Jim ifiorrison's but the Blues
hen I bumped into Jim Morrison in West Hollywood in early 1971, I had no idea that we'd wind up doing the last interview he'd ever give to an American publication.
We ran into each other at an apartment building where a publicist friend, Diane Gardiner, lived. One of her neighbors was Pamela Courson, who, despite Morrison's liaisons with various other women, considered herself his main companion. One February afternoon, Jim came by, looking for Pamela. She wasn't home, so he came downstairs to Gardiner's apartment, where I was visiting.
I hadn't met Morrison before, and soon after Diane introduced us, I asked for an interview. He had nothing better to do, he said, and I grabbed my cassette recorder.
And then things got weird. For some reason, he was feeling playful. Having done no research, and with no questions in mind, I was happy to play along. We decided to pretend as though we were doing a talk show on TV, and he kicked things off with a decidedly lewd riddle or two.
While he joked, I searched through my memory for the latest news on Morrison's neverdull life, and we settled into a pretty serious interview. He got into it enough that when Pamela showed up, he continued with our conversation, one that turned out to be his last with the press before he left, in March, for Paris.
Four months after settling into Paris with Pamela, Jim Morrison died, and I was dispatched to Hollywood to write his obituary. A few nonstop days and nights later, the article was complete, except for a headline. Jim had considered himself as serious a poet as he was a rock musician and stage performer. By and large, his poetic interests had been dismissed. In fact, one reason Morrison gave for going to France was that the people there would give him his poetic due.
That's why the headline on page one of our 88th issue, dated August 5, 1971, reads: James Douglas Morrison, Poet: Dead at 27.
JIM M O R R I S o N AND T H E DOORS are back home in Hollywood and at work on an album-this time without producer Paul Rothchild, and this time featuring "blues," Morrison says, "original blues, if there's such a thing."
Morrison, the ex-sex symbol of West Coast rock; the poet who called himself the "Lizard King," is a convicted man, following a two-month trial in Florida for his alleged organ recital at a March 1969 concert in Miami. He was found guilty of misdemeanorsindecent exposure and open profanity, and his case is on appeal. He's out on bail.
Jim Morrison, all of the above, is still a Door. He continues the transition from rock and roll to poetry and films. And he has aged. His face is still jungular, but now more lionlike than Tarzanic, outlined as it is by comfortably long, dark hair and a full, dark beard. And he's got the beginning of a beer belly. Quiet about his Miami case in the Rolling Stone interview he did in July 1969, and silent, still, during the trial, Morrison seemed eager to talk a bit when we ran into each other in Hollywood-to put the old days in proper perspective, to discuss the Doors, and to assess the whole Miami thing, in his own words.
Do you still consider yourself the "Lizard King"?
That was two years ago, and even then it was kind of ironic. I meant it ironical- ly...half tongue-in-cheek. It was an easy thing to pick up on. I just thought everyone knew it was ironic, but apparently they thought I was mad.
Do you think you'd be classified among the people who signify what some people insist is the "death of rock"?
Well, I was saying rock is dead years ago. What rock means to me is-for example, in one period twenty or thirty years ago, jazz was the kind of music people went to, and large crowds danced to, and moved around to. And then rock and roll replaced that, and then another generation came along and they called it rock. The new generation of kids will come along in a few years, swarm together, and have a new name for it. It'll be the kind of music that people like to go out and get it on to.
But back twenty, thirty years ago the music didn't become a symbol of a whole new culture or subculture.
But, you know, each generation wants new symbols, new people, new namesthey want to divorce themselves from the preceding generation; they won't call it rock.... Don't you see a cyclical thing every five or ten years, when everyone comes together and swarms and breaks apart.... When you think of rock it's not mind music. I mean, if you couldn't understand the words, there'd still be everything there to react to.
How about Miami? Will that whole thing affect whether you'll play any more concerts?
