Jim Morrison and the Doors

I felt it was time for a true story about the Doors. We didn’t want to be saddled with the Oliver Stone fiasco [the 1991 biopic with Val Kilmer] for the rest of our lives. Jim’s legacy would be as a drunken lunatic, but this film is the real Jim Morrison, it’s the real Doors. Johnny Depp narrates it in a very sensitive, soulful way — Johnny has beatnik blood. If Jim were alive today he would have loved the documentary.

Beach bum days

Jim was into the same things I was into. He went to the film school at UCLA because he had seen the same films I had seen. He’d seen Black Orpheus, The Seventh Seal, The 400 Blows, Rashômon. It seems like yesterday when I saw him stroll along in the surf on Venice. There I was, sitting in the sun, being a bum, smoking a joint. And I saw this guy, in semi-silhouette wearing cut-offs, without a shirt. Thin, about 6ft tall, with long hair. He looked great, he has lost all of his baby fat, dropped 30 pounds, his hair had grown out in soft ringlets, and he looked not unlike Michelangelo’s David. He told me he was homeless and writing poetry and songs.

“What are you doing here man, I thought you were going to New York city”? “Nah, I decided to stay here”. “Any particular reason?. He shifted his weight and played Paul Newman in Hud. “Seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said, slyly grinnning. “Well cool man, I’m happy to see, you, what have you been up to?” “Nothin much.” Now he was James Dean in Giant “tryin to stay out of trouble. He told me he was homeless and writing poetry and songs. My mind did a cartwheel at the possibilities. So I said to him ‘Sing me a song man, let me hear what you’ve been writing.” “Aw Ray I don’t have much of a voice’. This was the real Jim Morrison. And Lord he was shy. He sang Moonlight Drive for me right there on the beach. I was knocked out, really impressed by his lyrics. And I thought to myself the girls are going to love this guy. they are just going to absolutely fall in love with this Jim Morrison.

When we formed a band we also formed a bond, which would last until Jim went to Paris [in 1971]. The creative chemistry between the four of us was incredible. Drummer John Densmore, guitarist Robby Krieger, myself on keyboards and Jim singing. Our music was dark, the lyrics darker, sometimes bordering on bizarre. We incorporated pop and electro-blues along with Jim’s poetry/lyrics. The music was hot and hard rock; and we were ready to sow our seed into the belly of the American psyche. We were ready to give the young people of America something they had never heard before — it had nothing to do with age and everything to do with consciousness.

Opening the doors of perception

When I took LSD I wanted to be in a blissful state of energy-infused, intoxicated oneness. I wanted to be able to feel the tactility of the sunlight, the gelatinous viscosity of the ocean’s water, to be able to step in and out of the energy flow of the universe at will.

Instead it took me to hell, into total ego isolation; a cold frozen place of abject terror. The recurring dream of my baby youth years -- of the Frankenstein monster coming after me in my childhood nightmares, unstoppable, inexorable, with no other thought than to crush me to death while I screamed in terror -- were nothing compared to the terror of LSD. Total panic, blind senseless fear. The worst possible panic attack. I turned to meditation instead.

Jim, however, saw expansion of consciousness as a way to gain access to the subconscious mind’s dark, unacknowledged desires; his rampaging Id dominated his songs with a lust for sex, alcohol, self-destruction, anything forbidden by the authority of conservative Middle America.

Morrison’s dark side

There were two sides to Jim. The shy poet, and there was “Jimbo”, always clinging to the shadows, carrying with him the influence of negative friends. He would say that all the great writers drank. But do you think Becket was drunk when he wrote Waiting for Godot? Jim did have that wild Irish heritage. He had that violent killer on one side, and that gentle poet dreamer on the other. Jim just had that tension for alcohol and it brought out that other personality.

In When You’re Strange we included original footage of that night in Miami when Jim provoked mass hysteria and riots and the police closed down the concert. Fifteen thousand people had been shoehorned into a decommissioned naval seaplane hanger that safely held ten thousand. The audience was moody and restless. The air was humid and slightly fetid. It smelled of the swamp. Of rot.

And Jim was overly fortified with alcohol. He had used the spirits to screw up his courage. But he had gone too far. Lord, was he ranting. “You’re all a bunch of idiots, how long are you going to let them rub your face in the shit? Maybe you love getting pushed around.”

The audience pushed and shoved against the rickety temporary scaffolding. Attempting to get closer to him, to touch him. I felt the stage begin to list, it was going to go, it was a matter of time.

As Jim started to take his shirt off the audience screamed their approval, I thought ‘Oh shit he’s going to get naked. The shirt came off but the pants stayed on. Oddly there were boxer shorts beneath the leather pants. It was not a good look - why was he wearing those stupid boxer shorts? He said: “Hey anyone want to see my c***?” The audience roared its approval. He took his shirt in both his hands holding it like a bullfighter’s cape in front of his groin. “Ok, watch now here it comes.” And he pulled the shirt/cape aside - swish then back in place. Concealing everything. Exposing nothing. “Did you see my cock? Are you happy now?” The audience went mad. He had hypnotised them. He had created a mass religious hallucination. Except this time the Holy Mother or her crucified son was nowhere to be seen. This time is was snakes.

So, in the When You’re Strange footage you will not be seeing Jim’s ivory shaft [Morrison was infamously charged with indecent exposure].

Shall we attempt to give it a name, this malady, this Jimbo? Probably not. How about compensation for a perceived inadequacy (he could not live up to his father’s expectations)? Or emotional immaturity? Or antisocial hostility (arrested for inciting a riot in New Haven)? Or obsessional moral deficieny (‘There are no rules, no laws” as he said in Miami)? Or simply old-fahioned Victoriana “unsoundness of mind”? Or all of the above. Or none of the above - a summing up that would put a neat bow around Jim. To categorise him and then to be rid of him and his damnable charisma. It can’t be done.

Morrison’s death

In his private life Jim was not happy. He was a restless soul but he yearned for a stable kind of relationship and he never had that with Pamela [Courson, his long-term lover]. She was a heroin addict, but Jim never took heroin and had a fear of needles. Seeing footage of Jim and Pamela on the screen, there’s a tragic look in their eyes. They were a rock’ n roll Romeo and Juliet.

When I got the call to say Jim had died in Paris I refused to take it seriously. Our manager, Bill Siddons, flew to Paris to establish the truth — but by the time he got there Jim had been buried. The coroner said that death was due to a haemorrhage brought on by a heart attack, which was caused by taking a too-hot bath after a heavy drinking spree.

According to Pam, who found his body, he had a beatific smile on his face and — she confessed before her own death two years later — had suffered an accidental overdose of heroin, which she had injected into his veins. But there were conflicting reports of that night. I was told there were a lot of deaths in Paris the week that Jim died. All related to a pure heroin that was doing the rounds. He could have mistaken Pam’s heroin for cocaine and overdosed. It was a terrible shock.

Sure, he lived life on the edge, but, hell, he was only 27. If Jim were here today he would be enjoying this sunset with me and a glass of wine. He’d be back to being the swimmer that he was (before he died he was in bad shape). Writing songs and books of poetry and literature, evolving the Doors into a jazzier direction.

I miss him every day. What great company he was. Talk about going to the pub and having a couple of beers with the guy - Morrison was perfect. He’s been haunting me for some 40 years now, and I miss him every day.

As told to Veronica Blake

When You’re Strange is on release on Friday; a Doors photo exhibition will take place at Idea Generation Gallery, London, from July 9 (ideageneration.co.uk)