Part One: The Hitchhiker

I was in my late teens when a message went out across the cosmos: "Starseed alert. Severe burnout. Abort mission. Terminal damage. Return to home base immediately."

And so it was that the soul that had taken up temporary residence in the physical body of one James Douglas Morrison, aka Jim, took leave of this earthly place one otherwise uneventful summer's night in Paris, France.

This fantasy visitation occurred to me a number of years ago. Imagine my surprise when, only recently, I was revisiting a book more seriously that I had looked at just cursorily when first purchased. I came across the following, quoted from Cheri Siddons, wife of the manager of the Doors, Bill: "Somewhere I heard the line, 'shooting star', you know, people who come here for a short time and they do their work and they leave, and as soon as I heard that I understood exactly that it applied to Jim."

In 1968, aged fifteen, I bought a copy of the album 'Waiting for the Sun'. This was the Doors' third album, and I thought it was great. I was young enough not to take any notice of reviews (which gave the record a lukewarm reception). Who needs reviews when you know what you like and what you want anyhow? Reviews are for confused or boring people. 

Some of the songs were great. The infinite seductive charm of 'Love Street'. The Spanish acoustic guitar on 'Spanish Caravan' morphing into searing electric rock. 'The Unknown Soldier', arguably the edgiest anti-war song around. It also highlighted the best of Jim Morrison's writing, his ability to compress an entire world into a few simple words. 'Breakfast where the news is read/ television, children fed/ unborn living, living dead/bullet strikes the helmet's head.' American life summarised in eighteen words. 

And then there was 'Yes, the River Knows', the scary and menacing 'Five to One': the list continues.

As good as the music was the album cover. The Doors out somewhere, maybe the edge of the desert, as the sun goes down. The Jim Morrison of the 'Waiting for the Sun' album was the person you wanted to be in 1968. At least, who I wanted to be. Having shed his boy sex god image, he was still strong, slim, good-looking, the long hair blowing in the breeze as the sun went down. Could I be like sexy handsome sultry Jim? Could I? Please. 

Part Two: Love, Love, Love 

I never was a love-and-peace guy. I don't mean by this that I didn't want love and peace. It's just that folk who went around preaching love and peace always seemed to be a bit, well, deficient.

1967 was the Summer of Love, we are told. In California rather more than the UK; still, the incense and flowers managed to waft a little across the airwaves into the kitchens and living rooms of Croydon and Huddersfield. 

The Beatles were still the biggest thing in town. The beginning of the year had seen them release the extraordinary 'Strawberry Fields Forever', a tripped-out piece if ever there was one. Spring witnessed the historic (though personally spasmodic) 'Sergeant Pepper'. High summer came round, and we were all prepared for the grand finale, the icing on the cake, the psychedelic end-time. 

It was common knowledge - at least common rumour - that Lennon had spent the past two years tripping on LSD, visiting hitherto uncharted regions of the infinite. I was fourteen, and didn't quite get what this was, except that I knew it sounded the way to go. The anticipation was unbearable. What would John come up with?

Then the answer came: 'All You Need Is Love.' What? Is that it? Is that all? It was a major let-down. Two years of acid, and that's what you've got for us? All you need is love? My fourteen year old brain probably couldn't come up with the words, but I knew: this was simplistic and naive. Too much time with that Maharishi guy, maybe. If there was 'an answer' for the world, it was surely a little more complex and psychologically nuanced than that.

From then on, the Beatles were pretty much history for me. Love and light: forget it. You needed love, you needed light; but you needed the dark, the other, as well. Leave that behind, and it spells disaster. I sensed it clear as crystal. And at this point, enter Jim Morrison. 

Part Three: Necessary Chaos 

Jim was the missing link, especially for the Protestant-moulded cultures of north-western Europe and North America. Dionysus. Darkly sexy, wild, handsome and beautiful, an invitation for the senses. Chaos, provocation, the triumph of body over beleaguered brain. The ecstasy of the dance, the swirl of the poem, the primal rhythm of music.. Primitive, underworld, otherworld. 

In 1968 Jim Morrison was everything I aspired to be. Two years on, and he was everything I did not want to be. The slim Dionysian demi-god had transformed into a roughly-bearded overweight, alcohol-soaked boor. The music of the future was replete with guitar pedals, trippy whooshing sounds, starry-eyed slender longhairs. And there was Morrison, growling bar blues into a microphone, before collapsing in a drunken heap on the floor. When Jim finally parted his mortal vessel in 1971, I hardly blinked an eye in recognition.

