Light My Fire

  And he came to a door

  And he looked inside;

  Father?

  Yes, son?

  I want to kill you!

  Oh, my God. He’s doing Oedipus Rex, my mind flashed in recognition. It’s brilliant, But I now knew what was coming next…and it was dangerous. But there was nothing I could do to alter the destiny of that moment. And, besides, I wouldn’t want to. Why alter the high drama…it’s the very reason we had all assembled inside that “ancient and insane theater: to propagate our lust for life.” The audience was his now. In the palm of his hand. Hypnotized. The music had short-circuited all rational, conscious thought and the electric shaman was taking the audience on a journey into the beginnings of Western civilization. John had hit a couple of drum explosions on the “I want to kill you” line and his tom-tom cannons had frozen the assembled multitude. There was absolute stillness. And then he screamed…

  Mother, I want to…

  Fuck you!

  And we all exploded! Drums, organ, guitar in a frenzy of volume and smashing and shrieking and screeching. The sounds of chaos, of hell, of an orgy of madness. We assaulted our instruments; demented monks releasing all the gargoyles from our repressed souls. We flailed away as Jim leapt and gyrated like a satyr. Like his satyr. And the satyr had come to join us on that Dionysian night, free again to revel in the ancient rites. And the trance was broken for the audience. They were released. The dancers began to spiral again, joining Jim in fantastical corkscrews. Moving in a frenzy to match the ear-assaulting volume of the music. The go-go girls shimmied for all they were worth from the depths of their fellaheen hips. The waitresses began their balancing act again, carrying drink-loaded trays through the audience of chaos. The bartenders poured again. The club was alive again.

  And then John upped the ante and took the rhythm into a twice-as-fast meter. (That’s why we couldn’t fire him.) And we broke into the double time. The whirling became dervish frenzied. The dancers were ecstatic. Jim was gone…the faun was now onstage, leaping about on his little split hooves, priapic and intoxicated. Robby and I were racing to keep up with John, driving and pushing each other faster and faster until we had no place left to go and exploded in an ejaculatory climax! An aural orgasm. A smashing explosion of come. We shot our sonic wad out onto the heads of the collective and anointed the faithful with holy chrism. Jim, or the satyr, shrieked into the microphone, “Kill, fuck, kill, fuck!” and Phil Tanzini went ballistic! People say he was in a booth in the back and leapt up, shouting, “He can’t say that! The goddamned motherfucker can’t say that! It’s obscene! The fucking son of a bitch!” He came out of the booth like a mad bull. Raging, snorting. He was on a mission of decency. This swinging Vegas rat-pack wanna-be was going to defend God, motherhood, the Church, and the American way of life in one grand gesture of defiance vis-à-vis the “counterculture.” He was going to nail Morrison and that way-the-fuck too-loud band! The Doors?…Bullshit!

  We finished “The End” with a delicate and gentle good-bye: a good-bye originally intended for Mary Werbelow. The music was soft and fragile, with a bittersweet sense of loss. Jim’s voice was rich and warm as he sang,

  This is the end, beautiful friend.

  It hurts to set you free,

  But you’ll never follow me.

  The end of laughter and soft lies.

  The end of nights we tried to die.

  This is the…end.

  And we left the stage…to thunderous applause. We reached the graffiti-rich dressing room and collapsed onto the funky third-hand couches. We were postcoital spent. It was a delicious exhaustion of the psyche and we were proud of our prowess. We sat in near silence, grinning. And then the gates of Pamplona were opened and in it charged! Picasso’s Minotaur! The raging bull himself, Phil “Tough Guy” Tanzini!

  “You filthy motherfuckers,” he shrieked. He was hysterical. A mean little man, screaming. “You guys are all sick. This is the sickest band I’ve ever heard.” He swept the room, pointing at each of us. “You’re all fucked…too much pot! You goddamned fuckin’ hippies.”

  “We’re not hippies,” Jim protested. “We’re artists.”

  Phil wheeled about, nostrils flaring, snorting.

  “You are the sickest of the bunch, Morrison!” He was apoplectic. “You can’t say that about your mother, you asshole. You filthy fucking, sick motherfucking asshole son of a bitch! You can’t say that! About your mother?!”

