Jim Morrison

"real poetry doesn't say anything, it just ticks off the possibilities... opens all doors you can walk through any one that suits you. If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel." -Jim Morrison

The Wolf,
Who lives under the rock
has invited me
to drink of his cool
Water.
Not to splash or bathe
But leave the sun
& know the dead desert
night
& the cold men
who play there.
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Morrison wished to be accepted as a serious artist, and he published such collections of poetry as An American Prayer (1970) and The Lords and The New Creatures (1971). The song lyrics Morrison wrote for The Doors much reflected the tensions of the time - drug culture, the antiwar movement, avant-garde art. With his early death Morrison has been seen as a voluntary victim of the destructive forces in pop culture. However, he was not ignorant about the consequences of fame and his position as an idol.
Morrison once confessed that "We're more interested in the dark side of life, the evil thing, the night time."

James Douglas Morrison was born in Melbourne, Florida, on December 8, 1943. His father, Steve Morrison, was a U.S. Navy admiral. Morrison was early interested in literature, he excelled at school, and he had an IQ of149. Morrison studied theatre arts at the University of California. With his fellow student Ray Manzarek, keyboardist, John Densmore, drummer, and Robbie Krieger, guitarist, he formed a group which was in 1965 christened The Doors. They never added a bass player to their group. Its name was taken from Aldous Huxley's book The Doors of Perception, which quoted William Blake's poem ("If the doors of perception were cleansed / All things would appear infinite"). The lyrics Morrison wrote in 1965 dominated the first two Doors albums.

Morrison found in music a channel to project his poetry, and add to it a theatrical aspect. Thus improvising and unpredictableness was a part of the band's show on stage. The mythical Lizard King, Morrison's alter ego, appeared first in the best-selling record Waiting for the Sun (1968) in a poem that was printed inside the record jacked. I was entitled 'The Celebration of the Lizard King'. Part of the lyrics were used in 'Not to Touch the Earth' and the complete 'Celebration' appeared on record Absolutely Live (1970). Morrison's drinking, exhibitionistic performances, and drug-taking badly affected his singing and input at recordings. "Let's just say I was testing the bounds of reality," he confessed in 1969 in Los Angeles. "I was curious to see what would happen. That's all it was: just curiosity."

After finishing sessions for a new album, L.A. Woman, Morrison escaped to Paris, where he hoped to follow literary career. "See me change," he sang.
He never came back from Paris. His first book, The Lords and the New Creatures, was published by Simon and Schuster in 1971. It went into
paperback after selling 15,000 in hardback. An earlier book, An American Prayer, was privately printed in 1970, but not made widely available until
1978. On 3 July 1971 Morrison was found dead in his bathtub. Morrison was buried at Pére Lachaise cemetery in Paris, which houses remains of many famous artists and legendaries from Edith Piaf to Oscar Wilde. In 1990 his graffiti-covered headstone was stolen.

For further reading:

No One Here Gets Out Alive by Danny Sugerman (1980)

The Doors Complete Illustrated Lyrics by Danny Sugerman (ed.);

Poetry by Jim Morrison:

* An American Prayer, 1970

* The Lords and the New Creatures, 1971

* Wilderness: The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison
1989

* The American Night: The Writings of Jim
Morrison, vol.1, 1990

* The American Night: The Writings of Jim
Morrison, vol. 2, 1991

Selected records:

* THE DOORS, 1967
* L.A. WOMAN, 1971
* AN AMERICAN PRAYER, 1980
* MORRISON HOTEL , 1970