1. James Douglas Morrison The Doors
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6. James Morrison The Doors Death
7. James Morrison

James Douglas Morrison (December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971) was an American singer, songwriter and poet, who served as the lead vocalist of the rock band the Doors. Due to his poetic lyrics, distinctive voice, wild personality, unpredictable and erratic performances, and the dramatic circumstances surrounding his life and early death, Morrison is regarded by music critics and fans as one of the most iconic and influential frontmen in rock history. Since his death, his fame has endured as one of popular culture's most rebellious and oft-displayed icons, representing the generation gap and youth counterculture.^[1]

He wrote several books about Jim Morrison and The Doors, including No One Gets Out Of Here Alive with Jerry Hopkins. As reported in this article, many people have referred to this book as 'Nothing In Here But Lies'. Sugerman began working for The Doors when he was 12 years old. Jim Morrison hired him to answer fan mail. James Morrison, Actor: 24. A filmmaker, playwright, poet, actor, singer/songwriter and yoga teacher, James Morrison was born in Utah and is a product of Alaska. He began his acting career as a clown and wire walker for the Carson and Barnes Wild Animal Circus and served his theatrical apprenticeship with the Alaska Repertory Theatre. Thank you to everyone who has already listened to my brand new album ‘You’re Stronger Than You Know’. Here’s a peek behind the curtain into how it came about!

Together with Ray Manzarek, Morrison co-founded the Doors during the summer of 1965 in Venice, California. The band spent two years in obscurity until shooting to prominence with their number-one single in the United States, 'Light My Fire,' taken from their self-titled debut album. Morrison wrote or co-wrote many of the Doors' songs, including 'Light My Fire', 'Break On Through (To the Other Side)', 'The End', 'Moonlight Drive', 'People Are Strange', 'Hello, I Love You', 'Roadhouse Blues', 'L.A. Woman', and 'Riders on the Storm'. He recorded a total of six studio albums with the Doors, all of which sold well and received critical acclaim. Though the Doors recorded two more albums after Morrison died, his death severely affected the band's fortunes, and they split up in 1973. In 1993, Morrison was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Doors.

Morrison was also well known for improvising spoken word poetry passages while the band played live. Morrison was ranked number 47 on Rolling Stone's list of the '100 Greatest Singers of All Time',^[2] and number 22 on Classic Rock magazine's '50 Greatest Singers in Rock'.^[3] Manzarek said Morrison 'embodied hippie counterculture rebellion'.^[4]

By Bernard Wolfe Slamming the door in the Woodstock Nation Minutes before darn, July 3, in the bathroom of his Paris hotel suite, at age twenty-seven, James Douglas Morrison, most flamboyantly swinging but least open of The Doors, a Los Angeles rock, stopped breathing. Books shelved as jim-morrison-the-doors: The Lords and the New Creatures by Jim Morrison, Images of Jim Morrison by Ed Wincentsen, The Jim Morrison Scrap.

Morrison developed an alcohol dependency during the 1960s, which at times affected his performances on stage.^[5][6][7] He died unexpectedly at the age of 27 in Paris. As no autopsy was performed, the cause of Morrison's death remains unknown.^[8]

• 1Early years
• 4Personal life
• 9Legacy
• 10Discography
• 11Books
• 12Films

Early years[edit]

James Douglas Morrison was born on December 8, 1943 in Melbourne, Florida, to Clara Virginia (née Clarke) and Rear AdmiralGeorge Stephen Morrison, USN.^[9] His ancestors were Scottish, Irish, and English.^[10][11] Admiral Morrison commanded United States naval forces during the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which provided the pretext for the US involvement in the Vietnam War in 1965. Morrison had a younger sister, Anne Robin, who was born in 1947 in Albuquerque, New Mexico; and a younger brother, Andrew Lee Morrison, who was born in 1948 in Los Altos, California.

In 1947, when he was four years old, Morrison allegedly witnessed a car accident in the desert, during which a truck overturned and some Native Americans were lying injured at the side of the road. He referred to this incident in the Doors' song 'Peace Frog' on their 1970 album Morrison Hotel, as well as in the spoken word performances 'Dawn's Highway' and 'Ghost Song' on the posthumous 1978 album An American Prayer. Morrison believed this incident to be the most formative event of his life,^[12] and made repeated references to it in the imagery in his songs, poems, and interviews.

His family does not recall this traffic incident happening in the way he told it. According to the Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive, Morrison's family did drive past a car accident on an Indian reservation when he was a child, and he was very upset by it. The book The Doors, written by the surviving members of the Doors, explains how different Morrison's account of the incident was from that of his father. This book quotes his father as saying, 'We went by several Indians. It did make an impression on him [the young James]. He always thought about that crying Indian.' This is contrasted sharply with Morrison's tale of 'Indians scattered all over the highway, bleeding to death.' In the same book, his sister is quoted as saying, 'He enjoyed telling that story and exaggerating it. He said he saw a dead Indian by the side of the road, and I don't even know if that's true.'^[13]

Raised a military brat, Morrison spent part of his childhood in San Diego, completed third grade at Fairfax County Elementary School Fairfax County, Virginia, and attended Charles H. Flato Elementary School in Kingsville, Texas, while his father was stationed at NAS Kingsville in 1952. He continued at St. John's Methodist School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and then Longfellow School Sixth Grade Graduation Program from San Diego, California.^[14]

In 1957, Morrison attended Alameda High School in Alameda, California, for his freshman and first semester of his sophomore year.^{[15][self-published source]} He finished high school in Alexandria, Virginia, graduating from George Washington High School (now George Washington Middle School) in June 1961.^[14]Cass Elliot also attended the school several years earlier.

Literary influences[edit]

A voracious reader from an early age, Morrison was particularly inspired by the writings of several philosophers and poets. He was influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, whose views on aesthetics, morality, and the Apollonian and Dionysian duality would appear in his conversation, poetry and songs. Some of his formative influences were Plutarch's Parallel Lives and the works of the French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud, whose style would later influence the form of Morrison's short prose poems. He was also influenced by William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Louis Ferdinand Celine, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Baudelaire, Molière, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Honoré de Balzac and Jean Cocteau, along with most of the French existentialist philosophers.^[13][16]

His senior year English teacher said, 'Jim read as much and probably more than any student in class, but everything he read was so offbeat I had another teacher (who was going to the Library of Congress) check to see if the books Jim was reporting on actually existed. I suspected he was making them up, as they were English books on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century demonology. I'd never heard of them, but they existed, and I'm convinced from the paper he wrote that he read them, and the Library of Congress would've been the only source.'^[17]

Morrison went to live with his paternal grandparents in Clearwater, Florida, where he attended classes at St. Petersburg College (then known as a junior college). In 1962, he transferred to Florida State University (FSU) in Tallahassee, where he appeared in a school recruitment film.^[18] While attending Florida State University, Morrison was arrested for a prank following a home football game.^[19]

College experience in Los Angeles, 1964–1965[edit]

In January 1964, Morrison moved to Los Angeles to attend the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Shortly thereafter on August 2, 1964, Morrison's father, George Stephen Morrison, commanded a carrier division of the United States fleet during the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which resulted in the United States' rapid escalation of the Vietnam War. At UCLA, Morrison enrolled in Jack Hirschman's class on Antonin Artaud in the Comparative Literature program within the UCLA English Department. Artaud's brand of surrealist theatre had a profound impact on Morrison's dark poetic sensibility of cinematic theatricality.^[20] Morrison completed his undergraduate degree at UCLA's film school within the Theater Arts department of the College of Fine Arts in 1965.^[21] At the time of the graduation ceremony, he went to Venice Beach, and the university mailed his diploma to his mother in Coronado, California.^[22] He made several short films while attending UCLA. First Love, the first of these films, made with Morrison's classmate and roommate Max Schwartz, was released to the public when it appeared in a documentary about the film Obscura.^[23] During these years, while living in Venice Beach, he befriended writers at the Los Angeles Free Press, for which he advocated until his death in 1971. He conducted a lengthy and in-depth interview with Bob Chorush and Andy Kent, both working for the Free Press at the time (approximately December 6–8, 1970), and was planning on visiting the headquarters of the busy newspaper shortly before leaving for Paris.^[24]

The Doors[edit]

