by Ray Manzarek
This time he found Freddy and Wes. They were musicians. Wes played keyboards and Freddy played, I don’t know what, probably skin flute. They lived on a ranch. Outskirts of the city. They had guns. Jim would go out there and drink and shoot the guns. It was Charlie Manson time. He was at the crossroads, and Jimbo was winning.
You got to meet me at the crossroads,
Meet me at the edge of town.
Outskirts of the city,
You better come alone,
You better bring your gun,
We’re gonna have some fun.
And fun they had. They were an odd trio, however. Jim would have had nothing to do with these two. But Jimbo loved them. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jimbo was trying to start a new band like the Doors. But this time a negative-energy band. An opposite, mirror reflection of what the Doors were. An incompetent, loose, and lazy band of boozers…who couldn’t really play their instruments or write poetry or sing very well. A band without discipline, without talent, and certainly without love. But, man…they would have been good at messing with your mind. Shit, they would have been as good as Manson.
And one day Jimbo even brought his drinking buddies to TTG. To a Doors’ recording session. Not a good idea. Rothchild would have none of it. No boozing in the control room, no sarcastic asides, no loud guffaws, no mind games. Paul let them stay a couple of hours and then took Freddy and Wes aside and read them the riot act.
“Get the fuck out of this recording studio and never come back here!” He was seething.
“You can’t throw us out.”
“The fuck I can’t! This is my recording studio. I’m running these sessions. I’m the producer and you’re out of here!” shouted Paul.
“We’re Jim’s friends, he invited us.”
“Friends? You’re not his friends. You’re destructive assholes. You’d bring the whole fucking thing down.”
Rothchild had their number. They would have destroyed the whole thing. Hell, Jimbo wanted to destroy the whole thing, too. He wanted to push us as far as he could until we snapped. Until he broke us and we said, “That’s it! We quit. We can’t take this anymore. We want to play music and you want to play mind games? What the fuck is your problem? Are you fucking insane or something? Let’s just break the band up and go our separate ways.” That’s what Jimbo was after. Jimbo wanted to destroy the Doors. And when he couldn’t, he eventually took Jim to Paris…and destroyed himself.
But we didn’t know about Jimbo back then. We didn’t know about alcoholism and the meanness it carries with it. The insane, destructive behavior that lurks in every bottle of Jack and Wild Turkey. Waiting for the right personality to set free the obsession. The right chemical makeup and the right psychological profile to allow the demons out of the bottle. To allow the spirit possession to take place. The Native American was susceptible to the powers of rum, and the redneck knew it. It was outlaw Jimbo’s task to kill the shaman. It was always the white devil’s task to kill the natives, and Jim had become a Native American. Born of the soil of America. Reborn of the spirit of the shaman. And Jimbo was out to destroy that man. And the Doors, if he could.
“We are too his friends,” Freddy continued. “We take him out to the ranch, and he rides the horses…and he shoots guns…and he…”
“Jim doesn’t fucking ride horses,” I said.
“Yes, he does, man. You just don’t know him,” Freddy rejoindered. “Not like we do.”
And there was the line being drawn. Sides were being chosen up right then and there. Jimbo, Freddy, and Wes on one side, Doors on the other.
“Guns!” shouted Paul. “You assholes let him shoot guns?” Paul glared at Freddy. “Are you crazy?”
“He likes to shoot guns. He likes being with us…better than being with you guys. He told us!”
I was stabbed in the heart. Jim liked being with them better than us? How could he?…Why? What had we done to him to make him feel that way? To say that? I was destroyed.
You see, I just didn’t understand. Had any of us understood that personality transference, that psychic split, we would have been able to deal with it. But as it was, we thought it was Jim. And it hurt.
“I don’t care what he likes,” Paul forcefully said. “You two are history in my recording studio. Now get the fuck out and never come back.”
And Freddy and Wes slithered out, hissing meanly, never to be seen again.
