by Ray Manzarek
Jim popped the cork on his vintage French bottle and sloshed wine into the glasses at Danny’s table. He took a quick gulp of his and made a sour face.
“Needs to sit for ten more years,” he opined and leapt up, corkscrew in hand, and headed for Billy’s table.
“Billy, my man, you need wine on this table!” And he pulled another vintage bottle out of its resting bin, popped the cork, and slammed it down on the table. “Drink hearty,” he said and moved off to another table.
Oh shit, I thought to myself. He’s going to pull an expensive vintage bottle of wine for every fucking table of boisterous, hollering New York heads. I didn’t know what to do.
Dorothy saw what was going on, too. “He’s gonna pull a bottle…for every fucking table,” she slurred at me, the martinis doing their work.
Lynn cried out, “Wine for everybody, Jim.”
Robby joined her. “Yeah, we’re all thirsty!”
I said, “Shut up, you two! You’re real troublemakers, ya know?”
Dorothy hit me on the side of the arm. “You’re not in charge here, Ray.”
Robby and Lynn laughed. “There’s nothing you can do about this.”
She was right. What could I do? “Well, then fuck it,” I said. “I’m thirsty, too!” And they all laughed.
Jim got to the next table and pulled two bottles this time. “More wine for my men,” he shouted as he slammed the bottles on the table. Someone took the corkscrew from him and deftly opened both bottles. Jim bowed to the bottle opener and moved across the room to Andy’s banquette.
“Wine, Andy?” Jim asked.
“Yes, please, Jim,” Andy hissed.
Jim went for the wine rack, but to get at it he had to climb up on the table and reach behind the banquette. He was knocking glasses over and stepping in the hors d’oeuvres and just about to grab more wine from the racks when the manager of the wine cellar burst into the room, saw Jim standing on the table, and rushed across the room, grabbed him by the leg, began yelling at him, and shouted, “Get down! Young man, get down off the table. Where do you think you are?”
“I’m in the wine cellar,” Jim responded as he pulled his leg free, “and my people are thirsty…aren’t you?!” he shouted to all of us. And the entire room responded back with shouts of “aye” and “right on” and “More wine” and general hubbub and cries of merriment. The manager was having a fit. He’d never seen anything like this. Mayhem in the wine cellar. “Who’s in charge, here?” he shouted.
Jim grabbed two bottles of wine, held them over his head, and declared, “I am!”
And the place broke out in a roar. The intoxicated heads were beside themselves. It was us versus the Establishment and we were winning.
“Aren’t there any adults here?” the manager whined as he scanned the room. He realized he was completely outnumbered and began to flee as random “boos” were tossed at him. Everyone cheered as he exited the room, Jim jumped down off the table, presented Andy with the two bottles, and moved on to the next table. The din had become a roar. Chaos reigned. We were having a grand time in the Big Apple. Man, what fun.
But within five minutes the police arrived. The jig was up. Such Dionysian revelry could not continue in the Delmonico Hotel wine cellar—although what could be a more appropriate place for an afternoon bacchanal, I ask you. Police whistles were blown, nightsticks were drawn, and a sweep of the room began. It was mean and orderly on the part of the cops, and chaotic and stumbling on the part of the revelers. It was, perhaps, one of the first confrontations between the counterculture and the blue muscle-arm of the Establishment, which would culminate in the Chicago police riots at the Democratic National Convention and the murder of four college students by the National Guard at Kent State University. That madness was yet to come. For now, at the Doors “number one in America” official Billboard plaque presentation party…it was all fun and games. We were all laughing and goofing and carrying on like a mob of sillys as the blue men, rather embarrassedly, cleared the room. They felt extremely foolish having to drive a group of young people out of a four-star hotel for excessive fun. But they did their job, and we tumbled out onto Park Avenue and into our waiting limousines. Police rousting hippies who climbed into limos? It didn’t compute in cop mind. But it was so and it was done. The party was over. And Jac Holzman was sent another Jim Morrison bill for damages.