In the summer of 1965, after graduating with a bachelor's degree from the UCLA film school, Morrison led a bohemian lifestyle in Venice Beach. Living on the rooftop of a building inhabited by his old UCLA cinematography friend, Dennis Jacobs, he wrote the lyrics of many of the early songs the Doors would later perform live and record on albums, such as 'Moonlight Drive' and 'Hello, I Love You.' According to Manzarek, he lived on canned beans and LSD for several months. Morrison and fellow UCLA student Ray Manzarek were the first two members of the Doors, forming the group during that summer.^[25] They had met months earlier as cinematography students. The story claims that Manzarek was lying on the beach at Venice one day, where he accidentally encountered Morrison.^[26] He was impressed with Morrison's poetic lyrics, claiming that they were 'rock group' material. Subsequently, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore joined. Krieger auditioned at Densmore's recommendation and was then added to the lineup. All three musicians shared a common interest in the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's meditation practices at the time, attending scheduled classes, but Morrison was not involved in these series of classes.^[27]

The Doors took their name from the title of Aldous Huxley's book The Doors of Perception (a reference to the unlocking of doors of perception through psychedelic drug use). Huxley's own title was a quotation from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in which Blake wrote: 'If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.' Although Morrison was known as the lyricist of the group, Krieger also made significant lyrical contributions, writing or co-writing some of the group's biggest hits, including 'Light My Fire,' 'Love Me Two Times,' 'Love Her Madly' and 'Touch Me.'^[28] On the other hand, Morrison, who did not write most songs using an instrument, would come up with vocal melodies for his own lyrics, with the other band members contributing chords and rhythm. Morrison did not play an instrument live (except for maracas and tambourine for most shows, and harmonica on a few occasions) or in the studio (excluding maracas, tambourine, handclaps, and whistling). However, he did play the grand piano on 'Orange County Suite' and a Moog synthesizer on 'Strange Days.'

In June 1966, Morrison and the Doors were the opening act at the Whisky a Go Go in the last week of the residency of Van Morrison's band Them.^[29] Van's influence on Jim's developing stage performance was later noted by Brian Hinton in his book Celtic Crossroads: The Art of Van Morrison: 'Jim Morrison learned quickly from his near namesake's stagecraft, his apparent recklessness, his air of subdued menace, the way he would improvise poetry to a rock beat, even his habit of crouching down by the bass drum during instrumental breaks.'^[30] On the final night, the two Morrisons and their two bands jammed together on 'Gloria.'^[31][32][33] In November 1966, Morrison and the Doors produced a promotional film for 'Break on Through (To the Other Side)', which was their first single release. The film featured the four members of the group playing the song on a darkened set with alternating views and close-ups of the performers while Morrison lip-synched the lyrics. Morrison and the Doors continued to make short music films, including 'The Unknown Soldier', 'Moonlight Drive' and 'People Are Strange'.

The Doors achieved national recognition after signing with Elektra Records in 1967.^[34] The single 'Light My Fire' spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July/August 1967. This was a far cry from the Doors opening for Simon and Garfunkel or playing at a high school as they did in Connecticut that same year.^[35] Later, the Doors appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, a popular Sunday night variety series that had introduced the Beatles and Elvis Presley to the United States. Ed Sullivan requested two songs from the Doors for the show, 'People Are Strange' and 'Light My Fire'. Sullivan's censors insisted that the Doors change the lyrics of the song 'Light My Fire' from 'Girl we couldn't get much higher' to 'Girl we couldn't get much better' for the television viewers; this was reportedly due to what was perceived as a reference to drugs in the original lyrics. After giving assurances of compliance to the producer in the dressing room, the band agreed and proceeded to sing the song with the original lyrics. Sullivan was not happy and he refused to shake hands with Morrison or any other band member after their performance. Sullivan had a show producer tell the band that they would never appear on The Ed Sullivan Show again. Morrison reportedly said to the producer, in a defiant tone, 'Hey man. We just did the Sullivan Show!'^[36]

By the release of their second album, Strange Days, the Doors had become one of the most popular rock bands in the United States. Their blend of blues and dark psychedelic rock included a number of original songs and distinctive cover versions, such as their rendition of 'Alabama Song,' from Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's opera, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. The band also performed a number of extended concept works, including the songs 'The End,' 'When the Music's Over,' and 'Celebration of the Lizard.' In 1966, photographer Joel Brodsky took a series of black-and-white photos of Morrison, in a photo shoot known as 'The Young Lion' photo session. These photographs are considered among the most iconic images of Jim Morrison and are frequently used as covers for compilation albums, books, and other memorabilia of the Doors and Morrison.^[37][38] In late 1967 at a concert in New Haven, Connecticut, he was arrested on stage, an incident that further added to his mystique and emphasized his rebellious image.

James Douglas Morrison The Doors

In 1968, the Doors released their third studio album, Waiting for the Sun. The band performed on July 5 at the Hollywood Bowl; this performance became famous with the DVD: Live at the Hollywood Bowl. It's also this year that the band played, for the first time, in Europe. Their fourth album, The Soft Parade, was released in 1969. It was the first album where the individual band members were given credit on the inner sleeve for the songs they had written. Previously, each song on their albums had been credited simply to 'The Doors'. On September 6 and 7, 1968, the Doors played four performances at the Roundhouse, London, England with Jefferson Airplane which was filmed by Granada for a television documentary The Doors Are Open directed by John Sheppard. Around this time, Morrison—who had long been a heavy drinker—started showing up for recording sessions visibly inebriated.^[39] He was also frequently late for live performances.

By early 1969, the formerly svelte singer had gained weight, grown a beard and mustache, and begun dressing more casually — abandoning the leather pants and concho belts for slacks, jeans, and T-shirts. During a concert of March 1, 1969, at the Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami, Morrison attempted to spark a riot in the audience, in part by screaming 'You wanna see my cock?' and other obscenities. He failed, but six warrants for his arrest were issued by the Dade County Police department three days later for indecent exposure, among other things.^[40] Consequently, many of the Doors' scheduled concerts were canceled.^[41][42] On September 20, 1970, Morrison was convicted of indecent exposure and profanity by a six-person jury in Miami after a trial that had 16 days of testimony.^[43] Morrison, who attended the October 30 sentencing 'in a wool jacket adorned with Indian designs', silently listened as he was sentenced to six months in prison and had to pay a $500 fine. Morrison remained free on a $50,000 bond.^[44] At the sentencing, Judge Murray Goodman told Morrison that he was a 'person graced with a talent' admired by many of his peers; Morrison remained free on $50,000 bond while the conviction was appealed.^[44] His death eight months later made the appeal a moot point.

In 2007 Florida GovernorCharlie Crist suggested the possibility of a posthumous pardon for Morrison, which was announced as successful on December 9, 2010.^[45][46] Drummer John Densmore denied Morrison ever exposed himself on stage that night.^[47]

Following The Soft Parade, the Doors released Morrison Hotel. After a lengthy break, the group reconvened in October 1970 to record what would become their final album with Morrison, titled L.A. Woman. Shortly after the recording sessions for the album began, producer Paul A. Rothchild — who had overseen all of their previous recordings — left the project. Engineer Bruce Botnick took over as producer.

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Poetry and film[edit]

Morrison began writing in earnest during his adolescence. At UCLA he studied the related fields of theater, film, and cinematography.^[48] He self-published two separate volumes of his poetry in 1969, titled The Lords / Notes on Vision and The New Creatures. The Lords consists primarily of brief descriptions of places, people, events and Morrison's thoughts on cinema. The New Creatures verses are more poetic in structure, feel and appearance. These two books were later combined into a single volume titled The Lords and The New Creatures. These were the only writings published during Morrison's lifetime. Morrison befriended Beat poetMichael McClure, who wrote the afterword for Danny Sugerman's biography of Morrison, No One Here Gets Out Alive. McClure and Morrison reportedly collaborated on a number of unmade film projects, including a film version of McClure's infamous play The Beard, in which Morrison would have played Billy the Kid.^[49] After his death, a further two volumes of Morrison's poetry were published. The contents of the books were selected and arranged by Morrison's friend, photographer Frank Lisciandro, and girlfriend Pamela Courson's parents, who owned the rights to his poetry.

