by Ray Manzarek
europe and the soft parade
In the next six months, Jimbo made only sporadic appearances. Jim abandoned Freddy and Wes and their arsenal and took up with Paul Ferrara, Babe Hill, and Frank Lisciandro. If he was going to have a Doors substitute, this trio was at least more life-affirming. Paul and Frank were from UCLA. They were artists. They were good men. Degeneration was not their goal. Art was. And Babe, who was Paul’s buddy, was a roly-poly, jolly dude with a good heart, a thirst for firewater and an unfortunate nose for trouble. Jim and Babe really hit it off. So well, in fact, that an Ingmar Bergman Persona trip began to happen.
They were all going to work on the editing of the footage Paul had shot of the Doors on the road. They were going to construct a documentary film. A full-length, ninety-minute feature. A rock and roll documentary to be shown in art house movie theaters. That was the publicly stated reason for their bonding and for the rental of an office/editing space in the inappropriately named Clear Thoughts building just down the street on La Cienega. Clear thinking was not what was going to be done in that editing room. It was going to be a clubhouse. A hangout for Jim’s new little gang. For the next faux Doors.
You see, he wanted drinking buddies and the Doors just wouldn’t drink together. We’d make art with him but we wouldn’t carouse with him. We’d make him famous but we wouldn’t go on a midnight creep with him. And as the success and fame came too easily, Jimbo wanted action! And that began and ended with booze.
Sure, we’d have a couple of beers together during rehearsal…but the hard stuff, forget it. I was a gin and tonic with a lime man. Bourbon did nothing for me, except in a mint julep. Jim was a brown spirits man, exclusively. A real drinker. Kentucky bourbon and Tennessee whiskey, brandy and cognac. John and Robby were ayurvedic pear-apple guys, so there was no barroom communication with them.
I tried to drink with him on occasion. The last time was in New York City. One of those Irish Shamrock bars on Sixth or Seventh in Midtown Manhattan. Vaguely tawdry and bummy. Kerouac-like. A place for men to drink and talk. Also a place for rummies and alkies. If you had the wit, you could kill an evening in a bar like that. If not, you could kill yourself.
We had played a gig or done a television show or given a press conference or…I don’t what. But we had time to kill and a gig the next night in New Jersey. Robby and John were off on a juice fast to cleanse their colons of compacted fecal matter or some such macrobiotic excess, so Jim and I headed for the Shamrock. I was going to drink brown with him that night. Brown for brown. At Kerouac’s bar. Like a couple of Beat acidheads on the road of life. A shot of Jack Daniel’s and a small tap-beer chaser. Chicago style. Working-man style. Like men, ya know? Like poets and artists and musicians with cojones. Macho drinking. Drinking to loosen the tongue. Drinking for the sake of alcohol. Not for taste or refreshment but for intoxication, and what might happen or be said before the blackout came.
And, man, we knocked ’em back. Hard and fast. And we waxed philosophical and probably—although I can’t remember—solved the world’s economic, spiritual, ecological, and population problems. And the shots kept coming and the chasers kept appearing. And I got totally shit-faced. And I can drink. Hell, show me a Polish guy who can’t drink and I’ll show you Chopin. But I couldn’t keep up with Morrison. He had obviously been in training, working on his endurance. I had the form but I didn’t have the stamina. He was ready for fifteen rounds, I had to bail at twelve.
I looked up at the clock. Blur city. Now, refocus, Ray. Up high. On the wall. Distance vision. And I got it…two A.M. Whoa, no wonder I’m looped. I told him…
“I can’t go on, man.”
“I understand.”
“I’m snookered, man.”
“Shit, me too,” he laughed.
“It’s my bedtime, man.”
“So let’s go.”
“That’s just it, I don’t know if I can make it across the street.”
“Don’t worry, Ray. I’ll hold you up.”
“I don’t need to be held up. I just don’t know if I can make it across the street.”
“So, I’ll hold you up.”
“I don’t need that. I just need to see if I can stand.”
“Go ahead, man. I’ll hold you up.”
“Jesus, is that all you can say?”
He started giggling. “Yeah…I’ll hold you up.”
“Fuck you. I’m standing up now. Don’t hold me, all right?”
“What if you fall?”
“I’m not gonna fall…I’m just worried about crossing the street. You understand?”
