Jim Morrison

Morrison believed the incident to be the most formative event of his life, and made repeated references to it in the imagery in his songs, poems, and interviews. His family does not recall this incident happening in the way he told it. The book The Doors, written by the remaining members of The Doors, explains how different Morrison's account of the incident was from the account 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." Jim’s English teacher once commented, "I felt that Jim was the only one in the class who read Ulysses, and understood it."


Jim’s senior-year English teacher said that, "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."

In an early display of his so-called "rebellious"-ness, he refused to attend the graduation ceremony, his degree diploma being mailed to him. He made two 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.  Morrison was an advocate of the underground newspaper until his death in 1971. He later conducted a lengthy and in-depth interview with Bob Chorush and Andy Kent, both working for the Free Press at the time (January 1971), and was planning on visiting the headquarters of the busy newspaper shortly before leaving for Paris.

American rock singer and rock lyric who achieved after his death a cult position among fans. Morrison wished to be accepted as a serious artist, and he published such collections of poetry as An American Prayer (1970) and The Lords and The New Creatures (1971). The song lyrics Morrison wrote for The Doors much reflected the tensions of the time – drug culture, the antiwar movement, avant-garde art. With his early death Morrison has been seen as a voluntary victim of the destructive forces in pop culture. However, he was not ignorat about the consequences of fame and his position as an idol. Morrison once confessed that "We're more interested in the dark side of life, the evil thing, the night time."

James Douglas Morrison was born in Melbourne, Florida, on December 8, 1943. His father, George “Steve” Morrison, was a U.S. Navy admiral, born in Georgia in 1920. In 1942, after graduating from the Naval Academy, he had married Clara (Clarke) Morrison, the daughter of a lawyer. In 1946 he returned from the Pacific and during the following years the family moved according to his numerous postings. Jim was their eldest son. When he began performing in public, he broke with his father and mother and never saw them again. George Morrison died in 2008.

Morrison was early interested in literature, he excelled at school, and he had an IQ of 149. Morrison studied theatre arts at the University of California. With his fellow student Ray Manzarek, keyboardist, John Densmore, drummer, and Robbie Kriger, guitarist, he formed a group which was in 1965 christened The Doors. They never added a bass player to their group. It also included such Doors classics as 'Break on Through' (to the Other Side)' and 'The End'. The lyrics Morrison wrote in 1965 dominated the first two Doors albums. In July 1967 the band had its first single chart success with 'Light My Fire'.

Thus improvising and unpredictableness was a part of the band's show on stage. The mythical Lizard King, Morrison's alter ego, appeared first in the best-selling record Waiting for the Sun (1968) in a poem that was printed inside the record jacked. I was entitled 'The Celebration of the Lizard King'. Part of the lyrics were used in 'Not to Touch the Earth' and the complete 'Celebration' appeared on record Absolutely Live (1970).

Morrison's drinking, exhibitionistic performances, and drug-taking badly affected his singing and input at recordings. "Let's just say I was testing the bounds of reality," he confessed in 1969 in Los Angeles. "I was curious to see what would happen. That's all it was: just curiosity." In Miami in 1969 the audience thought it saw Jim's "snake" – he was charged with exposing himself on stage, in full view of 10.000 people. The police did not arrest him on the spot, for fear that it would cause a riot. Next year Morrison was sentenced 8 months' hard labor and a $500 fine for "profanity" and "indecent exposure", but he remained free while the sentence was appealed against. The Soft Parade (1969), which experimented with brass sections, was received with mixed emotions but it had a hit single, 'Touch me'.

After Miami everything changed and Morrison put his leather pants in closet. He grew a beard, started to take distance to his fans, and devote more time with projects outside the band. John Densmore has later told in an interview, that although he knew Jim well, there was so much about him that he could not find out. Possessed by his inner visions and urge to write and create music, Morrison also had troubles to explain his aims. He also felt that his time was running short: "O great creator of being, grant us one more hour / to perform our art and perfect our lives."

In April 1970 Morrison Hotel hit the lists in the U.S. and England. It was hailed as a major comeback. One song on it, 'Queen of the Highway', was dedicated Pamela Courson, his common-law wife, who called herself Pamela Morrison. Jim called Pamela his "cosmic mate". Morrison had also an affair with Linda Ashcroft from 1967 to 1971. With Patricia Kennealy, a rock critic, he had romance which started in 1969; supposedly they were joined in a Wiccan ceromony, known as a Handfasting. Morrison did not take the ritual seriously.

On his 27th birthday, Morrison made the recordings at Elektra's LA studio of his poetry, which later formed the basis of An American Prayer. The Doors played their last concert with Morrison in New Orleans. It was a disaster – Morrison smashed the microphone into the stage, threw the stand into the crowd and slumped down.

After finishing sessions for a new album, L.A. Woman, Morrison escaped to Paris, where he hoped to follow literary career. "See me change," he sang. He never came back from Paris. His first book, The Lords and the New Creatures, was published by Simon and Schuster in 1971. It went into paperback after selling 15.000 in hardback. An earlier book, An American Prayer, was privately printed in 1970, but not made widely available until 1978. On 3 July 1971 Morrison was found death in his bathtub. He had regurgitated a small amount of blood on the night of July 2, but claimed he felt fine. Recently had consulted a local doctor concerning a respitory problem.

Morrison was buried at Pére Lachaise cemetary in Paris, which houses remains of many famous artists, statesmen and legendaries from Edith Piaf to Oscar Wilde. In 1990 his graffitti-covered headstone was stolen. Pamela Courson Morrison, died in Hollywood of heroin overdose on April 25, 1974. In 1979 Francis Ford Coppola used The Doors' performance of 'The End' in his Vietnam War film, Apocalypse Now, and in 1991 director Oliver Stone made the film biography The Doors, starring Val Kilmer. Wilderness: The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison was published in 1989. It was compiled from the Morrison literary estate by his friends.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/, http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/, http://3.bp.blogspot.com/