Chapter 14
Thunder at the Hollywood Bowl ... Fellatio Alger in the studio ... Amsterdam hash
JAC: Meanwhile the Doors earned their gold single, a gold first album, and were growing before the eyes of the whole country into a truly tremendous group. They were amazingly prolific. Ultimately we had five gold albums in a row with them, which may have been a record for an American band at that time. The Doors embodied—incarnated—a major upheaval in popular culture. Their music was of the times and it shaped the times. Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane gave a TV interview in the Eighties in which he spoke of talking with Jim Morrison about the phenomenal moment in history they were living in the Sixties. Kantner described it as being swept along, like white water rafting—the swirling chaos of those days, a giant cultural explosion, the sexual revolution, the feminist explosion, the gay explosion, the civil rights explosion, the anti-Vietnam explosion, all in the space of a few years. He had this wonderful memory of the Airplane playing at a college in the Midwest, the students dressed in tuxes and prom gowns, and then going back a year later and the kids were all on acid, staging painted body ceremonies and nude love-ins. He had the perception that so many of us did—that music and politics and drugs were part of the same gestalt.
PAT FARALLA: There was an expansion, a growing, a sharing of our lives, our experiences, our pharmacology, and the manner in which we cohabited with each other. We were just totally involved in each others' lives and passionate about it. The power, the art, the transformation all of us were going through was a pretty potent aphrodisiac. We were addicted to the times.
JAC: And the Doors' music was both cause and effect of the addiction. If you want the essence of it in just a few words, look no further than Morrison's brilliant epigrammatic definition of himself and the group: "erotic politicians."
JIM LADD: We listened to this music in our parents' houses, or in our own rooms. We gathered in groups of two or three or four, smoking our first joint, taking the first acid together. This music was a sacrament to us—'The End,' or 'When the Music's Over,' about what have they done to the earth, stabbed her and ripped her and bit her and stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn. Those kinds of lyrics were unheard of at that time. They broke all kinds of new ground. I really believed that if we sang loud enough and long enough, we could change the world. And I believed that the Doors were certainly very responsible for changing the world.
RAY MANZAREK: What the Sixties, what the psychedelic revolution was to be all about, was giving up your individual ego, to create with your fellows—your brothers and sisters—something greater than yourself. The Doors had that symbiosis. We gave up our individual egos to the collective whole. We always had that give and take, that ebb and flow, so that the rhythm, the chord changes—nothing was ever perfect with the Doors, but we always attempted to attain a perfection, and perhaps we did attain a perfection within the ebb and flow that coursed between the four of us.
BILL SIDDONS: I think that Robby was, to put it in art terms, the abstract artist in the group. He was Jackson Pollock pouring paint on a canvas and saying, "What's it feel like?" Completely free form, kind of just bounced off walls—"Well, that's what's happening, accept it." My favorite quote of my whole history with the Doors came from Robby. Somebody asked him after a show, "Robby, what do you think of when you're playing your solos? You walk around without apparent focus or aim, you're obviously somewhere else, what are you thinking about?" Robby kind of smiled and said, "Well, I think about my aquarium a lot." And I thought it was the perfect description of his playing, floating around with his fish. While Ray was building chord upon chord, structure upon structure. Ray was not quite the cubist, more of a literalist. I always felt in Ray's playing, every next phrase was built on the one before, block by block. And he does that in conversation—he's a very structural person. Ray was the one who was always trying to see that control was maintained. Robby never cared about control per se, he cared about having enough order to get through what we were doing.
JAC: Robby's guitar playing looked so deceptively simple. Mike Bloomfield would eke out an E minor chord and go into spasm on stage with the sheer bravado of his own technique. Robby would be spinning incredible riffs and he might be watching an insect on the ceiling, or perhaps considering that in six months time he might buy another pair of jeans. And there was that very special Brechtian feel you got from Ray Manzarek's organ. Whenever Ray played, I saw two colors: earth brown and purple. So you have the uniqueness of Ray's keyboard platform supporting exquisitely precise, liquid guitar lines from Robby, given structural integrity by John's very inventive, staccato drumming.
VINCE TREANOR: John soaking wet with shot in his pockets probably weighed a hundred pounds at that time. But he'd make more music out of those simple bass and floor toms and two small toms and a snare drum with three cymbals than these guys with thirty-seven toms and fifty-one cymbals.
