The Doors
 Doors
frontman Jim Morrison saw his dad run over and kill an elderly
American Indian, so Jim set out on his own road to
self-destruction . . .
A night out for Jim just wasn't complete without drugs, booze,
more booze, some more drugs and a violent encounter with one of
his many lovers. One night, suspecting his muse Pamela Courson was
cheating on him, he locked her in a wardrobe and set fire to it!
On September 19 1968 a drugged and drunken Jim Morrison was
taken to hospital after collapsing on the stage of the Amsterdam
Concertgebouw, having stumbled into the middle of a live set by
Jefferson Airplane.
Morrison's consumption of alcohol and hallucinogenic drugs was
legendary, but the incident suggested he might no longer be in
control of his intake. His collapse in Amsterdam came after a day
of heavy drinking, and sources close to the band revealed he
swallowed a sizeable block of hashish given to him by a fan
immediately before the show.
The Doors' year had started well.
Their second album Strange Days went gold in January and, in early
February, Universal offered the band $500,000 to star in a feature
film. Plans were also announced for an ABC-TV special, a 'humour
book' by the group, and a book of Morrison's poetry and lyrics.
Their artistic and commercial success was at risk from
Morrison's personal failures. Life magazine writer Fred Powledge
noted in April that the 24-year-old Morrison "appears in
public and on his records to be moody, temperamental, enchanted in
the mind and extremely stoned".
On May 10, Morrison courted disaster when he incited a Chicago
audience to riot. After performing Five To One, a song about
violent youth insurrection, Morrison took the group into When The
Music's Over, a lengthy dramatic piece climaxing in a scream of
"We want the world and we want it now". The crowd
screamed it back, louder.
Raising them to fever pitch, Morrison virtually led the crowd
to a riot which was only subdued by baton-swinging police
reinforcements. Challenged about his position, he retorted;
"It's all done tongue in cheek. I don't think people realise
it's not meant to be taken seriously. When you play the bad guy in
a western, that's not you. It's supposed to be ironic".
Ironic or not, the kids bought what was on offer in bucket-loads.
Waiting For The Sun was soon certified as the band's third
consecutive gold LP. But while Morrison sang "I am the Lizard King, I can do
anything", the gap between what the Lizard King believed he
could do and what he could actually handle became manifest more
and more frequently . . .
A bloated and puffy Morrison was arrested on March 1 1969 for
exposing himself during a concert at the Dinner Key Auditorium in
Miami. In November he was arrested again on charges of assaulting
an Air Hostess while on a flight from LA to Phoenix. The groups
career would never recover.
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