Part Four: The Books

I can think of no-one about whom more bullshit has been written than Jim Morrison (Greta Thunberg is getting there, but that's another story...). For the largely sick world of rock journalism, on the lookout, like most other types of journalism, for sensationalism, glorification, and destruction, he was perfect material. Morrison, it has to be said, played his part in creating the myths and the legends. 

Rock journalism: it is through rock journalism that the myths and legends are propagated. Media in general, and rock journalism in particular, popularised the Jim Morrison of the masses. 

I have a copy of a Jim Morrison book by one such journalist. 'Jim Morrison' by Stephen Davis. It's not exactly a 'bad book'. It's only when you realise that you are looking through the eye of reportage that its shortcomings become clear. That's what it is: reportage, journalism. A compendium of events catalogued, and in such a way as to tell the oh-so familiar tale of the rise and fall of a rock star. If you want to know if Jim turned up drunk for the gig at Vermont, or whether he checked-in on time for the flight to Philadelphia, this is the book for you. If you wish to find out who the guy behind the myths and legends might have been, best look elsewhere....

The finest book, in my view, for getting beyond the hype and propaganda, is 'Morrison; a Feast of Friends' by Frank Lisciandro. A few words from the intro to the book explain it well: 

"In the past, when people discovered I was a friend of Jim Morrison, sooner or later they inevitably asked 'What was he really like?'..... Jim has become a cultural icon. Now the tabloids and magazines, Sunday supplements and MTV devote columns and air time to recreating the Morrison myth. For a friend this should be welcome news. Don't believe it. I find very little truth in what I hear and read..... As the misinformation barrage about Jim increased, I noticed that the people who should be heard from - the people Jim trusted and worked with and tripped with and those he shared his time and thoughts with, his friends - were not being heard from at all..."

This book intends to set the record straight, with interviews with those very same people - including Cheri Siddons, from the beginning of this piece. The result is heart-warming in its honesty, straightforwardness, and lack of pretension.

One salient point to emerge (and not solely from this book) is that the other band members were not necessarily Jim's friends. Certainly from around 1969, they were more like work colleagues than close buddies. They got stressed and anxious (understandably so) because they didn't know when, or if, Jim was going to turn up at the office. He was off with his friends or girlfriends, or by himself, not with Ray, Robby, and John. Their much-publicised views of Jim Morrison are very partial and incomplete at best.

Two other interesting Jim Morrison books: 'We Want the World' by Daveth Milton. The FBI were after the singer -poet, and the 'authorities' really did see him as a threat that needed to be neutralised. It was not simply the chaos and disturbance that sometimes accompanied the shows. It was Morrison's message to the kids, which was, in a nutshell - do not obey authority; look to yourself; find your own destiny in life; follow nobody; in the jargon of today, 'empower yourself'. It's this which made Jim Morrison a dangerous man; Edgar Hoover, among others, took note.

And there is 'Strange Days' by Patricia Kennealy Morrison. Patricia is the lady with whom Jim Morrison underwent a pagan handfasting ceremony, and her love for him clearly transcended the death of his mortal body. There are those detractors who consider Patricia an obsessed and demented fantasist. However, while there are most likely elements of theatre, exaggeration, and wishful thinking woven into the narrative, nevertheless I take her essential story as based on events that did take place. If I pick up the book now, I cringe a little, since some of it is written rather in the style of those slushy paperback romances sold in airports (last time I looked, anyhow, which is a while ago....). However, it is a first-hand account of the life and times of Jim Morrison and, despite the embellishment, has the stamp of reality about it.          

The Jim of 1970 was confused maybe, but way ahead of me in some respects. Life doesn't come wrapped in a package of simplicity, of evenness of personality. What he was trying to do was wake people up. Or, rather, he understood that he was unable to effect this transformation himself. But he could prod, poke, provoke. He could show where to go. We could do with him around right now..... 

Starseed image: gaia.com

A post on the 'current world situation' coming soon, as well as another slice of life story. Regarding the former, the interview below covers some of the psychological aspects of the 'nightmare now', especially going into trauma and abuse personal and collective. The interview fizzles out somewhat near the end, but its main body is very clear and worthwhile.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/vea4oV9dhJ9j/