The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison Volume I is titled Wilderness, and, upon its release in 1988, became an instant New York Times Bestseller. Volume II, The American Night, released in 1990, was also a success. Morrison recorded his own poetry in a professional sound studio on two separate occasions. The first was in March 1969 in Los Angeles and the second was on December 8, 1970. The latter recording session was attended by Morrison's personal friends and included a variety of sketch pieces. Some of the segments from the 1969 session were issued on the bootleg album The Lost Paris Tapes and were later used as part of the Doors' An American Prayer album,^[50] released in 1978. The album reached #54 on the music charts. Some poetry recorded from the December 1970 session remains unreleased to this day and is in the possession of the Courson family. Morrison's best-known but seldom seen cinematic endeavor is HWY: An American Pastoral, a project he started in 1969. Morrison financed the venture and formed his own production company in order to maintain complete control of the project. Paul Ferrara, Frank Lisciandro, and Babe Hill assisted with the project. Morrison played the main character, a hitchhiker turned killer/car thief. Morrison asked his friend, composer/pianist Fred Myrow, to select the soundtrack for the film.^[51]

Personal life[edit]

Morrison's family[edit]

Morrison's early life was the semi-nomadic existence typical of military families.^[52] Jerry Hopkins recorded Morrison's brother, Andy, explaining that his parents had determined never to use physical corporal punishment such as spanking on their children. They instead instilled discipline and levied punishment by the military tradition known as 'dressing down.' This consisted of yelling at and berating the children until they were reduced to tears and acknowledged their failings. Once Morrison graduated from UCLA, he broke off most contact with his family. By the time Morrison's music ascended to the top of the charts (in 1967) he had not been in communication with his family for more than a year and falsely claimed that his parents and siblings were dead (or claiming, as it has been widely misreported, that he was an only child).

This misinformation was published as part of the materials distributed with the Doors' self-titled debut album. Admiral Morrison was not supportive of his son's career choice in music. One day, an acquaintance brought over a record thought to have Jim on the cover. The record was the Doors' self-titled debut. The young man played the record for Morrison's father and family. Upon hearing the record, Morrison's father wrote him a letter telling him 'to give up any idea of singing or any connection with a music group because of what I consider to be a complete lack of talent in this direction.'^[53] In a letter to the Florida Probation and Parole Commission District Office dated October 2, 1970, Morrison's father acknowledged the breakdown in family communications as the result of an argument over his assessment of his son's musical talents. He said he could not blame his son for being reluctant to initiate contact and that he was proud of him nonetheless.^[54]

Morrison spoke fondly of his Irish and Scottish ancestry and was inspired by Celtic mythology in his poetry and songs.^[55][56]Celtic Family Magazine revealed in its 2016 Spring Issue that his Morrison clan was originally from the Isle of Lewis, Scotland, while his Irish side, the Clelland clan who married into the Morrison line, were from County Down, Northern Ireland.^[57]

Relationships[edit]

Morrison was sought after by many as a photographer's model, confidante, romantic partner and sexual conquest. Throughout his life he had at least several serious, ongoing relationships, and many casual encounters. By many accounts, he could also be inconsistent with his partners,^[58] displaying what some recall as 'a dual personality'.^[59] Doors producer Paul Rothchild recalls, 'Jim really was two very distinct and different people. A Jekyll and Hyde. When he was sober, he was Jekyll, the most erudite, balanced, friendly kind of guy .. He was Mr. America. When he would start to drink, he'd be okay at first, then, suddenly, he would turn into a maniac. Turn into Hyde.'^[59]

Morrison spent the majority of his adult life in an open,^[59] and at times very charged and intense, relationship with Pamela Courson. They met while young, when both were attending college,^[60] and she encouraged him to develop his poetry. Through to the end, Courson saw Morrison as more than a rock star, as 'a great poet'; she constantly encouraged him and pushed him to write.^[61] Courson attended his concerts, and focused on supporting his career.^[62] Like Morrison, she was described by many as fiery, determined and attractive, as someone who was tough despite appearing fragile. Manzarek called Pamela 'Jim's other half' and said, 'I never knew another person who could so complement his bizarreness.'^[63] Courson was buried by her family as Pamela Susan Morrison, after Jim Morrison's death, despite the two having never been married. After Courson's death in 1974, and her parents petitioned the court for inheritance of Morrison's estate, the probate court in California decided that she and Morrison had once had what qualified as a common-law marriage, despite neither having applied for such status, and the common-law marriage not being recognized in California. Morrison's will at the time of his death named Courson as the sole heir.^[64] Morrison dedicated his published poetry books The Lords and New Creatures and the lost writings Wilderness to her. A number of writers have speculated that songs like 'Love Street,' 'Orange County Suite' and 'Queen of the Highway,' among other songs, may have been written about her.^[65][66] Though the relationship was 'tumultuous' much of the time, and both also had relationships with others, they always maintained a unique and ongoing connection with one another, right up until the end.^[59][67]

One of Morrison's early significant relationships was with Mary Werbelow, whom he met on the beach in Florida, when they were teenagers in 1962. In a 2005 interview with the St. Petersburg Times she said Morrison spoke to her before a photo shoot for the Doors' fourth album and told her the first three albums were about her.^{[68][69][70][71]}

Throughout his career, Morrison had regular sexual and romantic encounters with fans (including 'groupies') such as Pamela Des Barres,^[72][73] as well as ongoing affairs with other musicians, writers and photographers involved in the music business. These included Nico, the singer associated with the Velvet Underground, an encounter with singer Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane while the two bands toured together,^[74] an on-again, off-again relationship with 16 Magazine's Gloria Stavers, as well as an alleged alcohol-fueled encounter with Janis Joplin.^[75]

David Crosby said many years later Morrison treated Joplin meanly at a party at the Calabasas, California, home of John Davidson while Davidson was out of town.^[76][77][78] She reportedly hit him over the head with a bottle of whiskey in retaliation during a fight in front of witnesses.^{[76][77][78][79]} Thereafter, whenever Joplin had a conversation with someone who mentioned Morrison, Joplin referred to him as 'that asshole,' never by his first or last name.^[80]

First written about in No One Here Gets Out Alive, Break On Through, and later in her own memoir, Strange Days - My Life with and without Jim Morrison, Morrison participated in a Celtic Paganhandfasting ceremony with rock critic Patricia Kennealy.^[81][82][83] The couple signed a handwritten document, and were declared wed by a Celtic High Priestess and High Priest on Midsummer's Night in 1970, but none of the necessary paperwork for a legal marriage was filed with the state.^[83][84] The couple had been friends, and then in a long-distance relationship, since they met at a private interview for Jazz & Pop magazine, in January 1969. The handfasting ceremony is described in No One Here Gets Out Alive as a 'blending of souls on a karmic and cosmic plane.' Morrison was also still seeing Pamela Courson when he was in Los Angeles, and later moved to Paris for the summer where Courson had acquired an apartment. In an interview in the book Rock Wives, Kennealy says he turned 'really cold' when she became pregnant, leading her to speculate that maybe he hadn't taken the wedding as seriously as he'd led her to believe.^{[58][85][86][87]} She also notes that his coldness and distance was during the trial in Miami, and that 'he was scared to death. They were really out to put him away. Jim was devastated that he wasn't getting any public support.'^[88] As he did with so many people, Morrison could be cruel and cold and then turn warm and loving;^[58] he wrote in letters that he was planning on returning to her, to New York City, in the fall of '71.^[89][90] However, Kennealy was skeptical. Morrison seemed to be falling apart. He was back with Pam, he was severely alcoholic, and like many she feared he was dying.^[89]

At the time of Morrison's death, there were multiple paternityactions pending against him, although no claims were made against his estate by any of the putative paternity claimants.^[91]

Death[edit]

Morrison joined Pamela Courson in Paris in March 1971, at an apartment she had rented for him at 17-19, rue Beautreillis [fr] in Le Marais, 4th arrondissement, Paris. In letters, he described going for long walks through the city, alone.^[92] During this time, he shaved his beard and lost some of the weight he had gained in the previous months.^[93] He died on July 3, 1971, at age 27.^[94][95][96] He was found by Courson in a bathtub at his apartment.^[97] The official cause of death was listed as heart failure,^{[98][better source needed]} although no autopsy was performed, as it was not required by French law. His death was two years to the day after the death of the Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones, and approximately nine months after the deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.^[99]

Paris Journal[edit]

After his death, a notebook of poetry written by Morrison was recovered, titled Paris Journal;^[100] amongst other personal details, it contains the allegorical foretelling of a man who will be left grieving and having to abandon his belongings, due to a police investigation into a death connected to the Chinese opium trade. 'Weeping, he left his pad on orders from police and furnishings hauled away, all records and mementos, and reporters calculating tears & curses for the press: 'I hope the Chinese junkies get you' and they will for the [opium] poppy rules the world'.^{[100][101][102][103]}