  “But, Phil,” I tried to play peacemaker again, “he was doing Oedipus Rex. You know, Greek drama. A play.”

  “Greek! Greek?!” he screamed. “What the fuck, I’ll give you Greek in your asshole, you jack-off. Fuck you, Greek.”

  He turned back to Jim. Veins popping in his neck and forehead. Steaming, enraged.

  “You’re fired! You shit. You finish up this week…and you’re fucking fired! The only way you’ll ever get in this club again is to pay admission at the door! And that goes for all of you sick fucks! You understand me?!”

  “Sure, Phil,” Jim said. “But…do we still have a bar tab?” Jim gave the bull his best shit-eating grin.

  I almost lost it on that one. What a wise-ass.

  Phil snorted at Jim and stormed out, finally speechless. However, our nights of madness and transcendence at the Whiskey-a-Go-Go were over. It was, indeed, the end.

  sunset sound studio

  But once again the fates intervened. The ascent on Olympus would not be deterred. We had signed a recording contact with Elektra Records just three days earlier. Jac Holzman—superhip long tall drink of water Gary Cooper Greenwich Village New York City folk label gone rock record maven—brought us under his corporate wing with a very liberal three-record-album guaranteed deal. He also gave us a very lousy 5 percent royalty and…he took the publishing; Nipper Music. Shit. But it was a guarantee of three albums of Doors music, recorded and on the streets, for the people to hear.

  And that’s what we wanted. We knew once the people heard us we’d be unstoppable. We were making our music for the people. To turn each other on. Both us and them. The transcendental elevation of the psyche through the manipulation of sound waves. We knew what the people wanted: the same thing the Doors wanted. Freedom. And three full albums of songs was even more than we had at that time. We could record every tune in our repertoire and still have another album left to create new works. It was great. And it was exactly the kind of artistic freedom we were looking for. Jac said, “You guys do whatever you want, we’re behind you. Just don’t put in any obscenities. I can’t release it if it has obscenities. They’ll yank my license.” Fair enough, we’d get around it somehow. Jim could figure out something, he was the word man. But what was he going to do about this new development in “The End.” It had to be in there. It was brilliant. Hell, it got us fired. It had to stay. We’d work it out.

  The next night Jac brought the fifth Door to meet us. Paul A. Rothchild. The coolest, hippest, most intelligent producer on the planet. Paul was street and college. Paul was us. Paul was a head. Paul knew his Bach, Mingus, and Monk, Sabicas, Jim Kewskin Jug Band, Arthur Rimbaud, and Federico Fellini. And he had produced the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and Love! And he was ours. Our producer. Jim and Paul hit it off immediately. I loved him the first time I looked into his eyes. Robby’s favorite album was the Butterfield platter. John was in love with Love. Man, too cool. The team was assembled. And then Jac said: “Guess who’s coming to work at Elektra as head of our new West Coast office…Billy James.” Well shoo-fly pie and apple pandowdy. How’s that for rolling sevens and elevens on the crap table of existence? We were all together.

  Three weeks later we were in the studio. Sunset Sound in Hollywood. And we met the sixth Door. Bruce Botnick. Enfant terrible engineer. A good and decent man with ears of gold. We’re still together. We’d all still be together if the fates hadn’t turned vindictive and taken Jim and Paul from the magic circle. But any thoughts of the demands of destiny, of the price of immortality, were far from the mi
nds of Les Six. We were making a record! Rothchild would run the studio, Botnick would run the sound, Jim and Ray and John and Robby would run the changes, and the communal mind would run the magic. And the four horsemen charged through that high-tech pleasure dome. We roared and we rocked. We went liquid and snaky. We went into the fire of Agni and into the waters of Jung’s unconscious. We paid a visit to Dr. Freud and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Muddy Waters, and Willie Dixon joined the party, urging us on, inspiring us to play beyond ourselves. Acting as our gurus, our idols, our fathers. And it was good. Very good.

  We were in a frenzy of creativity. All six of us were operating on the plane of inspiration. But if one of those six is inclined to Dionysian excess…well, frenzy has been known to lead to chaos. And of course it did.

