Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Jun 4, 2006 18:23:21 GMT
Near the end of his 27-year life, was Jim Morrison – as depicted in Oliver Stone's new movie, The Doors – a fat, abusive, alcoholic, drugged-out, deluded, self-obsessed, self-destructive, humorless, haunted, wasted, washed-up symbol of the death of rock 'n' roll?
The first and last time I visited with Morrison, he was, and he wasn't.
Certainly, he was either slowing down, or he was weighed down.
His band was in decline; bookings had fallen off sharply since his arrest for indecent exposure at a concert in Miami in 1969; and he'd been mired in that trial for nearly two years. And when I saw him in early spring of 1971, he'd been convicted and was out on bail while his case was being appealed. The Doors were still working on an album, but Morrison was thinking about the next stage of his life. If he could snake out of his six-month jail sentence, he was going to Paris, where he'd pursue two longtime interests: poetry and film making.
I happened onto him because his common-law wife, Pamela Courson, knew and lived near a friend of mine, Jefferson Airplane publicist Diane Gardiner, in West Hollywood.
As a writer for Rolling Stone magazine, one of my jobs was to hang out, and that's what I was doing with Gardiner and Earl McGrath, a Rolling Stones associate-turned-screenwriter, when Morrison bounded into her apartment. He was looking for Pamela. We said hello and, of course, I asked for an interview. Once he figured out Pamela wasn't around, he agreed.
He had aged dramatically since his arrest. At 27, his face's sometimes pouty, girlish beauty had given way to a full, dark, leonine beard, and he'd begun to build a paunch.
This afternoon, he seemed to be in a silly mood. Used to toying with the media, he fell into a talk-show rhythm. I'd be Dick Cavett, he decided; he'd be Jim Morrison. And with Gardiner and McGrath serving as the studio audience, he began by asking a riddle that would never have made it on network television. Something about a women's track team.
And then we settled down, and in the course of an hour or so of serious talk, he spoke at first about his bust.
"I think that was the culmination of our mass performing career," he said. "Subconsciously, I think I was trying to reduce it to absurdity, and it worked too well."
Early on, he said, he had hoped to turn his trial – he was charged with lascivious behavior (a felony), profanity, simulating masturbation and public drunkenness – into a freedom-of-speech issue. As his lawyer argued, there was nudity in the film of the Woodstock Festival; there was frontal nudity in Hair. His actions on stage in Miami, he said, amounted to "a theatrical performance." The judge didn't see it that way.
The Doors Would Split
Morrison expected that, after a couple more albums, the Doors would split and he would work in films.
"I'd like to write and direct a film of my own," he said. "There's one that's all in my head. But I have a film I made, called Hiway, that hasn't been seen very much."
I reminded him that San Francisco hadn't been very kind to it. He offered a tight smile.
"Feast of Friends (a self-produced 40-minute documentary of life on stage, on the road, and on vacation) was shown there a year or so ago to a lot of boos," Morrison said. "I think they were reacting to personalities rather than film...."
The 15-minute Hiway, he said, "was more poetic, more of an exercise for me, kind of a warm-up. There's no story in it. Just a hitchhiker who steals a car and drives into town and checks into a motel or something, and it just kind of ends like that."
Morrison talked about getting back to the blues – the kind of music the early Doors used to play in clubs – and about poetry, about how his calling himself the "Lizard King" was actually "half tongue-in-cheek."
"I just thought everyone knew it was ironic, but apparently they thought I was mad!"
I liked Morrison. Whatever his excesses, they were moderated that spring day, and he seemed more self-deprecating than destructive.
He No Longer Dazzled
He was no longer the rock star who dazzled me one night at the Berkeley Community Theater in 1967 – I remember thinking that he'd single-handedly taken rock 'n' roll and turned it into theater. He had now traversed to the edge of self-parody. But he was still the man who gave us some of the greatest songs we ever danced to – or puzzled over.
We shook hands, and, taking his leave, he invited me to come and see him in Paris sometime.
Death makes angels of us all
and gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth as raven's claws
– Jim Morrison, ‘An American Prayer’
A month after our chat, Morrison, having finished his last album with the Doors, L.A. Woman, left with Pamela for Paris, and in July I wrote my next story about him. It was his obituary.
I ended it with quotes from two close friends of his, Frank Lisciandro, a film maker, and his wife, Kathy, once Morrison's secretary.
"He expected to live a long time, even if he was self-destructive," Frank explained. His wife said, "He'd be surprised to find out he was dead at age 27."
Nine years later, I finally got to Paris, where Morrison was buried in one of the world's most famous cemeteries, Pere-Lachaise, final stop for Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, Frederic Chopin and Edith Piaf.
By 1980, Morrison was riding a new wave of popularity. Books, videos, proposed movies and the inspired use of Morrison's disturbingly provocative ‘The End’ in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now thrust the Doors back into the public eye.
A Silent Vigil
After wandering around lost for a half-hour in the 100-square block cemetery, a young fan with a map led our party to Morrison's burial site. Graffiti – all about Jim – littered nearby headstones and monuments, and at his grave, a dozen young people stood and sat around silently.
Morrison's grave, a concrete-framed plot of dirt, had no headstone – whenever someone tried to install one, it'd be stolen – but surrounding graffiti left no doubts about who was buried here. As I took notes – "I LOVE YOU JIM"..."JIM IS NOT DEAD" – a young man pointed to a spray-painted exclamation: "God doesn't exist but JIM will exist FOREVER!"
"People here in France thought he was crazy," he told me, "but you Americans understood."