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The concluding stanzas of this poem convey disappointment for someone with whom he had had an intimate relationship and contain a further invocation of Billy the killer/Hitchhiker, a common character in Morrison's body of work. 'This is my poem for you, Great flowing funky flower'd beast, Great perfumed wreck of hell..Someone new in your knickers & who would that be? You know, You know more, than you let on..Tell them you came & saw & look'd into my eyes & saw the shadow of the guard receding, Thoughts in time & out of season The Hitchhiker stood by the side of the road & levelled his thumb in the calm calculus of reason.'^[100][101]

In 2013 another of Morrison's notebooks from Paris, found alongside the Paris Journal in the same box, known as the 127 Fascination box,^[104] sold for $250,000 at auction.^[100][105] This box of personal belongings similarly contained a home movie of Pamela Courson dancing in an unspecified cemetery in Corsica, the only film so far recovered to have been filmed by Morrison.^[106][107] The box also housed a number of older notebooks and journals and may initially have included the 'Steno Pad' and the falsely titled The Lost Paris Tapes bootleg, if they had not been separated from the primary collection and sold by Philippe Dalecky with this promotional title. Avid listeners familiar with the voices of Morrison's friends and colleagues later determined that, contrary to the story advanced by Dalecky that this was Morrison's final recording made with busking Parisian musicians, the Lost Paris Tapes are in fact, of 'Jomo & The Smoothies'—Morrison, friend Michael McClure and producer Paul Rothchild loose jamming in Los Angeles, well before Paris 1971.^[103]

Grave site[edit]

Morrison was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris,^[108] one of the city's most visited tourist attractions, where Irish playwright Oscar Wilde, French cabaret singer Edith Piaf, and many other poets and artists are also buried. The grave had no official marker until French officials placed a shield over it, which was stolen in 1973. The grave was listed in the cemetery directory with Morrison's name incorrectly arranged as 'Douglas James Morrison.'

In 1981, Croatian sculptor Mladen Mikulin^[109] voluntarily placed a bust of his own design and a new gravestone with Morrison's name at the grave to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Morrison's death; the bust was defaced through the years by cemetery vandals, and later stolen in 1988.^[110] Mikulin made another bust of Morrison in 1989,^[111] and a bronze portrait of him in 2001;^[112] neither piece is at the gravesite.

In 1990, Morrison's father, George Stephen Morrison, after a consultation with E. Nicholas Genovese, Professor of Classics and Humanities, San Diego State University, placed a flat stone on the grave. The bronze plaque thereon bears the Greek inscription: ΚΑΤΑ ΤΟΝ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΑ ΕΑΥΤΟΥ, usually translated as 'true to his own spirit' or 'according to his own daemon.'^{[113][114][115][116]}

Artistic influences[edit]

As a naval family, the Morrisons moved frequently. As a consequence, Morrison's early education was routinely disrupted as he moved from school to school. Nonetheless, he was drawn to the study of literature, poetry, religion, philosophy and psychology, among other fields.^[117] Biographers have consistently pointed to a number of writers and philosophers who influenced Morrison's thinking and, perhaps, his behavior.^{[13][16][118][119][120]} While still in his adolescence, Morrison discovered the works of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.^[6] He was also drawn to the poetry of William Blake, Charles Baudelaire, and Arthur Rimbaud.^[119]Beat Generation writers such as Jack Kerouac and libertine writers such as the Marquis de Sade also had a strong influence on Morrison's outlook and manner of expression; Morrison was eager to experience the life described in Kerouac's On the Road.^[121][122] He was similarly drawn to the work of French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline.^[120] Céline's book, Voyage Au Bout de la Nuit (Journey to the End of the Night) and Blake's Auguries of Innocence both echo through one of Morrison's early songs, 'End of the Night'.^[119]

Morrison later met and befriended Michael McClure, a well-known Beat poet. McClure had enjoyed Morrison's lyrics but was even more impressed by his poetry and encouraged him to further develop his craft.^[123] Morrison's vision of performance was colored by the works of 20th-century French playwright Antonin Artaud^[124] (author of Theater and its Double) and by Julian Beck's Living Theater.^[125][126]

Other works relating to religion, mysticism, ancient myth and symbolism were of lasting interest, particularly Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces. James Frazer's The Golden Bough also became a source of inspiration and is reflected in the title and lyrics of the song 'Not to Touch the Earth.'^{[citation needed]} Morrison was particularly attracted to the myths and religions of Native American cultures.^[127]

While he was still at school, his family moved to New Mexico where he got to see some of the places and artifacts important to the American SouthwestIndigenous cultures. These interests appear to be the source of many references to creatures and places such as lizards, snakes, deserts and 'ancient lakes' that appear in his songs and poetry. His interpretation and imagination of Native American ceremonies and peoples (which, based on his readings, he referred to by the anthropological term 'shamans') influenced his stage routine, notably in seeking trance states and vision through dancing to the point of exhaustion. In particular, Morrison's poem 'The Ghost Song' was inspired by his readings about the Native American Ghost Dance.

James Morrison The Doors Mix

Morrison's vocal influences included Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra, which is evident in his baritone crooning style on several of the Doors' songs. In the 1981 documentary The Doors: A Tribute to Jim Morrison, producer Paul Rothchild relates his first impression of Morrison as being a 'Rock and Roll Bing Crosby'. Sugerman states that Morrison, as a teenager, was such a fan of Presley that he demanded silence when Elvis was on the radio. He states that Sinatra was Morrison's favorite singer.^[128] According to record producer David Anderle, Morrison considered Brian Wilson 'his favorite musician' and the Beach Boys' 1967 LP Wild Honey 'one of his favorite albums. .. he really got into it.'^[129]

Legacy[edit]

Musical[edit]

Morrison was, and continues to be, one of the most popular and influential singer-songwriters and iconic frontmen in rock history. To this day Morrison is widely regarded as the prototypical rock star: surly, sexy, scandalous, and mysterious.^[130] The leather pants he was fond of wearing both onstage and off have since become stereotyped as rock-star apparel.^{[131][dubious]} In 2011, a Rolling Stone readers' pick placed Jim Morrison in fifth place of the magazine's 'Best Lead Singers of All Time'.^[132]Iggy and the Stooges are said to have formed after lead singer Iggy Pop was inspired by Morrison while attending a Doors concert in Ann Arbor, Michigan.^[133] One of Pop's most popular songs, 'The Passenger', is said to be based on one of Morrison's poems.^[134] After Morrison's death, Pop was considered as a replacement lead singer for the Doors; the surviving Doors gave him some of Morrison's belongings and hired him as a vocalist for a series of shows.

Wallace Fowlie, professor emeritus of French literature at Duke University, wrote Rimbaud and Jim Morrison, subtitled 'The Rebel as Poet – A Memoir'. In this, he recounts his surprise at receiving a fan letter from Morrison who, in 1968, thanked him for his latest translation of Arthur Rimbaud's verse into English. 'I don't read French easily', he wrote, '..your book travels around with me.' Fowlie went on to give lectures on numerous campuses comparing the lives, philosophies, and poetry of Morrison and Rimbaud. The book The Doors by the remaining Doors quotes Morrison's close friend Frank Lisciandro as saying that too many people took a remark of Morrison's that he was interested in revolt, disorder, and chaos 'to mean that he was an anarchist, a revolutionary, or, worse yet, a nihilist. Hardly anyone noticed that Jim was paraphrasing Rimbaud and the Surrealist poets.'^[135]

Layne Staley, the vocalist of Alice in Chains; Eddie Vedder, the vocalist of Pearl Jam; Scott Weiland, the vocalist of Stone Temple Pilots, and Velvet Revolver; Glenn Danzig, singer, and founder of Danzig; Julian Casablancas of the Strokes; James LaBrie of Dream Theater; Scott Stapp of Creed; and Ville Valo of H.I.M.^[136] have all said that Morrison was their biggest influence and inspiration. Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver have both covered 'Roadhouse Blues' by the Doors. Weiland also filled in for Morrison to perform 'Break on Through (To The Other Side)' with the rest of the Doors. Stapp filled in for Morrison for 'Light My Fire,' 'Riders on the Storm' and 'Roadhouse Blues' on VH1 Storytellers; Travis Meeks, of Days of the New, also performed 'The End.' Creed performed their version of 'Roadhouse Blues' with Robby Krieger for the 1999 Woodstock Festival.