I think that was the culmination, in a way, of our mass performing career. Subconsciously, I think I was trying to get across in that concert-I was trying to reduce it to absurdity, and it worked too well.
When did it stop getting to be fun?
I think there's a certain moment when you're right in time with your audience, and then you both grow out of it and you both have to realize it; it's not that you've outgrown your audience; it has to go on to something else.
You see blues fitting in with this?
No, it's just getting back to more of what we enjoy. What we actually personally enjoy. Not that we've ever not played music that we didn't like. When we were playing clubs, I'd say over half of what we did was blues, and we used our own material on records, but I think the most exciting things we did were basic blues. I like them mainly 'cause they're fun to sing.
We're using Elvis' bass player-his name is Jerry, damn it, I forget his last nameand for the first time we recorded it in our office where we rehearse, and the board's upstairs; we're using the engineer that we used on the other records-Bruce Botnickbut we're not using Paul Rothchild on this one. It was kind of mutual: just figured it was time ...to take different roads.
What was your main interest in the Miami case, aside from your personal liberty?
You know, I was hoping-or I thought there might be a possibility of it becoming a major, groundbreaking kind of case, but it didn't turn out that way. It might have been one of the reasons why they dragged it out so long, in order not to let enough momentum or sentiment build up in a short time, or a lot of attention focus on it. So it actually received very little national attention. But in a way I was kind of relieved, because as the case wore on, there were no great ideals at stake.
I thought it might become just a basic American issue involving freedom of speech and the right of anyone with a personal viewpoint to state their ideas in public and receive a hearing without legal pressure being put on them. In fact my lawyer made a speech partway through the trial in which he traced the origin of freedom of speech, which goes side by side with the origin of drama, actually. The right of the dramatist or artist to state his views. It was a brilliant summary of that historical process, but it didn't have any effect on the outcome at all. The first amendment provides supposedly for the freedom of expression. There's a clause which states that any dramatic or public artistic performance comes under this amendment.
Basically the prosecution refused to listen to any testimony which would come under that clause. They were prosecuting totally on a criminal case. My defense counsel was prepared to put the whole case on the fact that even if this alleged event did occur, it did not violate contemporary community standards, and they were going to take the jury to see Woodstock, a lot of other films-and during the trial the production company of Hair opened up in Miami, and they had obscenity and full nudity on stage in it, and there were no restrictions on it as to the age of the audience-they let anybody in-but the judge anticipated that, and he threw out the proceedings.
But is that a really relevant parallel? In Hair, say, that profanity and that alleged obscenity is planned as part of the act. Would you then have to testify that whatever acts you took were part of your act? Yours were spontaneous.
But it is a theatrical performance, nonetheless. It's not a political rally. We go on to a series of songs that everyone's familiar with. The people who come to the shows have the albums and I think they know basically what they're coming to see. I suppose they could've had a point there, but they never even got into that.
What did they find you guil
ty of?
There were four charges-one was a felony which carried a three-year rap-for lascivious behavior including exposure. And three misdemeanors-one was on profanity; one was on-let's see-oh, public drunkenness, and the other was one which included the exposure charge; it was a separate one. So constitutionally, right there they were wrong. You're not supposed to be able to try a person on the same count twice. You could argue that anyway. That's probably one of the motions that we'll include in the appeal.
Why wasn't that argued in the very beginning? Couldn't you have called for a dismissal of the trial?
Yeah, we called for a dismissal a score of times, but they were all denied.
Another cause for argument was that there was no possible way I could have received a fair trial because of the climate of public opinion that had been stirred up for a year and a half-probably a newspaper story or a radio or TV story in Miami. We have a sheaf of clippings that takes up two files from all over the country. But one thing I was interested to observe: Every day we would rush home to watch ourselves on TV: they couldn't film in the courtroom, but going and leaving they'd film it, and we'd hear the reporters' views of what happened. The first few days it was kinda the old-line policy, what people had been thinking for a year and a half, but as the trial wore on, the reporters themselves, from just talking to me and the people involved in the case-the tone of the news articles-and even the papers-became a little more objective as each day went on.