BILL SIDDONS: John wanted to be proud of his work. He didn't just step out and say, "OK, where do I play?" He was trying to read Jim, who was barely functioning in the same sphere. John was the guy who bore most of the weight emotionally. He was so overwhelmed with what was going on with the group, he left the band at least three times. John was the jazz player in the band. I thought he kept perfect time for Jim. When Jim slowed things down and changed tempo, John was right there with him. It gave the band more elasticity and fluidity than any other band—they would stretch and relax, stretch and relax, in ways that nobody else did, and that gave a dynamic tension to the music.
JAC: The band was so uniquely tuned into themselves and each other that Jim could wail in any direction he chose.
PAUL ROTHCHILD: Jim was blessed with a magnificent vocal instrument. His was one of the greatest voices I've ever had the delight to work with. He talked about being a crooner. He admired Sinatra's phrasing enormously. And he could do a great Elvis. But he was really an accidental musician. He couldn't play an instrument.
ROBBY KRIEGER: He could pound around on a piano pretty good. He could fake playing a harmonica. That's about it.
PAUL ROTHCHILD: His timing was terrible—whenever he picked up maracas or a tambourine, myself or someone in the band would try to take it away from him.
ROBBY KRIEGER: He wasn't really musical, not in a professional way. You couldn't say, "OK, Jim, hit a B flat." He was not like a Frank Sinatra who could read a chart and sing. He didn't have a whole lot of input on the arrangements. And lazy as hell. Would not practice. Loved to jam and sing blues songs, but never bothered to learn more than one verse.
PAUL ROTHCHILD: His talent was in creating dramatic situations with his voice and with his persona on stage, directing entire rock audiences into the drama in his mind. And he was very successful at it—more successful as a dramatic performer than he was as a singer, live, because his singing frequently failed him, but his sense of drama never did.
DIGBY DIEHL: The Doors, more than any other group I can think of, brought theater to rock and roll. When you see a video now, sometimes there's a whole intense little story told in there, and that's what the Doors used to do with one song. Morrison was a video performer before his time.
JAC: The short film Mark Abramson shot for 'Break On Through' helped us move the Doors around the country without transporting their bodies. It was one of the earliest pre-MTV clips aimed at the TV bandstand shows which were a staple of late afternoon programming. Groups might come and lip sync to the record, but no actual performance took place because the station, God forbid, would then have to pay union minimums. It was the easiest kind of show for a station, cheap and fast. Kids enjoyed seeing themselves and each other.
The live performance scene was equally sketchy. Except for well-developed venues in the largest cities, an act had to be really big to fill the converted warehouses and old movie theaters that were pressed into service in the smaller towns. And you couldn't tour unless you had a very big hit and could convince the local radio stations or key DJs to publicize the performance, for which they generally received a percentage. Aside from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, the big arenas were in the future. But the Doors were getting there. They were a mesmerizing act, with Jim Morrison taking audiences to the very edge of the known world.
VINCE TREANOR: Incredible performances! The rocket's red glare of the Doors! Anyone that ever attended a Doors performance live, and you have the albums, every time you play a track, can you forget? Can it not bring to memory—vivid, absolute, almost hallucinatory memory—that hour and a half, two hours, that you spent in that hall, experiencing the Doors?
It's dark and it's humid, and there's this sound, this crowd out there, they're not loud, occasionally they'll whistle. "Yeah, let's do it!" Or "Where are the Doors?" And you look out, and there are these jewels in the night, the stars in the heavens—no, that's not a star, that's an exit sign, that's a joint being lit, and of course the place would turn into instant exhalations of everything smokeable. And that sweaty smell and that animal existence of thousands of people waiting for a cataclysmic event to occur. The trumpets are about to blow and St. Peter is going to walk on the cloud. And suddenly there's this stirring behind the stage. A door opens and there's a flash of light and you can see movement, in this dusky dull dark glow you can see these ghostly figures walk up on stage. And nothing. And then you hear from John's drums, datdat datdat, and then notes, dee, dong. Ray would have the volume on the organ way down, just a little signal passed between two musicians: "I have the note, Robby. Here, I'm going to give it to you—here, Robby, listen, catch it, catch it." And Robby gave it to the other five strings. Very quietly you can hear Robby, subtly tuning that guitar. And then there was silence. Time stopped. There wasn't any life. And suddenly that one person came across that stage, and there was a sound like crashing waves on a beach.
DIGBY DIEHL: Jim would work himself into these frenzies. I would arrive with him and sit backstage and watch him in an hour or so drink or toke himself up into the performer that went on stage. Often he'd arrive as the shy poet, and he would become that wild, theatrical sexual figure.