Morrison's recital of his poem 'Bird of Prey' can be heard throughout the song 'Sunset' by Fatboy Slim. Rock band Bon Jovi featured Morrison's grave in their 'I'll Sleep When I'm Dead' video clip. The band Radiohead mentions Jim Morrison in their song 'Anyone Can Play Guitar', stating 'I wanna be wanna be wanna be Jim Morrison'. Alice Cooper in the liner notes of the album Killer stated that the song 'Desperado' is about Jim Morrison. The leather trousers of U2's lead singer Bono's 'The Fly' persona for the Achtung Baby era and subsequent Zoo TV Tour is attributed to Jim Morrison. In 2012 electronic music producer Skrillex released 'Breakn' a Sweat' which contained vocals from an interview with Jim Morrison.

Morrison was also referenced in the Lana Del Rey song 'Gods & Monsters' in the line 'living like Jim Morrison.'

In popular culture[edit]

In June 2013, a fossil analysis discovered a large lizard in Myanmar. The extinct reptile was given the moniker Barbaturex morrisoni in honor of Morrison. 'This is a king lizard, and he was the lizard king, so it just fit,' said Jason Head, a paleontologist at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.^[137]

Discography[edit]

with The Doors[edit]

• The Doors (1967)
• Strange Days (1967)
• Waiting for the Sun (1968)
• The Soft Parade (1969)
• Morrison Hotel (1970)
• L.A. Woman (1971)
• An American Prayer (1978)

Books[edit]

By Morrison[edit]

• The Lords and the New Creatures (1969). 1985 edition: ISBN0-7119-0552-5
• An American Prayer (1970) privately printed by Western Lithographers. (Unauthorized edition also published in 1983, Zeppelin Publishing Company, ISBN0-915628-46-5. The authenticity of the unauthorized edition has been disputed.)
• Arden lointain, edition bilingue (1988), trad. de l'américain et présenté par Sabine Prudent et Werner Reimann. [Paris]: C. Bourgois. 157 p. N.B.: Original texts in English, with French translations, on facing pages. ISBN2-267-00560-3
• Wilderness: The Lost Writings Of Jim Morrison (1988). 1990 edition: ISBN0-14-011910-8
• The American Night: The Writings of Jim Morrison (1990). 1991 edition: ISBN0-670-83772-5

About Morrison[edit]

• Linda Ashcroft, Wild Child: Life with Jim Morrison, (1997) ISBN1-56025-249-9
• Lester Bangs, 'Jim Morrison: Bozo Dionysus a Decade Later' in Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader, John Morthland, ed. Anchor Press (2003) ISBN0-375-71367-0
• Stephen Davis, Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend, (2004) ISBN1-59240-064-7
• John Densmore, Riders on the Storm: My Life With Jim Morrison and the Doors (1991) ISBN0-385-30447-1
• Dave DiMartino, Moonlight Drive (1995) ISBN1-886894-21-3
• Steven Erkel, 'The Poet Behind The Doors: Jim Morrison's Poetry and the 1960s Countercultural Movement' (2011)
• Wallace Fowlie, Rimbaud and Jim Morrison (1994) ISBN0-8223-1442-8
• Jerry Hopkins, The Lizard King: The Essential Jim Morrison (1995) ISBN0-684-81866-3
• Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman, No One Here Gets Out Alive (1980) ISBN0-85965-138-X
• Huddleston, Judy, Love Him Madly: An Intimate Memoir of Jim Morrison (2013) ISBN9781613747506
• Mike Jahn, 'Jim Morrison and The Doors', (1969) Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 71-84745
• Dylan Jones, Jim Morrison: Dark Star, (1990) ISBN0-7475-0951-4
• Patricia Kennealy, Strange Days: My Life With and Without Jim Morrison (1992) ISBN0-525-93419-7
• Gerry Kirstein, 'Some Are Born to Endless Night: Jim Morrison, Visions of Apocalypse and Transcendence' (2012) ISBN1451558066
• Frank Lisciandro, Morrison: A Feast of Friends (1991) ISBN0-446-39276-6, Morrison – Un festin entre amis (1996) (French)
• Frank Lisciandro, Jim Morrison: An Hour For Magic (A Photojournal) (1982) ISBN0-85965-246-7, James Douglas Morrison (2005) (French)
• Ray Manzarek, Light My Fire (1998) ISBN0-446-60228-0. First by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman (1981)
• Peter Jan Margry, The Pilgrimage to Jim Morrison's Grave at Père Lachaise Cemetery: The Social Construction of Sacred Space. In idem (ed.), Shrines and Pilgrimage in the Modern World. New Itineraries into the Sacred.Amsterdam University Press, 2008, p. 145–173.
• Thanasis Michos, The Poetry of James Douglas Morrison (2001) ISBN960-7748-23-9 (Greek)
• Daveth Milton, We Want The World: Jim Morrison, The Living Theatre, and the FBI, (2012) ISBN978-0957051188
• Mark Opsasnick, The Lizard King Was Here: The Life and Times of Jim Morrison in Alexandria, Virginia (2006) ISBN1-4257-1330-0
• James Riordan & Jerry Prochnicky, Break on through: The Life and Death of Jim Morrison (1991) ISBN0-688-11915-8
• Adriana Rubio, Jim Morrison: Ceremony..Exploring the Shaman Possession (2005) ISBN
• Howard Sounes. 27: A History of the 27 Club Through the Lives of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse, Boston: Da Capo Press, 2013. ISBN0-306-82168-0.
• The Doors (remaining members Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, John Densmore) with Ben Fong-Torres, The Doors (2006) ISBN1-4013-0303-X
• Mick Wall, 'Love Becomes a Funeral Pyre: A Biography of the Doors', (2014)

Films[edit]

Films by Morrison[edit]

Documentaries featuring Morrison[edit]

• The Doors Are Open (1968)
• Live in Europe (1968)
• Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1968)
• Feast of Friends (1970)
• The Doors: A Tribute to Jim Morrison (1981)
• The Doors: Dance on Fire (1985)
• The Soft Parade, a Retrospective (1991)
• The Doors: No One Here Gets Out Alive (2001)
• Final 24: Jim Morrison (2007), The Biography Channel^[138]
• When You're Strange (2009), Won the Grammy Award for Best Long Form Video in 2011.
• Rock Poet: Jim Morrison (2010)^[139]
• Morrison's Mustang – A Vision Quest to Find The Blue Lady (2011, in production)
• Mr. Mojo Risin': The Story of L.A. Woman (2011)
• The Doors Live at the Bowl '68 (2012)
• The Doors: R-Evolution (2013)
• Feast of Friends (2014)
• Danny Says (2016)

Films about The Doors[edit]

• The Doors (1991), A fictional film by director Oliver Stone, starring Val Kilmer as Morrison and with cameos by Krieger and Densmore. Kilmer's performance was praised by some critics. While the film was inspired by many real events and people, Ray Manzarek, the Doors' keyboardist, and others interviewed in the companion documentary, harshly criticized Stone's portrayal of Morrison and noted that numerous events and people depicted in the movie were pure fiction. David Crosby on an album by CPR wrote and recorded a song about the movie with the lyric: 'And I have seen that movie – and it wasn't like that.'^[140]

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112. ^'Mislav E. Lukšić – 'Mladen Mikulin – the Portraitist of Jim Morrison', 2011'. M. E. Lukšić. Retrieved November 2, 2012.
113. ^Salazar, Fortunato (December 19, 2018). 'Who's Buried in Jim Morrison's Epitaph?'. Electric Literature. Retrieved December 21, 2018.
114. ^Liewer, Steve (November 28, 2008) inscription: ΚΑΤΑ ΤΟΝ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΑ ΕΑΥΤΟΥ. 'George 'Steve' Morrison; Rear Admiral Flew Combat Missions in Lengthy Career'Archived December 27, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. The San Diego Union-Tribune. Accessed November 18, 2010.
115. ^Davis, Stephen (2005). Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend. Gotham. p. 472. ISBN978-1-59240-099-7.
116. ^Olsen, Brad (2007). Sacred Places Europe: 108 Destinations. CCC Publishing. p. 105. ISBN978-1-888729-12-2.
117. ^Saroyan, Wayne A. (March 22, 1989). 'The Twisted Tale Of How Late Rocker Jim Morrison's Poetry Found'. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved July 11, 2017.
118. ^Manzarek, Ray. Light My Fire. New York: Berkley Boulevard Books, 1998 (ISBN978-0-425-17045-8). Penguin edition
119. ^ ^abcRiders on the Storm: My Life with Jim Morrison and the Doors, John Densmore, Random House
120. ^ ^abTobler, John; Doe, Andrew (1984). The Doors. Proteus. ISBN978-0-86276-069-4.
121. ^Young, Ralph (2015). Dissent: The History of an American Idea. NYU Press. p. 418. ISBN978-1-4798-1452-7.
122. ^'Jim Morrison and Jack Kerouac – Jim Cherry'. Empty Mirror. November 4, 2013. Retrieved July 11, 2017.
123. ^Shivani, Anis (March 3, 2011). 'Exclusive: Beat Poet Michael McClure On Jim Morrison, The Doors, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac'. Huffington Post. Retrieved July 11, 2017.
124. ^Lauerman, Connie (February 15, 1996). 'Artaud: The 'Madman' Who Changed Theater'. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved July 11, 2017.
125. ^Halperin, Shirley (December 2, 2010). 'The Doors' John Densmore: Jim Morrison 'Didn't' Expose Himself'. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved July 11, 2017.
126. ^Walters, Glenn D. (2006). Lifestyle Theory: Past, Present, and Future. Nova Publishers. p. 81. ISBN978-1-60021-033-4.
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135. ^Ben Fong-Torres (2006). The Doors (1st ed.). New York: Hyperion. p. 104. ISBN978-1-4013-0303-7.
136. ^'Ville Valo Interview Transcribed on k-ron's Blog – Buzznet'. Kron.buzznet.com. October 1, 2007. Archived from the original on January 1, 2014. Retrieved April 16, 2014.
137. ^'Real-Life 'Lizard King' Named for Doors' Jim Morrison'. Yahoo News. Retrieved June 5, 2013.
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140. ^'David Crosby – Morrison Lyrics'. Sing365.com. June 23, 1998. Retrieved April 16, 2014.

