Somebody to Love?

by Grace Slick

  Images of The Doors performing there are still vivid in my mind. No colors, all black, except one spotlight on Jim's face. Both of his hands holding the mike right up on his mouth, eyes closed and silent. You could see him just waiting for ignition to come flying up through his body. The long silence was full of music he could hear, but everyone else only felt. Then, in a sudden step backward, arms lifting out to the sides, he yelled, “FIYAAHH!” The audience let out a collective scream, relieved by the explosion they'd been anticipating. Most of them had never seen him before, but he had the ability to draw people into his mood without opening his eyes or his mouth.

  I was always fascinated by the way he seemed to go from one side of his brain to the other, ignoring all the synapses in between. It was just like his lyric, “Break on through to the other side.” And beautiful? He looked like a rabid Johnny Depp, perfectly formed and possessed by abstraction. I'd been backstage before and after all the shows, talking easily with members of both of the bands, but when I directed a remark to Jim, I usually got back a colorful non sequitur.

  “Jim,” I'd say, “did you see that broken chair by the speaker system?”

  With a pleasant smile and pupils dilated to the very edges of the iris, he'd respond with something like, “Lady in smoke shop, nobody for broken, chair broken, chair broken.”

  He inhabited two places at once, and although I knew there was some pattern of events going on in his head that connected what I'd just said to what he was thinking, it never made sense. I'm sure that the people who knew him well must have heard normal dialogue out of him like, “What time does the plane arrive?” But I never heard anything intelligible I could respond to until I was able to see what he was like alone, away from the frantic energy of the music halls.

  We co-headlined in Frankfurt, Copenhagen, London, and Amsterdam, and I can't remember which country we were in when it happened. But I do remember strangely isolated things like the color of the rug in the hotel hallway (rose pink and maroon) and the nervousness I felt standing in front of the door to Jim's room.

  “Jim Morrison” (Grace Slick)

  It's daytime, he's probably asleep. If he's asleep, then he won't answer my knock, and I can go back to my room and stop shaking. What if it's the wrong room? Oh, fuck it.

  I did the “secret knock,” which he wouldn't have known anyway because it was Airplane's private signal, the opening beat to one of our songs, to let each other know that it was one of us standing outside the door. I was surprised when Jim didn't even ask, “Who is it?” Instead, he turned the handle and pulled the door all the way back so I could see him and the whole room. He smiled. “What's up?”

  I wish I could remember my answer, but some specifics about the past are clear while others are vague. Since I had no idea that anyone would care about this thirty years later, I never kept a diary. In fact, if I'd known the enormous impact Morrison would have on future generations, I might have been tempted to wear a tape recorder. I also wish I could tell you that he came to my room to hustle me. But it didn't happen that way. I was, once again, the perpetrator.

  Either the hotel had sent them up as a complimentary food tray, or he'd ordered them from room service, but either way, there were strawberries sitting on a plate on top of the coffee table. I went over to look at them, just for something to do, while I tried to figure out what to say next. Jim flopped on the bed and watched me. I brought the strawberries over to the end of the bed, and then, for some stupid reason, I put my finger into the middle of them. There was an extraordinarily cold and hard center. Frozen strawberries. Thank you, Baby Jesus, for a topic to guide my conversation with Mr. Non Sequitur.

  “Okay if I put this plate on the radiator?” I asked. This was Europe, 1968. No central heating.

  “Sure, but it's not on,” he said, one of the most coherent remarks I ever heard from him. After I set the plate of strawberries on the cold radiator, he crawled over the top of the bed, reached down, picked one up, and squeezed it till it turned into juice in his hand. He laughed and did it again to another one and kept on laughing. Words are hard to respond to, but laughter makes its own sense. I can play this, I thought, and I relaxed.