Another night, Jimbo—being deprived of his cowboys—brought a foxy lady to the studio. Sable Sperling and her pink Jaguar convertible. We watched them pull up. What a mod-sixties machine. And then they attempted to get out. “Holy staggers, Batman.” They were more than boozed out. This was wiggle-wobble, rubber legs. This was downers!
Sable had on a miniskirt that was almost even with her lamb pit. She had great legs, except for what appeared to be a huge birthmark on her right thigh, and a skimpy little top that showed off her pre–plastic enhancement melons to their full ripeness. She was a fine figure of a woman…but a real ditz. And they staggered in. Jim clutching a bottle of Wild Turkey, Sable clutching Jim.
Now, this was supposed to be a vocal night. We had planned on Jim getting two songs, “Love Street” and “Summer’s Almost Gone.” Not too difficult a night’s work. Easy, actually, for Jim Morrison. Impossible for Jimbo. Especially Jimbo on downers.
When the down duo walked into the studio, Sable opened her purse and put a baggie of colored pills on the recording console. Jim offered us all anything we wanted. Pills, booze, Sable. No takers.
“How many of these have you popped, Jim?” asked Paul.
Jim slurred heavily, “I don’t know…maybe ten…maybe twenty…” An evil grin. “Maybe thirty.”
“Oh, Jesus,” was all Paul could say.
“He didn’t take thirty,” offered Sable. “He’s just a big fucking liar. He lies about everything.” She went up to him and gave him a sloppy lewd kiss to match her lewd speech. “That’s why I love him.”
Jim pushed her away. “I got work to do,” he said. “I gotta sing!” And he howled like a wolf.
“What do ya wanna sing, Jim?” I asked him.
“What am I supposed to sing?”
“‘Love Street.’”
“I don’t wanna do ‘Love Street.’”
“‘Summer’s Almost Gone’?”
“Nah…”
Robby spoke up, “You gotta sing something, Jim, it’s vocal night. We planned on it yesterday, remember?”
Jimbo didn’t remember anything. He had a memory, a life, only when released from the bottle, and last night there was no bottle of Wild Turkey. Ergo, no Jimbo.
“I don’t remember saying that. I just wanna sing.”
“What?” asked Robby.
“‘Five to One’!” And he howled again. “Yeah!”
“Well, shit, man. Get out there and do it!” said Rothchild. “If you feel that good…give me a great take.”
“Yeah!” shouted Jimbo. “I fuckin’-A will!”
And he cracked the bottle of Wild Turkey, put his hand in the plastic baggie, grabbed three or four multihued pills, and before anybody could stop him, slammed those suckers into his mouth and washed them down with a quick splash of fine Kentucky bourbon.
“Yeah!”
And he staggered out of the control room to the Neuman vocal mic set up in the center of the main room with baffles and a music stand, and earphones, and a little table on an Oriental rug with soft, moody down lights for the right atmosphere. It was a very nice arrangement that Bruce Botnick had set up. Very conducive for singing. Jim put his bottle on the table and the earphones on his head, and slurred into the mic, “Yeah!…Yeah!…More echo!”
Paul looked at Bruce and said, “Fuck the echo, call the paramedics.”
“Now?” Bruce asked.
“Now,” said Paul. “Tell them what’s going on here, don’t use any names, but tell them where we are, we got a guy on downers and booze, and we’re gonna call them as soon as he hits the fl
oor.”
“After what he just took that should be about ten minutes,” said Bruce.
“Exactly,” said Paul. “Now go call them and put them on standby, so all you have to say is ‘Come now!’”
And Bruce went into the office to make preparations for the saving of Jim’s life.
And Jim sang “Five to One.” And I’ll be damned if he didn’t get the take. His rhythm was a little off in the “get together one more time” section—he came in on the wrong beat—but it was such an impassioned performance that we put it on the record. And the healthy young son of a bitch kept drinking and never did hit the floor. Of course, a few years later he was dead because of nights like this…but for now that return phone call to the paramedics never had to be made.
