winston wrote:I always considered the Doors overly self indulgent and a band that would be nothing without the musings of Jim Morrison. My opinion has not changed much and it would seem that I was right about them amounting to nothing without Morrison.
I'm firmly in the opposite camp. I think that the Doors were quite unique, musically, for their time, and that it was Morrison, the self-proclaimed "Lizard King" (give me a break...I'd rather be king of unicorns or possibly manatees...) whose self-absorption (not to mention self-delusion) seduced millions to buy their records. Because of JM, they are (another) tribute to hype's opportunistic role in producing cash cows, whereas without Morrison they were musically interesting, but would have never sold a record. Looking back on the mid-to-late '60s, when I was an urban college kid just interested in training for a profession and earning a living, Morrison slotted neatly into the whole self-indulgent "hippie" scene of suburban kids whose parents were footing the bill for their patchouli and afghan coats so they could have license to "explore" stuff that working students could spend neither time nor money on. I thought that hippies were looking for a convenient way to distinguish themselves from the mass of meat puppets while enjoying some second-rate, acid-laced erotic freedom. I belonged to a band called "Haymarket Square", who were staunch followers of hippie "philosophy"; the girl singer, in particular (who styled herself after Mama Michelle Phillips, and was every bit as delectable; no names here...) would spout volume after volume of rote hippie "wisdom" in an attempt to convince me (and probably herself, too) that there really was some sort of universal Truth in all that nonsense.
Consider if the Doors were from Des Moines instead of USC and Venice beach. Consider, too, that the late Danny Sugarman would have never had a career had he not tied his wagon to their memory, and how symbiotic and incestuous that relationship became over three decades. Sugarman wrote what I consider to be the worst rock bio that I've ever read ("No One Here Gets Out Alive"), and is one of a pair of ersatz nonfiction "authors" on my bookshelves who would not be writing without their weird attachment to, and obsession with, their human pseudo-heroic subject matter.
(My nominee for best rock bio? Of an individual, Charles Schaar Murray for "Crosstown Traffic", on Hendrix, of course. Best bio of a movement? Barney Hoskyn's "Waiting for the Sun", about the LA music scene from Central Avenue in the '40s through hip-hop. Both Brits, ironically, who did their homework.
The other ersatz author with an ersatz "I was there!" bio? Mark Christensen, for "Building the Perfect Beast", the dumbest car-freak book ever written, because anyone who knows cars can spot dozens of factual errors sprinkled throughout the text, while pondering Christensen's homo-erotic attachment to the book's subject, a fledgling car designer and constructor named Nick Pugh. Do I digress? Sorry...)
The musings of Morrison would be seen as he doggerel that they are,had the band not hit it big. His lyrics are third-rate; thank God for hummable hooks.
I have three strong connections with the Doors, psychically speaking: I will never, never forget the first time I heard "Touch Me, Babe", on AM radio, while cruising in my '55 Chevy Nomad wagon, girlfriend by my side, on a perfect Saturday afternoon in Wauconda, Illinois. Also etched into my memory was the first five minutes of "Apocalypse Now", which I saw at the premiere in West Los Angeles in 70mm and Dolby surround: The wheezing organ of Manzarek as the band launches into "The End" and helicopters move across the theater and napalm blossoms in slow motion...Last, the three days I spent in an industrial loft in downtown LA in March 1990, filming parts of the Oliver Stone "Doors" film, where I was immersed in their music, smoked too many packs of stale cigarettes because the script told me to, and the five minutes or so of my "acting" work that didn't hit the cutting-room floor.
Finally, without the Doors and Manzarek, no one would ever have heard, played, or collected the Gibson G101 organ, one of the best-made and best-looking and -sounding of all analogue keyboards, VOX Continental notwithstanding...
