Doors Open Teleseminar Transcript

David Shiang doorsgoldmine.com Oct. 20, 2011 Speaker: Welcome everybody to the Open Doors teleseminar on Oct. 20, 2011. My name is David Shiang and were here to talk about The Doors in an open forum and go over some of the current events about The Doors and whats happening with things about the band and some of the books that have come out. Also, I did a survey online with Doors fans and others who may not be Doors fans. I also want to open up the lines to any questions that people might have or things that might be of interest to them. So let me start by saying that in 2011 theyre going to be at least 9 books coming out about The Doors. Some of them are already out and one of them is called, You Make Me Real by a fellownamed Rui Silva, who did quite a bit of research about The Doors and is putting together something of a biography about the band members and their origins. Theres also The Doors FAQ, which a fellownamed Rich Weidman put together, and is similar to other FAQs about different bands like The Beatles and others, and it sort of looks at different aspects of The Doors and is in a format where you can sort of go to any little heading and learn about something related to the band. Theres also Jim Morrison Jesus Complex, which is a long poem by a fellownamed Wayne Grogan from Australia. And theres Summer with Morrison that was by a fellownamed Denis Jakob, who knewJim Morrison from film school. Morrison stayed on Deniss rooftop in the summer of 65, right before he ran into Ray on the beach in Venice that led to the formation of The Doors. You probably knowthat Jim and Ray had gone to film school at UCLA together. Theres also a book called Mr. Mojo Risin (Aint Dead) and thats a novel by a fellownamed Ron Clooney that basically looks at whether or not Jim Morrison might still be alive. And weve got a French

book called La Veritage Jim Morrison by Sam Bennett. It looks at Morrison from 1971 to 2011 and Sam Bennett, you may know, was the night club owner who claims that Jim Morrison died in his night club and was moved to the apartment in Paris where they discovered the body. So way, way back, 40 years ago, there was all this controversy about was Morrison really dead or did he really die of a heart attack, which was sort of the official cause of death, or was it a drug overdose, or you know, was he murdered or whatever. Theres also a book called The City of Light by Phil Steele, who met Jim Morrison in Paris after Morrison had moved there, and nowhas just put together a book about Morrisons last days. And Phil also is a film-maker, so those are fewof the books. Weve also got a book by Greil Marcus called, The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years. Greil Marcus is a cultural critic from the United States who wrote for RollingStone and other magazines way, way back and he is best known for books on Elvis and rock and roll and other things, but hes a cultural critic as opposed to a rock critic. And Im working on a book too called Jim Morrison and the Infinite Gold Mine: My Journey Through The Doors to the Mind of God although that title might change depending on some things that Ive been thinking about. So my book is really what Jim Morrison is saying in his lyrics and why are The Doors a really important group and what is Morrisons vision. I dont think its been fully explored so thats one of the reasons Im writing it. I wanted to read a little bit from one of the books I mentioned, which will give you an idea sort of howcurrent The Doors still are, especially compared to many other bands from that time and this particular author, he was living in the Bay Area last year and he was driving back and forth from San Francisco to Berkeley. So Im going to read from this book. In the spring of 2010, I made an interesting discovery. In those 40 or 50 minutes, switching stations to find something I wanted to hear, cutting from 98.5 to 104.5 to 103.7 to 107.7 to 90.7, as soon as a song I liked was over, sometimes catching signals floating in and out half a tune

before it broke up or was drowned out by something else, I was all but guaranteed to hear all or part of Lady Gagas Bad Romance at least three times and Trains Hey Soul Sister at least twice. This was not a surprise, those were the big hits of the season, and both were wonderful, bottomless, each in its own way. And then he goes on, In a way, each record contains its own surprise every time it came on, but the real surprise was something else: as certain as it was that Id hear Bad Romance, Bad Romance, Hey Soul Sister, Bad Romance, Hey Soul Sister, it was close to a sure thing that Id hear The Doors twice, three times, even four times, and not just Light My Fire, not just the one or two songs into which the radio has compressed Bob Dylan (Like a Rolling Stone), The Rolling Stones (Gimmie Shelter, maybe Satisfaction), The Byrds (Mr. Tambourine Man,) Wilson Pickett (In the Midnight Hour), Sly and the Family Stone (Everyday People), the Band (The Weight), all of The Doors contemporaries save the Beatles, as if they were forgotten hacks, forever playing the same squalid dive, with the same announcement on the door, the name of the one hit, maybe bigger than the name of the act, because you can always remember the song even if you cant remember who did it. So then he goes on, At any given moment, in 2010, you could hear Light my Fire, People are Strange, Moonlight Drive, Touch Me, Love Her Madly LA Woman, Twentieth Century Fox, Riders On the Storm, Hello, I Love You, Five to One, Break on Through (to the Other Side), Soul Kitchen, Roadhouse Blues. What were all those songs doing there? And why did most of them sound so good? As I reveled in the music, as if I hadnt heard it before, realizing in some sense that I hadnt, that LA Woman and Roadhouse Blues

had never sounded so big, so unsatisfied, so free in 1970 and 71 as they did forty years later, I remember Oliver Stones 1991 movie, The Doors. So this fellowgoes on and on about being really surprised to hear The Doors on the radio and he also mentions that he wasnt just listening to oldies or nostalgia stations, he was listening to, you know, contemporary radio and he said that The Doors music stood up to the music of 5 years ago, 10 years ago and 5 minutes ago. So one of the questions hes trying to wrestle with in the book is why are The Doors still played so much and why do they sound so good. And this fellow mentions he had listened to the first album hundreds and hundreds of times, but then he sort of felt that The Doors didnt fulfill their promise and he said that the third and fourth albums were words that didnt need to be written, much less sung. So he sort of panned the group during their mid career and then somewhat admired them towards the end of their career, but I think that this particular writer, who used the metaphor that Jim Morrison used, which was that the first album was only a map of their music, I think this particular writer really didnt understand that map and thats one of the things that I want to explore a little bit tonight and thats what I look at in my book, because I think that that map is something of a treasure map and The Doors are trying to lead us on this journey of self-exploration and self-discovery and psychic liberation. I want to read a little bit from the Illustrated History of The Doors because that book, in case you dont knowit, is press clippings by and large, about The Doors spanning their career plus their other things in the book. Its a great coffee table-sized book and its got Jim Morrison in his own words, and if you knowanything about The Doors, youll knowthe word mythology is very prominent, because Jim used mythology and he also became a myth and Jerry Hopkins, as you probably knowwho wrote, No One Here Gets Out Alive or co-wrote that book, said that the myth of Jim Morrison has become so big that he doesnt even knowwhat to call it, and many things are attributed to Jim Morrison as far as sayings or actions or behaviors and its almost to the