And the French phone? Later that evening, while driving in the limo with Andy and Danny and Robby and Lynn and a couple of Factory workers, Jim rolled the window down when he saw a couple of winos sharing a paper bag at a stop light in the Village. He stuck the box with the phone out the window and said, “Hey, man. This is for you guys.” One of the winos quickly grabbed the box as the limo began to pull away. Robby said he saw the guy open the box, take out the froufrou phone, and just stare at it, and then at the disappearing limo. Jim rolled the window up and smiled. Andy never said a word. Nor did he ever get to watch.
We played at Forest Hills with Simon and Garfunkel, a popular folk duo of the time. They were the kings of New York and we were the opening act. And it was terrible. In that very prestigious tennis center of the U.S. Open we had the worst reception of our entire career. The audience hated us! They had come to see smarm and were instead getting rock abyss from the opening act. And they hated it! Boos, catcalls, heckling, jeers, and whistles assaulted us as we tried to weave a little night music around their empty heads. But they didn’t want electric, they didn’t want Jung, they didn’t want the Doors. They wanted their soft boys. They wanted to be coated with honey-tongued harmonies. They did not want intensity. It was ultimately a battle between soft folk-rock (very nice, very inoffensive) and West Coast psychedelic jazz-rock. We lost. Badly. Jim said it was the worst gig he had ever played and the worst audience he had ever experienced.
But we had also played Ondine again and another very hip club called the Scene. It was run by the equally hip Steve Paul. We even played there with Howlin’ Wolf. What a double bill! The Doors and Howlin’ Wolf. It was such an honor to be performing on the same stage with one of the legends of the blues that I almost had a heart chakra overload. The blues-loving boy from Chicago, playing with “the Wolf,” in New York City?! Man, it doesn’t get much better than that.
So as bad as Forest Hills was …we had the underground. And the number-one song in America. And it was now time to play it on national television. On the Ed Sullivan Show!
Paul and Bruce flew out from L.A. to handle the sound for us. After all, the Ed Sullivan Show was “live” and we weren’t about to turn the mixing of our sound over to some old TV union guys who could care less about how some rock group called the Doors came off on national television. Hell, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme were on the show that Sunday. That was their kind of music.
We wanted everything to be right. This was the real deal. This was Ed Sullivan. A national institution. Elvis had been on in the fifties. The controversial performance that was shot only from the waist up. “You can’t show a wiggling pelvis on national television,” came the edict from network. The Beatles had been on. The Rolling Stones with Brian Jones’s angelic hair and Mick Jagger’s full and sensuous lips were on. The Animals were on, the Kinks were on, the best of rock had been on—and now it was the Doors’ turn.
We were loaded for bear. Paul and Bruce would run the sound, the band was primed, rehearsed, and ready to kick ass. And…Jim Morrison had his leathers! Yes. The black snake bone had been born. The black mamba. The shaman dipped in black liquid licorice. The leather Adonis. The man was all in black with a white poet’s shirt underneath. And no underwear. Was he ready? Did he look good? Oh, my, yes! He looked great. He was going to pierce the hearts of the collective TV audience with black arrows of Eros. Dionysus was about to become manifest on the television screens of America. We were ready to rock, and the satyr was drooling.
Now, leather and snakeskin were something Jim had talked about for quite some time. He loved Marlon Brando’s look in The
Fugitive Kind and wanted to be the young drifter, both sensitive and poetic. He wanted to be the character who said, “They say a woman can burn down a man…but I can burn down a woman.” And “My natural body heat is higher than other people’s. More like a dog’s.” He identified with that role. Hell, he played that role in real life. He adapted the garb and the persona of that handsome young drifter into his own personality projection. And he threw in a bit of classic western Americana…leather pants. Like Jack Palance in Shane. Like a gunfighter, all cool and dangerous and slightly evil. Except Jim was a slinger of words, not hot lead. He could shoot out the most meticulously crafted phrases as easily as the demented, inbred descendants of indentured servants could squeeze off a couple of rounds from a Colt .45. He was a word man…not a gun man. A lover, not a killer. An American aristocrat, not white trash. And he looked great in leather. And when the ladies saw him on TV and saw the bulge in his crotch, they were pierced through the heart chakra. They were slain by love/lust. His American maenads. When they saw, on national television, what appeared to be the head of Jim’s penis, the glans penis, straining against its black leather enclosure, they knew he had no underwear. It was just leather against shaft…and their imaginary hand was in between. And they loved him.
