Jim Morrison

Morrison, Jim (1943–71), American singer and songwriter, born in Melbourne, Florida, and educated at the University of California at Los Angeles. In 1966, he formed a group called the Doors with Ray Manzarek, John Densmore, and Robbie Krieger. The group became known for its extravagant performing style, combining sensual movements and a hard-hitting sound, amplified to huge proportions. Morrison and other group members also had a reputation for using drugs. In 1971 he went to France in order to rethink the course his life was taking. He died there of a drug overdose.

The group's first album, The Doors (1967) – which included the singles “Light My Fire” and “The End”– became a number-one hit. Other albums included Waiting for the Sun (1968) and L.A. Woman (1970). The Lords and the New Creatures (1971) was one of several published collections of Morrison's poetry. Oliver Stone's film The Doors (1991), with Val Kilmer in the part of Jim Morrison, tells the story of the group and its lead artist. (Encarta Encyclopedia)

The Doors Myth

The Doors were somewhat of an anomaly in the rock pantheon. They weren't folk or jazz, they weren't part of the peace-and-love sound of San Francisco. They had nothing in common with the English invasion, or even pop music in general though they had three Number 1 hit singles. They weren't even part of the folk-rock scene which dominated Los Angeles in those days, in the music of the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and the like. Even among the hierarchy that includes Elvis, Joplin, and Hendrix, they were a world unto themselves.

Jim Morrison was a man who could not compromise himself or his art. And herein lay his tragedy. To go all the way or die trying. All or nothing. The ecstatic risk. He would not just entertain; he was brilliant and desperate. And these qualities made him dangerous and conflicted. He sought consolation in the same elements that had initially inspired him and helped him to create: intoxicants.

Jim would scream "Wake Up!" a thousand times, in an effort to shake the audience. I can still remember the first Doors concert I went to, scared to the very depth of my thirteen-year-old soul, thinking: This guy is dangerous. Someone's gonna get hurt, probably him. Or me. Or all of us. No one here gets out alive, he sang in the song "Five To One". That concert changed my life. Today, more than twenty years later I still feel the same way. I still don't know exactly what happened to me that night back in 1967. But I know: Jim Morrison changed my life. He had power, he worked magic.

Early in the group's career, Jim tried to explain his ideas to a journalist: "A Doors concert is a public meeting called by us for a special dramatic discussion. When we perform, we're participating in the creation of a world and we celebrate that with the crowd." A few days before he flew to Paris, to his death, Jim told me: "For me, it was never really an act, those so-called performances. It was a life-and-death thing; an attempt to communicate in a world of thought."

It was the mid-to-late 1960s and bands were singing of love and peace, but with the Doors it was different. When the music was over, there was a stillness, a connection with life and a confirmation of existence. In showing us Hell, the Doors took us to Heaven. Talking about death, they made us feel alive. This all happened at night. With music and dance and performance. The concert as ritual, as initiation, as an ancient pagan mystery.

Morrison was the first rock star to speak of the mythic and archetypal powers of rock 'n' roll, about the ritualistic properties of the rock concert. Some people told him: "Don't take yourself so seriously, Morrison, it's just rock 'n' roll and you're just a rock singer." Jim knew they were wrong, but he didn't argue. Jim knew that music is magic, and he knew rhythm can set you free.

From his favorite philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jim learned to "say yes to life." Jim chose intensity over long life, to be, as Nietzsche said, "one who does not say no".

To be a poet meant more than writing poems. To be a poet meant making a decision: to meet the tragedy that fate has chosen for you. In a poem titled "The Abyss," Baudelaire tries to describe the wordless horror, the indifferent void. Sartre called this "No Exit." Jim sang, "Some are born to sweet delight and some are born to the endless night".

Jim's dying wish was to be taken seriously as a poet. Today his life still fascinates and amazes us, and his work as a poet is finally gaining recognition. Jim did what all good artists aim for: to arouse us from the lethargy of our routine lives, provoke a reaction within us; and to make us think.

And in the end, after conquering America and the rest of the Western world, he escaped to Paris, to continue his life as a poet. But his body was too worn down, his heart too weak; he had already seen and done and drunk too much. His spirit was tired. Death was simply closer and easier than returning to America.

Jim Morrison is not dead. His spirit lives on, in his music and in these lyrics, shining with everlasting brilliance. No, Jim. This is not the end. (www.thedoors.com/band/jim/?fa=bio)