point where youre not really sure what Jim Morrison really said. I wrote a book on Einstein a couple years ago, and I have a book of Einstein quotes and in that book, there are quotes by Einstein, but theres also a whole section on quotes that are attributed to Einstein that he probably never said. And I think thats the same with Jim Morrison. People say that he said certain things or did certain things and were not really sure what he said or what he did. So anyway, Im going to read a little bit from the Illustrated History because I think its indicative of what The Doors were trying to do. They were not just a rock and roll band, just playing simple music. So he goes: The Doors concert is a public meeting called by us for a special kind of dramatic discussion and entertainment. When we perform, were participating in the creation of a world, and we celebrate that creation with the audience. It becomes the sculpture of bodies in action. Thats politics, but our power is sexual. We make concerts sexual politics. The sex starts with me, then moves out to include the charmed circle of musicians on stage. The music we make goes out to the audience and interacts with them. They go home and interact with the rest of reality, then I get it all back by interacting with that reality, so the whole sex thing works out to be one fine, big ball of fire. Nowobviously, when Jim talks about sex there, its not physical sex but sex in a larger context having to do with life and eros and the whole big thing of what is reality, what is life. And he uses that phrase about a Doors concert as a public meeting, and in the book that I was reading from earlier, the writer talks a little bit about what were The Doors doing and he sort of ridicules the idea of a public meeting, but I think Jim once said that he wanted people to think, and he wanted people to listen to the music and try to get into the music, and go along with the journey that the music was trying to take you on, and everybody was supposed to come together in some sense. Theres another part where Jim talks about feeling spiritual in his music, and this is a quote from

The Doors, the book from that the three remaining Doors put together with Ben Fong-Torres, and Jim says, The only time I really open up is on stage. I feel spiritual up there. Performing gives me a mask, a place to hide myself where I can reveal myself. I see it as more than performing, going on doing songs and leaving. I take everything personally and dont really feel Ive done a complete job unless weve gotten everybody in the theater on common ground. And one of the things about The Doors public career was that early on in the clubs, the audience was very much a participant with the band in going on the voyage, and The Doors could go into different realms of consciousness through the music and Jim Morrison could do very outrageous things on stage and become a shaman in a sense, become a possessed figure and do things that people had never seen before. And even people who dont like The Doors would tell you that they were completely unique and have not been duplicated since. But as The Doors continued to perform, the audience who at the beginning sort of sawthe unexpected, they came to expect the unexpected and they came to watch Jim Morrison go crazy and be outrageous and do things on stage that nobody had ever seen before and Morrison felt somewhat compelled to live up to that image and he and The Doors would go try to do things that they had done at the beginning yet the audience would want them to sing Light My Fire and othertheres a lot of heckling and you can hear that in some of the albums that The Doors have released since in terms like bootleg cuts, theres a compilation called Butt Your Boot or something like that, where The Doors have these concerts in the Singer Bowl in NewYork or Honolulu where the audience literally is screaming at Jim Morrison while hes singing and that war between the audience and The Doors intensified because theythe audience came to see something outrageous in a sense, and if Morrison didnt give it to them, they felt dissatisfied. And that culminated in Miami, where he may or may not have exposed himself, and he probably didnt and he was pardoned for that 40 years later. But theres that whole

aura of Jim Morrison being outrageous, and I think that has overshadowed the lyrics and what they were trying to say in their music. So thats one thing I wanted to talk about, the other is I did this survey online and I asked people who were Doors fans, as well as nonDoors fans what, whats your viewof the music and howlong have you been listening to the music and things like that and there were some interesting results out of about a hundred people who filled out the survey online. About 60% felt that Jim Morrison was something of a shaman and not just a singer, but somebody who was spiritual and had a message to convey to the audience. Another thing is that The Doors have a fan base, and we knowthis just from people who go to either Doors tribute bands concerts all around the world, or other Doorsrelated events, that a lot of the fans are young fans. In the survey that I had, they had fans who had been listening to the music ranging from 5 years, or even less than 5 years up to 30 plus years, and there are a lot of fans who are in the 11 to 20 year range, 21 to 30. 35% were over 30 years, and you know, as fans, but there are also people who are less than 5 years. So that is sort of in distinction to a lot of other bands from their time where the fan base is largely older people. One example is Paul Simon from Simon and Garfunkel, and I think it turns out that the Singer Bowl concert that I mentioned earlier, Simon and Garfunkel may have been the headliners and anyway, I read a reviewnot long ago where a reporter went to see Paul Simon perform and, you know, I like Paul Simons music and I think its good, but she noticed that most of the fans were older, and she said this doesnt really bode well for Paul Simons longevity because hes not attracting a young fan base, whereas you go to Doors related concert, or you go to MTV for example or actually VH1 and youll see the movie The Doors, Oliver Stones movie, in what you might call heavy rotation, that thing is on every couple of months where I live, in Boston, and thats very, very unusual for a band that old. So one of the things that people have been asking for decades really, is whats the fascination with The Doors, and why The Doors? Way, way back, a month after he died, literally, there was a reporter for The New

