off Hendrix,â said Fields. âThe three of them were in a tangle of broken glass, dust and guitars. The bodyguards had to send them home, each in their own limousine.â
Within under three-and-a-half years each player in this absurd and unedifying scenario would be dead, each at the age of twenty-seven.
*
A poet and visionary of extraordinary ability, James Douglas Morrison, born on 8 December 1943, was one of the most intelligent of all rock stars. He was supremely talented, highly perceptive and exceptionally well educated, both formally and through his own broader studies. After first encountering the German writerâs name in Kerouacâs
On the Road
, âJimmyâ Morrison â as he then was, aged sixteen â twice read Friedrich Nietzscheâs
The Birth of Tragedy
, following it with the same writerâs
Beyond Good and Evil
. It was from Nietzsche that Jim absorbed the notion that whatever did not kill him would only make him stronger (Nietzsche, Ray Manzarek said later, was what killed Jim Morrison). Jim Morrison is the personification of that old adage of being careful what you wish for, because you may get it.
Yet rock ânâ roll and the music industry has always been a home to dysfunctional, damaged people, many deeply so. Extremely talented rebels, often mired in â yet simultaneously driven by â their personal problems. The Doors, moreover, were the biggest American group of the second half of the 1960s: deservedly, as they certainly were one of the greatest bands there has ever been, and the definitive Los Angeles group of that era. Keyboard player Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore were all jazz aficionados â there always was an intellectual core to The Doorsâ music. Although they recorded for only just over four years, The Doorsâ tight Gothic sound, married to the supreme confidence and beauty of Morrisonâs poetic lyrics, along with his suitably enigmatic death in a Paris bathtub in 1971, have made the four piece one of the most legendary of all rock acts. âThe Doors were asserting themselves as the archetypal band for an American apocalypse that we didnât even know was creeping up on us,â wrote Mikal Gilmore in
Rolling Stone
in 2001. âThe real question,â he continued, âisnât so much whether we can find the virtue in Jim Morrisonâs art despite the waste of his life. Rather, the question finally is: Can we separate the two? And if not, what do we make of that?â 2
The time span of The Doorsâ career encompassed some of the most vivid tableaux that defined the era, the second half of the much mythologized Sixties: the youth riot on Los Angelesâs Sunset Strip in 1966, two months before the release of their first album; the Summer of Love the next year in San Francisco; the emergence of Andy Warholâs New York pop art subculture; the Kent State shootings; Charles Manson and his madness; the moon landing; the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy in 1968; the My Lai massacre and the debacle of the Vietnam War; the election of President Richard Nixon.
And the schism between Jim Morrison and his parents was equally archetypal, carrying a tremendous resonance for the groupâs fans, many of whom were similarly afflicted in their relationships with their families. Jimâs naval officer father, for example, had allegedly disowned him for having chosen to study film at UCLA. (As the son of a Navy officer, he had been expected to attend the US Navy Academy at Annapolis, as his father had done; or perhaps to become a diplomat.) Was this why, in early publicity material, Jim Morrison claimed that his mother and father had been killed in a motoring accident? When The Doors played in Washington, DC in 1967, his mother came to the concert but the singer refused to see her, and never spoke to her again.
In the song âThe Endâ, the final
Within under three-and-a-half years each player in this absurd and unedifying scenario would be dead, each at the age of twenty-seven.
*
A poet and visionary of extraordinary ability, James Douglas Morrison, born on 8 December 1943, was one of the most intelligent of all rock stars. He was supremely talented, highly perceptive and exceptionally well educated, both formally and through his own broader studies. After first encountering the German writerâs name in Kerouacâs
On the Road
, âJimmyâ Morrison â as he then was, aged sixteen â twice read Friedrich Nietzscheâs
The Birth of Tragedy
, following it with the same writerâs
Beyond Good and Evil
. It was from Nietzsche that Jim absorbed the notion that whatever did not kill him would only make him stronger (Nietzsche, Ray Manzarek said later, was what killed Jim Morrison). Jim Morrison is the personification of that old adage of being careful what you wish for, because you may get it.
Yet rock ânâ roll and the music industry has always been a home to dysfunctional, damaged people, many deeply so. Extremely talented rebels, often mired in â yet simultaneously driven by â their personal problems. The Doors, moreover, were the biggest American group of the second half of the 1960s: deservedly, as they certainly were one of the greatest bands there has ever been, and the definitive Los Angeles group of that era. Keyboard player Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore were all jazz aficionados â there always was an intellectual core to The Doorsâ music. Although they recorded for only just over four years, The Doorsâ tight Gothic sound, married to the supreme confidence and beauty of Morrisonâs poetic lyrics, along with his suitably enigmatic death in a Paris bathtub in 1971, have made the four piece one of the most legendary of all rock acts. âThe Doors were asserting themselves as the archetypal band for an American apocalypse that we didnât even know was creeping up on us,â wrote Mikal Gilmore in
Rolling Stone
in 2001. âThe real question,â he continued, âisnât so much whether we can find the virtue in Jim Morrisonâs art despite the waste of his life. Rather, the question finally is: Can we separate the two? And if not, what do we make of that?â 2
The time span of The Doorsâ career encompassed some of the most vivid tableaux that defined the era, the second half of the much mythologized Sixties: the youth riot on Los Angelesâs Sunset Strip in 1966, two months before the release of their first album; the Summer of Love the next year in San Francisco; the emergence of Andy Warholâs New York pop art subculture; the Kent State shootings; Charles Manson and his madness; the moon landing; the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy in 1968; the My Lai massacre and the debacle of the Vietnam War; the election of President Richard Nixon.
And the schism between Jim Morrison and his parents was equally archetypal, carrying a tremendous resonance for the groupâs fans, many of whom were similarly afflicted in their relationships with their families. Jimâs naval officer father, for example, had allegedly disowned him for having chosen to study film at UCLA. (As the son of a Navy officer, he had been expected to attend the US Navy Academy at Annapolis, as his father had done; or perhaps to become a diplomat.) Was this why, in early publicity material, Jim Morrison claimed that his mother and father had been killed in a motoring accident? When The Doors played in Washington, DC in 1967, his mother came to the concert but the singer refused to see her, and never spoke to her again.
In the song âThe Endâ, the final
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