BILL GRAHAM: When you saw Morrison performing and then you looked at the audience, you realized there was something very rare. I saw it a few times, about four or five people that I've seen on stage and on the screen. Otis Redding. Perhaps Jimi Hendrix. On the female side, Ava Gardner, serpent of all serpents, panther of all panthers. She more than anyone on the female side had what Jim Morrison had. It exuded, like steam came out of there. Jim had that, a sensuality, an animal sensuality.
ELLEN VOGT: He was beautiful, like Elvis. He had that beautiful white skin, perfect features.
JAC: I remember a line from a story in Rolling Stone by Jerry Hopkins: "Morrison is so pretty he looks like he was made up on the phone by two fags."
EVE BABITZ: That whole thing with the hair and everything. And all of us women encouraged him to do it. His girl friend Pamela, my sister, all the women around him, we loved it when the hair was long and he looked so great and fabulous. He looked like a girl.
STEVE HARRIS: He knew how to look at a camera. Better than any rock star I've ever known. He posed. He wanted people to notice how terrific he looked. Jim had a degree in film from UCLA. He had seen classic movies. To see Jim on stage was really seeing the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich. If he ran his hand through his hair, or shook his head like Monroe, if he posed like a Dietrich, and stared out like a Garbo, it would really have an effect with that tall, lean, mean masculine look of Jim's. When I mentioned that to him he did not disagree, he understood what I was talking about.
BILL GRAHAM: Keep your eyes on Jim, watch him just move, the way he goes toward the microphone, what he does with the microphone stand, but mainly how he gets from one space to another, how he prowls around the stage, and there's that, if you want to call it, snake, panther, slithery whispery movement to him that exuded sexuality, sensuality. Especially dressed dark, the black leather pants—
DIGBY DIEHL:—So tight they were like ballet dancer's tights, and they left no doubt as to his proportions—
BRUCE BOTNICK:—At least he wasn't stuffing a sock in there.
BILL GRAHAM: No underwear. Jim Morrison doesn't wear 'em. Very powerful statement. I think he had a far greater effect on young men's habits than when Clark Gable took off his shirt in a movie in front of a woman. Young women gave themselves to it willingly. When Jim took his shirt off, women seemed desirous of him.
He told me one of the turning points for him was in Cleveland. Must have been about ten thousand people, they did four or five encores and the crowd wouldn't leave, the house lights were on, and he said, "I went out and took a bow, and what scared me, Bill, I looked at all these women screaming at me, and I realized they all wanted to fuck me."
And men envied that attraction Jim had. I think he challenged them. For the men, this was Jim Morrison—"What does he eat, do, wear, think, I want to do that." Adulation came on such a level, but it wasn't just bobby soxers screaming about Sinatra—that was just "aaaahh." People followed Jim across the country like the Crusades.
JAC: By the time we were ready to equip our studio at La Cienega, most everyone was moving to eight-track recorders using one-inch tape. The logic was obvious: more command over the sound of each instrument so we could make changes later or sweeten by adding voices, effects or more instruments. We were approaching the holy grail of total control in both recording and mixdown.
When we were about to record the Doors' "The Soft Parade" album, 3M had just introduced a new recorder with an unusual arrangement of redundant tapes and amplifiers which took the excess signal at the top of its dynamic range and transferred it over to a second recording amplifier and tape. The cost was much higher but the results were noticeably better. Of course we had Dolby for every track and a very elaborate, home-brew relay switching mechanism to toggle them between record and playback. Our total studio bill for mixing console, tape recorders, Dolbys, playback amps, customized speaker cabinetry, microphones, et cetera, was $175,000.
From eight-track the industry moved to sixteen, then twenty-four, then thirty-two, and the only certainty was that the cost of producing an album rose in direct ratio to the numbers of tracks used in the recording.
In retrospect I doubt whether having more tracks would have made the first Doors album or Love or Tim Buckley any better. That was the technical road we were going down, but good sound by itself would never be enough. The success of any album would always be determined by the quality of the songs and the singers.
BRUCE BOTNICK: That was a really, really creative time. I had "Sergeant Pepper" a good three months before it came out. I remember playing it back in one of the mastering studios and absolutely flipping out. I brought the Doors in—I don't think Jim was there, but I brought them in and we listened, and our jaws dropped.
And what it did for us, it said: "Let's not do it the same way we did before, let's invent new techniques of recording. No holds barred."
PAUL ROTHCHILD: It was the beginning of today's ferocious hunt after The Sound.
BRUCE BOTNICK: We developed a lot of techniques. In 'Horse Latitudes,' there's a sound of what sounds like ocean slowing down, which I did by hand on a tape machine.
PAUL ROTHCHILD: We were into exploring "organic" sounds. What happens if we take this guitar and put paper clips all over it—what kind of sound would that make?
