Mr Mojo (16 page)

‘I went to stay with Pamela right after she came back from Paris,' said Danny Fields, ‘and she was convinced Jim was living in the dog, she thought his spirit had transferred. The dog would jump up and slobber all over you and she'd say, “Sshhh, Jim's trying to tell you something.” I knew then that he was really dead; she wouldn't have been saying that if he was hitchhiking in Arizona. She was in terrible shock, it was so sad.' And when Courson died, the truth about Morrison's death went with her.

The Doors' music would be repackaged and resold throughout the seventies, but it took until 1978 for the legend really to begin to take shape. Since the mid-seventies Manzarek, Krieger and Densmore had been working on the tapes of Morrison's 1970 poetry recitals, providing musical backing for the words; and, along with snippets of original live performances, the results were eventually released as
An American Prayer
. The album was structured as a metaphor for Morrison's life, and, although the verses were more impressive than anything
contained in either
The Lords
or
The New Creatures
, it was still less than a vindication of his poetry.

Paul Rothchild told
BAM
magazine's Blair Jackson in 1981, ‘That album is a rape . . . To me, what was done on
An American Prayer
is the same as taking a Picasso and cutting it into postage-stamp-sized pieces and spreading it across a supermarket wall . . . It was the first commercial sell-out of Jim Morrison.'

Patti Smith, talking about the record with Cynthia Rose in January 1979, said, ‘His intensity seems dated. Dated in its passion and innocence, like
West Side Story
. . . But he was always dated, even when he was around . . . He was bigger than life, and so he was laughable. Where does a guy like him fit in?'

In 1979 ‘The End' finally got its own video: Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam epic
Apocalypse Now
. Coppola originally asked Manzarek to score an entire soundtrack, but eventually decided instead to feature Morrison's most controversial song over the opening and closing credits (with the vocal substantially remixed by Paul Rothchild). In one scene, not used in the final version, Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando, teaches his private army the words to ‘Light My Fire'. The Doors' music was appropriate, not only because it was popular again, but also because it offered an allegorical twist to Coppola's depiction of the war. The movie itself was largely based on Joseph Conrad's
Heart of Darkness
, one of Morrison's favourite books.

As the Jim Morrison legend gained momentum, 1980 saw the release of the exhaustive but sycophantic biography
No One Here Gets Out Alive
– a compelling but ultimately unsatisfying hagiography, written by
Rolling Stone
contributor Jerry Hopkins and the Doors' energetic manager, Danny Sugerman. Hopkins had tried to get his Morrison biography published for years – it was turned down by over thirty publishers but it took Sugerman's overhaul to make it a viable proposition. It was eventually published by Warner Brothers, who had already turned it down twice, and ended up selling millions.

Former Elektra boss Jac Holzman was less than impressed: ‘The book was nothing but a repackaging job – not serious. It was too monumental . . . The death rumours? Not sick but unbelievable. Danny Sugerman – how can I phrase this tactfully – wasn't as tight with Jim as you'd think from the book. I doubt if anyone knew Jim
that
well.'

‘Hopkins and Sugerman's book is primarily interesting for what it apparently inadvertently reveals,' wrote Lester Bangs. ‘In the foreword, on the very first page of the book, Sugerman lets go two sentences which have stopped more than one person of my acquaintance from reading any farther: “I just wanted to say I think Jim Morrison was a modern-day god. Oh hell, at least a lord.”

‘It was never revealed whether Hopkins shares this assessment, but the authors then go on for almost four hundred pages, amassing mountains of evidence almost all of which can for most readers point to only one conclusion: that Jim Morrison was apparently a nigh-complete asshole from the moment he was born until he died in that bathtub in Paris.

‘If Jim Morrison cared so little about his life, was so willing to make it amount to one huge alcoholic exhibitionistic joke, why should they or we or anybody finally care, except insofar as the seamy details provide trashy entertainment?'