  It wasn't 9½ Weeks with Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke using food as erotic lubricant; it was more like kindergarten play—mud puddles and Silly Putty. Smash it, shove it around, not on each other, but we just individually tried to make a bigger mess than the other could. He outdid me by smearing the strawberries all over the cream-colored bedspread, but then suddenly, the private stories in his head made him stop and go over to the top dresser drawer. He opened and closed it without putting anything in or taking anything out, and he came back to where I was kneeling at the end of the bed, still playing in the fruit tray. I didn't ask him what the dresser move was all about; I was afraid I'd be stepping on that Fantasia tape that seemed to be running in his cranium.

  This was new. Like making love to a floating art form with eyes. I'd never had anyone “study” me like that. It wasn't the standard evaluation of body parts. He seemed to be appraising the distance between us as if it was an invisible garment that needed to be continually breached with each motion. With our hips joined together and his body moving up and down, it felt like he was taking a moment each time to circle the area between our bodies with his eyes and consider the space that separated us. He was a well-built boy, his cock was slightly larger than average, and he was young enough to maintain the engorged silent connection right through the residue of chemicals that can threaten erection.

  At the same time, he was surprisingly gentle. Somehow, I'd expected a sort of frantic horizontal ritual. It's interesting: the most maniacal guys onstage can be such sublime lovers. But everybody has to stop being a jerk sometimes. Jim mystified me with that otherworldly expression, and at the same time, his hips never lost the insistent rolling motion that was driving the dance.

  When he did look directly at my face, he seemed to be constantly searching for the expression that might break the lock, as if I might be wearing a disguise. I'm not sure what I mean by that, but I can say that it was both intriguing and disconcerting, waiting for him to ask me if I was someone else—an impostor or a product of his imagination.

  I have no idea how long I was there, but there was no lying around afterward having a cigarette, dreamily looking at each other. I knew I should leave before I got caught—we both had other relationships—and I felt like an intruder. I dressed as fast as I could, without looking like it was a race. Jim didn't seem to notice; he appeared to be totally unconscious, just lying there motionless on the bed. But naked, with eyes closed and without moving a muscle from his completely immobile posture, he said, “Why wouldn't you come back?” Since I hadn't said anything about coming or going, I didn't know what he expected to hear, so I went into proper Finch College mode and said, “Only if I'm asked.” He smiled, but he never asked.

  Because I have the Robin Williams disease—If-You-Can-Remember-the-Sixties-You-Weren't-Really-There-itis—I've blanked on what country the Strawberry Fuck was actually in, so I called author Danny Sugerman, who probably knows more about The Doors than they know about themselves.

  “What countries did we play with The Doors?” I asked him.

  He gave me the Frankfurt, Copenhagen, London, Amsterdam list.

  “And where, if you could possibly figure this out, would we have been when I fucked Jim?”

  Danny took a long pause, and then he said, “You know, Grace, I'm glad you're telling everybody you screwed Jim. You can't believe the amount of ugly women who've claimed to have fucked him.”

  Backhanded compliment.

  Since Danny was only thirteen when all of this was going on, he could only come up with answers by process of elimination. “It couldn't have been Amsterdam,” he said. I agreed, because on the first day in Holland, the two groups had gone on a loose trip to a downtown area. We'd been told there were a lot of head shops and interesting things we couldn't get in the States, and we all wa
nted to check it out. The kids on the streets of Amsterdam recognized us, so while were walking around, going in and out of the stores, they'd come up and talk, handing us various drugs as gifts of thanks for our music. Most of us just said “Thank you” and put whatever it was in our pockets for later. Jim, on the other hand, stopped, sat down on the curb, and did it right up. Pot, hash, coke, whatever. I thought he was ingesting an overly interesting combination of chemicals for that night's concert.