York Times named Don Heckman, who said, Nowthat Jim

Morrisons dead, presumably The Doors are going to fade away, just likefade away into anonymity, just like whats happening under the surface of their music so this fellowwho actually still writes reviews in Los Angeles, who must be in his 80s now, predicted in 1971 that The Doors would basically disappear and every so often you have these reviewers who say, I am surprised at the longevity of the music. When the movie came out in 1991, which was 20 years ago, there is a lady, Janet Maslin, who is a film reviewer for the NewYork Times, and I think she wrote for Rolling Stone at one point in the 60s, but she talked about the stillsomething like the surprising longevity of the group and it just goes to showyou that a lot of people are puzzled by whats the appeal of this music, by this sort of wild and crazy drunken guy and his bandmates, and, by the way, a lot of the critics dismiss the band, the three musicians as sort of just Jim Morrison hacks, or flunkies who never would have made it on their own, and I think thats absurd, but anyway to me, whats going on in the music has a lot to do with the heros journey and the motifs of self-awareness, self-discovery, transcendence and striving to knowourselves. So you take a song like The End and a lot of critics have dismissed that as well, Lester Bangs for example, you may knowwho he is, hes was considered one of the most important American rock critics back in the 60s and 70s. He always said that that song was a joke to him. And weve got other people, Pete Johnson said that the song was singularly simple, over-elaborated, psychedelic non sequiturs and fallacies. And even today the person that I quoted earlier thinks that that song was lyrical overreach and silliness andthings like that. So its clear that that song, which is by far The Doors most important song, and its also their longest, is still not quite understood by a lot of the people who listen to it and its not like you really need to get into Freud and Sophocles and Oedipus to really like the song, but certainly if youre going to try to understand whats going on there, you really have to understand the hero myth and things like the heros journey and what people like Joseph Campbell or Mircea Eliade or Eric Newman were saying, and how Morrison is using those motifs and trying to entice us on that journey.

So, one thing about that song I wanted to mention was that theres a part where he invites the audience or the listeners, theres danger on the edge of town, ride the kings highway. Weird scenes inside the goldmine, ride the highway west, ride the snake to the lake, the ancient lake, and he goes on the west is the best, and theres more. The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on, he took a face from the ancient gallery, and he walked on down the hall. And then theres that part about the sister and the brother and the father, I want to kill you mother, and then he starts screaming. And many critics, and many noncritics, and what I mean by non-critics are psychiatrists who dont criticize rock music per se but literally two different psychiatrists have read those lyrics and they say something like, Oh, thats Jim Morrison spouting off his Oedipus Complex, saying he wants to kill his father and marry, you know, fuck his mother. And even today, various people say, Oh thats Jim in the first person, he wants to commit those acts and... Thats completely ridiculous, among other things, because what they fail to do is to look at the lyrics in context and see what Morrison is doing overall. So let me just give a little bit of context of the whole thing with the heros journey, which is a very well-known and welldocumented journey that you can read about in Joseph Campbell and also a fellownamed Chris Vogler, who popularized it in Hollywood. The hero goes to confront the danger in order to win the treasure, and there are various stages to this journey and in Chris Voglers, there are twelve stages where you go from the ordinary world to the special world and then back to the ordinary world. And what Morrison is doing here is saying go confront the danger, and that danger is psychological. Hes trying to have you discover something in your own mind and go from the comfort of the known to the unknown, and theres a whole part about there are things that are known and things that are unknown, and in between are The Doors, thats one of their big lines. So Morrisons saying, Go enter that danger, ride the kings highway and then you will perceive weird scenes inside the gold mine, the gold mine being the treasure. You knowthe heros journey has to do with the hero, the dragon, and the treasure. You defeat the dragon in order to win the treasure. So ride the highway west, ride the snake to the lake, and within

mythology, when you go to confront the dragon, you go west, and if youre successful, youre reborn in the east. So thats a very well known motif. Morrison, when he says the west is the best, hes not talking about California, hes talking about the mythological west, which is very much of a landmark within that whole heros journey complex. So go west and go confront the danger and then he gets to that Oedipus part. Nowwhen he says The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on, that part Morrison has stopped singing and nowhes talking, and hes also going into third person. So instead of, I am doing the following hes saying he. So hes transformed himself into a character, and hes commenting on this third person, the killer, and hes talking. And then later he says he took a face from the ancient gallery, so hes putting on this mask. In concert, when Jim Morrison sang this song, he would sometimes put his hand over his eyes as if to symbolize a mask, so hes speaking through a character, not in the first person. So when he says, Father I want to kill you, mother I want to... you knowand he starts screaming, thats not Jim Morrison in the first person saying he wants to kill his father and fuck his mother. That is Jim Morrison speaking in the role of a character. So when critics say that Jim Morrison wanted to violate a taboo and simply yell out Father, I want to kill you and do that in the first person, and thats what those psychiatrists say, that is completely misreading the lyrics. The other thing that is going on here is that the treasure that Morrisons talking about in terms of the gold mine and go confront the danger in order to win the treasure, that treasure has to do with an anti-Freudian viewof the world in terms of whats possible for liberation. And its an anti-Oedipus Complex view. So, there are several things going on here in terms of the killer in the Freudian version. The Oedipus in Freud wants to kill his father and marry his mother, and its sort of, you want to kill your father because you want to marry your mother.

Within the myth of Oedipus, theres the father, the mother, and the riddle of the Sphinx. And Oedipus kills his father unintentionally and then solves the riddle of the Sphinx and wins the hand of the mother because he solved the riddle, so those two are sort of flip sides of the same coin. And the other thing about the Oedipus myth is that Oedipus grewup with foster parents because his father tried to kill him when he was 3 days old, because his father, Laius, was the first pederast. And he had raped a young boy named Chrysippus, and Chrysippus father put a curse on Oedipus father saying, If you have a son, that son will kill you. If you knowanything about Greek tragedy, you knowthat misfortune often flows through the generations. Freud was not interested whatsoever in the fact that the father had committed the sin of rape and therefore was cursed, and Freud is not concerned with the fact that the father tried to kill Oedipus. Freud is only concerned with Oedipus wants to He completely misreads the myth, and Freuds version is Oedipus wants mom, therefore must kill dad. And it turns out that that is exactly what Freud himself said that he wanted to do. If you look at Freuds writings, he [essentially] said, I felt this urge for my mother, and I also felt antipathy for my father. And then he later said [to Wilhelm Fleiss], Ive come to the conclusion that these feelings are universal. NowIm going to go check the legend of Oedipus. So he went to the legend with his whole theory in mind, and he went to confirm what he felt and within academic circles thats called the confirmation bias, which you go find what youre looking for. So the whole thing is quite complex, no pun intended, but within the song, Morrison knows all this about Freud, he studied Freud very, very deeply as well as all those other people that I talked about. And Jim Morrisons background was in theater arts, and he knewall about Sophocles and Greek tragedy. In fact he talked about Greek tragedy with Richard Goldstein and Digby Diehl, and howhe viewed rock and roll as similar to Greek tragedy. But, anyway, getting back to that song, the killer woke before dawn, he put his boots on, he took a face from the ancient gallery, so those three lines, if you knowGreek tragedy, the City

