A Hell of a Way to Peddle Poems by Robert Gover from the book"An Hour For Magic". Robert passed away in 2015 at the age of 85.

I'd never heard of Jim Morrison and The Doors when, in 1967, I got a call from the editor of The New York Times Magazine suggesting I do a feature about them. Their first album, released quietly, was rising rapidly in the charts and having an astounding impact, After listening to it closely from start to finish, I was sure The Doors and their lead singer were something special in the contemporary music scene - and not only because of their sudden, stunning success. There was that certain unnameable something about their words and music that was strong, original and just right for the times. I was eager to get on with the job. A luncheon was arranged and I anticipated talking to the group, learning how they'd developed such a distinct sound and how they were coping with the trauma of success. But the only member of the group who showed was Jim Morrison, and he let The Doors' management team do all the talking. 

Their managers, at that time, were wheeler-dealers, sharpies, and what they had to say was predictable, shallow and dull. Morrison seemed in a glowering mood, although now and then he caught my eye and made it clear by his intense stare that he had something to say. So after lunch we wandered off by ourselves and strolled through a park. That's when I met the widely read, philosophical, poetic Jim Morrison. We had an instant rapport, a deja vu effect, like we'd known each other in past lives.

In the months that followed we saw a lot of each other. Jim told me I could discount practically everything the management people had said because The Doors were planning to sever ties with them. Then he said that for him rock stardom was merely a step toward film making and that film making was an outlet for his poetry. "See, I'm really a poet." What did he mean by poet? Did he mean he was a lyricist? "Yeah, that too, but basically I'm a poet," Whereupon he pulled out a notebook and read me a few of his most recently written pieces. They were brief, compact, philosophical and there was something about each poem that made me want to hear it again. 

Our conversation then swung to the ancient tradition of poetry, written and spoken and sung, and I was amazed to find I was in the company of a young man who had studied the subject deeply. Indeed, there was no denying it - poetry was his passion. Soon we found ourselves jabbering away like we'd just picked up a conversation from yesterday and would continue it tomorrow, maybe for the rest of our lives. We were to see a lot of each other in the coming weeks and months even though the Times retired me from the assignment. That happened when the editor called me to find out how I was doing and to tell me the perspective he expected was: Jim as the creation and product of Machiavellian Hollywood puppeteers. 

I laughed and told him that was a ludicrous notion; Morrison was a poet with great promise and definitely his own man. The editor seemed to think I'd been so taken by Morrison's charisma (manufactured by his management) that I had lost my rightful senses. And so I allowed as the Times'd best get someone else to write the version he was looking for. 

I was living at the time with a lady named Beverly Mitchell in a two story apartment on the beach in Malibu. It had eight doors and we usually left them all unlocked. Jim liked to put in suprise appearances. We'd come home to find him sitting at my desk, picking over whatever I'd been writing. Or, we'd wake up around 4 a.m. hearing a prowler: Jim raiding the refrigerator. Or, I'd be upstairs at my typewriter and feel eyes on my back, turn and find him peeking over the decking of the upper balcony - having chinned himself to this position, hanging dangerously by whiteknuckled hands, waiting for us to do something because it was a three story fall to the beach below. This last became his favorite entrance for it never failed to unsettle us. Bev would push up on his boots while I pulled on his arms and, after considerable drama, heightened by his noncooperation, we'd land the rising rock star on our upper balcony. Naturally, whatever we'd have planned for the day would be arrested by such a showstopper, so we'd usually light up a joint, go for a walk on the beach and cavort. Sometimes Jim had something particular he wanted to discuss; sometimes he just wanted to quietly relax. Around sundown Bev would cook up a dinner and, likely as not, just as we were about to sit down and eat Jim would say, "Ah... I left a girl... sitting in the car." So we'd bring in his latest pickup and dine, talk, smoke, drink wine and play sides.