  I don't know about The Doors, but it was the first time most of Airplane had tried “poppers” (amyl nitrate), and because of the legality of so many drugs in Amsterdam, it was a temptation for everybody to overdo it. We all ingested heavily, but Jim was the champ. An all-day, all-night consumption of everything available had turned him into a running pinwheel. Airplane opened that night and he came flying onto the stage during our set and collapsed. Dancing toward death, he was rushed to the hospital, and Ray Manzarek, The Doors' keyboard player, had to do the singing that night. Jim recuperated through the next day and was back onstage for the following evening's performance; that he lived as long as he did was amazing to me. But when we were in our twenties, we all thought we were invincible, and those short overdose situations came and went as part of the territory. It wasn't until death started picking us off on a regular basis that we started reflecting on our mortality. I don't think Jim ever thought of himself as a possible future drug casualty. It was always the other guy. “Not me. I won't die. I'm different, not like they are. I know what I'm doing.” We all thought that way.

  It was the reverse of Chicken Little—the sky would never fall. Some people did get the message, but most of us kept right on behaving as if we were made of steel.

  27

  The Big House

  When Airplane returned from Europe to San Francisco, we spent a lot of time in the big Victorian mansion we'd acquired. We called this place the Big House, because for us, it was. The whole Victorian package, it featured four floors of activity, including an office, a kitchen, six bedrooms, a parlor, a dining room, a living room, a foyer, plus a carpenter/martial arts expert/coke dealer. He made his “office” in the basement, which also housed tools, a small bed and desk, and a couple of jumbo-sized nitrous oxide tanks. The members of the band would go down there from time to time and sit in a circle on the floor around the big blue metal totems, while our road manager, John Scheer, adjusted the six-spigot contraption on the top that allowed a group of people to get high, all at the same time. The “laughing gas” made us dizzy enough to pass out, so staying on the floor was a less painful way of enjoying the experience.

  Jorma, for some reason, preferred to stand. Having hit his head twice (to the point of bleeding) on the sharp metal conduits at the top of the tank, we could never figure why he kept resuming his upright standing position. It's one of the few stupid things I've seen him do. Extremely bright and pragmatic, Jorma normally conducted himself with more restraint than the rest of us. Not to say that he wasn't into the extremes of the time as much as anybody else, but he was generally the most quiet and self-contained member of the group.

  The main floor of the Big House had the typical baroque excesses of cut-velvet wall covering and pink carpets, carved wood paneling, and painted cherubs on the ceiling. The dining room accommodated our pool table, and the furniture ranged from cheap Louis XIV couches to a handmade wooden torture rack/dining table and an unplugged electric chair. I had the macabre items specially made, because the juxtaposition of happy dining and instruments of death tickled my dark fancy. We actually put David Crosby on the rack one time, strapped him in by his hands and feet, then turned the wheel that pulls on all four limbs at the same time. We realized how well designed it was when David's laughter turned to anguished screams.

  Peace and love.

  We used the second floor for offices, and I lived in the master bedroom (also on the second floor) for about four months. I was still seeing Spencer, although our love affair was cooling off, but on the road as well as at home, I've always maintained separate rooms from my partner. That way, each individual can sleep, play music, eat, be quiet, watch television, or party without disturbing the other.

  I've always gotten up at about 4:30 every morning; it's my own peculiar ritual. Lying there in the dark for hours until the guy woke up would drive me nuts. Besides, it's sexier to make love in someone else's room; things get much more interesting when I can visit the man's territory for a while. Private quarters also help to avoid the old “Did you leave the cap off the toothpaste?” routine or “When are you gonna turn off the damn TV?” They lighten up the situation, leaving me free to argue over more important issues than who left the wet towels on the floor. Without that setup, each of my relationships would have ended in about a week.

  The top floor of the Big House looked like a salon from a fancy turn-of-the-century house of ill repute. Lots of small rooms (for getting a quickie?) around a central area (which one of these girls would you like?) and one large bedroom (for the Madam?), where Paul took up residence. From Home of Tramps to Enrico Caruso's residing there on the night of the big earthquake of 1906, the Big House had seen it all.

  Originally white, we painted it black—not as a tribute to The Stones song “Paint It Black,” but just to bring dark flavor to the neighborhood. With four big stained-dark columns in front, it looked like the Addams Family mansion.

