The Doors to Schools of Learning Might Remain Closed

Dateline: Florida, 1963. Thanks to the folks at Mojo (the magazine) there's evidence that the pre-Doors Jim Morrison was not a crash hot actor. This appears to be some sort of public education film telling teens that the university place of their dreams doesn't await them unless they knuckle down and study.

Jimbo, soon to be a Lizard King, was then just the 20-year-old son of a US Navy Admiral who made it into film school at UCLA. Someone now needs to uncover a long-buried anti-drugs public service ad and life will be complete.

Breaking On Through One More Time

I know the post-Jim Doors machine has been a runaway train business entity, seemingly aimed at squeezing every last cent out of the Lizard King's adoring fans, but maybe this premium-priced box set might be worth close to the asking price of US$90.

The last days of the Doors have a dark attraction to them - sort of like the truck-running-downhill-with-no-brakes finality. "LA Woman" had a damaged, world-weary blues feel that dwarves much of the band's mid-period output.

This one pre-dates The End, documenting NYC gigs that would appear, in part, on the sprawling/bloated "Absolutely Live" set and recorded around the time of "Morrison Hotel", but you can hear where they're heading.

Read more about the box set here.

Danny Fields tells tales

Jim Morrison was an asshole whose bandmates had nightmares because they were worried he was still alive...Jim Osterberg lost his looks and tried to get him sacked...

Uber-starmaker Danny Fields reflects on his rich past in music in the first of a two-part interview at Thirsty Media's e-presence here.

New Doors doco: When You're Strange

There have almost been too many of these but another one is previewed here.

Learning To Love The Doors Again

Jim Morrison died - probably of a smack overdose, maybe of verbosity - in 1971. The Doors died for me in 1992 after three viewings of Oliver Stone’s movie.

I hate hype. I’m not so silly as to claim total immunity but pragmatic enough to know that when most of it washes over or passes me by, it makes me very happy. So I only ever partially bought into the ‘90s re-birth of the Doors, driven in equal parts by fanboy-turned-posthumous manager Danny Sugerman and ebullient but calculating keyboards man Ray Manzarek. The “No-one Here Gets Out Alive” bio was a great read, even if parts were fabricated to paper over gaps in memories or missing pieces.

In marketing it’s said that all brands have a limited life. When one is re-birthed or revitalized it’s called it a “line extension”. You don’t have to read the late Mr Sugerman’s vastly entertaining autobiography “Wonderland Avenue” to know he knew lots and lots about lines. But back to the subject…

I used to love the music of the Doors even if I found Jimbo’s poetic bent over-rated at times and guitarist Robby Krieger a bit of a one-trick pony. I had all their catalogue on vinyl. One of my housemates in the itinerant ‘80s share accommodation phase had a Jimbo fixation, playing the shit out of those LPs and tripping on whatever was at hand while quoting lyrics ad nauseum. A visit to Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris (Morrison’s resting place) was a must on an overseas trip where the prostrated, sobbing/stoned fans, graffiti and gifts confirmed how crazy the more extreme Doors fans really were.

The ‘90s rolled around and so did the movie. Band members dissed it for what it was – Hollywood fucking a dead rock star - but it opened the floodgates for all manner of cross-promotion, re-issues and re-invention. We had band member re-mixes, hand-picked and re-mastered best ofs, a band member hand-picked box set (one disc each) and of course a stream of books, with most of them not saying much. The Jim Morrison McHappy Meal never transpired (“nod off in the bath with a burger”) but I’m sure it was not through lack of trying.

The constant hype just got to me. I switched off. In the ‘00s, I avoided the tour by the remaining members. (Drummer John Densmore eventually did too – probably after he read Manzarek’s less than flattering comments about him in his own autobiography.) “Alive, She Cried” got some turntable time but I eventually shut the door on the Doors.

The door recently re-opened. A re-mastered version “LA Woman” that was a sonic upgrade gave it initial impetus. The bluesy rawness of this one meant it never entirely faded from view. The “Live in Hollywood” disc – culled from post-Miami shows at the Aquarius in LA – helped, even if Sugerman’s liner notes comparing Morrison to Nijinsky is compelling evidence that too many drugs really do fuck your brain. (I never speak ill of the dead but the word “necrophiliac” is somehow appropriate.)

