Chapter 26
The police chief and the studio magician ... Hendrix is one ... Joplin makes two ... And a poet is evicted from the Morrison Hotel
JAC: All this time, Jim Morrison had been waiting to go to trial in Miami. And the Doors had another album to record, what became "Morrison Hotel." They were using the La Cienega studio.
BRUCE BOTNICK: Rolling Stone had printed a big picture of Jim with WANTED on it, and he taped it up in the control room. We drew a beard on it.
JAC: Jim was still the prankster he had always been.
BRUCE BOTNICK: On La Cienega in those days, every Tuesday night was gallery night—you could go gallery-hopping, walk up and down, have some wine and cheese.
PAUL ROTHCHILD: We were in the studio late with the Doors, less Jim, going over some arrangements.
BRUCE BOTNICK: In the console we had a little panel, with a sign that Fritz Richmond put there, DO NOT OPERATE EQUIPMENT, and under that panel we used to keep the dope. We had this one jar with KD on it, for Killer Destroyer. And we had things out, hashish and papers. We had the lights very dim—
PAUL ROTHCHILD:—All of a sudden the door opens and in comes Jim, dressed nicely, with some gentlemen in tuxedos and women in evening gowns. He had been at a function, picked them up and said, "I'm going to the studio to record. Would you like to come along?" These wealthy folks and political figures thought that would be a very good way to slum for the evening. Jim said to us, "Please continue, these are my friends."
BRUCE BOTNICK: One was Laurence Harvey, the movie actor. Paul said to me, "Do you recognize any of the others?" I turned around very casually. I said, "The man behind you is Thomas Redden, police chief of the city of Los Angeles." Paul said to the boys, "That's good, let's do another one," and he bent very professionally over the control board, and when he straightened up, everything was gone. Paul was a magician.
I'm looking over at Morrison, and he is in hysterics. He planned the whole thing.
HENRY DILTZ: My partner Gary Burden and I had done the Crosby, Stills and Nash album cover, and the Doors called us. Ray Manzarek said he had seen this place in downtown LA called Morrison Hotel. It was a flop house on Hope Street, with a sign that said "ROOMS FROM $2.50." The clerk at the desk wouldn't let us take pictures, but then he went to the elevator and the guys ran in and got into position in the easy chairs and I started snapping with a wide-angle lens, and then I went across the street with a telephoto, and they hit the mark, perfect.
Transients at the Morrison Hotel EKS-75007
Jim said, "Let's go get a drink." It's skid row, wino bars. We saw one called Hard Rock Café. We took pictures outside, and then inside, with the four Doors lined up on bar stools and these gentlemen behind them—this is before the days of "homeless," these are gentlemen who have left home.
After we finished Jim said, "Let's go to a couple more bars." He and I went, and he bought this old guy some beers, listened to him talk. Jim liked to do that. He would just look you in the eye and listen to you, with this bemused look, and he did it with this old guy, hardly said a word, just drinking in his life story.
The Hard Rock picture went on the back of the album. A year or so later they got a call from a guy in England: "We're starting a café over here. Would you mind if we use that name?" The beginning of the empire. And to this day, young kids ask me what covers I did, and I say Crosby, Stills and Nash; the Eagles; Jackson Browne; and on and on, and I say "Morrison Hotel," and they go, "Dude! You did "Morrison Hotel?" Whoa!" It's the one thing I can say that will get a reaction from young kids, all around the world.
JAC: The Doors' contract was coming to an end and we threw a lavish party for them at the New York Hilton, in the presidential suite, a duplex penthouse with a 360° view. Nearly everyone had gone home, and just as Pam and Jim were leaving she said, "Well, in case we're on Atlantic next year, thanks for the swell party." I died. Jim put her up to it. He was wearing his sly, "gotcha" smile as they shuffled out.
The Doors had promised me the right of first negotiation, which meant I would be the first to go up against their attorney, Abe Somer, who wasn't a fan of mine and who had very close ties to A&M Records. I had to devise a strategy that would defang Abe and give the boys what they deserved.
BILL SIDDONS: Abe was fiercely intelligent.
SUZANNE HELMS: He was another of the fastest thinkers I ever knew, up there with Jac.