  I spent some strange days at the Big House; I actually met my friend Sally there one night when she was waiting for Spencer in one of the small upstairs bedrooms. Sally, a groupie (the groupies weren't necessarily mindless idiots), is now a lawyer, living in Texas with—surprise!—another musician husband. She and I talked for a couple of hours when we first met, and I liked her sense of humor and her sharp mind.

  I felt that Spencer and I, as an item, were pretty much over, but it was another night at the Big House when my suspicions were confirmed. I walked in the front door to find Spencer and Sally in the living room, watching a video (which Spencer had taken earlier that evening) of Sally dancing around naked. I had a twinge of one-more-blonde-with-big-tits-grabs-the-spotlight envy. But considering my new interest in Paul, and my ongoing friendship with both Sally and Spencer, plus the fact that I was still married to Jerry, the viewing of the homemade peep show was more humorous than devastating.

  Sally and Spencer tied the knot at the Big House. Our manager, Bill Thompson, got a mail-order preacher's license and married my ex-boyfriend and my new girlfriend there, followed by a lavish party attended by rock-and-roll types and San Francisco freaks of all descriptions. I was living off premises at that point, so I decided to leave on the early side. When I got home to Sausalito, though, I received a concerned phone call. “You've got to come back to the wedding party,” a friend said. “Paul's losing it on LSD.”

  Paul losing it? Oh, Jesus, I didn't know what to think, or what I could do, but I went back to see if I could help. When I got to Paul's top-floor bedroom, he was sitting on his bed, legs crossed, in his usual ramrod-straight position, rolling a joint. This was freaking out?

  “How's it going?” I asked. “Someone said you weren't doing so well.”

  “Everything is so confusing,” he replied.

  That was the extent of any “bad acid trip” I ever saw. Just momentary confusion. Of course, I'd read about people really losing it, like Art Linkletter's daughter, who committed suicide by jumping out a window while she was high on LSD. When Mr. Link-letter was interviewed on a TV program some years later, he accused Timothy Leary and me of killing her. Tim and I had never even met her, but our reputation as unpaid cheerleaders for LSD led Mr. Linkletter to arrive at his conclusion. When I heard Linkletter accuse me, I tried to call the TV station. I wondered how many celebrities who'd been paid to pitch alcohol had been accused of the millions of traffic deaths attributable to alcohol over the years. Probably none. I wanted to talk to the man, to remind him of the more serious alcohol situation and the hypocrisy associated with it, but the lines w
ere jammed with other people who had their own opinions. I suppose Linkletter's grief would have prevented him from really listening to me anyway.

  Later, Leary released this statement:

  I've talked in the past about the weirdo oxygen-snorting fish who advanced evolution. But let's be honest. Some fish aren't ready to sniff oxygen. Most of them know who they are. It's been said, for instance, that LSD causes panic among people who have never tried it. Still, if I have prematurely coaxed some fish ashore who were really not prepared for the experience, I now express regret for not refining our invitations with more care.

  —TIMOTHY LEARY (and GRACE SLICK by association)

  On another occasion, at the Big House, I almost did kill somebody. I came in late one night, opened the front door, and the furniture had been tossed around the room like discarded toys. It looked like some kid had thrown a tantrum, but it was very quiet. No crazy party had gone on here—I would have known about it—so I figured it must have been a crazy person.

  Fear.

  I remembered that Paul kept a gun in his nightstand, but that was three floors up. Where was the person who'd caused the chaos? Was he or she still here and armed? As quietly as possible, I made it all the way up to Paul's room. Then I heard footsteps behind me. I grabbed the gun with mindless resolution and aimed at the door, fully intending to fire on sight.

  “Good girl,” a familiar voice said, complimenting me on my ability to protect myself. David Crosby strolled into the room.

  “Good girl, my ass,” I retorted. “I almost blew your head off.”

  David had obviously come into the house before me, and after the screwball had trashed the place. Since neither of us knew at the time whether or not the nut was still in the house, we couldn't do anything but sneak out, wondering who'd done all the redecorating and why. We later found out that the mess had been created by a crazy “fan” who had some gripe about us not responding to his desire to join the band.