I was in the bathroom as Jim was onto his third take and Sable spilled into the men’s room. She had broken a heel and was listing to port. She had also popped a few more pills before Paul stashed the baggie in his briefcase—no one was getting any more of that poison—so she lurched about like a novice deckhand on a December North Atlantic crossing.
“This is the men’s room, Sable.”
“I can’t find the fucking ladies’ room. Is it okay if I go in here?” Slur city. Christ, lay off the downers, babe.
“Sure, Sable. Who cares?”
“I don’t care.” She smiled at me. A most seductive smile, come hitherish in a tawdry way.
I looked her up and down. A nice piece of work…but totally gone and blowzed out. And then I noticed her thigh. It wasn’t a birthmark. It was a bruise. All blue and almost green at the perimeter, and red and raw at the center. It had about an eight-inch diameter and it looked like it hurt like hell. Or would have without the downs.
“Jesus, Sable. What happened to your leg?” I asked. “Did you get in an accident or something?”
“No, nothing like that,” she slurred, with that coming out of her numb, lewd lips like “thash.”
“Did you fall off your high heels, then?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Well, what…?”
“Jim hit me with a fucking board.”
We sent her home in a cab. Jim, too.
In the summer of ’68, Waiting for the Sun became the number-one album in America. “Hello, I Love You” became the number-one single the same week. And José Feliciano’s Latino version of “Light My Fire” was racing up the charts. It was number thirty on the Billboard Hot 100 that same week. It would become numero uno in about four more weeks. We played the Hollywood Bowl on the Fourth of July weekend and filmed the entire concert. Paul Ferrara, a UCLA Film School buddy, was our director of photography. The concert was sold out. The Stones were there. It was a big success. If you’re interested, you can see a video of the performance. It’s called—appropriately enough—The Doors Live at the Hollywood Bowl and it’s on Universal Home Video.
Everything was going great, and then Jim walked into the office one day and said to me—the hammer was about to fall again—“Ray, I wanna quit.”
I couldn’t believe it! We had the number-one single and the number-one album. We were realizing our goal. The dream we had together on Venice Beach in the summer of ’65 was a reality. All the hard work had paid off. We were there. On top. It wasn’t a dream, a fantasy of two college guys who wanted to be like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. It was reality! We were like them. And this was just the beginning. The cinema was next. And then politics. Man, we had a long way to go. And he wants to quit? My mind went blank. I couldn’t even think. Could you?
“Why?” was all I could manage to say.
He paced the room. Kathy was at her desk, jaw unhinged. Leon was at his PR desk, staring. Unbelieving.
“I just can’t take it anymore,” he finally said.
I was incredulous. This was easy. Rock and roll was the easiest and most lucrative thing I had ever done. And what an art form! What a great way to make a living. We were doing everything we wanted to do, creatively and artistically. The future was ours…and it was unlimited.
“What are you talking about, man? This is easy.”
He looked at me. He looked tired. His eyes looked tired.
“I’m tellin’ you, Ray, I can’t take it.”
“But we don’t tour that much. It’s not like we’re on the road for months on end.” I began to pace the room as Jim flopped down on the couch. The tension was sucking the air out of the room.
“Want a beer, Jim?” asked Kathy.
“Yeah, Kathy. I need one.”
Kathy ducked into Siddons’s room, to the mini-fridge, and rushed back with a Tecate.
“We go out for a weekend or so and then we come home,” I said. “Four, five gigs at the most, and we’re back in L.A. We don’t go out more than every other week. Do you think we’re working too hard?”
“No, man. It’s not that…it’s…” He glugged the Tecate. Left me hanging there. I jumped into the void space. I needed to fill the silence. I was panicking. We all were.
“The recording studio is easy. It’s not too hard making records, is it?”