By the following year, the tenth anniversary of Morrison's death, the revival was in full swing. In July Manzarek, Krieger and Densmore led fans in a graveside tribute ceremony at Père-Lachaise; in September the compilation LP
The Doors' Greatest Hits
went platinum in the USA; and
Rolling Stone
was one of seven magazines to put the dead Door on their front cover. (‘He's Hot, He's Sexy, And He's Dead', screamed the cover line.) This was the fourth time Morrison had made the cover of
Rolling Stone
, the second time posthumously. In 1981 more Doors records were sold than in any year since they were first released. Teenagers discovered the band for the first time, their records went into heavy rotation on college-radio stations all over America, and they soon became as popular as the Rolling Stones or Van Halen. Big Jim had risen again,
creeping into every suburban bedroom with his dirty lyrics and unsettling white-man's blues. The youth of America again asked Morrison to carry the black flag for them, and he was powerless to resist. Morrison's death took on a life of its own, and the Doors, with Danny Sugerman marketing the myth, experienced an extraordinary renaissance.

In the years since then there have been more records, more books, more videos, Oliver Stone's movie, more discoveries of lost poetry, and more posthumous deification. Now, over forty years after his death, Morrison fever is everywhere. Documentaries are being edited, records being compiled, T-shirts and posters still being printed in their millions. The Morrison industry is thriving. Jim Morrison's image is stronger than ever, and, no matter what comes to light, nothing seems able to tarnish that image. Wherever you go in the world, there will always be a screenprinted image of the tortured icon staring out at you from the front of a T-shirt, trapped for ever in a freeze-framed grimace.

Morrison was the sexiest bookworm to ever pick up a microphone, he was an inspired lyricist and one of the most celebrated pop icons of the sixties. But he was also a wilfully enigmatic, pretentious loudmouth, a self-proclaimed poet who wore the mask of the drunk. He was the impotent alcoholic, the scarred idol. He was the King of Corn, the consummate showman, the petulant clown. He was too clever for his own good,
and often too stupid to care. Masochist, emotional sadist, incurable romantic – Morrison was all these things. But the T-shirts don't have room for any of them, instead promoting only the image of the gaunt, all-conquering sex beast, the Crawling King Snake, the Killer on the Road, the Lord of the Dance, the Lizard King, Mr Mojo Risin'.

‘Towards the end he had complete contempt for his audience,' said Patricia Kennealy, ‘because they couldn't see what he wanted to do. He had this idea that he could lead them after him like a pig on a stick, but they weren't really following. He became disillusioned when they only picked up on the sensationalist stuff, the stuff he used to gain their attention. They didn't understand him, and it was partly his fault.'

As a role model for pop stars, Morrison has been enormously influential, and in the last forty years his legend has been interpreted by hundreds of performers, both good and bad. His whole persona – his passion, his intellect, his pretensions and his cynicism – quickly became a rock and roll blueprint, one that's been relentlessly copied. As Steve Harris said, ‘He really did invent a way of looking back at the world.' He not only inspired a generation of delinquents, he also provided them with a game plan. If, during his life, he had become a mirror for his audience, after his death he became a mirror for his mimics. Many have been inspired by Morrison's
poetic visions and tormented make-up, while others have abused his ironic stage mannerisms – particularly Alice Cooper, who exploited Morrison's uneasy, cathartic performances and cold-heartedly formularised them, turning himself into a moneymaking freak show in the process.

David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Julian Cope, Echo and the Bunnymen's Ian McCulloch and Joy Division's Ian Curtis are among the most pertinent imitators, though Curtis is one of the few to have taken his role to its tragic conclusion, killing himself in 1980. His death also created its own absurd mythology, his fans interpreting personal torment as artistic frustration and futility.

But for many rock stars, the problem of what to do when they turn thirty remains a huge problem. If you start out angry and alienated, what's the point of growing old gracefully? What kind of a legacy is that? Shouldn't you just kill yourself through overindulgence?