“Yeah.” He laughed and his elbow slipped off the bar. He hit his chin on the rail. “Ouch! Motherfuckin’ bar.”
I stood up as he rubbed his chin. I made it.
“Hey, I’m standing.”
“See? You’ll make it.”
I was holding on to the rail and then my hand slipped. I sent two half-filled beer glasses flying, spilling suds all over us, the bar, and the back-bar display of liquor. Jim grabbed me before I hit the floor.
“I gotcha, Ray. See…I told ya. I’ll hold you up.”
And we headed for the door. Out onto the now-empty Manhattan streets, a cold wind in the air. Burning in the face. The cold helping to focus the mind. We had to cross the street and stagger down a block to the Windsor. And damned if we didn’t make it. And it was cold. We giggled and staggered and laughed and stumbled our way down the avenue to the safety of the hotel, through the revolving doors—that was tough—and into the warmth of the lobby. We made it! And I didn’t fall. And neither did Jim. Although I came close a couple of times and he did hold me up. And he was drunk, too. But I was blotto.
“I don’t know what room I’m in, Jim. I can’t remember.”
“Do you have your key?”
I searched my pockets. “Yeah, I got it.”
“Well, look at it. Does it have a number?”
I couldn’t see shit. Close vision. Focus the eyes on the palm of your hand. You can do it, Ray. Close in. “Yeah…1814.”
“That’s your room number.”
“That’s fuckin’ clever of them, ya know?”
“Come on, get in the elevator.” He half carried me in and pressed floor eighteen. “Go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.” He smiled. “We got a gig tomorrow, remember?”
“Ohh, shit!” was all I could say. “Where you goin’? Aren’t you goin’ up?”
“You can make it from here. I’m gonna get a cigar.” And the doors closed. I don’t remember going to bed.
The next day I woke up with one of the worst fucking hangovers of my life. Mean and hard in the head with bad nausea in the gut. I could feel my blood rushing into my brain with each heartbeat…and it hurt. My blood hurt my brain. It was too aggressive. Couldn’t it be subtler? Did it have to do such wild racing and coursing through my veins? I staggered to the bathroom, drank a glass of water—my mouth had gone Mojave—and immediately threw up in the toilet. That helped. The nausea subsided a bit. And then the phone rang!
“Are you ready to go, Ray? We’ll be leaving in a half hour,” said a too-cheery Bill Siddons.
“It’s fucking morning,” I mumbled. “Why are we leaving in the morning?”
“Sorry, Ray. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Ohh, shit.” I hung up.
Somehow I made it downstairs. Everyone was milling about in the lobby…except for Morrison! Ahh-ha! I thought to myself. He’s as bad as I am. Maybe worse.
“Where’s Jim?” I asked Siddons. “Isn’t he down yet?” Hoping he wasn’t. Hoping that he couldn’t take it, either. Hoping that he had a killer hangover, too.
“Oh, he’s in the bar with Tom Baker.”
I couldn’t believe it! In the bar? How the fuck could he do it? I had to see for myself. I went in and sure enough…there he was. With another Irish reprobate. The star of Andy Warhol’s I, A Man; Tom, A Baker, as we later called him. I staggered up to them. Jim saw me, turned, and ga
ve me a big smile. “How ya doin’, Ray?”
“I’m fucked, man. How about you?”
And then came his unbelievable reply: “I’m fine, man. Why don’t you sit down and have a drink with us?” And he downs his beer. I was incredulous! How the fuck could he do it?! Last night we drank drink for drink. I was completely wasted. Dying of angry blood in my brain, my stomach on the verge of purge. And he’s at the bar? Having another? Impossible!
That was the last time I drank with Jim Morrison.
In September we went to Europe. With the Jefferson Airplane. What a double bill! Psychedelic West Coast acidheads take on the Old World. The Doors and the Airplane. In London. At the Roundhouse for the first gig. The place was packed and all the rock nabobs were there. Even the Sir Paul to be. And the Glimmer Twins, Mick and Keith. But without Brian, of course. They had destroyed him by then.
The Roundhouse was an ancient railroad engine turnabout and it was the hippest venue in London. It was positively psychedelic. And that was a stretch for mod London. They were still very Carnaby Street. The swirling colors and amoeba shapes of psychedelic intoxication had not yet taken over as the “next hip thing.” But it had at the Roundhouse. Liquid light projections. Guys and girls in Gypsy caravan garb. And 100-year-old dust everywhere. Man, it was funky. But we, New World hippies, didn’t care. We were going to comply with Diaghilev’s request and “astonish them.” We were the real goods and we knew it.