festival of Dionysus was held every year in Greece, and people would come from all over the country to go watch these tragedians and other playwrights put their plays on. And so you had Aristophanes and Sophocles and Euripides and people like that putting their plays on for prizes and all the tragedies began at dawn. So the killer awoke before dawn. The reason hes saying he awoke before dawn because hes getting into a tragedy, hes bringing up Greek tragedy. He put his boots on, thats the part where the principal actors wore boots or buskins to elevate themselves above the normal actors, so to speak. And he took a face from the ancient gallery, so these actors put on these masks. So Morrison is literally bringing Sophocles and Greek tragedy into the poem, or into the song, and then commenting on the Oedipus complex. And one other thing about why does Morrison say, Father I want to kill you, Mother I want to... its sort of like because hes in the guise of Freuds Oedipus, which is I want to kill my father because I want to marry my mother. NowFreud, we already saw, hes completely omitted the riddle of the Sphinx, which if you look at Freuds writings, hethe riddle is what walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon and three legs in the evening? and the answer is Man. But basically Freud completely ignores the actual riddle and he translates the riddle into where do babies come from? Many Freud watchers or Freud observers have said thats a pretty weird interpretation of that riddle, but it shows Freuds mentality. But Morrison knows all about Freud, and he knows all about Sophocles and Morrison actually talked to another reporter named Bernard Wolfe about Freud and Melanie Klein, who is a Freudian disciple. So this song is not Morrison blurting out his Oedipus complex in order to shock the audience. Morrison is positing a gold mine, the weird scenes inside the gold mine, the state of finding the treasure as the ultimate prize, not some kind of mother fantasy. And I mentioned Bernard Wolfe. Morrison said to Bernard Wolfe, and this is towards the end of Morrisons life, that The End, that song is about three things, and he said it has the same theme as Light My Fire, which he didnt write by the way. He says, The theme is liberation from the cycle of

birth, orgasm, and death. If you look at the other lyrics, that same theme of liberation and freedom and transcendence is what The Doors are all about, not darkness and chaos and disorder, and lot of the things that the critics see, which are certainly there but theyre not there to the extent that the critics think. And Morrison, when you look at a song like When the Musics Over, right after he screams out, We want the world and we want it now, he says, See the light. Save us, Jesus, Save us. And the light, meaning the sun and things like that, the dawn, are the prevailing themes in The Doors, not the dark and the night and the chaos and the abyss. Many critics see Jim Morrison as a nihilist, and say, you know, his vision is bleak and dark and, this critic that I mentioned earlier had a great line which is, The Doors, their music suggested that anything that happened, as long as it was bad and thats completely ridiculous, but thats a great sort of way of looking at it thats totally wrong. Morrison is not saying anything bad can happen, I mean, it has to be bad, hes actually saying you need to go through the darkness; you need to go through the chaos in order to be purified and to be reborn. So when critics look at The End and say, Thats all about darkness and death and insanity, you knowall the children are insane, this other critic had a great line saying, Some of theyou know, its almost like material for a comedian and you could imagine Bill Murray going into a night club and spouting off one-liners and one of the one-liners is Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain, hey, weve all been there baby, right? So when Morrison is saying, all the children are insane, he wants us to overcome that insanity and his key themes are rain and the sun and the dawn and the rebirth and the awakening. So that is sort of what Im trying to get into with my book, and I think that Morrison had achieved that transcendence, that liberation and thats what he was trying to bring to his audience. And the music of The Doors, the four guys, was something that we are supposed to journey through in order to experience this rapture and this spiritual ecstasy. One thing that somebody wrote way back in 1981 was by a guy named Irwyn Greif, who at that time was a NewYork psychic, and he was asked to

interpret four photographs, and he supposedly did not knowanything about The Doors when he looked at those photos. And as a result of his analysis, he said that Morrison was a spiritual psychiatrist, trying to lead his audience to some sort of inner awakening, and I think thats really spot-on and the audience at the beginning was a willing participant in this voyage, and then later as they became, as The Doors became internationally famous and had bigger venues to play in and Morrison became known for his outrageousness and his sexuality and things like that, leading people to an inner awakening got completely lost. In case you dont knowof this four part special that Jim Ladd did with The Doors in 1979, its called No One Here Gets Out Alive and it was an audio documentary, and its four hours long and theres a lot of really good stuff in there by the three Doors as well as Danny Sugarman, who helped put it out. In case you didnt know, Jim Ladd is a disc jockey, or was a disc jockey from LA, he might be retired now, who was one of The Doors biggest supporters. And he loves their music, as do many other people, and he was convinced by Danny Sugarman to do a four part special on The Doors and he had a weekly radio showcalled, Innerview. And when he did this four-parter, he started it off by saying, Weve never done a four-parter on any band and you might ask Why The Doors? and then he starts talking about that. He rebroadcast that same four-part special two years later, in 1981, and he started it off by saying that of the 150 bands he had done in that series, the one that got the most requests for a repeat was The Doors and, you know, that was in 1979, 1981, here we are 30 years later and The Doors on the radio are still considered as contemporary or as relevant or as interesting or as listenable as pretty much any band out there. So thats sort of my take for the evening. Id like to open it up to any questions or any comments and like I could go on and on for quite a while, but Id like to knowif anybody has anything they want to add or ask, so the lines are open. Guest 1: Yeah, I have a question. Im from Kansas City, and Im really enjoying your discussion. Im 62, been a fan ever since Break On Through came out, and Ive read just about all the books and have