What's in the immediate future for the Doors? Any concerts?
No, we're kind of off playing concerts: somehow no one enjoys the big places anymore, and to go into clubs more than just a night every now and then is kind of meaningless. I think we'll do a couple of albums and then everyone will probably get into their own thing; each guy in the band has certain projects that they want to do more independently.
How about yourself? Do you have aflm project?
Ahhh...I guess that's what I've always wanted to do, even more than being in a band, was working in films. I'd like to write and direct a film of my own-there's one that's all in my head, but I have a film I made, which hasn't been seen very much, it's called Hiway.
Wasn't it shown in Canada at a "Jim Morrison Film Festival?" How did it go over?
The reports I got were that Hiway was very enthusiastically received.
That wasn't the case in San Francisco at the film festival there....
Feast of Friends was shown there a year or so ago with a lot of boos. I think they were reacting to personalities rather than film. Hiway was entered in the San Francisco Film Festival, but it was rejected, for whatever reason. It's a fifteen-minute film, 3 5 millimeter, and in color. I act in it and made it with some friends of mine. It's more poetic, more of an exercise for me, kind of a warm-up. There's no story in it. Just a hitchhiker who steals a car...we assume that, anyway.. .and drives into town and checks into a motel or something, and it just kind of ends like that.
-March 4, 1971
Rolling Stone
`GOTTA EVOLUTION'
n the book Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored History, author Robert Draper writes, in a section about the "Bad Craziness" of deadlines: "Ben Fong-Torres was so _ late on a story that an art director was moved to heave a plateful of spaghetti at him."
This is not true. No one at the magazine would ever waste food like that.
More to the point, I never missed a deadline. It is true that, often, I barely made it. In fact, a sentence preceding the alleged spaghetti toss could have been about me as much as about one of Rolling Stone's most gifted writers, Tim Cahill. His 1973 feature on Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz, Tim is quoted as saying, was "written in seventeen hours straight, with them taking each page as it came out of my typewriter and running it over to the printer."
Well.. .That's not quite accurate. In the early seventies, Rolling Stone had grown too big for the old-fashioned linotype setters to handle, and we were still awaiting the computer age. In the meantime, we acquired our own typesetting machines. Once keyed in by typists, they'd be printed-in the desired typeface and size-onto glossy white paper, ready to paste onto layout forms. So our material never went directly to any printer; rather, copy editors would read it, make corrections, and take it down the hall to our own makeshift composing room.
My own Mark Spitz moment happened in the fall of 1971. I was working on the latest article about the Jefferson Airplane-they were big and newsworthy enough that they amounted to a regular beat. Suddenly, a major story at Rolling Stone fell through, and I was told late one afternoon that my story would need to double in length, start on page one, and occupy the feature well. And it would have to be submitted that night.
No, I will never forget the way it was, back in the days before computers. As I wrote, Bob Kingsbury, the art director, stood at my door, waiting to take each typewritten page to the typesetters. I was a fast typist, hitting about ninety words a minute in full throttle, but whenever I slowed.. .like, to think for a second about the next sentence, I'd catch Kingsbury standing there, and feel guilty.
It's no wonder that I would soon burn out, and take a leave of absence from Rolling Stone.
But first, as always, the story:
FOR JEFFERSON AIRPLANE, here in the fall of 1971, six years and a month since that first gig at the Matrix, it's like the title of the new Hedge & Donna album: REVOLUTION, with a black felt "X" over the "R." But in two thin strokes, so that the original whole word is clear, if not more obvious for the masking job.
Manager Bill Thompson is talking evolution, here in the second-floor office of the Jefferson Airplane mansion, about the only room in the house that's the same since Grunt Records came into existence-and into 2400 Fulton-to help push Airplane members into yet another era.