ROBBY KRIEGER: And backwards tracks—it was fun.
PAUL ROTHCHILD: And we were inventing electronic sounds.
BRUCE BOTNICK: Paul Beaver had the very first synthesizers. He was an unique individual. Probably one of the brighter people around. He passed away at a very young age. In fact they say he didn't really die. Supposedly he knew people from other planets, and he went up to Mount Shasta, where the flying saucers came down and re-fueled and got energy, and went away with them. Anyway, Paul Beaver brought his synthesizer in. We set it up so that Jim played one key and it would put a real eerie edge on his voice on 'Strange Days.' This was our first use of a synthesizer.
JAC: During the recording of the first album the Doors were on their best behavior, which with Jim was a very relative term indeed. The album had turned out to be everything I might have wished for and the combination of Rothchild and the Doors worked as I was sure it would. Paul knew their psychology, and they had learned to trust each other.
The beginning of a session is usually slow, as the participants shake off the outside world and begin to adjust to the job at hand. Paul got them going as quickly as he could. When the Doors recorded, the studio was rarely broken down for another act, which made getting the mike balances a lot easier and kept the sound consistent. The Doors owned Studio B for the duration and at the end of each session we double-locked all the doors so nothing would be disturbed.
PAT FARALLA: Paul would come in the back door, briefcase, hair pulled back tight, always tight T-shirts, tight long shirts, and tight, tight jeans—I mean bound. He'd head for the studio, no chit-chat, no small talk, going straight for what he was going for. And he was ready for business. He was the briefcase.
JAC: The briefcase was famous. It held everything he might possibly need, pitch pipe, the latest gadgets, cigarettes, whatever drug was up for the evening.
MARK ABRAMSON: I used to marvel at it. Paul would open it and it was crammed, but everything was always perfectly in place and it always stayed perfectly in place. How did he do that? Everything about Paul stayed perfectly in place. His pants always looked perfectly pressed. How did he do that? And he'd smoke dope and only get more intense. How did he do that?
PAT FARALLA: He was an absolute loner in many ways, totally into himself, totally immersed in his work, into what he's in charge of, into what he's creating. His mind never stopped. His intelligence and his indifference, in a way, always attracted me, and I think attracted other people to him. Driven, powerful, the master.
JAC: Like all great producers, Paul was part actor, part chameleon, part broken field runner. He had a way of mirroring the space the artist was coming from, or a way to insert himself at exactly the artist's level, even to their speech patterns—he could do a "Hey, man" to the artist, though he didn't say "Hey, man" to me. And he was also a field general. Coupled to his deep knowledge of music was a pursuit of perfection and the militancy to achieve it. Paul was not an easy personality, but most recognized that he was usually right. And agree or disagree, as Paul went for Take 35 you always knew that he had the best interests of the album foremost in his mind.
BILL SIDDONS: Jac knew the right guy to work with the Doors. Rothchild was the perfect call. Because of Jim, it was Chaos Incorporated. Paul had to try to control the uncontrollable.
PAUL ROTHCHILD: Control is a word that didn't work around Morrison.
MIRANDI BABITZ: I don't think Jim was ever the greatest guy. I think he was a morose, depressed, moody, violent person. I just remember him being mostly furious at Pam about something, and her being on a rage at him, and the two of them duking it out and then making up and being happy and loving and then fighting. They brought all their problems and played 'em out in glorious Technicolor.
DIANE GARDINER: There was this swashbuckling thing going on, you know, the way swordfighters fight on the staircase, up and down.
JAC: We would continually receive Morrison storm warnings. Hurricane Jim and Cyclone Pam. Wherever they were was the epicenter. Pam has thrown all Jim's books out the window. She has shredded his clothes. She has scrawled FAG on the mirror. Jim has put a knife to her throat. The two of them have dropped acid and are playing chicken on the railroad track. Someone has to drive them to the UCLA neuropsychiatric unit. Again and again.
ROBBY KRIEGER: We were supposed to record 'When The Music's Over.' I got a call about 3am. This happened about once a week: "We're in trouble here, you'd better come over." He had taken acid with Pam the night before. I was going to take them to Griffith Park to cool out. Jim starts out the door and he doesn't have his pants on. "Jim, your pants." I told him to be sure to come to the studio by twelve. And he never shows.
JAC: Another bulletin—a mercy mission, to resuscitate Jim. This time he has made it to the studio, but in terrible shape, and he's not coming up with the vocal for 'You're Lost, Little Girl.' So they bring in a girl to go down on him. In one version of the story it's Pam bareass in the vocal booth, in another it's either a volunteer or a hooker.