A couple of months ago, I stumbled across the entire studio back catalogue on Rhino (this line extension is Bruce Botnick’s re-mixes from the master tapes) in a chain store for the bargain basement price of 10 bucks each. Digital slut that I am, I took the plunge.

Some of the re-mixes are superfluous and the bonus tracks on the first couple are dubious (outtakes of truncated versions or studio chatter are usually exactly that – outtakes) but I’m warming to some of the tweaks. A few specific observations:

- The mid-period “Morrison Hotel” is right up there with the band’s best. Can any band complain about having its first, last and middle albums rated as “excellent”. Thought not.

- As ravaged as his voice was by then, “LA Woman” is stronger for that fact. That the band says it had run out of songs by then and was making things up in the studio is not necessarily a negative either.

- Even with years of distance, the term “mute nostril agony” has never improved as a lyric.

- The penny has dropped: The reason for the “I see the bathroom is clear” line is because “LA Woman” was recorded in the band’s office with the shithouse set up as a vocal booth. D'oh.

- Did the flawed “The Soft Parade” really take nearly a year to make? Why?

"Night descends, daylight ends..."

Further to yesterday’s post about the 3rd Day of the Seventh Month and various events to do with that date including the passing of Doors singer Jim Morrison: Visitors vocalist (who doesn’t do a bad version of “Hyacinth House”), Radio Birdman alumnus and general conspiracy-theorist-about-town, Mark Sisto, points out that it was also the anniversary of the de-commissioning of the USS Bon Homme Richard, the aircraft carrier skippered by Jimbo’s dad, Admiral George Morrison, which makes it a doubly sad day for him. Admiral Morrison spoke at the ship's de-commissioning, 12 hours after his son's death and no doubt unaware of what had gone down in Paris.

While I knew that Morrison senior was, for many years, the US Navy’s youngest-ever admiral, I wasn’t aware his career may have been stymied by politics rather than his son’s psychedelic profile. Read more here.

This is the shit you need to know if you're doing serious business on the burgeoning trivia night circuit.

Waiting for the Sun

The Internerd throws up the strangest people. Some of them are seriously mentally unwell, I'm sure. But to more important questions: Did Jim Morrison have a son? And does he front a band called Lizard Sun King?

If you haven't heard it before, the story begins with a bloke named Cliff Morrison/Marston. You can see him and his band Lizard Sun King below:



There's a startling physical resemblance between Cliff and The Lizard King in his declining years, sure, and his pitch and tone are similar. But why doesn't the guy go and get a DNA test and grab a chunk of the (ever-expanding) Morrison estate? Or get himself a decent lawyer and stay out of jail if this posting from the John Densmore forum is true.

Here's the San Diego TV news story that announced this whole thing in 1993:



That was 16 years ago and Cliff looks like he's broken through to the other side a few times since then. A confirmed Doors progeny, guitarist Waylon Kreiger, has played with him or has been overdubbed onto one of his recordings, depending on what story you believe.

Cliff sure gets around. According to this, he was married to a member of Marlon Brando's family. He's one of the star attractions at a Las Vegas (where else?) festival to apparently raise funds for research into diabetes here.

If someone tells me that Cliff's CD being flogged on some website called doors.com is irrefutable evidence that the guy sprang from the loins of Jimbo four decades ago, excuse me for guffawing. If that is a legit Doors Pty Ltd website you just know they'd sell the coke-denuded nasal cartilage of the late Danny Sugerman to make a buck.

I doubt the authenticity of this exchange of letters ("legal council"?) in The Lizard King Lounge and what looks like a badly Photoshopped picture of Cliff's band being given star billing at L.A.'s Whisky-a-Go-Go.

Anyway, back to the mentally unwell and there are minutes of entertainment in this gem of a thread from some message board with Jim's daughter solemnly weighing in and the not unexpected contemporary sightings of Mr Mojo Rising keeping things real.

Will the real Morrison offspring please stand up? Given Jim's inability to keep his own lizard in his leather pants, I have a feeling there are plenty of them out there.