It is big business now, with Grunt Records and a roster of artists headed by Jefferson Airplane and Airplane members as so-called "solo artists" and a lot of ideas on revolutionizing the record industry. And if you can get all six of them together for a group shot these days, you still see a lot of strength, muscle to back up the ideas. Viking-browed Jorma and mum's-the-mouth Casady-Hot Tuna! Grace and Paul and a Sumo-kicker of a baby girl now named China. Fiddling Papa John Creach, black, bent over and spryer than ever with even an album of his own now cutting. Surfer boy drummer Joey Covington, who still doesn't seem to fit, yet brought Papa John into the scene and turned a Santana-Tuna jam into one of the most-played tracks on Bark, the new Airplane album, "Pretty As You Feel," sounding so pretty you'd think Marty Balin was still around....
'August 13th, 1965," muses Bill Thompson, stroking his Buffalo Bill whiskers and flashbacking through his round, wine-tinted glasses. "They had a stand-up bass. It was all acoustic except for Jorma, who had a small amp, then Jorma got a bigger one than that. Then Paul got a bigger one than that. And then Jack came into the group, and he had two amps...." Thompson was 24 then, veteran of three years at the San Francisco Chronicle as a copy boy, and he was living with Marty out in the fog (called Sunset) district, on 16th Avenue.
"Marty was always an incredible dreamer. `I'm gonna start this group,' he said. It'll be-five guys and one chick, we'll do folk music and have electric instruments with it-and we'll call it folk-rock."'
From the beginning, the copy boy was the hustler. Even before the Airplane had opened at the Matrix, Thompson got a story into the Sunday Chronicle-by John Wasserman, then second in line behind Ralph J. Gleason-complete with a photo of Balin. Then, "I got Ralph to go down and hear them, and he did a review, a fantastic story.... Then we got mentions in Herb Caen [the most popular gossipist in town], the sports page, and the society page. The society editor Frances Moffat knew Grace-Grace was married in Grace Cathedral, did you know that?-and the Airplane played a fol de rol, a society thing MC'd by Danny Thomas. They booed us, but the Chronicle did a big story."
Thompson soon enough quit the paper to join the band. "They'd just fired their first manager. and they wanted me to talk to the straight press." Bill did prom
otion work at an ad agency before the Chronicle. "I'd go to the airport and get their tickets, and the guys and Grace would be carrying their own guitars and stuff." And between his "Jefferson Airplane Loves You" bumper strips and the group's breakthrough appearances at the Monterey Jazz and Berkeley Folk festivals, the dream came true. Marty designing one of the first ballroom posters; the Airplane being the first out of the pack with a big record contract, the first to run their own national tour, the first to say this and that on their records, and now the first San Francisco group to have their own major independent record label, backed by a lot of money from RCA and a lot of energy and muscle-the group shot, flex-flex.
Now Bill Thompson, former roadie, is head of business affairs for the new dream machine. And Marty Balin, the founder, is gone. And Signe Toly Anderson, their first chick singer, is in Oregon with her baby. And Grace Slick is a mother for the first time, living with father Paul and seven-month-old China in Marin County by the ocean, in a house with a studio in the basement for Kantner and Slick's solo and duet grunts, with a swimming pool whose redwood perimeter will take another six months to polish, lay down, and finish; with a geodesic dome for meditation and vocals, with Japanese GBC Mini TV cameras watching the crib and the garage; with a beaming living room where Paul-who's off coke now, by the way-is reworking the dividing wall between the front area and the house proper, and...tear down what wall? Mother-what?
Bill Thompson is talking about how the Airplane and San Francisco have affected music and the business, and it's difficult, of course, to just sum it all up in one sentence. But he tries: "Since the Beatles, people started listening to the music, and there are people all over the world whose consciousness is changing. And you keep learning. For one thing, you learn that you can't change people by beating them over the head, or bombing or whatever. That's the old style of revolution. You try it, it fails, you move on to something else."
Not Fade Away: A Backstage Pass to 20 Years of Rock & Roll Page 7