DAVID ANDERLE: There was a deadline. Jac was getting antsy—you know how Jac can be. I was working at the office, came into the studio, and there was one of those crazy vibes, and Paul had a certain look he got when something weird was happening. Jim was barely able to stand, so they brought this girl in, and she was giving him a head job, and not only couldn't he sing, he couldn't get it hard.
JAC: They did get that vocal. Success. A Fellatio Alger story. Heroically, Paul finished the album, titled, not inappropriately, "Strange Days."
PAUL WILLIAMS: I remember Jac playing me the acetate at his apartment, and I said to him that it just felt like everybody involved would be in jail in six months. I meant that in a positive way—it was that revolutionary. It was outrageous.
"Strange Days" indeed EKS-74014
BILL HARVEY: For the cover, I didn't want to have to deal with the group, it was too difficult. I talked to them, and they agreed instead on something Fellini-esque, a troupe of strolling players idea. I shot at Sniffen Court, a mews between Lexington and 3rd Avenue, in New York. I gathered people from all over. I went up to this strange residential hotel, on Broadway in the Seventies. Very, very old place. Odd people were there. I was looking for these twin midgets. I knocked on the door and the door opens and I look down and there they are. I came in, and they had all their clothes laid out on the bed. They were as neat as pins, I mean everything was just perfect. They were just sweet people, awfully nice men. "Do you want us to wear this? Or do you want us to wear that?" I got a strong man from the circus. I found an acrobat guy. I got the photographer's assistant to put makeup on and I let him juggle some balls. I took a taxi driver and pulled him out of the cab and said, "For five bucks, will you stand over there and blow a trumpet?" Because he had on this battered old hat and I thought, "He's perfect."
JAC: The Doors had been briefly managed by two gentleman who, out of kindness, I will refer to as B and D. Their first strategic move had been to try and hijack the band off Elektra and into a label deal in which they—B and D—could participate. As close as I had been to the group, the arrival of these characters floored me. We had been so scrupulous in getting the boys the best of everything and, without telling us, they pick people who were the antithesis of class and with no demonstrated skill at career building for a rock act. I mentally gave the band six months to get wise and was relieved when Robby came to me in the studio one evening and confided that the group had decided to dump their managers and would I advance them $50,000 for anticipated legal costs. I never wrote a check with greater pleasure.
My investment in the Doors was as much artistic and emotional as it was financial. Elektra was on a solid footing, and though losing the Doors' record sales would make a horrific dent in our future revenues, the band wasn't critical to the company's stability. What was far more important was the longer view, a band that could make a string of great albums.
In addition to Elektra being responsible for Doors albums, we needed to coordinate their tours and club dates. Steve Harris was our designated ambassador and he would keep me posted on the band's mood. As long as Morrison was behaving I stayed in the background. Over the years I purposely held back from getting too intimate with the artists. I am not their best pal or hanger-on; I run their record company. To get too close erodes your objectivity and authority, and there may come a day when you will need both.
The Doors badly needed a wrangler who would get done what needed to be done, and they found the ideal candidate in Bill Siddons. He was still a teenager when he took the job, but he learned quickly and worked very well with us.
Bill Siddons with Ray Manzarek
BILL SIDDONS: I was eighteen, and I had no idea what my responsibilities were, except to help with the equipment, and I didn't even know how to plug it in. I think it was my second weekend, we did a show on Long Island. We got there about four and they went on at eight, and Jim just hung out in the bar. By the time he went on stage he was completely dysfunctional. Fifteen minutes into the show, he started trying to take his clothes off. Densmore got up and walked offstage and was screaming in the dressing room, "I can't do this! I'm going home! I don't wanna do this any more!"
I went over to the bar, paranoid about what I had screwed up. I asked the bartender how much Jim had drunk. He said he didn't know, but a lot. I asked him to look at the tab. Twenty-six shots of VO.
DIANE GARDINER: Jim would always get drunk. We were on the road, and we stopped somewhere, you know these god-awful places when you're touring. It was a bait store. They had cages and cages of crickets, big huge cages, and Jim bought every cricket they had and just let them loose. They were all over the parking lot.
STEVE HARRIS: There were a lot of reports coming in that Jim was drinking pretty heavily, so I went with him to Boston.
Here was the deal: I was going to drink exactly what Jim did, consume what he consumed, and if I felt, as if I were an artist, that I couldn't get on stage, then Jim's had enough.
We spent the afternoon walking around Cambridge, and went into Harvard Yard, and I was sitting there and Jim was sketching on a pad. I would say, "Gee, Jim, that's beautiful," and he'd crumple up the paper and toss it into a trash can. I read recently where some of his original lithographs went for ten thousand apiece . . .