Occasionally our discussions were as neatly structured structured as doctoral dissertations. Usually, though, we both got crazed. We bounced from moments of exquisite spiritual togetherness to moments when we were ready to kill each other - or so it seemed. We were both intense and driven, rather than practical and ambitious, and recognized each other as fellow tourists in the land of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I was deep into my own study of the occult forces and Jim liked to sift through my collection of books on the subject, selecting paragraphs at random to read aloud, setting off another round of talk. On this subject, we usually chose our words carefully and used them sparingly for were both well aware that words, thoughts made meaningful through sound, conjure and invoke the invisibles.

We talked about such earth-bound things as how to deal with commercial fame and fortune. My brief and lesser literary fame was nothing compared to the pressure cooker his rock star fame was fast becoming. It soon became clear that the Jim Morrison being created as a public image was a lot different from the Jim Morrison I was getting to know. Given his temperament it didn't take a fortune teller to foresee that this could lead to mind blasting trouble.

One of our favorite topics was who really "owns" an art product. The person or persons who conjured it up? The ones who "packaged" it and got it out to the public? Or those who responded, absorbed it into their beings, "ate" it as a delicious aesthetic delicacy? Or was it forever the property of those famous invisibles called Muses? Although we could carry on such discussions with a minimum of words and a maximum of telepathy I had to be on guard, always, for the only thing one could expect from Jim was the unexpected.

One night, for instance, he punctuated our discussion by suddenly rushing to the turntable, yanking off The Doors' freshly released second album, smashing it to the floor and g with his high-heeled boots, cursing It wildly. I rushed to him and angrily insisted he should destroy his copy of that album, not mine. That put us into a philosophical nuthouse for hours, which we both thoroughly enjoyed, since it forced us to think beyond the usual ruts of rationality.

I must add that he later brought me another copy of that album. He even offered to autograph it but I got snitty and told him to just put it on and let's listen to it all the way through, without another ruckus. 

Another aspect of our relationship was that Jim liked to drive my Olds 98 and I found it fun to be chauffeured about by a skyrocketing rock star. He drove a bit recklessly, but what the hell, he always got us there without a dent. I'd bought that monstrous vehicle in Las Vegas, where I'd lived for about a year, and I liked to spin yarns about that unique city, and Jim got a kick out of hearing about it. So it came about that we decided to take a trip there. His lady, aside from teenaged occasionals, was Pamela, so we planned to go as a foursome. But when the time came to depart, Jim and Pam got into a fight. We went instead as a threesome. It's probably a good thing Pamela didn't come along, in light of the misadventure which befell us. Or maybe I should say that if she had come to Vegas, we'd never have gotten into the mess we got into. I don't know... the two of them together could be notorious emotional arsonists, or deft firefighters, depending on their mood at the time. Some Vegas friends of mine gave us the red-carpet treatment when we arrived around sundown. One of them, Mike, was a Doors fan. The other, Chaney, had never heard of The Doors. As a party of three couples and Jim - dressed as usual in his tight leather pants - we had a jovial dinner, then decided to go out on the town. Chaney read off a list of shows playing and we all locked in on Stark Naked and the Car Thieves, playing at the Pussycat A Go Go. 

Jim had been driving since noon, in a dour mood because of his tiff with Pamela, but the dinner and a glass of wine or two had lifted his spirits. We arrived at the Pussycat's parking lot in three cars, and Jim ever alert to a dramatic entrance possibility - borrowed a Pall Mall from me and continued his method-acting studies by pretending it was a joint. He got out of the car and went, with Mike and his lady toward the Pussycat's entrance, followed by Chaney and his lady, followed by Bev and me.  

What happened next I can only attribute to the fact that we were a racially mixed group with two "hippies" and it was this mix that drove a Pussycat security guard bonkers. Affable Mike was leading the way, so he was first to encounter the pride and prejudice of the guard, who suddenly bashed him on the head with his billy club. From the parking lot, I saw Mike go down and heard him yell something like, "Hey, what the hell is this?" Then the guard came at Jim, who leaned against a wall and continued to placidly act out his joint smoking. The guard smacked Jim's head... again and again and again. Jim acted as though the guard wasn't there, even when blood began streaming down. 