“No…” He drank again. He seemed to need it. He drank as if his body, or some deep place in him needed the alcohol.
“Man, this is everything we worked for, Jim. We’re there! And this is just the beginning.”
His head slouched down. He half mumbled under his breath, “I don’t think I can take it anymore.”
That stopped me. It froze me. I could only stare at him. He finished the beer, far too quickly. Finally, I spoke.
“But…why, Jim? What’s wrong?”
His head slowly came up. Our eyes met.
“I think I’m having a nervous breakdown.”
Kathy gasped. Leon dropped his fan magazine to the floor. They didn’t say a word.
“Oh, man. No, you’re not. You’re just drinking too much. It’s starting to get to you.”
“No, Ray. I’m telling you…I’m having a nervous breakdown. I want to quit.”
Panic attack again. My heart was racing.
“You can’t quit. Not now!”
“You guys can go on without me. Get another singer, or something.”
“I don’t want to work with another singer. I wanna work with you. Jesus Christ, Jim, I never said this before…but, I love you.”
He looked up at me again. Through those too-old eyes.
“I love you, too, Ray.”
“Well, Christ, let’s not break it up now. I’ll tell you what…let’s give it six months. If you feel the same way then, we’ll break the band up.”
“And you’ll go on without me?”
“Jiiimm”—J was sounding like Pam—“I don’t want to think about that now. I just want you to feel good.” I sat down next to him. Put my arm around his shoulder. “You’re not having a nervous breakdown, you’re just tired. You gotta stop burning the candle at both ends.”
He smiled for the first time. “Yeah, I guess I do get a little excessive.”
The tension was broken. The air came back into the room. Kathy, Leon, and I laughed.
“Just a bit,” I said.
“Okay, six months,” Jim said. “But I tell ya, Ray. I think I’m having a nervous breakdown.”
Kathy finally spoke. “Jim…go home and go to bed. Just let Pam take care of you for the next couple of days. You need to rest.”
“Yes, Mother,” Jim responded.
“And don’t drink,” I added.
“I don’t know about that, Ray.”
And he stood up and headed for the door. “Don’t call me for a couple of days, Kathy.”
“I won’t, Jim,” she said.
And then he looked at me, and his eyes became vulnerable. “I don’t feel so good, man.” And he was out the door.
After he left, I thought, Freddy and Wes. Guns and booze. I’m not gonna let him break the band up because of too much drinking and craziness with ne’er-do-wells. And pilled-out Jaguar rich-girl trash. Fuck them. He’s got work to do
and he’s going to do it. He’s got a gift like few others have and he’s going to share it with the world. He belongs to the people. To all of us. He’s not going to dissipate his poetic gift with guns and whiskey and downs. I won’t let him stop writing and singing to throw it all away on side arms, black beauties, and firewater. Nervous breakdown? Bullshit!
Now, however, I realize he was having a breakdown. It was an impending psychological split. Jimbo was trying to take over. To destroy the band. To kill the shaman. To silence the poet. Jimbo, with the help of those cowboys, was seeking dominance. He was trying to obliterate the Jim Morrison I knew and create a new, degenerate persona…Jimbo the shit-kicker. Jimbo the evil. Jimbo the dog-man.
That day in the office, Jim knew he was in a battle for his soul. He knew he was up against a formidable opponent. He just didn’t know whom he was fighting. All he could feel was that he was being torn apart. Ripped in two. And he came to us for help. Jim didn’t want Jimbo to take over but he was losing the battle on his own. If only I had known then what I know now. I could have helped him.
But I was so caught up in the moment, in the joy of it all, in the thrill of riding to the top of the charts, in the giddiness of realizing our dream, in the delight of being flush for the first time in my life, in the exuberance of being the number-one band in America…that I never wanted it to end. I wanted the high, the rush, the trip to last forever. I was hooked. I was so in love with the dream that I wanted it to go on and on and on. Into infinity. Into the mystic. Forever. Wouldn’t you?