The first night the Doors opened the show. It was a great performance and Jim was in top form. He manipulated that audience like a puppet master and was himself manipulated by various shamanic entities. He was at once possessed and in complete control. And he looked great and was straight-arrow sober to boot. He was in his motherland and he was going to show them what he could do. What secrets he had discovered. What lessons from ancient lands he had unearthed. And he wowed them. Our playing was brilliant and Jim black-mambaed the audience back to its pre-Christian, Briton/Celtic roots. And BBC Television was there, capturing it all on videotape. If you want to see us at the Roundhouse, it’s available for home video rental on Granada Television and it’s called The Doors Are Open.
The second night we followed the Airplane. They were inspired, and the beautiful Grace Slick sang like a possessed angel while Paul Kantner drove the band demonically through their repertoire. I’d never seen them better. And then it was our turn. And we did it again. The muse came—Euterpe in her soft, Greek robe—and blessed us with inspiration. The flames of Advent licked our foreheads and we were off. A journey into the unknown. And those neopagan English freedom seekers were right with us. We could have constructed a new Stonehenge with the collective energy being generated in that dusty old roundabout. What a grand night of Dionysian revelry.
Let’s reinvent the gods,
All the myths of the ages,
Celebrate symbols from deep, elder forests.
And when the celebration had finally concluded, when the music was finally over and the venue was cleared of bacchantes, the Doors left their backstage dressing room sanctuary and headed out onto the streets of London town. And it was dawn! The sun was rising. We had played the entire night away and it was a new day. And we were in London.
It was good to be alive.
And then came Amsterdam. Jim simply passed out in the dressing room. A half hour before we were to hit the stage, Jim hit the floor. Too much fun, too much jet lag, too much hash, too much booze. Coming out of Germany that afternoon—after two lackluster days in Frankfurt—Bob “the Bear” Hite of Canned Heat gave Jim a small block of hashish. Just for fun. A kindly present. Something to share with the rest of the band. At the airport, Siddons said, “We’re going through customs. This is Germany. If anybody’s holding…get rid of it. And I mean now!” Jim fumbled in his pocket, took out the block of hash, looked at it for an instant, smiled to himself, and popped it into his mouth. He chewed it up and swallowed. He bought a quick beer and washed it down. It was gone! He wasn’t holding. What had been intended for four guys and then some was consumed by the Doors’ lead singer alone.
The Lebanese shit came on later in the day, after being mixed with far too many of those cute little airplane bottles of booze. Courvoisier and Chivas and Bailey’s Irish Cream and a German schnapps and God knows what else. A lethal blend. And it hit him like Mike Tyson hit the skinny Spinks brother. Bam! Over and out. The end.
Jim had done a whirling dervish onstage with the Jefferson Airplane. They were singing “Somebody to Love” and Jim, hashish kicking in, joined them. He sang with Marty, danced with Grace, and egged the band on to a faster and faster tempo. They obliged—Paul later told me he thought it was all a big joke on Morrison’s part—and Jim danced furiously, got caught up in mic cables, hit the floor, extricated himself, got back up, and dashed madly off the stage. He headed for the dressing room, opened a Heineken, drained it, and slowly slumped to the floor. Bam. Over and out. The end.
Siddons panicked. He held a mirror under Jim’s nose to see if he was breathing (a premonition of Paris?). He was. Vince called the hospital for an ambulance. It arrived as the Airplane finished their set. The meds wrapped Jim in a rubber sheet, put an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, and carried him out on a stretcher. Like a fucking cadaver. Pale and green and dead looking. And we’re on in twenty minutes! A quick equipment changeover and the Doors are supposed to take the stage at the Royal Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Holland. A beautiful, classical venue. Mozart had been played there. Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. And now the Doors, minus Morrison.
Vince made an announcement to the audience.
“Jim Morrison will not be able to perform tonight. You can have your money back. Or, if you like, you can have the Doors…minus Morrison. It’s your choice.”