James Morrison The Doors

External links[edit]

• Jim Morrison at Curlie
• Jim Morrison at Find a Grave
• Jim Morrison on IMDb

Did James Morrison Of The Doors Have Children

The Doors is a 1991 American biographical film about the 1960–70s rock band of the same name which emphasizes the life of its lead singer, Jim Morrison. It was directed by Oliver Stone, and stars Val Kilmer as Morrison and Meg Ryan as Pamela Courson (Morrison's companion). The film features Kyle MacLachlan as Ray Manzarek, Frank Whaley as Robby Krieger, Kevin Dillon as John Densmore, and Kathleen Quinlan as Patricia Kennealy.

The film portrays Morrison as the larger-than-life icon of 1960s rock and roll, counterculture, and the drug-usingfree lovehippie lifestyle. But the depiction goes beyond the iconic: his alcoholism, interest in hallucinogenic drugs as entheogens, and, particularly, his growing obsession with death are threads which weave in and out of the film. The film was not well received by his bandmates, close friends, and family, due to its depiction of Morrison.

• 3Production
• 9References

Plot[edit]

The film opens during the recording of Jim's An American Prayer and quickly moves to a childhood memory of his family driving along a desert highway in 1949, where a young Jim sees an elderly Native American dying by the roadside. In 1965, Jim arrives in California and is assimilated into the Venice Beach culture. During his tenure studying at UCLA, he meets his future girlfriend Pamela Courson, and meets Ray Manzarek for the first time, as well as Robby Krieger and John Densmore; who would found The Doors.

Jim convinces his bandmates to travel to Death Valley and experience the effects of psychedelic drugs. Returning to Los Angeles, they play several shows at the famous nightclub Whisky a Go Go and develop a rabid fan base. Jim's onstage antics and occasionally improvised lyrics raise the ire of club owners; however, the band's popularity continues to expand.

As the Doors become very successful, Jim becomes increasingly infatuated with his own image as 'The Lizard King' and degenerates into alcoholism and drugs. Jim meets Patricia Kennealy, a rock journalist involved in witchcraft, and participates with her in mystical ceremonies. He joins her in a handfasting ceremony. An elder spirit watches these events.

The rest of the band grows weary of Jim's missed recording sessions and absences at concerts. Jim arrives late to a Miami, Florida concert, becoming increasingly confrontational towards the audience and allegedly exposing himself onstage. The incident is a low point for the band, resulting in criminal charges against Jim, cancellations of shows, breakdowns in Jim's personal relationships, and resentment from the other band members.

In 1970, following a lengthy trial, Jim is found guilty of indecent exposure and ordered to serve time in prison. However, he is allowed to remain free on bail pending the results of an appeal. Patricia tells Jim that she is pregnant with his child, but Jim convinces her to have an abortion. Jim visits his bandmates for the last time, attending a party thrown by Ray where he wishes the band luck in their future endeavours and gives each of them a copy of An American Prayer. As Jim plays in the front garden with the children, he sees that one of the children is his childhood self. Jim comments: 'This is the strangest life I've ever known.'

In 1971, Pam finds Jim dead in a bathtub in Paris, France, at the age of 27. The final scenes of the film before the credits roll are of Jim's gravesite in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris while 'The Severed Garden (Adagio)' plays in the background. Just before the credits, the screen whites out and text appears saying 'Jim Morrison is said to have died of heart failure. He was 27. Pam joined him three years later.'

During the credits, the band is shown recording the song 'L.A. Woman' in the studio.

Cast[edit]

• Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison
• Kevin Dillon as John Densmore
• Kyle MacLachlan as Ray Manzarek
• Kathleen Quinlan as Patricia Kennealy
• Meg Ryan as Pamela Courson
• Frank Whaley as Robby Krieger
• Charlie Spradling as Makeup artist
• Josh Evans as Bill Siddons
• Crispin Glover as Andy Warhol
• Kelly Hu as Dorothy
• Billy Idol as Cat
• Patricia Kennealy-Morrison as Celtic Pagan priestess
• Michael Madsen as Tom Baker
• Costas Mandylor as Italian Count
• Debi Mazar as Whiskey girl
• Mimi Rogers as Magazine photographer
• Jennifer Rubin as Edie Sedgwick
• Sean Stone as young Jim
• Jerry Sturm and Gretchen Becker as Mr. and Mrs. Morrison
• Floyd Red Crow Westerman as a Native American Spirit
• Paul Williams as Warhol PR
• Christina Fulton as Nico
• Michael Wincott as Paul Rothchild
• Eric Burdon in a cameo appearance in the London Fog
• Paul Rothchild in a cameo appearance in the London Fog
• Sky Saxon in a cameo appearance in the Whiskey a Go Go
• Oliver Stone as UCLA film professor
• Jennifer Tilly as Okie girl
• John Densmore as Studio Engineer
• William Kunstler as Jim's lawyer
• Josie Bissett as Robby Krieger's Girlfriend

Production[edit]

Development[edit]

Film directors Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, and William Friedkin flirted with making a Doors biopic over the years.^[2] In 1985, Columbia Pictures acquired the rights from the Doors and the Morrison estate to make a film. Producer Sasha Harari wanted filmmaker Oliver Stone to write the screenplay but never heard back from his agent. After two unsatisfactory scripts were produced, Imagine Films replaced Columbia. Harari contacted Stone again and the director met with the surviving band members. He told them he wanted to keep a particularly wild scene from one of the early drafts. The group was offended and exercised their right of approval over the director and rejected Stone. By 1989, Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna, who owned Carolco Pictures, acquired the rights to the project and they wanted Stone to direct it.^[2] The Doors had seen Platoon and were impressed with what Stone had done.^[3] He agreed to make it after his next project, Evita. After spending years working on it and courting Madonna and Meryl Streep to play the lead role, the film fell apart over salary negotiations with Streep. Stone quickly moved over to The Doors and went into pre-production.^[3] Guitarist Robby Krieger had always opposed a Doors biopic until Stone signed on to direct.^[4] Historically, keyboardist Ray Manzarek had been the biggest advocate of immortalizing the band on film but opposed Stone's involvement.^[4] He was not happy with the direction that Stone was going to take with the film and refused to give his approval. According to actor Kyle MacLachlan, 'I know that he and Oliver weren't speaking. I think it was hard for Ray, he being the keeper of the Doors myth for so long'.^[5] According to Krieger, 'when the Doors broke up Ray had his idea of how the band should be portrayed and John and I had ours'.^[4] Manzarek claims that he was not asked to consult on the film and wanted it to be about all four band members equally rather than the focus being on Morrison.^[6] Stone claimed that he repeatedly tried to get Manzarek involved, but 'all he did was rave and shout. He went on for three hours about his point of view .. I didn't want Ray to be dominant, but Ray thought he knew better than anybody else'.^[7]

Screenplay[edit]

