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Sex, death, reptiles, charisma, and a unique variant of the electric
blues gave the Doors an aura of profundity that not only survived
but has grown during the 30 years since Jim Morrison's death. By
themselves, Morrison's lyrics read like adolescent posturings, but
with his sexually charged delivery, Ray Manzarek's dry organ, and
Robby Krieger's jazzy guitar, they became eerie, powerful, almost
shamanistic invocations that hinted at a familiarity with darker
forces, and, in Morrison’s case, an obsession with excess and death.
At its best, the Doors’ music — “Light My Fire,” “L.A. Woman” — has
come to evoke a noirish view of ’60s California that contrasts
sharply with the era’s prevailing folky, trippy style.
Morrison and Manzarek, acquaintances from the UCLA Graduate School
of Film, conceived the group at a 1965 meeting on a Southern
California beach. After Morrison recited one of his poems,
“Moonlight Drive,” Manzarek — who had studied classical piano as a
child and played in Rick and the Ravens, a UCLA blues band —
suggested they collaborate on songs. Manzarek’s brothers, Rick and
Jim, served as guitarists until Manzarek met John Densmore, who
brought in Robby Krieger; both had been members of the Psychedelic
Rangers. Morrison christened the band the Doors, from William Blake
via Aldous Huxley’s book on mescaline, The Doors of Perception.
The Doors soon recorded a demo tape, and in the summer of 1966
they began working as the house band at the Whisky-a-Go-Go, a gig
that ended four months later when they were fired for performing the
explicitly Oedipal “The End,” one of Morrison’s many songs that
included dramatic recitations. By then Jac Holzman of Elektra
Records had been convinced by Arthur Lee of Love to sign the band.
An edited version of Krieger’s “Light My Fire” from the Doors’
debut album (Number Two, 1967) became a Number One hit in 1967,
while “progressive” FM radio played (and analyzed) “The End.”
Morrison’s image as the embodiment of dark psychological impulses
was established quickly, even as he was being featured in such teen
magazines as 16. Strange Days (Number Three, 1967) and Waiting for
the Sun (Number One, 1968) both included hit singles and became
best-selling albums. Waiting for the Sun also marked the first
appearance of Morrison’s mythic alter ego, the Lizard King, in a
poem printed inside the record jacket entitled “The Celebration of
the Lizard King.” Though part of the poem was used as lyrics for
“Not to Touch the Earth,” a complete “Celebration” didn’t appear on
record until Absolutely Live (Number Eight, 1970).
It was
impossible to tell whether Morrison’s Lizard King persona was a
parody of a pop star or simply inspired exhibitionism, but it earned
him considerable notoriety. In December 1967 he was arrested for
public obscenity at a concert in New Haven, and in August 1968 he
was arrested for disorderly conduct aboard an airplane en route to
Phoenix. Not until his March 1969 arrest in Miami for exhibiting
“lewd and lascivious behavior by exposing his private parts and by
simulating masturbation and oral copulation” onstage did Morrison’s
behavior adversely affect the band. Court proceedings kept the
singer in Miami most of the year although the prosecution could
produce neither eyewitnesses nor photos of Morrison performing the
acts. Charges were dropped, but public furor (which inspired a
short-lived Rally for Decency movement), concert promoters’ fear of
similar incidents, and Morrison’s own mixed feelings about celebrity
resulted in erratic concert schedules thereafter.
The Soft
Parade (Number Six, 1969), far more elaborately produced than the
Doors’ other albums, met with a mixed reception from fans, but it
too had a Number Three hit single, “Touch Me.” Morrison began to
devote more attention to projects outside the band: writing poetry,
collaborating on a screenplay with poet Michael McClure, and
directing a film, A Feast of Friends (he had also made films to
accompany “Break On Through” and the 1968 single “The Unknown
Soldier”). Simon & Schuster published The Lords and the New
Creatures in 1971; an earlier book, An American Prayer, was
privately printed in 1970 but not made widely available until 1978,
when the surviving Doors regrouped and set Morrison’s recitation of
the poem to music. In 1989 Wilderness: The Lost Writings of Jim
Morrison was published. Although Morrison expressed to friends and
associates his wish to be remembered as a poet, overall his writings
have found few fans among critics. By then some felt, especially
after “Touch Me,” that the band had sold out, and Morrison’s
dangerous persona was more often ridiculed than not. Critic Lester
Bangs once tagged him “Bozo Dionysus.”
Soon after L.A. Woman
(Number Nine, 1971) was recorded, Morrison took an extended leave of
absence from the group. Obviously physically and emotionally
drained, he moved to Paris, where he hoped to write and where he and
his wife, Pamela Courson Morrison, lived in seclusion. He died of
heart failure in his bathtub in 1971 at age 27. Partly because news
of his death was not made public until days after his burial in
Paris’ Père-Lachaise cemetery, some still refuse to believe Morrison
is dead. His wife, one of the few people who saw Morrison’s corpse,
died in Hollywood of a heroin overdose on April 25, 1974.