We did a sound check that Sunday afternoon and everything was jake. Paul and Bruce placed the mics and the sound was hot and crisp. The set was a bunch of doors—looked corny but passable. John and I had put some flowers on our instruments—looked meditative and quasi-mystical. Robby was wearing a naval-jacket-smart outfit. I had on a summer suit and sandals. John had on a kind of yellow sport coat and mod turtleneck thing. And, of course, black mamba man was handsomely dressed in black leather.
And then they dropped the bomb. We were in the dressing room, relaxing, sipping a beer, chitchatting idly when Himself walked in. Ed the Sullivan. We quickly hid the beers—no drinking in the dressing rooms—but he didn’t notice, and said, “You know, you boys are really handsome. But you’d look a lot better if you’d smile more.”
And he turned and walked out the door. We were speechless. It was Ionesco again. Another absurd statement tossed out into reality. And the irony of it…Mr. Stoneface himself was telling us to smile.
And virtually on Ed’s heels came the one-man bomb squad. The producer, who said, “Boys, we’ve got a little problem.”
My brain screamed, Oh shit! Problem? Shit! What problem? What can possibly be wrong? Shit!
Jim glared at the producer, “What kind of problem?” he snarled.
“Well, network has sent down an edict.” He spoke in his most official yet conciliatory manner. After all, he didn’t want to upset the “boys,” but network’s will must be obeyed. “It seems you can’t say the word higher on national television.”
John spoke up, “So what’s that got to do with us?”
“You have the word higher in your song.”
“Where?” John asked.
The producer spoke as if to a child: “…‘girl we couldn’t get much higher,’” he said as he scanned his clipboard.
John got it. “Ohh…so?”
The producer repeated himself, more forcefully this time. “So you can’t say the word higher on national television!”
Robby spoke: “So what are we supposed to do?”
“Change the word,” said the producer.
Jim muttered “Fuck you” under his breath.
The producer whirled around and shot a mean look at Jim. “What did you say?”
“I said ‘to what’?” Jim lied sweetly.
“Ohh…uhh…wire, or liar…or something. I don’t know. You’re the poet, make something up,” the producer said.
I liked that. At least he was acknowledging Jim as a poet. But change the word? I didn’t think so.
Jim was about to get very angry. You could see his face redden. He was about to tear the producer a new hole for his anal sphincter, somewhere in the middle of his chest. I quickly stood up and said, “Why, sure, sir. We can do that.”
The band was shocked at my acquiescence. The producer was very relieved. He smiled at us.
“Very good, boys. I’m sure you’ll have a great show.” He headed for the door. “And be sure to smile more like Mr. Sullivan said,” and he was gone.
Jim glared at me, “Raay, I’m not gonna change the word for those assholes! What do you think I am, a fucking sellout?”
“Of course not,” I said. “You’re not gonna change the word. You’re gonna do the song the way you always do the song. Say the fucking word higher.”
John spoke up. “But you just said we wouldn’t.”
“John, I lied. So what?”
“You shouldn’t lie,” he said.
“It’s okay when you’re dealing with morons, John.”
Jim laughed. “Or evil.” He was relieved. “But how do we get away with it?”
My tone became conspiratorial. “Okay, we do the song like we rehearsed it. You sing ‘girl we couldn’t get much higher’ the way you always do. We do the short solo in the middle. John, I’ll nod to you for the three against four and then the intro again, and then we kick ass on the last two sections! And we’re done. Simple.”
Robby spoke. “But they said we couldn’t say higher.”
“So what,” I said. “We say it anyway.”
“But they’re gonna be really pissed,” Robby said.
“We just tell them we got so excited and so nervous being on national television, on the big-time Ed Sullivan Show, that…we forgot!”