Chaney rushed into this scene yelling, "This is an outrage, call the police!" Why the guard never hit Chaney, who is black, I'll never know - unless it's because Chaney is an ex-football star and looks it. Anyhow, Bev and I came jogging into this mess and the guard swung at me. I ducked and backed away and suggested in a loud voice that we go see some other show. By this time the Pussycat's entrance was in a huge uproar, with more security guards arriving, people screaming, Mike in an Irish fury, Jim placidly bleeding, the ladies nearly hysterical, Chaney yelling, "Call the police" and me yelling, "Let's get out of here." The reason I was in favor of retreat was that I knew from experience Jim attracted cops like honey attracts bears. His charisma was such that your ordinary upholder of the established order could be infuriated merely by the sight of Morrison strolling down the street - innocent to all outward appearances but... well, there was that invisible something about him that silently suggested revolution, disorder, chaos. 

That night the Vegas cops had been idling not far away and arrived pronto. It didn't surprise me when they took one look at this noise, grabbed Morrison and bent him over the hood of their patrol car. It did, however, cause me considerable fright when they grabbed me as the other "criminal" involved, because I had a real marijuana joint in my pocket, and that could get you a long stay in a Nevada prison. 

But our guardian angels were on the job Chaney's loud indignation distracted the policemen long enough for me to slip away to the shadows, drop the joint and resume the position of the friskee a wink before the cops were ready to search me. After the frisk, the cops cuffed our hands behind our backs, just Jim and me, and shoved us into the patrol car and dutifully drove us toward the bars of justice. I was shaken due to the close call with the joint, Jim's head was still bleeding and, worse, his demons were bubbling up. Soon they were rushing out of his mouth like a pack of mad dogs attacking helpless strangers in the forest. "You chickenshit pigs, you redneck stupid bastards," et cetera and so forth. I made an effort to stem this tide of demons telling him to hush up and cool it, and Jim did try, but it was hopeless, for the demons had him now and were coming through in a hurricane of invectives. 

It wasn't just our momentary plight that had roused these invisible avenging angel/ demons - it was also the temper of the times, the war in Vietnam, the plight of millions all over the planet who are unjustly harmed by such uniformed nitwits as these. Morrison thought and felt in planetary terms, and his mind had an uncanny way of reaching way back in time, as though he were the reincarnation of a pagan priest who'd been burned at the stake during the Inquisition and was here to avenge that wrong, along with others. When manhandled by the emperor's troops, it seemed, he would rather be killed than humbled. In the heart and soul of Jim Morrison there was an uncontrollable rage against injustice. While it's true that he put people through psychological changes like you wouldn't believe, I never knew him to harm anyone physically - except himself. And then it was only to make a point, a statement he deemed important enough to suffer for. At the police station we were roughly escorted to a large office space full of people at desks, tapping typewriters, reading reports, sipping coffee and performing other such police duties. Our "hippie length" hair was not yet the fashion in Vegas, and our arresting officers had had more than they could take of Jim's "disrespect for the law." So they made us strip naked in front of all those officers, men and women, with the clear intention of humiliating us. "Let's see if they're boys or girls, har har har." 

But Jim at age twenty-four was Mr. Body Beautiful and I'd been pumping iron and running, so neither of us felt much humiliation. Until, that is, they brought forth a spray gun and engulfed us in big clouds of roach powder, then made us turn around, bend over spread our cheeks and gave us each a final blast in the ass. That brought laughter from the assembled peace officers, but was by no means the medicine needed to quiet Jim's obsessing demons. By the time we'd been booked, fingerprinted, photographed and thrown into the holding tank, James Douglas Morrison was no longer present. His eyes were out of focus and he was panting like a fire breathing dragon. That's when he climbed the bars of our extra high cell and drew my attention to the assembled minions of law and order by yelling, "Hey, Bob, ain't they the ugliest motherfuckers you ever saw?' and other such endearments, delivered in that resonant voice and clear diction which was fast becoming his trademark as a singer. There was no point trying to remind him that the police have the extralegal power to kill you or worse, to beat you into a brain damaged basketcase. Whatever force had gained control of him cared not one bit for the safety of his physical being or mine. 