BILL SIDDONS: When Abe went in to do the renegotiation, the first thing he did was have the label audited, to try to find out where they were stealing money from us, because all labels steal from artists, by definition.
Abe said to us, "Our settlement is anywhere from thirty to seventy percent, but fifty percent is a nice target. If you get half what you're asking for, half of what the auditors can come up with, that's a good settlement."
Jac gave him one hundred percent of the audit settlement—and gave the Doors their publishing back. Abe was flabbergasted.
JAC: Abe and I had been around the course before. After the Doors' second album he had advised them to go on strike, not to record again until I improved their royalty rate. I didn't take well to that approach and held out, not reacting. After the stalemate had gone on for several months the Doors dropped by one day, and we had a pleasant talk. They really wanted to go back into the studio, but Abe had told them not to until he got them more money. I said, "I have no objection to giving you more money. What I do object to is the way a lawyer interposed himself in my relationship with you. All you had to do was ask." I raised their royalty to seven percent.
Now, as part of our new contract for an additional album, I had increased the royalty again, to ten percent, and I gave them back the twenty-five percent of the publishing held by Elektra. The label had made a fortune with the Doors and they had given us a presence and credibility that we could and did use to attract and sign other artists. It was the right and proper thing for me to do.
BILL SIDDONS: It was amazing, a totally ballsy move by Jac. And to me, that's why Jac was a great man. He totally knew who he was dealing with, and he went, "I can either allow this lawyer to make me the Doors' enemy, or I can show them that I am their friend." Negotiations were over that day. There was no way we would go to another label or do anything else. It cost Jac millions of dollars, because that's what the Doors' catalog turned out to be worth. But it got him what he needed, which was to keep the Doors loyal to him.
I thought that really showed Jac's colors. He's El Supremo for a reason. I have always admired Jac Holzman for those kinds of moves, that I saw twenty different ways during my relationship of working with him. The guy knew what he was doing, and he ran a record company that had a lot of heart and soul and was founded on music first. It wasn't founded just on making him a millionaire.
ROBBY KRIEGER: At the time we didn't realize what a great guy Jac was. A guy who is able to succeed without screwing people. He's really the only guy I know who is a totally great businessman and totally generous.
JAC: The summer that Judy Collins recorded 'Amazing Grace,' Jim Morrison finally went on trial in Miami—August, 1970.
The proceedings were politically charged and painful, the verdict convoluted. Jim was found not guilty on the felony charge of lewd and lascivious behavior, and not guilty of a misdemeanor charge of public drunkenness, but guilty of a misdemeanor charge of profanity and a misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure. The judge sentenced him to sixty days of hard labor for profanity, and for indecent exposure six months of hard labor plus a $500 fine. He was expected to serve two months, with the other four months on probation, plus an additional two years probation. Jim remained free on bail pending appeal. In other words, it wasn't over and it wasn't going to be over any time soon.
ROBBY KRIEGER: Everything was coming down and going bad because of the Miami bullshit trip. But in a way I think Jim might have wanted that. He didn't like his image any more.
PAUL ROTHCHILD: He was unhappy with his role as a national sex symbol, and did everything in his power to obliterate that. He gained enormous weight, he grew a beard, he looked ugly.
STEVE HARRIS: My wife and I were going to have dinner with Jim and Pamela, and I was sitting in a back booth, and Jim walked in with Pam and I didn't recognize him. He walked by and someone said, "Isn't that Jim Morrison?" He had gotten very heavy, very jowly, and his hair even started receding.
MIRANDI BABITZ: I was so shocked when I saw him, because he was so fat and flabby and pale and strange-looking.
DIANE GARDINER: He was not comfortable in his skin any more. He was a changed person. He would simply sit in the corner in my apartment and watch people. The decline in him was amazing. Let's face it, he framed himself, he shocked himself.
MICHAEL FORD: He evicted himself from the Morrison Hotel.
JAC: While Jim was going through his ordeal by trial, Jimi Hendrix OD'd, in London, aged twenty-seven. In October, Janis Joplin OD'd, in the Landmark Hotel in Los Angeles, also twenty-seven. Jim was approaching his twenty-seventh birthday. He began to refer to himself as "number three."