Before the show, the two of us went to dinner at a seafood restaurant. Jim was pretty boozed up, but he was feeling well enough to perform. So I said to myself, "I think we've made it." We were waiting for a cab to pick us up to take us to the gig, and it was late. Some kids came by in a car, and they said, "Hey, we're going to see you! Want a ride?" So we jumped in the back of the car, and the driver turned around and said to Jim, "Hey, man, you want some acid?" I looked at Jim and said, "No, man, don't do it." And Jim looked at me with steel eyes and said, "Don't ever tell me what to do." But he did say to the driver, "No thanks." And the gig came off terrific. Jim knew he had to conquer them and he did. First thing he did after he came off the stage was come up to me and say, "Steve, thanks a lot for keeping me straight."
JAC: In December 1967, another Morrison communiqué, datelined New Haven—Jim had been busted for obscenity.
Before the show Jim was engrossed with a girl backstage, actually in a shower stall, and a cop came by and rousted them. Jim sassed back and the cop maced him. Jim made a big thing of it during the performance, exercising his First Amendment rights on stage, and with cops posted throughout the hall, he was arrested.
That was a defining moment in pop culture: Jim Morrison, the first rock star to be busted while performing. Life magazine gave it a multi-page spread.
This and all the fuss that followed re-legitimized the Doors as a counter-culture group, and advance orders for their next album, "Waiting for the Sun," shot up to three quarters of a million units.
As this album neared completion the Morrison storm warnings grew in volume and frequency, including Jim passing out on the studio floor, peeing his pants. Fulltime care was indicated.
I talked about the problem with Paul. We reviewed the very short list of candidates who could get the job done and decided on Bob Neuwirth.
DAVID ANDERLE: Because that's what Bobby had done with Dylan.
PAUL ROTHCHILD: Neuwirth was someone Dylan could trust. He was a painter, street hipster, very bright, paranoid, big scene guy, the guy who is referred to as the star's star, America's guest. He was never Dylan, he was never Albert Grossman, he was never Jim. Bobby was second man. But he's also the guy who could get to the Number 1 man. And he was the only guy I knew who could outdrink Morrison, out-hip him.
BOB NEUWIRTH: I was living in New York and it was really cold that winter. In conversation with Paul on the phone, he said, "It's really warm out here," and I said, "Well, let's go."
We moved into the Landmark, on Franklin, right by the Magic Castle. Paul discovered the place. The only people staying there in those days were the Ice Capades, and Cannonball Adderley's band, and a lot of magicians. We had our own private phone lines installed. And it became Action Central. Everything was going in nine thousand different directions. The motel became like a zoo. Everybody started staying there, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Eric Andersen, members of the Committee, actors—it became another show business hotel, a contemporary one. And it became really pretty zoney.
Jim would hang out late at night, taking drunken dives into the swimming pool, waking everybody up. Luckily he was like a champion diver, he was very coordinated, athletic, so he didn't hurt himself, but it was pretty bizarre.
It became a matter of trying to keep him interested in making a record. It was a lot of cajoling. I represented the record company. Jim knew that I was there to try to bounce ideas around him, and he didn't want to be tricked into anything. He was his own man and he knew what he was doing. Even if he was giving the impression of being out of control, he pretty much knew what was up.
A great example is, one time he came into my room late at night and he picked up my guitar—which he didn't play—and he threw it toward the wall, in a typical irresponsible "I'll walk out this window and nobody will ever see me again" and as he threw the guitar against the wall, I thought, "That's it, I'm gonna kill him," because it was of some value to me, this guitar. I was coming off the chair to punch him up, and I saw the guitar like a feather stop in midair and land on the sofa bed that was pushed up against the wall. So he had control.
There were lots of times when he pretended to be more out of control than he was. He had a method behind all of it, he had a great sense of his own image, and he played it. Scamp.
Elektra publicity still
ROBBY KRIEGER: There was a lot of Jim getting drunk and bringing drunken friends into the studio and Paul throwing them out. Some heavy, heavy scenes. Heavy pill taking and stuff. That was rock and roll to the fullest, I would say.
BOB NEUWIRTH: Morrison had always been a hangout artist, basically. So there was a lot of socializing built into the job. In point of fact, the only way to relate to Jim was to drink along with him, so there were times when the both of us were pretty much in the bag.