Presently our arresting officers returned to tell us they got off duty at midnight and that we would then "have a date, somewhere real private." Which only caused the ranting and raving coming out of Jim's mouth to become more eloquent and precisely phrased. Even from behind those bars he was determined to make a dream haunting entrance into the consciousness of all within hearing. 

I laid down on one of the steel bunks and concentrated on Bev and the others putting their wits together and getting us out of there before midnight. While Jim preached from his perch up the bars, I watched the secondhand sweep around the dial, the minutes go by and soon enough we had only five to go. Yes, they got us out, just in the nick of time, over Jim's protests that he wanted to call his lawyer in L.A. and file charges for false arrest. We'd been charged with public drunkenness, but walked out of that jail as sober as we'd gone in. We did, however, continue partying, and that got crazier and crazier. Jim was - or seemed to be - calmer than the rest of us by the time we got back to the 

Pussycat parking lot to retrieve my car. He got behind the wheel and we all piled in, intending to repair to the Moulin Rouge for a quiet, soothing interlude of jazz. Then, just as we were beginning to relax and unwind, Jim decided to drive on the wrong side of the street, yelling about how he was now on a search and destroy mission for police cars. At the first stoplight, Chaney grabbed him from behind and I ran around and got behind the wheel, and we continued on our way with Jim laughing like a maniac. Before we'd finished our first round of drinks at the Moulin Rouge, Jim pulled another one out of his bottomless bag of showstoppers. He was enchanted by this jazz combo and decided to join in, went up to the stage, picked up the mike and, for a warmup, let out one of his famous "Back Door Man" screams. 

The combo stopped playing, dumbfounded. None of them knew this strange behavior was being performed by a nationally famous rockstar; they thought he was a fullmoon lunatic and decided now was a good time to take a break. Chaney, who'd had more than he could handle, grabbed Jim, hauled him outside and, by the time I got there, was threatening bodily harm if Jim didn't settle down and quit acting crazy. Jim loved every minute of this scolding, which only made Chaney angrier. 

Mike saved our partying by suggesting we all go to his apartment and listen to his Doors albums. Chaney said he didn't want to hear no damn Doors albums, but came along anyway and listened, utterly unimpressed. Bev and I soon retired to a bedroom, leaving the other ladies snoozing, as Mike and Chaney debated - and Morrison silently listened - the cultural worth, or lack thereof, of The Doors' music. The next afternoon we went to a seafood place for raw oysters, then said our goodbyes. After the drive back to L.A., Jim took Bev and I to dinner, and then to the Whiskey on Sunset Strip, where Dr. Jekyll Morrison delivered an indepth analysis of how The Doors had developed their music there, refining it in response to this more intimate and discerning audience. Since they'd become "bigtime," they were expected to play concerts for thousands of screaming teenagers, and this was already beginning to bore Jim. 

Now, fourteen years later, there lingers a public impression of Morrison as being usually drunk, often brazenly lewd, and unable to hold up under the pressures of stardom. Gossip mongering journalists dined upon that aspect of his personality like microbes feasting on a corpse. True, he did little to discourage that legend, and few of the journalists of the time made any effort to reveal that other, far more important aspect of him: his mind. It was, after all, his mind which has had such a powerful effect on millions of people. Being the mind of a poet, he was inclined to intoxications of great variety, intensity and subtlety. And hidden behind the public legend, the private Jim Morrison diligently pursued his primary task: poetry. 