As with everything about Jim Morrison, it wasn't that simple. We understood, and we didn't.
[glow=red,2,300]Ben Fong-Torres, San Francisco Chronicle, 1991 [/glow]
The first and last time I visited with Morrison, he was, and he wasn't.
Certainly, he was either slowing down, or he was weighed down.
His band was in decline; bookings had fallen off sharply since his arrest for indecent exposure at a concert in Miami in 1969; and he'd been mired in that trial for nearly two years. And when I saw him in early spring of 1971, he'd been convicted and was out on bail while his case was being appealed. The Doors were still working on an album, but Morrison was thinking about the next stage of his life. If he could snake out of his six-month jail sentence, he was going to Paris, where he'd pursue two longtime interests: poetry and film making.
I happened onto him because his common-law wife, Pamela Courson, knew and lived near a friend of mine, Jefferson Airplane publicist Diane Gardiner, in West Hollywood.
As a writer for Rolling Stone magazine, one of my jobs was to hang out, and that's what I was doing with Gardiner and Earl McGrath, a Rolling Stones associate-turned-screenwriter, when Morrison bounded into her apartment. He was looking for Pamela. We said hello and, of course, I asked for an interview. Once he figured out Pamela wasn't around, he agreed.
He had aged dramatically since his arrest. At 27, his face's sometimes pouty, girlish beauty had given way to a full, dark, leonine beard, and he'd begun to build a paunch.
This afternoon, he seemed to be in a silly mood. Used to toying with the media, he fell into a talk-show rhythm. I'd be Dick Cavett, he decided; he'd be Jim Morrison. And with Gardiner and McGrath serving as the studio audience, he began by asking a riddle that would never have made it on network television. Something about a women's track team.
And then we settled down, and in the course of an hour or so of serious talk, he spoke at first about his bust.
"I think that was the culmination of our mass performing career," he said. "Subconsciously, I think I was trying to reduce it to absurdity, and it worked too well."
Early on, he said, he had hoped to turn his trial – he was charged with lascivious behavior (a felony), profanity, simulating masturbation and public drunkenness – into a freedom-of-speech issue. As his lawyer argued, there was nudity in the film of the Woodstock Festival; there was frontal nudity in Hair. His actions on stage in Miami, he said, amounted to "a theatrical performance." The judge didn't see it that way.
The Doors Would Split
Morrison expected that, after a couple more albums, the Doors would split and he would work in films.
"I'd like to write and direct a film of my own," he said. "There's one that's all in my head. But I have a film I made, called Hiway, that hasn't been seen very much."
I reminded him that San Francisco hadn't been very kind to it. He offered a tight smile.
"Feast of Friends (a self-produced 40-minute documentary of life on stage, on the road, and on vacation) was shown there a year or so ago to a lot of boos," Morrison said. "I think they were reacting to personalities rather than film...."
The 15-minute Hiway, he said, "was more poetic, more of an exercise for me, kind of a warm-up. There's no story in it. Just a hitchhiker who steals a car and drives into town and checks into a motel or something, and it just kind of ends like that."
Morrison talked about getting back to the blues – the kind of music the early Doors used to play in clubs – and about poetry, about how his calling himself the "Lizard King" was actually "half tongue-in-cheek."
"I just thought everyone knew it was ironic, but apparently they thought I was mad!"
I liked Morrison. Whatever his excesses, they were moderated that spring day, and he seemed more self-deprecating than destructive.
He No Longer Dazzled
He was no longer the rock star who dazzled me one night at the Berkeley Community Theater in 1967 – I remember thinking that he'd single-handedly taken rock 'n' roll and turned it into theater. He had now traversed to the edge of self-parody. But he was still the man who gave us some of the greatest songs we ever danced to – or puzzled over.
We shook hands, and, taking his leave, he invited me to come and see him in Paris sometime.
Death makes angels of us all
and gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth as raven's claws
– Jim Morrison, ‘An American Prayer’
A month after our chat, Morrison, having finished his last album with the Doors, L.A. Woman, left with Pamela for Paris, and in July I wrote my next story about him. It was his obituary.
I ended it with quotes from two close friends of his, Frank Lisciandro, a film maker, and his wife, Kathy, once Morrison's secretary.
"He expected to live a long time, even if he was self-destructive," Frank explained. His wife said, "He'd be surprised to find out he was dead at age 27."
Nine years later, I finally got to Paris, where Morrison was buried in one of the world's most famous cemeteries, Pere-Lachaise, final stop for Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, Frederic Chopin and Edith Piaf.
By 1980, Morrison was riding a new wave of popularity. Books, videos, proposed movies and the inspired use of Morrison's disturbingly provocative ‘The End’ in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now thrust the Doors back into the public eye.
A Silent Vigil
After wandering around lost for a half-hour in the 100-square block cemetery, a young fan with a map led our party to Morrison's burial site. Graffiti – all about Jim – littered nearby headstones and monuments, and at his grave, a dozen young people stood and sat around silently.
Morrison's grave, a concrete-framed plot of dirt, had no headstone – whenever someone tried to install one, it'd be stolen – but surrounding graffiti left no doubts about who was buried here. As I took notes – "I LOVE YOU JIM"..."JIM IS NOT DEAD" – a young man pointed to a spray-painted exclamation: "God doesn't exist but JIM will exist FOREVER!"
"People here in France thought he was crazy," he told me, "but you Americans understood."
As with everything about Jim Morrison, it wasn't that simple. We understood, and we didn't.
[glow=red,2,300]Ben Fong-Torres, San Francisco Chronicle, 1991 [/glow]