On July 3rd we observed the 47th anniversary of the death of Jim Morrison. We still care about Morrison because he lead the greatest American rock band of all time, and because he was also a gifted poet and a lyrical filmmaker. Even folks who’d disagree with all of those points would have to concede that Morrison was one of the most charismatic rock stars of the music’s golden age, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding the artist’s death will ensure that his grave will be kept clean for the ages.

Morrison is buried in graveyard in Paris, France where the artist was living when he died. Did Morrison turn his back on rock? Had he reinvented himself as a poet living a literary life in Europe or had he finally fallen to his appetites for excess and experience?

Here’s a Final 24 episode re-creating the day of Jim Morrison’s life in Paris in 1971…

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Celebrating National Poetry Month, here’s a rad radio production of Arthur Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell which was published 145 years ago this year. Even though it might not be immediately evident Arthur Rimbaud had a lot in common with William Blake: both saw the benefits of altered states on literary vision and both were natural born rebels who couldn’t seem to help but attack the mores and codes of their contemporaneous cultures. Both poets were also visionaries whose words went on to influence the rock ‘n’ roll music of the 1960s and 70s. Bands like The Doors and artssts like Bob Dylan and Patti Smith quoted and name-checked both of these poets, and quotes like “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom” (Blake), and ““A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses” (Rimbaud), seem as if they emerged from the American postwar underground.

Started in London in April 1873, and finished in France that August.
It draws on his stifling – often violent – relationship with Verlaine, and
his discovery that poetry was not enough. He was the great poet of
the age, and he didn’t have a pot to p*ss in. He wanted more.

Listen to A Season in Hell here…

Stay Awake!

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Across the days that marked the overlap from the 1960s to the 1970s Jim Morrison recorded the poetry readings that would eventually be featured on the 1978 release An American Prayer. This year we’re celebrating 40 years since the album’s 1978 debut, but the project has always been a difficult one for fans of the band. I love the album. Jim sounds great, and the poems are consistently mysterious, visionary, musical and hilarious all at once. The posthumous compositions and playing by the doors makes a timeless match for the music, and you can make an argument that this collection is The Doors’ real last record. However, some say that An American Prayer was a project that went against Jim’s final wishes, and that the remaining Doors were making a cynical cash grab.

If you haven’t heard An American Prayer you’ll want to check this out…

In 1971 Morrison left America to live with this muse Pamela Courson in Paris. The poet rocker died later that year under mysterious circumstances that have only added to his legend. Drink and drugs played parts in Morrison’s Parisian idyll, but so did music. Before his death the singer visited a recording studio for the last time to record one final performance/reading with a few street musicians he’d befriended. The recordings emerged as a bootleg in the early 1990s. Fans dubbed the collection The Lost Paris Tapes.

Here’s a short YouTube playlist featuring a number of those recordings. For some fans these tracks are the last word on Morrison’s poetic discography…

Which collection to you prefer? Was Morrison a poet who happened to be a rocker or just another singer with literary pretensions? What’s your favorite Doors album?

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2017 marks 40 years since the release of Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life. Including the classic title song and the evergreen “Passenger,” the album also features the dark romance of “Tonight” and the jailbait jam, “Sixteen.” I’ve always loved this album as it’s probably the best example of the massive influence that Jim Morrison had on Iggy. The Doors are America’s greatest rock band, and it’s no coincidence that their impact helped to forge one of the iconic heroes of the age after Aquarius. Celebrating the album’s anniversary, here’s a Dutch documentary from 1986 called Lust for Life…

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Earlier today I saw a tweet about the 50th anniversary of The Doors first gig at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles. Of course I immediately thought “Oh, perfect — I can blog about that.” Turns out it’s the 51st anniversary of The Doors debut at the club, and while it’s not an auspicious remembrance, I’m always up for The Doors.

Here’s a 1997 documentary exploring The Doors, their music, and the story behind Oliver Stone’s eponymous film about the band. Here’s The Road of Excess…

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I recently posted about Lee Harvey Oswald, remembering the assassination of JFK on November 22, 1963. I wonder how many readers know that the visionary author Aldous Huxley died that same day, tripping on acid as he finally gave way to the laryngeal cancer that had mostly taken his voice. Huxley’s The Doors of Perception is a central tome in any psychedelic library — the philosophical essay recounts Huxley’s first mescaline trip. The book gave The Doors their name, and it furthered the entheogenic understanding of hallucinogenic drugs, which examines psychedelic substances within a spiritual context.