  Fortunately, Jim was out of the sphere of influence of Felix. He had made his break from that reprobate and never saw Felix again once we started at the London Fog. Felix’s drunken motor-mouth retelling of the same stories over and over had become unbearable to Jim. Felix had taught him the secrets of the blood tribe but Felix was, let’s face it, an insufferable boor. And a loser, to boot. Jim finally realized it and walked out, never looking back. Jim then lived with a succession of UCLA friends both male and female, sleeping on couches of males and in beds of females, until he moved in with Ronnie from the Whiskey. That lasted till we were fired, and then he and Pam got a little place together in the Hollywood Hills.

  Although Felix was now cut from this film noir flick of ours, the damage had already been done. The attitude had been implanted and it blended seamlessly with Jim’s own psychological tendencies. And the combination was lethal. The wild child had his license. There was no reason to hold back. All his inner feelings were valid and there was no reason not to manifest them in reality. Be they joy or rage. And he knew he would be forgiven any excess. He was just too charming and too damned much fun to be with for us to ever hold a grudge against him for more than a couple of hours. And he knew it. He’d give you that sly grin of his, and you were hooked. You were his. A fool for his charm. And with your acquiescence came all the more reason for the next outrageous episode. And the drinking didn’t exactly help the situation, either. Jim was definitely seeking the palace of wisdom through the road of excess. And he was enjoying every intoxicated moment. Of course, in the end, inevitably, it killed him. But for now, in Sunset Sound, with the Doors, making our first record…he was having the time of his life. He was ebullient and smiling and laughing and witty and singing his ass off. We were in a trance of creativity and joy. And then up popped the devil. Jimbo!

  It was during the recording of “Light My Fire.” We were rocking. We were on it and it was burning. It was definitely going to be the take, and it was the first take. John was whacking his skins with a fury. Robby was all cool and liquid and hip. I was pumping the Vox and the keyboard bass right in sync with their metaphysical metronomes. Jim was floating over the top of our rock-solid foundation like a butterfly with the singing sting of a bee. The first two stanzas were smack in the pocket. The steam was rising. And then we hit the solos. I started…and the magic was with us. The diamond within the magic circle was functioning sweetly and perfectly. The muse of music heard our call and joined us in the studio. She was sitting on the edge of my red and black and chromed Vox Continental and she was grinning. And she was a fox, too. Euterpe. A fifth-century B.C. fox. I was entranced, fingers flying, soloing madly. And then out from his vocal booth came Jim Morrison, maraca in hand, doing his American Indian shaman’s dance. He must have seen the muse, too. She had him in a rapture. He started bopping and hopping around the main room, where Robby, John, and I were set up. Weaving in and out between the instruments, the amps, the baffles and us. Grinning like a fool, hopping on one foot and then the other; doing an ancient dance of the earth. Treading down on the earth and connecting himself with the living core of the planet. Connecting with the rhythm of the song and the rhythm of the earth. Making those two rhythms become one in his body as we were all doing at that instant in infinity. The four Doors had locked into the primordial energy of the globe. We were Native Americans and Jim was the shaman of the tribe, leading us, circling about us, encouraging us, pushing us on. And then he saw it!

  A TV set. Plugged into the wall, the rabbit ears antenna up and splayed…and on! An image on the screen. In the recording studio, facing the control room. It was discreetly off to one corner. But it was on! And it was tuned to a baseball game! And it stopped Jim dead in his tracks. The modern world had imposed itself on his ancient ritual. Robby, John, and I were oblivious. We were in the solo section. It was our turn to shine. And we were smoking. I had finished my solo and Euterpe had floated over to Robby’s guitar amp, seductively settled in, and lovingly placed her hand on Robby’s crotch as he charged into his solo. Jim, however, was frozen. He stared at the TV set, incredulous. Why? his brain screamed. What is that thing doing here? Why is it on? We’re making magic and a goddamned fucking TV set is tuned to a fucking baseball game? He was beginning to ignite. His anger was beginning to boil. Soon it would reach critical mass and then who knew what he might do.

