all his life his academic achievements were outstanding. His success as a rock n’ roller was so sudden and tremendous, he never really understood it and soon felt trapped by the image, longing to be thought of only as a poet.

From Blue Center Light, by Tom Baker

Jim Morrison demanded a reaction. Women wanted to fuck him, boys wanted to idolize him, men wanted to challenge him.

As I sit thumbing through James Douglas Morrison’s FBI File, I wonder which rock stars today would be deemed so threatening as to warrant the FBI’s interest. Sure, Public Enemy and N.W.A., but what about pop stars? Sting? Madonna? Phil Collins? Bono?

The New Haven incident, where he was arrested on stage for “lewd and obscene performance,” is in the FBI file, on the rap sheet, number 511 448 F and marked for “Official Use Only.” It is the fourth record of arrest the first three being “Drunk and Petty Larceny of police helmet and umbrella,” Tallahassee, Florida, 9-28-63, “Battery,” Inglewood, California, 1-23-66; “drunk,” Los Angeles, California 12-10-67.

Morrison’s file contains seven other records of arrest, mostly for vagrancy and being drunk. But the Miami and Phoenix incidents are also included. Miami is when Morrison supposedly exposed his penis onstage and Phoenix was when he was traveling to see a Rolling Stones concert with Tom Baker when they were arrested for “interference with a flight of an aircraft.”<br>
Soon all of this will probably be the meat of the new Jim Morrison film, which will probably be a big hit and launch yet another Doors revival, which may be an overstatement since the Doors’ songs are played every two minutes on the radio anyway. But, even with all this knowledge out there, with all the rock ‘n roll books and movies coming out these days, with all the instructions on how to do it, the music isn’t getting any better.

Maybe it’s time for some 14-year-olds from Des Moines to scream “Turn Off The Lights!” Yeah, just turn’em off.

END.