‘In a way, Jim Morrison's life and death could be written off as simply one of the more pathetic episodes in the history of the star system,' said Lester Bangs, ‘or that offensive myth we all persist in believing which holds that artists are somehow a race apart and thus entitled to piss on my wife, throw you out the window, smash up the joint and generally do whatever they want. I've seen a lot of this over the years, and what's
most ironic is that it always goes under the assumption that to deny them these outbursts would somehow be curbing their creativity, when the reality, as far as I can see, is that it's exactly such insane tolerance of another insanity that also contributes to their drying up as artists. Because how can you finally create anything real or beautiful when you have absolutely zero input from the real world, because everyone around you is catering to and sheltering you?'

Morrison is now considered to be one of the few genuine rock and roll archetypes, whose behaviour has been copied remorselessly by at least two generations of equally obnoxious but uniformly less talented frontmen – mere chimps to Morrison's eight-hundred-pound gorilla. Using Jim Morrison as a role model is ultimately unsuccessful because those who do are ever reliant on their six-gear anti-social tendencies disguising their creative shortcomings (actions trumping language). Whereas Morrison's absurdity blossomed into majesty, attempts to mimic him are always belittled by cliché.

Jim Morrison got out before he was found out. Because he disappeared when he was only twenty-seven, he left no clues as to how today's dark stars should spend their thirties, let alone the rest of their lives. What would he have done? Would he have deteriorated like Elvis Presley, or found God like Bob Dylan? Or would he have become a parody of himself – something he
was already in danger of doing – like John Lydon, Mick Jagger or Pete Townshend?

Perhaps he would have faded into obscurity, like so many other stars of the sixties. It is impossible to say whether poetry – Morrison's first love and second career – would have granted him the dignity he desired, the dignity he had lost through the Doors' success.

Possibly he would have been disgusted by his own shortcomings. Steve Harris, at least, was convinced about what would have happened: ‘He would have split the group, and become a down-and-out alcoholic. He would have tried to sober up, he would have lost his hair and gotten a paunch. It would have been downhill all the way. He would have tried directing movies, but they would have been marginal. He would never have been able to star in a movie, his looks just wouldn't have allowed it.'

But, had he lived, and had he been able to come to terms with his previous success, it's possible that Morrison would have been a much happier, far more complete person; for his fans, though, this would have been a disaster, as he would have grown up in public. Rock and roll obsessives don't want career plans, they want starbursts and crash landings . . . and with Jim Morrison they got exactly that. For them, the singer will always be twenty-something; he'll never denounce the booze, or give up the good life. Morrison will never change, and that's just the way they like it.

Ultimately Jim Morrison's blueprint is incomplete, being no more than the distillation of an impassioned, violent, misspent youth.

Which is why he remains a hero, a pop deity: time didn't allow Morrison to grow old in public, and so his life remains a prototype of immaturity. We worship Jimi Hendrix, Sid Vicious, Jim Morrison, Ian Curtis and Kurt Cobain because they didn't allow time to interfere with their ambitions; in death they are, to quote Morrison himself, ‘stoned, immaculate'. In rock and roll, it seems, the dead will always have the edge on the living.

7

Père-Lachaise Redux

And alien tears will fall for him,

Pity's long broken urn,

For his mourners will be outcast men

And outcasts always mourn

Inscription on Oscar Wilde's tomb at Père-Lachaise

On a bright and sunny but deceptively cold winter afternoon, a crowd of mourners are standing beside Jim Morrison's grave. They are here because today is a special day – Morrison's birthday. Six miniature champagne bottles sit atop his tombstone, as do a few handwritten letters and about a dozen bouquets of flowers. On the surrounding graves there is some new graffiti, though nothing radically different from what's already scrawled there: ‘Yo, Lizard King', ‘Free dope for ever', ‘You are stoned, do you feel your limbs? You are dead', ‘Nico loved you, but she died', ‘Girls! Girls! Girls!', ‘Wine, best you want', ‘The door in the West is closed', ‘Sex and drugs and Doors', ‘It's better to burn
out than fade away', ‘Hotel Morrison, occupied', ‘Burn both ends!'.

A Frenchwoman in her late thirties stares intently at these pledges to hedonism, and then drops a single red rose onto the grave before running off. She shakes her head as I approach her. For her, at least, this is a private visit.