  Here’s why the set was on. The L.A. Dodgers were in the thick of the pennant race. Bruce Botnick was a Dodgers fan. The legendary Sandy Koufax was pitching that day. Bruce was a huge Sandy Koufax fan…so he brought a portable TV to the studio to sneak an occasional glimpse at the game. In between takes, of course. It should have been in the control room with him and Paul, but the reception was bad in that electricity-filled control module…so it went in the corner of the studio, facing the huge glass control-room window, rabbit ears up, picture on, sound off. Bruce could see it from his command chair behind the recording console. He was a happy man. He was making a record and watching the Dodgers.

  Jim, however, was not a happy man. His psychic space had been invaded by a foreign element. A demon had interrupted his shaman’s dance, and he was pissed. He slowly bent down, picked up the TV, and stood to his full height, facing his reflection in the huge control-room window. Robby, John, and I became aware of the TV set at that moment. The music continued but our concentration had been broken. And then we became aware of what he was going to do with the TV set. For me, looking over my shoulder at him, it all took place in slow motion. He raised the set over his head, ballgame still flickering, paused for an instant, and with the look of a maniac, hurled the TV at the control-room window! Oh shit, I thought. That window is gonna explode like a bomb. And the set flew through the air, ever so slowly, waiting for the shattering impact. Botnick and Rothchild saw the missile coming and ducked under the console. The three of us stopped playing and tried to reach out to Jim to stop him, but it was too late. And then impact! The set hit the glass…and bounced off! The window didn’t shatter. It was tempered glass. Instead, the TV shattered. It sparked as it hit the window and sparked again as it hit the floor, the screen cracked, a little puff of blue smoke came out, and the TV set died. It went black right there on the floor of Sunset Sound. Right in the middle of the solo section of “Light My Fire.”

  There was silence in the room. The muse quickly fled. The three of us stood up from our instruments and went to Jim’s side. He was staring at the shattered, smoking TV set as if he couldn’t believe what had happened. As if he were saying to himself, “Who broke this TV set? Surely, not me.” The maniac was gone and he looked like a little boy again. And before anybody could speak, Rothchild burst into the room. “Jim!” he cried. “What the fuck are you doing? You could have killed us in there!” Botnick was right behind him. “My TV.” Jim didn’t raise his eyes from the shattered set.

  “No television sets while we’re making music,” he softly said.

  “But that was my television set,” Bruce said.

  Jim now looked up and met Bruce’s gaze. “No TVs, you understand,” he intently said.

  And Bruce understood the look in Jim’s eyes. He backed down and didn’t say another word. Paul saw the look,
too. He didn’t like it. He looked at the four Doors and said, “Let’s all go home. We’re not going to be able to make any more music today. Jim, go relax. Unwind, will ya? Everybody be back here at two o’clock tomorrow. We’ll pick up where we left off.”

  And with that he marched off. And we all slowly filed out of the studio as Bruce gently picked up his dead TV set.

  But, by God, the next day was business as usual. It was time to get it. And get it we did. The incident from the day before was completely forgotten, or at least not spoken of, and we launched into two rousing, spirited takes of “Light My Fire.” The take we chose to put on the record had a marvelous solo by Robby. It’s always been overlooked, but I think it’s one of the best extended solos I’ve ever heard in a rock and roll song. He was flying and inspired. The muse had joined us again and we were all inspired. Jim was in and out of his vocal booth, doing his shaman’s dance and shaking his maraca with manic glee. There was no TV set this day…nor would there ever again be a TV set or any other distractions in the studio when the Doors recorded. I mean, after all, this was serious business. John was a powerhouse behind his drums. An exploding metronome. My solo was dictated by the muse and just kept building and building in an ever-upward movement until it climaxed in a rhythmic three-against-four, with John and I in perfect sync in a percussive three-pulse against the basic four-pulse rhythm of the song. After Robby’s solo we did the same thing, with Robby joining us for maximum band power, pounding and pounding it until we finally released it into the cartwheeling intro passage that brought the song back to the beginning A minor chord for the last two verses.

  And then it was Jim’s turn to take over…and he gave it his all. Especially the last verse and chorus. He was filled with the power of the song and just burned through that “funeral pyre” and his final “Fire!” was chilling. Delivered with all the strength and intensity he could call up from his hidden depths. It put the final exclamation mark on seven minutes of music that would—little did we know at the time—go down in history.