Stone first heard the Doors in 1967, when he was a 21-year-old soldier in Vietnam.^[8] Before filming started, Stone and his producers had to negotiate with the three surviving band members and the parents of Morrison and his girlfriend Pamela Courson, and the band's label Elektra Records. Morrison's parents would only allow themselves to be depicted in a dream-like flashback sequence at the beginning of the film. The Coursons wanted there to be no suggestion in any way that Pamela caused Morrison's death. Stone found the Coursons the most difficult to deal with because they wanted Pamela to be portrayed as 'an angel'.^[8] While researching the film, Stone read through transcripts of interviews with over 100 people.^[9] He then wrote his own script in the summer of 1989. Stone said, 'The Doors script was always problematic. Even when we shot, but the music helped fuse it together'.^[10] Stone picked the songs he wanted to use and then wrote 'each piece of the movie as a mood to fit that song'.^[10] The Coursons did not like his script and tried to slow the production down by refusing to allow any of Morrison's later poetry to be used in the film. (When Morrison died, Courson got the rights to his poetry and when she died, her parents got the rights.)^[10]

Casting[edit]

For nearly 10 years prior to production, the project went through development hell after being considered by many studios and directors. Several actors including Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, John Travolta, and Richard Gere were each considered for the role of Morrison when the project was still in development in the 1980s.^[11] Even Bono from U2 and Michael Hutchence of INXS expressed an interest in the role, however Stone offered the role to Ian Astbury of The Cult. He declined the role because he was not happy with the way Morrison was represented in the film.^[2] When Stone began talking about the project in 1988, he had Val Kilmer in mind to play Morrison after seeing him in the Ron Howard fantasy film Willow.^[8][12] Kilmer had the same kind of singing voice as Morrison and to convince Stone that he was right for the role, spent several thousand dollars of his own money and made his own eight-minute video, singing and looking like Morrison at various stages of his life.^[13] To prepare for the role, Kilmer lost weight and spent six months rehearsing Doors songs every day. The actor learned 50 songs, 15 of which are actually performed in the film. Kilmer also spent hundreds of hours with Paul Rothchild, who told him, 'anecdotes, stories, tragic moments, humorous moments, how Jim thought, what were my interpretation of Jim's lyrics,' the music producer said.^[13] Rothchild also took Kilmer into the studio and helped him in 'some pronunciations, idiomatic things that Jim would do that made the song sound like Jim'.^[13] Kilmer also met with Krieger and Densmore but Manzarek refused to talk to him.^[13] When the Doors heard Kilmer singing they could not tell whether the voice was Kilmer's or Morrison's.^[14]

Stone auditioned approximately 60 actresses for the role of Pamela Courson.^[15] The part required nudity and the script featured some wild sex scenes which generated a fair amount of controversy. Casting director Risa Bramon felt that Patricia Arquette auditioned very well and should have gotten the part.^[15] To prepare for the role, Meg Ryan talked to the Coursons and people that knew Pamela.^[8] Before doing the film, she was not familiar with Morrison and 'liked a few songs' and said, 'I had to reexamine all my beliefs about it [the 1960s] in order to do this movie'.^[16] In doing research, she encountered several conflicting views of Pamela.^[15]

Krieger acted as a technical adviser on the film and this mainly involved showing his cinematic alter ego, Frank Whaley, where to put his fingers on the fretboard.^[4] Densmore also acted as a consultant on the film, tutoring Kevin Dillon who played him in the film.^[11]

Principal photography[edit]

With a budget set at $32 million, The Doors was filmed over 13 weeks predominantly in and around Los Angeles, California; Paris, France; New York City, New York and the Mojave Desert.^[6][17] Stone originally hired Paula Abdul to choreograph the film's concert scenes but she dropped out because she did not understand Morrison's on-stage actions and was not familiar with the time period. She recommended Bill and Jacqui Landrum. They watched hours of concert footage before working with Kilmer. The Landrums got him to do dance exercises to loosen up his upper body and jumping routines to develop his stamina.^[18] During the concert scenes, Kilmer did the actual singing and Stone used the Doors' master tapes without Morrison's lead vocals to avoid lip-synching.^[19] Kilmer's endurance was put to the test during the concert sequences which took several days to film. Stone said, 'his voice would start to deteriorate after two or three takes. We had to take that into consideration'.^[20] One sequence, filmed inside the Whisky a Go Go, was harder than others due to all the smoke and sweat - a result of the body heat and intense camera lights. For five days, Kilmer performed 'The End' and, after the 24th take Stone got what he wanted, his actor was completely exhausted.^[20]

Controversy arose during filming when a memo linked to Kilmer circulated among cast and crew members listing rules of how the actor was to be treated for the duration of principal photography.^[21] These included people being forbidden to approach him on the set without good reason, not to address him by his own name while he was in character, and no one could 'stare' at him on the set. An upset Stone contacted Kilmer's agent and the actor claimed it was all a huge misunderstanding and that the memo was for his own people and not the film crew.^[21]

Soundtrack[edit]

The film's soundtrack contains over two dozen of The Doors' songs; in the film, original recordings of the band are combined with vocal performances by Kilmer himself. In addition to the many themed Doors songs featured, two songs by The Velvet Underground are also heard throughout the film.^[22]

Historical accuracy[edit]

The film is based mostly on real people and actual events, but some parts are clearly Stone's vision and dramatization of those people and events. For example, when Morrison is asked to change the infamous lyric in 'Light My Fire' for his appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, he is depicted as blatantly ignoring their request. The film depicts a defiant Morrison shouting the word 'higher! Yeah!' into the TV camera, while in fact during the broadcast Morrison had simply sung the vocal with the same emphasis as on the record. Morrison later said the inclusion of 'higher' in the live version was an accident, that he meant to change the lyric but was so nervous about performing on live television that he simply forgot to change it. Ray Manzarek said that The Doors pretended to agree to the change of words, and deliberately played the song as they always had, though, without any added emphasis on the offending word.^[23] For the Ed Sullivan Show performance, Kilmer as Morrison is shown wearing a black shirt; however, during Morrison's actual performance on the show in September 1967, he wore a white shirt and a black leather jacket.

Another inaccuracy is the character of a seductive female magazine photographer played by Mimi Rogers, who appears to be based on 16 magazine editor Gloria Stavers (the dialogue in this scene is based on a conversation Stavers had with Morrison during a photo session in her Manhattan apartment). This character is portrayed as having taken the famous 'Young Lion' picture of Jim Morrison in New York City in 1967, when in fact this particular photograph (as well as nearly all the other publicity photographs for the Doors first album) were taken by a male photographer, Joel Brodsky, in Los Angeles in November 1966.

Morrison is also depicted as locking Pamela Courson in a closet and setting it on fire. Later, he is seen having a violent argument with Courson at a Thanksgiving celebration where they both threaten each other with a knife; and in another scene, Morrison is shown angrily throwing a television set at Ray Manzarek for licensing the use of 'Light My Fire' in a Buick television commercial.^[24] Even though Manzarek was frank about Morrison's tendency to go into senseless rages,^[25] participants in the film agree Stone took many liberties in fabricating events and that none of these incidents actually occurred.

Dialogue that took place between Kennealy and Morrison is reassigned to Courson, and Courson is depicted as saying hostile things to Kennealy, when by all reports their interactions were polite. Kennealy is also portrayed as being the girl Jim Morrison was with in the shower stall backstage just before the December 9, 1967 New Haven concert, when in fact he was having a conversation with a local teenage co-ed from Southern Connecticut State University. What's more, the New Haven venue is presented in the film as a gorgeous amphitheater with a large balcony and a packed audience, when in reality it was a rather decrepit, half-empty hockey rink with audience members sitting on foldable wooden chairs. Similarly, in an earlier scene of a press conference set in New York City in 1967, when Kennealy is first introduced to Morrison, the singer is asked a question regarding 'the dreadful reviews your new poetry book has received'; at that time, Morrison had not yet published any volumes of his poetry.

The band's drummer John Densmore is portrayed as hating Morrison as the singer's personal and drug problems begin to dominate his behavior. In truth, as Densmore writes in Riders on the Storm, he never directly confronted Morrison about his behavior. Other questionable portrayals include those of Andy Warhol, who is presented as a leering homosexual caricature, and German singer Nico, whose dress and behavior in the film are more akin to a prostitute than a professional entertainer.

Krieger, Densmore, and Kennealy are all credited as technical advisors for the film; however, they have all commented that although they may have given advice, Stone often chose to ignore it in favor of his own vision of the story. The settings for the film, particularly the concert sequences, are depicted in mostly chronological order, although the crowd scenes contain many blatant exaggerations, such as portrayals of public nudity, bonfires, and group revelries that did not occur.