JOHN DENSMORE: Bobby hanging around Jim got to be a real good mimic. One night we were recording 'Five to One,' and Jim was fucked up, inebriated, and we didn't know what to do. So Bobby did the vocal. And he had it all down. The way he was hanging onto the mike and slurring his words, "Heyyy, why don't you come over and get close to meee"—it was hysterical. Jim was watching. He laughed, yeah, he really laughed. I don't know whether we got the vocal that night. Probably the next day.
BOB NEUWIRTH: My favorite part of the record was 'My Wild Love.' Jim heard it as some kind of misty moors folk song. He wanted to record it with a banjo, and the rest of the Doors didn't. It became a real head-butting thing with Jim: "If I can't record it and do it the way I want, I'm not gonna record anything at all." I was casting around for an idea of how to solve this Irish Celtic dilemma. I said, "Let's try to do it a capella." Everybody went for it. Jac came in. He was, I'm sure, in such a state of relief to see that Jim was actually there and that the log jam had been kind of opened up, that he came out into the studio and took his place in the lineup. Yes, Jac Holzman did in fact take part in the a capella version of 'My Wild Love.' I think of Jac as a recording artist.
JAC: The two tracks on "Waiting for the Sun" that stand out—for very different reasons—are 'Hello, I Love You' and 'The Unknown Soldier.'
When I first listened to the Doors' original demo disc, recorded even before they were signed to Columbia, my son Adam loved 'Hello, I Love You,' which was about the second song Jim had written.
ADAM HOLZMAN: When the Doors first came out I thought that was just the end of the world. For years I did nothing but live, eat and breathe the Doors.
TONY GLOVER: I remember Nina telling me about Adam coming out of the shower naked with a teddy bear on his head. She said, "What are you doing?" He said, "I'm gonna be a rock and roll star."
ADAM HOLZMAN: I always tried to copy Ray. I tried to figure out his shit off the record. And from the little music books that were always wrong, always an awful transcription, never right. Jim showed me a couple of things. I was working on some little melodies on my recorder, and Jim said, "What have you got there?" And I played this stupid little melody, and he said, "Oh, that's kind of nice."
JAC: When they were doing "Waiting for the Sun," Adam reminded me about 'Hello, I Love You.' He said, "Dad, I think that's a hit single." He was all of ten at the time but so into their music that I called Paul. Paul reported that the Doors didn't want to do it because it was one of their earliest tunes: "They think it's too ancient." I said, "Look, do it. If it doesn't come out right, I'll eat the studio costs." They recorded it.
ADAM HOLZMAN: And it was their second gold single.
JAC: 'The Unknown Soldier' emerged from the universal Vietnam consciousness of the time. Steve Harris and Paul Rothchild were present at the creation.
STEVE HARRIS: We were in New York. Jim was really drunk, in a good mood, playful, and out of his leather pants that he never seemed to take off he took a piece of paper, and showed me and Paul a song he had written called 'Unknown Soldier.' He handed it to us and laid back on the bed, face in the pillow, then raised up and just began retching into a wastepaper basket. Paul and I looked at each other and said, "America's Number 1 star, folks."
JAC: Here is America in the middle of the Vietnam War. Tens of thousands of protesters are marching on the Pentagon. Morrison is the son of a career Navy officer, a commander of a warship, and Morrison has managed to fail his draft medical. Grunts in Vietnam are playing the Doors, and Morrison is at home performing the anti-war 'Unknown Soldier' live.
As a stage performer no one is more dramatic than Jim, so much so that Rolling Stone is getting on his case for going over the top with his writhing and falling. I remember one of their headlines: "Much Ado About Nothing, or, Humpty Morrison's Great Fall." And 'Unknown Soldier' is the greatest fall—Morrison is "dropped" with a rimshot by John Densmore and he collapses "dead." They gave those performances all they had.
VINCE TREANOR: The Hollywood Bowl, right around July 4, 1968, unbelievable.
RON JACOBS: My radio station, KHJ, promoted that concert. Those were the days when things were (in alphabetical order) alright, bad, bitchen, bosco banana, boss banana, boss trip, burn, choice, clean, cool, crazy, fab, fantastic, fine, freaky, funky, a gas, great, groovy, happening, heavy, hip, hubba hubba, jeter neat, like wow, makakasaka, marvy, neat, neato-frito, noble, out of sight, psychedelic, raspy, righteous, sock it to me, something else, squishy, stock, super, swingin', terrific, too much, torpedo, total, tough, wild, wow, zunzabah. The Doors concert sold out, and it was the worst mob scene I had ever seen, worse than the Monkees or anyone, fans crashing through cops and all the football-player-size security to get backstage, get at them.
VINCE TREANOR: Unfortunately that performance was a little tighter than it should have been, nervous tighter. Nevertheless we blew the audience right out of the seats, right over the hill, right down to Sunset Boulevard.