all the records and the bootlegs and everything else I could get my hands on. The thing that Im wondering about, I mean one interview, I think it was on The Doors are Open. Morrison was obviously stoned at that time, he was saying that he never thought that The Doors had done something that he termed it a pure expression of joy. I was listening to the music, and I think, yeah, I think he did it, but Im wondering whether or not if you had any thoughts as to whether Jim was ever really satisfied with what they did. Speaker: Well, I think thatsI remember him saying that and I had always thought that Light My Fire was an expression of joy, even though theres that part about the funeral pyre in there, which, you know, which Jim put in, but I think thatyou knowwhether Jim was satisfied, thats hard for somebody to answer. I knowthat he had supposedly said he wondered why they werent bigger faster, like the Beatles, and I think nowyoull find that The Doors are probably the most important American band to come out of the 60s and that they have eclipsed other groups that were destined for longevity, and there were many groups that the critics said were much more important than The Doors. In fact, The Doors were widely panned in their home town of LA, but as far as Morrison, I think he really wanted to be understood by the, quote- unquote, intelligentsia. And that hasnt happened. So one of my, I guess goals, is to bring his message to the intelligentsia, whichand the only way to do that is by looking at the poetry, which to my mindhas not been done successfully. And I have a line in my book, which was thethe people in the intelligentsia who were qualified to look at Morrison and The Doors werent looking, and the people who were looking werent qualified. So, you know, I was in the English PhD program at Berkeley for a while, and I knowthat professors there, their mission, their job is to analyze poetry, and they were looking at other things. But I think The Doors will eventually be recognized, and Jim Morrison recognized as a major thinker. Guest 1: Its probably theyhe really wasnt recognized so much because his poetry wasnt according to the discipline that they got their

PhDs in, and he was doing something different and they didnt really like it. To me, the reason why... Go ahead sir. Speaker: Yeah, I think thatits not just that he was doing something different, but nobody expects anything of importance to come out of pop music, number one, or pop culture, or music, I think. If you knowSteven Pinker, whos a major thought leader in psychology and things like that, he dismissed music once as auditory cheesecake and he held up language as the key to rationality and whatever, but, I mean Morrison was a poet, not a musician, but the music with the poetry is what gets people. You know, if Jim Morrison were just simply writing words on paper, and had no electronic music behind him, he would not have had anything close to the impact that he has had because people dont read poetry, in general. Guest 1: I think Paul Rothchild really nailed it on that tribute thing that he did where he said their music came from a sense of film, that, not the musical thing of anyone, but just oflike a soundtrack, I mean thats I think Ive watched an episode of Miami Vice, I think it was, where they nothing but The Doors song in the background, and it was just like a poem, and to me its a combination of Morrison and everything, as in music that just sets a mood that you dont quite understand, that you ... you want to go there. You know, I find I do. Cause I have been listening to it all these years, and Im enticed [Laughter] I always will be. Speaker: Well, you know, that Miami Vice episode just coincidentally, had G. Gordon Liddy in there. And that was, you know they used all Doors song, and recently, the TV showCold Case had an episode of all Doors music. Guest 1: Cool, wish I could...

Speaker: Thats online. You can see it by Googling Cold Case Metamorphosis and you can get it online. Guest 1: Okay.

Speaker: For free. But the guy that I had said, I had talked about earlier, said that he listened to the first album hundreds and hundreds of times, and then sort of lost interest because he felt that the second album lacks seriousness. But he also said that for him, The Doors were basicallywhenever he listened to The Doors, it was something like he had this twisted and thrilling emotion of getting outside himself, something like that (I dont have the exact reference). But I think thats really what the music was trying to do, and people, hethis fellowmentions that he got lost in songs like Hey, Soul Sister and Lady Gagas Bad Romance, but to really get into The Doors, you have to surrender to the music and sort of get lost in the music, and I think thats something that people are not really willing to do or they resist for some reason. And part of that is, they dont want to lose control of whatever it is. Morrisons themes are not your typical pop fare, and in many cases, they can be scary and many writers have talked about howscary or scared the audience was of the music. There are two examples. One of which is a writer who sawthem at Williams College named John Stickney. And his reviewis reprinted in The Doors: The Complete Lyrics and what John Stickney said way back in 67 or 68 was that The Doors came out there and they were nothing like your typical hippies with a flower and a grin: The Doors do not cater to the nameless faces beyond the footlights. The group is not kind, and they do not entertain in any traditional sense. They allowother people to witness the manner of their existence and the pain and pleasure inherent in their imaginations. The audience did not knowwhether to applaud or not. The audience was scared, and rightly so. The Doors are not pleasant, amusing hippies proffering a grin and a flower; they wield a knife with a cold and terrifying edge. The Doors are closely akin to the national taste for violence, and the power of their music forces each listener to realize what violence is in himself.

And I think thats really true in the sense that The Doors bring up themes which a lot of us would rather completely avoid for our entire lives, you knowwhat I mean? People dont want to think about incest, they dont want to think about the darkness, they dont want to think about violence. These are all sort of evil, and just likeI mentioned another writer who was with Life Magazine and he happened to see the concert where Jim Morrison was arrested on stage in NewHaven, and it was perfect. You know, Morrison supposedly, if you look at No One Here Gets Out Alive, he supposedly asked his people which press people were at each concert. And at that concert there was a reporter for Life and somebody for the NewYork Times and maybe some other places, but the guy from Life, his name is Fred Powledge. And he ended up writing an article, Wicked Go The Doors: An Adults Education by the Kings of Acid Rock, andthere was a callout in that article which was something like, he made you understand he was on the evil side. And, you know, Im a parent, I dont want my kids to experience evil. But Morrison used that term in his press bio, a sensuous evil world, something like that. He later said maybe I should have used the word primeval. But he wasnt talking about good and bad, he was talking about Nietzschean beyond good and evil, but thats the kind of thing you knowonce you put it out there you cant control it, but Fred Powledge said that Morrisonthat article is great, by the way, and part of it was reprinted not too long ago online in Life Magazine, for the 40th anniversary of his death. But Fred Powledge said that Morrison goes out there and he seems dangerous, which for a poet is a contradiction in terms, and he, Morrison that night had black leather pants on, or vinyl pants or whatever it was, and he had been maced backstage prior to the concert, and then he went out there and started talking about that and howhe was maced and he starts talking about this little man in this little blue suit, and he went on and on and he was just egging the police on and ridiculing them, and they, meaning the police, ring the stage to prevent the fans from rushing the band and apparently they all started turning around and looking at Morrison, talking about the little man in the little blue suit with the little blue hat, and then suddenly this guy, Lieutenant