And that cool and hip Dutch audience began clapping in time and shouting, “Play Doors! Play Doors! Play Doors!” And it built to a thunder. No one wanted their money back. Vince moved Jim’s vocal mike slightly stage left—exposing John to full view—to Robby’s area. I already had a vocal mic set up and the three standing, surviving, sober Doors took the stage to a roar from those Dutch intoxicants. And we played and sang our asses off. Robby and I handled the vocals—rather well, I might add—and John, center stage for the first time in his Doors career, flailed away with demonic glee at not having Jim Morrison standing in front of him, hogging the spotlight. That night the spotlight belonged to John, and his starved, voracious ego loved it! His drumming was furious and fine. The guitar and organ solos were inspired…and the audience loved it all. We made it. Whew!
The next day there was a photo of John, flailing away, on the front page of one of the daily papers. He was in heaven. Beaming. His ego bloated and became insatiable. For a day, he actually thought he was the star. Delusions of grandeur.
Jim got out of the hospital, rested and ready to rock. No hangover, no damage. He didn’t remember a thing after being onstage with the Airplane.
That afternoon we left for Copenhagen. Played a great concert the next night, a TV show the day after that, and Stockholm, Sweden, for two exceptional sets and the conclusion of our European tour.
We all went back to London. Robby and John and Siddons and Treanor split for the States. Jim and Pam took a flat in Belgravia for a month. Pam had secured it through an agency (another premonition of Paris) and stayed there, separate from the Doors tour. Dorothy and I visited them. It was squire Morrison and m’lady Courson. Swell digs. Nicely furnished in the English overstuffed chintz style. A fine reading chair for the squire and a charming dressing area for m’lady. It came complete with books in a vitrine, pots and pans and plates and flatware in the kitchen, and linens in a huge cupboard. It overlooked a small park. It was absolutely charming. They should have stayed there. They should have kept that flat instead of going to Paris.
They invited us over for breakfast. It was the most adult thing I ever saw Jim and Pam do. I was so proud of them. They were a couple. A man and a woman, a unit, making breakfa
st for their friends. We talked offhandedly about the tour and the current cinema and the vastness of the collection at the British Museum while the squire and his lady prepared rashers of bacon, fried eggs, toast with imported strawberry jam from Poland, and French roast coffee. It was all delicious, and so matter-of-fact, and so civilized. They were both to the manor born. They seemed quite at home and quite happy. It was the calmest and happiest I’d seen Jim since his “nervous breakdown.” He was content, satisfied…and we never spoke again of breaking up the Doors.
Dorothy and I left for Los Angeles two days later. Within the week, Michael McClure, noted Beat poet and playwright, had joined them to discuss Jim’s playing the role of Billy the Kid in a film adaptation of Michael’s play, The Beard. They clowned around London together and then made drunken plans to visit the Lake Country and pay homage to the grave of Keats. They never quite made it. A little too tipsy, don’t you know. Michael had read a manuscript of Jim’s poetry that had been lying about the Belgravia flat and loved it. He suggested Jim publish a small, literary private edition of The Lords and the New Creatures. Something personal, for friends.
Snakeskin jacket
Indian eyes
Brilliant hair.
He moves in disturbed
Nile insect
Air
It was a good time for Jim.
It was not a good time for America, however. Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated. Martin Luther King had been assassinated. There were riots in the streets of Chicago at the Democratic Convention. Young people were trying to stop the war and eventually the old people, the warmongers, would be killing us. Kent State University was the scene of a slaughter. The National Guard fired their rifles into a group of antiwar demonstrators and killed four students and wounded thirty. It was the beginning of the end of the dream of peace and love and equality. We realized that our own fathers would kill us. Jim acted out his Oedipal problems in “The End.” It was a catharsis. But this was reality! And they would shoot us if they had to. The fascists were winning. And then they elected Richard Nixon. We began to rot from the top down. And then Charles Manson worked his evil voodoo on a group of runaways who became killers themselves…disemboweling Sharon Tate and the others at Roman Polanski’s house. It was a despicable act. An act of madness. And we began to rot from our white trash roots up. Things would never be the same again. The war in Vietnam had driven the country mad. And there was no way out. We bear the burden of that madness even today. We are less than we could have been. The powers that be have put the fear into us. And we are their slaves. Except this time they have put the chains inside our brains. They control our imaginings, our desires. Our hearts are bound. Love does not prevail. And our dreams of the future are materialistic and, therefore, mundane. The Establishment has won. The fascists have won. The religious fundamentalists have won. For now!