The
Doors continued to record throughout 1973 as a trio, but after two
albums it seemed they had exhausted the possibilities of a band
without a commanding lead singer. Manzarek had hoped to reconstitute
the group with Iggy Pop, whose avowed chief influence was Morrison,
but plans fell through. After the Doors broke up, Manzarek recorded
two solo albums, and one with a short-lived group called Nite City.
He produced the first four albums by L.A.’s X, and in 1983 he
collaborated with composer Philip Glass on a rock version of Carl
Orff’s modern cantata, Carmina Burana. Krieger and Densmore formed
the Butts Band, which lasted three years and recorded two albums. In
1972 a Doors greatest-hits collection, Weird Scenes Inside the Gold
Mine was released, hit Number 55, and went gold. Krieger released
his first solo album in 1981 and toured in 1982.
Ironically,
the group’s best years began in 1980, nine years after Morrison’s
death. With the release of the Danny Sugerman–Jerry Hopkins
biography of Morrison, No One Here Gets Out Alive, sales of the
Doors’ music and the already large Jim Morrison cult — spurred by
his many admirers and imitators in new-wave bands — grew even more.
Record sales for 1980 alone topped all previous figures; as one
ROLLING STONE magazine cover line put it: “He’s Hot, He’s Sexy, He’s
Dead.” And that was just the beginning. The 1983 release of Alive,
She Cried, followed by MTV’s airing of Doors videos, introduced
Morrison and the band to a new generation, and Oliver Stone’s 1991
film biography of the group, starring Val Kilmer as Morrison, was a
critical and commercial success. The group was inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder filled
in for Morrison for the Doors’ performance at the ceremonies.
The Morrison cult continues to grow, particularly among the
young. In 1990 his graffiti-covered headstone was stolen; in 1993,
on what would have been his 50th birthday, hundreds of mourners —
many not even born before he died — traveled from around the world
to pay tribute. Because of the destruction these visitors often
wreak on the cemetery during their pilgrimages, many Parisians
petitioned to move Morrison’s grave when its 30-year lease expired
in 2001; French officials, however, opted to leave Morrison’s
remains in their resting place.
A box set with material
chosen by the band was released in 1997. Emphasizing live (the set
starts off with the notorious version of “Five to One” recorded at
the March ’69 Miami concert) and lesser-known tracks (“Albinoni’s
Adagio in G Minor,” a 25-minute free-form jam called “Rock Is
Dead”), the four-disc set includes “Orange County Suite,” a “Free as
a Bird”–style song — i.e., new instrumental tracks were dubbed onto
an old Morrison vocal. His vocals were resurrected yet again in
2000, when Fatboy Slim sampled Morrison’s reading of “Bird of Prey”
for a track on his album Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars.
That same year, VH1 taped an episode of its Storytellers series in
which the Cult’s Ian Astbury, Creed singer Scott Stapp, Stone Temple
Pilot’s Scott Weiland, Days of the New frontman Travis Meeks, and
Perry Farrell took turns covering Doors songs. The singers were
backed by the surviving members of the Doors; it was the first time
the three had played together since their induction into the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame. The episode aired around the same time
Elektra released Stoned Immaculate: The Music of the Doors, which
featured Krieger, Manzarek, and Densmore participating in their own
tribute album.
Capitalizing on the continual interest in the
band, the Doors launched an Internet-based label, Bright Midnight
Records, which released The Bright Midnight Sampler at the end of
2000. The Doors Live in Detroit and No One Here Gets Out Alive — a
radio interview with the remaining Doors members that originally
aired in 1980 — followed in 2001.
In 2002, Manzarek and
Krieger formed a new band called The Doors of the 21st Century with
Krieger sideman Angelo Barbera on bass and Astbury stepping in as
Morrison. After Densmore opted out reportedly due to tinnitus and
Police drummer Stewart Copeland left due to a broken arm, the new
band finally settled on Krieger drummer Ty Dennis. The following
year Densmore, claiming he actually had not been invited to take
part in the new band, filed an injunction against Manzarak and
Krieger in an attempt to stop them from using the Doors name. Jim
Morrison’s estate joined him in the suit. In July 2005 they won the
injunction and the band changed its name to D21C, and then changed
it again to Riders on the Storm. In early 2007 Astbury left to
revive The Cult; Manzarek and Krieger replaced him with Brett
Scallions, the former frontman of Fuel.
Meanwhile, Densmore
thwarted efforts to license The Doors’ music for commercials,
including a $15 million offer from Cadillac and a $4 million offer
from Apple, Inc. In a 2002 essay for The Nation he wrote that
commercial use of the music would violate its original intent.
In 2006, the year before the 40th anniversary of the release of
the Doors debut album, Perception, yet another box set of the band's
complete studio recordings, appeared. This one included
surround-sound versions of some tracks, extra songs and DVDs. In
2007 three different versions of an earlier collection, The Very
Best of the Doors, was released, in addition to a new three-disc
performance set, Live in Boston '70. That same year the Doors
received a lifetime achievement award at the Grammys and a star on
the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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