Kelly goes up there and says something like, Young man, youve gone too far. Youre under arrest and then you see these two guys hauling him off the stage and thats on Youtube, where you can see Jim Morrison literally being arrested on stage. And that... Guest 1: Ive got another [Laughter] Ive got another grand picture signed by Jim of that scene where hes extending the microphone to the policeman saying Say your thing, man. Speaker: Really, well Ill tell you, thats worth a lot of money. But thetheres a lot of funny things about that concert and one is, you know, if Jim knewthat Life Magazine and Time Magazine or whoever it was, or NewYork Times was in the audience, he may have done that sort of, see what kind of reaction he would get from the police and then get covered in Life Magazine. Life Magazine did a huge spread on Jim Morrison, and it was the same time that Martin Luther King was assassinated, and I think King was on the cover, but they have a huge blowup of Morrison being pulled off the stage, and one of the reviewers from the rock world later said The Doors appeared to be selling out, meaning, you know, giving in to commercial tastes and doing the same predictable thing over and over on the stage, and that when he got arrested, the underground sort of said, Oh! Thats the Jim that we like, getting arrested by the police. So well welcome him back into the fold. Apparently at Electra records they had a huge blowup of Jim Morrison being arrested, you know, on their wall. And thats the kind of publicity that the underground would have appreciated, but of course the parents were appalled, and that was part of the introduction to The Doors to mainstream America, this evil guy and theyFred Powledge said something about the most satanic and demented thing about The Doors is Jim Morrison, you know. Somebody said he looks like just beyond a suicide pact. You know, all these things that were very negative and very dark, and so that aura hung over them, and a lot of it was Jim Morrison had projected that. But, certainly his overall lyrics were about transcendence and redemption and not resurrection in the Christian sense, but rebirth. And that, I think, has been overlooked.

Guest 1: I remember, so many of the reviews I read back in those days would go on and on about some nonsense, I dont think those guys had ever heard. To me, so much of what I read about Jim Morrison explores the monsters of the id and these people are thinking that hes not pop or Top 40 enough. It seems so absurd the way that they slanted things. Speaker: Yeah, yeah, so nowthat 40 years has gone by and I dont knowif you were around at the beginning, but there are 9 books coming out about The Doors this year, worldwide, at least. And, I wouldnt say theyre back, per se, because they never went away, but I think as time goes by, they will get more and more serious attention and... Guest 1: Ive probably read 25 of them, and the thing that is interesting to me beyond just understanding the details of everything that happened, was just getting the different points of viewfrom everybody that was around. It was just amazing, you know, some very public event, youd read three or four versions, and the facts were so skewed, it was laughable. Speaker: Right, well I think Morrison was sort of like a Rorschach test. You showMorrison to all the people and theyre all going to have different viewpoints of what he represented. And the same thing was true about the Miami concert, where basically people who went to the same concert sawdifferent things, just like you knowwitnesses to an accident can all have different interpretations. Guest 1: One of my clients was at that concert, and he was a big sweaty mess, and he and a bunch of his friends were all so stoned they really didnt remember much of it. But it was just packed beyond anything that the fire marshals should have allowed, and it just took on a life of its own. Speaker: Right, well supposedly they had pulled out a lot of seats to make room for more people and they oversold the venue by several thousand. By the way, Im going to give away three electronic versions of

my book, so anybody whos interested. So the first three people who send me an email saying free book Ill send you a free PDF when its done. Guest 1: Okay.

Speaker: So the first three people. And the thing about the introduction to mainstream America, I mean first of all, rock and roll back then was considered very, very radical and very new. The Beatles came along and they were very, you know, pretty innocent lads, you knowmop tops with long hair, nothing to be afraid of, I Want to Hold Your Hand, She Loves You, but then, you know, the Rolling Stones came along and they were a little bit more edgy and you know, Led Zeppelin, and you know, The Doors came out, and the Beach Boys, but rock and roll was still considered not your standard fare and the whole 60s and the counter culture and then politics and the summer of love and riots in the street and race relations and womens lib, stuff like that, so rock and roll was this new, unknown thing. Nobody expected a serious poet to be in that medium, and thats one reason why Jim Morrison didnt get the attention from the serious poetry analysts or whatever that you might expect. Then, the other thing was mainstream America, when they were introduced to The Doors, you knowLife Magazine did another special that they looked at 6 rock bands, I think it was six, and there was a lady named Robin Richman who wrote about The Doors and I think Jefferson Airplane and a fewothers. And she looked at The Doors and said the music has no meaning, only mood. So you have Fred Powledge in Life, and then you have Time Magazine, they, either Time or Newsweek said that The Doors speak of a perverse and rather fuzzy salvation, you knowsomething like that. The mainstream media had basically no understanding of The Doors to speak of, and then theres a guy named Theodore Roszak, and I dont knowif you remember the book, The Making of a Counter Culture. Theodore Roszak, is, or was a historian at Cal State Hayward, and he wrote a book in 1968 about the youth movement, they called it the making of a counter culture, and he had read a reviewof The Doors by Tom Robbins, who would later

write, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, and Tom Robbins wrote this outrageous, and I mean that in a good sense, reviewof The Doors in Seattle in July of 67, right after seeing them in concert. And it turns out that night he found his writing voice, and he talks about that thirty years later in this retrospective when he talks about his reviewfrom 67. And he also added, thirty years later, The Doors were the most exciting rock band America ever produced. But in the review, which is online by the way, he is just really over the top, and in my view, its creative writing at its best. So anyway, Roszak, whos this academic, sees this review, and Im going to quote from Roszak, and I talked about this in my book: I find that little short of disheartening to come across items like the following: a rave reviewof an acid rock group called The Doors, after Huxley, after Blake apparently, taken from the underground Seattle newspaper Helix, July 67. The Doors, their style is early cunnilingual with overtones of the Massacre of the Innocents. An electrified sex slaughter. A musical blood bath. The Doors are carnivores in a land of musical vegetarians. Their talons, fangs, and folded wings are seldom out of view, but if they leave us crotch-rawand exhausted, at least they leave us aware of our aliveness and of our destiny. The Doors scream into the darkened auditorium what all of us in the underground are whispering more softly in our hearts. We want the world and we want it NOW! In the face of such mock-Dionysian frenzy, it is no wonder that a fretful cry for rationality should be raised. Howis one to make certain that the exploration of the nonintellective powers will not be generate into a maniacal nihilism. The matter needs sorting out, and I am uncertain that many of the young have reflected sufficiently upon it. So, thats Roszak, and it turns out hes still alive. I used to go to Berkeley and I ran into him at a taco place in Berkeley, but I didnt talk to him,