ROBBY KRIEGER: Vince was into power. He loved to be the loudest one around.
VINCE TREANOR: When it was time for the 'Unknown Soldier' shot—there's a pause and then this shot rings out—the timing was to pace that moment, milk it for its theatrical best. I don't think a broadside from the battleship Missouri could sound more impressive. The noise was that great, people were calling in to find out what happened.
JAC: Mark Abramson did a film version, and of course the Doors were always up for that, because Jim and Ray had been film students at UCLA.
JOHN DENSMORE: I guess we had a loose idea that for the execution section we were going to tie Jim up and shoot him. Mark filmed us in Venice, walking down from the house to the pier, and he cut in World War II footage. It was sort of End the War, lyrically, not in reality—Vietnam was roaring along, so we decided to end it ourselves.
We had a giant argument with Bill Graham, trying to get him to play it at the Fillmore East in the middle of our concert. He took offense to it, you know. How did we twist Bill Graham's arm? Somehow. In the rideout, we played our instruments live, behind the film as it ended. We became like live stereo, and the whole audience stood up and started dancing around like the World War II victory folk in the film. And I mean, you know, we ended the Vietnam war at the Fillmore East in 1968. What a feeling.
DIGBY DIEHL: If Ray was the musical leader of the group, Jim was the emotional leader, and he carried them directly down the dark tunnel. A very ominous, threatening figure on stage, always seeming on the brink of something terrible, exploding in violence. He liked to think he was taking himself and the audience out to the edge of a new, new experience, out to the fringes, push it to the limits.
JAC: The Morrison alerts were a continuing barrage, including one at Force Five, from the Singer Bowl on Long Island.
JEFF SILVERMAN: I had gotten a really good 35mm camera for a high school graduation present. These were the days before press credentials. If you had a good camera you just went to where the action was.
I get up to the stage, and I'm standing there, literally using the stage as a place to balance my elbows, so I'm this close to the Doors.
There was some incredible eye contact going on between Morrison and this Hispanic girl. She and Morrison were most definitely playing to each other most of the night. In the break of a song, absolute silence on the stage, he just looks over to her—I'm actually standing right between them—and grabs his crotch with one hand, and says, "Mexican whore, come suck my prick."
I look back in time to see this big guy she was with. I had never seen—it was a combination of absolute shock and real hate. And he grabbed a chair, one of those wooden folding chairs, and just heaped it on the stage, and all of a sudden chairs start flying.
VINCE TREANOR: The place came apart so fast it was like watching a school of fish or a flock of birds change direction. Jim was delivering his message—be free, test the limits—and on that particular night in that particular place, instead of being seeds on fertile ground it was grains of black powder.
RAY MANZAREK: Kids were breaking chairs, throwing pieces of wood and chairs at the cops, the cops were running into the audience, beating on the kids.
JEFF SILVERMAN: The place is pandemonium. And Morrison is just dancing around, having the time of his life. The cops try to get him off the stage, but couldn't move him. At one point he laid down and the cops couldn't even lift him.
VINCE TREANOR: Kids behind the stage picked up this eight- or ten-foot beam like a giant baseball bat and tried to knock us off the stage with it. They literally picked it up and swept the stage with it. People were hurt, equipment was stolen, a tremendous amount of damage was done.
After the audience was cleared out, there was just wood, like enormous tooth picks, laying crisscrossed, like pickup sticks, all over the ground, just shredded wood wherever you looked.
RAY MANZAREK: A sea of slats. One girl got hit in the head, and she was brought backstage, and Jim ministered to her, he was cleaning her wounds, ministering unto a girl with a little wound on her head.
JAC: That was the summer of 1968. In the fall, the Doors did a European tour with Jefferson Airplane, and from the other side of the world we received more Morrison communiqués, datelined Amsterdam.
Grace Slick and Paul Kantner recall the two bands walking down the street, Jim swinging a bottle like a gunfighter, kids pressing drugs on them—Amsterdam was a huge, open drug city—Jim downing everything on the spot, a big block of hashish, then a half a dozen beers before the show. The Airplane are opening, and in the middle of their set, on comes Jim, uninvited, gyrating to 'Plastic Fantastic Lover,' one of the Airplane's more up-tempo tunes. Mischievously, the Airplane begins to play ever faster, and to keep up Jim has to spin with greater speed, till he looks like a pinwheel, then collapses and is out of the Doors show. Ray has to sing the entire set. He does great.
BILL SIDDONS: Jim was hospitalized for two days because he ate so much hash it almost shut down his bodily functions.