In the film's climactic scene of the infamous concert at the Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami on March 1, 1969, Morrison is shown as leaving the stage to join the audience for a singalong medley of 'Break on Through' and 'Dead Cats, Dead Rats', a portrayal which is likewise exaggerated and inaccurate. Another glaring inaccuracy: prior to the concert, a hippie reporter on the scene makes a derogatory comment about the band's fourth studio album The Soft Parade, which had not yet been completed and would not be released until July of that year.

The surviving Doors members were all to one degree or another unhappy with the final product, and were said to have heavily criticized Stone's portrayal of Morrison as an 'out of control sociopath.' In a 1991 interview with Gary James, Manzarek criticized Stone for exaggerating Morrison's alcohol consumption in the movie, saying, 'Jim with a bottle all the time. It was ridiculous . . . It was not about Jim Morrison. It was about Jimbo Morrison, the drunk. God, where was the sensitive poet and the funny guy? The guy I knew was not on that screen.'^[26] In the afterword of his book Riders on the Storm, Densmore says that the movie is based on 'the myth of Jim Morrison'. In the same place, he criticizes the film for portraying Morrison's ideas as 'muddled through the haze of the drink [alcohol].' In a 1994 interview, Krieger said that the film doesn't give the viewer 'any kind of understanding of what made Jim Morrison tick.' Krieger also commented about the film in the same interview: 'They left a lot of stuff out. Some of it was overblown, but a lot of the stuff was very well done, I thought.'^[27]

In the book The Doors, Manzarek says, 'that Oliver Stone thing did real damage to the guy I knew: Jim Morrison, the poet.' In this book, Densmore says of the movie, 'a third of it's fiction.' In the same volume, Krieger joins Manzarek and Densmore in describing the movie as inaccurate, but also says, referring to the film's inaccuracy, 'it could have been a lot worse.'

As the credits point out and as Stone emphasizes on his DVD commentary, some characters, names, and incidents in the film are fictitious or amalgamations of real people. Stone states in particular in the 1997documentary, The Road of Excess, that Quinlan's character, Patricia Kennealy, is a composite, and in retrospect should have been given a fictitious name. Kennealy in particular was hurt by her portrayal in the film and strongly objected to a scene in the film where Morrison states that he did not take their Wiccan marriage ceremony seriously.

Ryan's character, Pamela Courson, involves liberties of a different sort. The former Doors do not think the movie depiction of her is very accurate, as their book The Doors describes the version of Courson in the movie as 'a cartoon of a girlfriend.' Courson's parents had inherited Morrison's poems when their daughter died, and Stone had to agree to restrictions about his portrayal of her in exchange for the rights to use the poetry. In particular, Stone agreed to avoid any suggestion that Courson may have been responsible for Morrison's death. However, Alain Ronay and Courson herself had both said that she was responsible. In Riders on the Storm, Densmore says Courson said she felt terribly guilty because she had obtained drugs that she believed had either caused or contributed to Morrison's death.

Manzarek did not approve of how Morrison was portrayed by Stone. In Manzarek's biography of the Doors, Light My Fire, he often criticizes Stone and also includes myriad details that discredit Stone's account of Morrison. For example, in Stone's 're-creation' of Morrison's student film at UCLA, he has Morrison watching a D-Day sequence on TV and shouting profanities in German, with a near-nude German exchange student dancing on top of the TV sporting a swastika armband. According to Manzarek, the only similarity between Stone's version and Morrison's was that the girl in question was indeed German.^[28]

Release and reception[edit]

The film received mixed reviews from critics. According to Q magazine, 'few people emerged from seeing the film having raised their opinions of that band and especially its singer Jim Morrison.' The problem, as critic Keith Cameron has put it, was not so much that 'Stone dwelled upon Morrison the inebriate, the philanderer, or the pretentious Lizard King.. No, blame clichéd Hollywood devices for sucking the wonder from the pioneering band: actors with fake hair saying silly things..' and 'a self-important director's turgid attempts to make grand statements about America.'^[29]

James Morrison Of The Doors

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 57% approval rating, based on 60 reviews, with an average rating of 6.01/10. The site's consensus states: 'Val Kilmer delivers a powerhouse performance as one of rock's most incendiary figures, but unfortunately, Oliver Stone is unable to shed much light on the circus surrounding the star.'^[30]Metacritic reports a 62 out of 100 rating, based on 19 critics, indicating 'generally favorable reviews.'^[31]Rolling Stone gave the film four out of four stars.^[32] The film was entered into the 17th Moscow International Film Festival.^[33]

In April 2019, a restored version of the film was selected to be shown in the Cannes Classics section at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.^[34]

Home media[edit]

The Doors was released on DVD on August 14, 2001.^[35] The Doors was later released on Blu-Ray on August 12, 2008.^[35] The Doors was released on 4K Blu-Ray on July 23, 2019.^[36]

See also[edit]

• When You're Strange – a documentary film about The Doors

References[edit]

1. ^The Doors at Box Office Mojo
2. ^ ^abcRiordan 1996, p. 308.
3. ^ ^abRiordan 1996, p. 310.
4. ^ ^abcdMitchell, Justin (December 28, 1990). 'Opening Up a Closed Door'. St. Petersburg Times. p. 19.
5. ^MacInnis, Craig (March 2, 1991). 'The Myth is Huge, but the Truth is the Lure of the Eternal'. Toronto Star. pp. H1.
6. ^ ^abBroeske, P (March 10, 1991). 'Stormy Rider'. Sunday Herald.
7. ^Riordan 1996, p. 312.
8. ^ ^abcdMcDonnell, D (March 2, 1991). 'Legendary Rocker Lives Again'. Herald Sun. p. 27.
9. ^'Oliver Stone and The Doors'. The Economist. March 16, 1991.
10. ^ ^abcRiordan 1996, p. 311.
11. ^ ^abMcDonnell, D (March 16, 1991). 'Rider on the Storm'. Courier-Mail.
12. ^Green, Tom (March 4, 1991). 'Kilmer's Uncanny Portrait of Morrison Opens Career Doors'. USA Today. pp. 4D.
13. ^ ^abcdHall, Carla (March 3, 1991). 'Val Kilmer, Lighting the Fire'. Washington Post. pp. G1.
14. ^Riordan 1996, p. 314.
15. ^ ^abcRiordan 1996, p. 316.
16. ^Riordan 1996, p. 322.
17. ^Riordan 1996, p. 317.
18. ^Thomas, Karen (March 12, 1991). 'Helping Stage The Doors'. USA Today. pp. 2D.
19. ^Riordan 1996, p. 318.
20. ^ ^abKilday, Gregg (March 1, 1991). 'Love Me Two Times'. Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 2010-07-17.
21. ^ ^abRiordan 1996, p. 326.
22. ^The Doors (1991) - Trivia
23. ^Manzarek, Ray. Light My Fire. New York: Berkley Boulevard Books, 1998 (ISBN978-0-425-17045-8), p251-252. Penguin edition
24. ^According to Manzarek, among others Chat with Ray Manzarek 11/17/97
25. ^Manzarek, Light My Fire, p. 180, 205-207, 305-308.
26. ^Interview with Ray Manzarek at Classic Bands
27. ^'Interview With Robby Krieger'. Classicbands.com. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
28. ^Manzarek, Light My Fire, p. 55-57
29. ^Cameron, Keith. Q magazine. 2010. October issue. Review Music DVDs. The Doors. When You're Strange. p.134.
30. ^'The Doors (1991)'. Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Retrieved June 28, 2019.
31. ^'The Doors reviews'. Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved January 12, 2016.
32. ^'The Doors' (review)Archived 2014-07-18 at Archive.todayRolling Stone (March 1, 1991)
33. ^'17th Moscow International Film Festival (1991)'. MIFF. Archived from the original on 2014-04-03. Retrieved 2013-03-02.
34. ^'Cannes Classics 2019'. Festival de Cannes. 26 April 2019. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
35. ^ ^ab'The Doors DVD Release Date'. DVDs Release Dates. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
36. ^'The Doors: The Final Cut - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Ultra HD Review High Def Digest'. ultrahd.highdefdigest.com. Retrieved 2019-05-23.

Bibliography[edit]

• Riordan, James (September 1996) Stone: A Biography of Oliver Stone. New York: Aurum Press. ISBN1-85410-444-6

External links[edit]

James Morrison The Doors Death

James Morrison

• The Doors on IMDb
• The Doors at the TCM Movie Database
• The Doors at AllMovie
• The Doors at Box Office Mojo
• The Doors at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Doors at Metacritic
• The Road of Excess on IMDb, a documentary of The Doors, included with the 2001 DVD