but its one of those things where you wonder whether you should have said something to the guy, but he sees this reviewand Robbins, who is pretty young at that time and hadnt written anything to speak of, goes to see The Doors and just is blown away. And if you read the whole thing online, he was saying that Seattle had seen, I think like the young Rascals and some other people, but they were not prepared for a group like The Doors to come in and just, I mean, do something totally unprecedented and the reviewis just really, really great writing and then 30 years later he says that he still feels about them the same way, and that night he found his writing voice. So, you know, you get this thing aboutRoszaks excerpt is not exact from the I mean, it may or may not be accurate, but the whole thing thats online from Robbins doesnt match exactly what Roszak quoted, but you know, theyre style is early cunnilingual, you know, I mean, if youre just reading that you would think that the people that are being written about are just outrageous, which The Doors may have been, but lets face it, they were four guys in a band. Another thing about The Doors when they performed, and this is part of Jim Ladd and his whole Innerview, the four-hour special, he talks about howThe Doors as a group could do things with the audience without special effects that no other group had done before or since, which was to take audiences on a voyage that was unlike anything people had experienced. And if you look at Frank Lisciandro, who was a film school classmate of Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek, he talks about kids, he went around with the group and photographed them, he talks about kids in the audience as being mesmerized by the music and just shell-shocked in a way, and obviously thats not all the kids, but he, Lisciandro says that he can understand why The Doors were accused of mayhem and chaos and disorder, because people would go to the concert, especially early on, and just get mesmerized and somehowget transfixed in a way. And that left them altered or, you know, some kind of euphoria or rapture, something, I dont knowwhat it was, but Lisciandro had some very interesting things to say about that.

So does anybody else have anything to add? Guest 1: That was quite a time to be a young person. I never got to see him in person, what a joy that would have been, but Ive seen the remaining Doors four times and first time I sawthem was back in 2003, I flewfrom Kansas City to Tampa. If youre going to come here, you knowIm going to go see you, and it was really good, after the night they did that, one that ended up being an underground bootleg, what a show it was, it was like a personal catharsis. I went the next night to Orlando to see them again, but I had to see, I was front rowdead center. And I thought, this has affected me for ever since I was a senior high school, Ive got to find out what its like to see them in person, and Ive pretty much seen everything from Sinatra to The Rolling Stones to Pink Floyd to Willie Nelson, but it was really, it was justIll never understand, like Ive given up even trying, I just-- its just one of the most joyful things Ive done in my whole life. Speaker: Well I think youll really enjoy the book that, one of the books this year is called, The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years by Greil Marcus. And, you knowI mentioned earlier, hes a cultural critic but hes also a rock critic in some sense. And he tries to place The Doors in the context of the 60s, but he also recognizes that they are something of a timeless group, I dont think he uses the word timeless, but hes very unusual in the sense of a Doors observer because he is not from just the rock critic genre, you know, so in his book he talks about Thomas Pynchon and lots of different historical references, and a lot of things about architecture and about art that will be of no interest to a normal Doors fan, and by the way Doors fans, Ive been online a lot and had that survey, and theres a portion who are very interested in the meaning of The Doors, you know, if there is any, according to these people, but then there are others who have no interest whatsoever in what The Doors are saying, all they want to do is listen to the music. And Ive corresponded with people who say that, you know, Jim Morrison said once that all he was doing in that song was trivial, so therefore it is trivial, and one thing about Morrison is he often spoke at the level of the reporters he was talking to. So if the

reporter was looking for sex and violence, he would speak in terms of sex and violence or, if somebody was coming in from a teenybopper magazine he would give them the teenybopper angle, whereas if somebody was coming in from a poetry side, he would talk of poetry. So, you know, when Morrison says to somebody A, B or C you sort of have to take that with a grain of salt. And it reminds me of what DH Lawrence said, which is often misquoted, he is often quoted as saying, Trust the tale, not the teller and what I think he said, and Ive got it somewhere, is Trust the art or the work, not the artist because the artist can say different things at different times about his own art, so, you know, its really the art that has to speak for itself. So when I got into the music, it was through the words, and I didnt knowanything about the arrest or the insanity or the chaos and the disorder and the stupidity and the drunkenness, and thats the way I think that if youre going to get into the music, you have to get in through the lyrics. Guest 1: Im going to think about that, but I think youre right cause Im sure that theres some of them that, as a kid I would have thought of them as a kid, but nowas a mature man I would definitely think differently. Speaker: Yeah, there is a great line from somebody in that book about The Illustrated History, who said that youll learn more about Jim Morrison through the words than you will through any biography or anything else thats written about him, and I think thats really true, that he thought of himself as a poet, and poets expressed themselves in their work, and you know, whether they were happy or unhappy that day, or who they were going out with, or whatever, its not really that relevant, and many people have talked about artists like Van Gogh or, you know, lots of different artists with very turbulent lives, but their life is not nearly as important as the work, so I think thats one of the cases here. Guest 1: Thats what I saw, gosh, where was it, at the Louvre certainly, seeing some of the people that, like seeing the Mona Lisa I stood there for 20 minutes and just was awestruck. And I found out later about the 32 layers of paint, the three-dimensional that picks out of their

mind, digest, you know, whatever, youre just looking at it, yeah, the work is more important than the person. Speaker: Right, right. Let me just read this part from Vogue, which this guy named Kurt Von Meier, wrote, His songs are eerie, loaded with somewhat Freudian symbolism, poetic but not pretty, filled with suggestions of sex, death, transcendence. And that guy Bernard Wolfe, in 1972, his article was published in Esquire, and theres a whole history to that Bernard Wolfe article, but Ill just mention the quote first, which was: Wolf says to Morrison, the Vogue guy said your songs are filled with sex, death and transcendence. Which transcendence did you have in mind? Sex through death, or death through sex? and Morrison says, The first on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, the second on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. But just getting back to Wolfe for a second, Wolfe was sent by the NewYork Times Magazine to write a story about Jim Morrison, and it turns out that he was the second writer they sent. The first writer was named Robert Gover, and Gover went and met Jim Morrison and then talked to the NewYork Times and the NewYork Times said, Whats going on with the story? and they said, The angle we want is Jim Morrison as the creation and product of Machiavellian Hollywood puppeteers. And Robert Gover, and I talked to Gover a fewmonths ago and heI played some of that conversation on my webinar in July 3rd, and Robert Gover said to The NewYork Times, Well I cant write that story, because thats not the Jim Morrison that I met and they said, Youve got to be kidding me. What weve heard is Jim Morrison is just a puppet of hes manufactured by his music company and so they took him off the assignment, and Morrison hung out with Gover for over eight months, sort of off and on, they got to knoweach other, Morrison would go over to his house and one of the things that Gover said was that Morrison had no fear of death and no fear in general and that he assumed he would be a legend. And the way Gover put it was he just took that for granted that he was going to become a legend. And I spoke to him for half an hour or so and I have it on tape. But the NewYork Times then found Bernard Wolfe, and Bernard Wolfe in the article that