“I am nervous,” said John.
“See, so it’s not even a lie,” Jim said.
I continued with my co-conspirators. “We just say we were so nervous, and we’ve done the song this way forever, at least a thousand times, that we just forgot and it came out! What can they say? Hell, we’re just boys anyway.”
“But they have a censor button,” said Robby.
“They’ll bleep us right on the air,” whined John.
I smiled. “Oh yeah? Guess who’s working the sound.”
Robby grinned. “Rothchild and Botnick!”
“The regular guys won’t be near the board. Hell, they’ll probably take a cigarette break when we’re on and won’t hear a goddamned thing.”
“All right!” Jim shouted. “That’s a plan. Let’s do it!”
Robby and John said, “Yeah!” and we slapped our hands together in a group high five. The Doors’ communal mind had gone conspiratorial. We were going to flip the bird at the Establishment. On national television!
This is not how Oliver Stone portrays the incident in his moronic movie version. He had the Doors fighting amongst themselves to change the word. Well, this is the way it really happened, Oliver. And if you would have had the brains to show the Doors fighting the Establishment instead of going for the overused cliché of rock band fights amongst themselves as the lead singer tries to retain integrity while the rest of the band wants to sell out…well, perhaps you’d have had a better film, ham-hands.
And the way Val Kilmer says higher in the flick! Ha, give me a break, Oliver. Jim would never have been so crude, or so obvious. He was elegant and a poet. Or did you miss that subtlety?
My friends, you can see the actual performance of “L.M.F.” on the Ed Sullivan Show on the Doors’ home video, Dance on Fire, from Universal. Take a look at it and see how Jim Morrison actually said the word higher. Much more finesse than was shown in the movie.
Oliver, didn’t you even look at Dance on Fire, for God’s sake?
So…where was I before my spleen had to vent again?
Ahh, yes, New York. Well, we did the song on national TV as we had conspired to do it. The word higher just slipped by like it was greased with pure Canadian creamery butter. We played the shit out of the song and Jim was magnificent. His performance was blood stirring. He was every girl’s wet dream and every guy’s idol of emulation. You either wanted him for your boyfriend or you wanted to be like him. He was great. We were
great.
And when we got back to the dressing room, sweating like hog boys from the lights and the excitement, there was the producer, waiting in whine for us. I’d never heard a grown man whine before.
“You said it!” He was almost sobbing. “You said higher! On national television!”
He couldn’t stop the whine. I almost felt sorry for him, but it was my time to put part two of the conspiracy into operation.
“You promised,” he said to me. “You promised you wouldn’t say the word higher“—and he turned to Jim—“but you did! Why?”
I was on. “You see, sir. It’s like this. We were so nervous, being on the Ed Sullivan Show…on national television”—I pitched my voice up a half dozen notches to a boyish register and spoke rapidly, excitedly—“with millions of people watching us…well, we were so excited…we just, we just…forgot!”
Like Pig Pen, he wasn’t buying it. His head cocked at a querulous angle and his face scrunched up as if he were smelling a three-days-dead rodent.
I sensed I was losing the game and rushed on: “We’ve done it the same way for at least…a thousand times…and to ask us to change it just before going on national television, well, we just forgot!”
“But you promised.” He had to get one more whine in before he got mad. He turned to Jim again. “I’ll tell you what, mister smart-ass.” Now he was mad. “We were going to book you for six more shows! Mr. Sullivan liked you. He wanted you back for six…more…shows.” He turned to me. “You know what that would have meant to your career?” I thought to myself, Shit. And then Jim spoke. It was Cool Hand Luke again. He shape-shifted in his leathers and coolly said, “Hey, man. So what? We just did the Ed Sullivan Show.”
That stopped the producer dead in his tracks. He was silenced. He looked at Jim, the black angel in his black leathers, waved his hand in exasperation, and muttered a disgusted “Ahh.” And then turned on his heels and stormed out of the room. We never saw him again. Or anyone from network, or Ed himself. Nor were we ever asked back. But, hey…we had just done the Ed Sullivan Show.