got published in Esquire, he says he was sent by the NewYork Times Magazine to write the story, and he ended up going back to the Times and saying youre not going to get your story, I cant write it, Im wiped out by listening to Jim Morrison and Im sort of bamboozled by this guys, you know, his, whatever. Actually, Morrison took a liking to Bernard Wolfe and would correspond with him and meet with him and sort of feed him these lines that he wanted to be remembered by. And then later Jim Morrison called him after Miami to talk about Miami. But that article is very interesting and the whole Esquire thing, Bernard Wolfe has some really, really good lines about what is Jim Morrison talking about when he says, We have constructed pyramids in honor of our escaping and he doesnt actually quote the line, but, you know, is the escape Jim Morrison is talking about an escape into drugs and alcohol and sex? You know, whats going on here? And Bernard Wolfe is sort of a serious reporter as opposed to many others, but he still didnt get it, supposedly. Just couldnt quite figure Jim Morrison out, so he goes back to the NewYork Times and says I cant write that story, but it ended up getting published in Esquire a year after Morrisons death. Guest 1: Uh-hmm. [Laughter] It would have been a real pleasure to hear what he had to say, Im sure it would have made most of our heads spin. Well... Speaker: I mean, yeah, the other thing is Morrison was very, very, well read. I dont knowif you knowthat part about... Guest 1: Yes, I do, yeah.

Speaker: In No One Here Gets Out Alive, supposedly he would take a book off, hed say to somebody, take a book off my bookshelf and read some of it, and Ill tell you the chapter that it came from. There are lots of stories about howerudite he was, and a lot of the critics just wouldnt accept that or just didnt knowthat, so they dismissed him in many, many ways. So if youre interested in that article or you want to get a copy of my free PDF, just email me and... Guest 1: I just did while Im sitting here. [Laughter]

Speaker: I was on the radio this morning with a radio showcalled Spiritually Rawand it was pretty interesting, they focus on the spiritual side of things and a lot of their guests are coming from different angles of spirituality, but the host and hostess, AJ and April, were saying that my take on The Doorsthey had never heard anybody talk about The Doors the way I did, sort of as material for serious discussion, I guess youd put it. And looking at the lyrics and trying to figure out what Morrison was talking about, and we talked about The End, and we also talked about The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat) and, you know, when Morrison says Out here on the perimeter, there are no stars. Out here, we is stoned immaculate and other lyrics and just -- I mean, Im a Doors fan, and Im a Doors critic and Im a Doors scholar, but even, forget about me, the fact that theyre on the radio and this other guy that I talked about earlier said youll hear twelve of their songs or even more in what you would call fairly constant rotation on regular non-nostalgia, non-moldie-oldie radio stations, right up alongside the current hits and people hear that and they say it fits right in. So whats going on there? Thats one of the things this guy tries to figure out, and heI dont think he quite figures it out, but I think a lot of people are very surprised, I mean, theres a whole litany of things I can talk about like, Jim Morrisons grave is probably the third most visited gravesite on the planet, well the third most you know, celebrity grave site. You might not includeI mean, Lennons tomb might be higher in terms of numbers, but whos counting? I mean, its on a list of the most visited grave sites in Europe. In fact, many people say it is the most visited grave site in continental Europe, whether or not Lennons tomb is included who cares, but I mean, one or two or three, but their albums still sell in the millions and theres all these things about The Doors. You know, the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra played all Doors music in February of this year... Guest 1: Anybody get that on tape?

Speaker: I dont know, you could probably get it, I dont know, I would think that its available. And, I have a whole list of those things somewhere because theyre still out there in the public consciousness,

and from my point of view, even if they were totally obscure, Id still be writing about them because I think its the work thats important, not the fact that they might be getting radio airplay. But the fact that they are getting radio airplay is for me a real bonus andyou knowI remember people saying, Oh, Donovans a real poet, hes going to survive, and the Byrds, theyre going to survive and all these other people that, you know The Doors are just ridiculous and theyre going to fade away and they havent faded away, so, I think Morrison would be very happy that there is the attention being paid to them that he wanted and I think he deserved. Guest 1: Ive been sitting here as weve been talking, trying to figure outyou were saying you thought they were probably the most important American band thats come along, Im trying to think of any other I dont hear many Beatles songs, Beach boys, these other great bands once in a while you hear something, but I hear a Doors song just about every day of my life, not just one, maybe two, three, four and just... Speaker: Right, right. Well, I dont listen to the radio that much and I very seldom listen to what you might call contemporary radio, and I listen to the oldies station as Im in my car, which is not that often, but I hear The Doors a little bit, its something where I literally heard this review the BBC had a special in July that was narrated by Jerry Hall and they re-broadcast something that was by a guy named John Sugar and in the John Sugar one, the guy, you knowJohn Sugar actually, starts talking about howThe Doors, you could hardly go anywhere without seeing Jim Morrison. Youve got radio shows about The Doors and Tshirts about The Doors and movies about The Doors and this about The Doors and that about The Doors and they also talked to Jerry Hopkins and Ray John and Robbie and Danny Sugarman and its very, very interesting. They also talked to John Peel, who was a DJ who is nowdeceased who really didnt like The Doors and said that The Doors might make his top 250 bands, but Jerry Hopkins has some really interesting things to say about Jim and, so, you knowtheres a lot of attention being paid to this band that is what I call out of proportion to

the output which was six studio albums and one live album, and out of proportion to howlong they were around, which was basically only five years. The End