For all his famous outlandish pranks, he wrote an amazing amount of poetry, the quality of which continues to gain the attention of serious connoisseurs. Thus, in retrospect, it becomes clear that in his showmanship he reached back to the very roots of poetry to become, via the music of his time, a shaman. I often thought his behavior was an attempt to "break on through" to an extrasensory view - a vantage point from which he could monitor the invisible causes of the events that swirled around his physical being. Certainly he was a student of the invisible powers that move people by affecting their thoughts and emotions. And, at the height of his singing career, he demonstrated an awesome ability to rouse crowds to screaming frenzy, then silence them, then rouse them to frenzy again. He could do more with a crowd of people than the U.S. government and Frank Sinatra combined. Even now, a decade after his death, his recorded voice, his written and spoken words, have the power to jar people loose from enslaving assumptions. 

One should remember that The Doors arose to prominence and had their initial impact at a crucial juncture in our nation's history. During the summer of 1966 when The Doors were developing their music on Sunset Strip, LSD was the object of Senate Hearings which led to its prohibition, the U.S. military bombed Hanoi for the first time, riots were erupting in the black ghettos of northern cities, Robert Speck killed eight nurses in their Chicago dormitory and Charles Whitman, exMarine and Boy Scout leader - shooting from the top of the clocktower at the University of Texas - hit forty-four people, killing fourteen. The Doors' first album appeared in January of 1967, as the Pentagon announced that 5,008 American troops had died in Vietnam in 1966. The National Students Association admitted receiving $3 million from the CIA to spy on their fellow students. An antiwar demonstration in New York City drew 400,000 marchers. Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali was arrested for refusing army induction. During the summer of '67 while "Light My Fire" held its grip on AM stations, riots broke out in the ghettos of 127 U.S. cities. Between July 12 and 17, 26 were killed in Newark, 1,500 were injured and 1,390 were arrested. From July 23 to 30 in Detroit, 43 died, 2,000 were injured, 5,000 arrested; 1,700 stores were looted, 1,445 buildings burned and 5,000 emerged homeless. While this War between inner city blacks and the established order's gunmen was happening, tens of thousands of young people converged on San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district for the famous "Summer of Love," outraging upholders of law and order with LSD, communal living, free love, marijuana, Eastern religions, spiritualism, "Acid Rock" and public burnings of draft cards. Even with nuclear annihilation never far from awareness, there was an explosion of rage on both sides of the color line, much of it directed at the state's presumed right to confiscate young men's lives for a war that was meaningless to them. The Love Power of the Sixties had me the Protectors of the Status Quo and discovered a lot of them would rather kill than reason or debate. As the music of The Doors permeated the airwaves, groping the national psyche, black students died at Jackson State and Black Panthers across the country were raided and shot by the dozens. The Jim Morrison I knew realized hi might soon become number one on the establishment's hit list.

Then in 1969 and '70, came the deaths of such rock stars as Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin - who all died with fatal synchronization at age twenty-seven. Jim commemorated Jones' passing with a poem title "Ode To L.A. While Thinking of Brian Jones, Deceased," which he'd published at his own expense, and distributed to the audience at a Doors concert.

I knew nothing about that poem back then, for Jim and I went separate ways late in 1968. When I was handed a copy by Frank Lisciandro during the summer solstice of 1981, I was astounded... by the elegant words Jim used to empathize with Brian Jones' drowning; by the means he chose (consciously or intuitively) to predict his own death two years later; and by the sheer magical grace of the piece.

The last time I saw Jim was when he drove out to Malibu to tell me The Doors were going on a European tour, and ask if I'd come along and write a book about it. There was an impish glint in his eye as he contemplated delivering his lyrics over the language barrier. I was intrigued. Here was a chance for me, the storyteller, to be "ringside" when this David took on the Goliath of our Mother Culture. But I was having personal problems, and word was trickling in that my career was being sabotaged by reactionary elements. I told Jim about this, and said I'd have to decline.

Now, for the umpteenth time, I regret that decision, but what the hell... I might not have survived that trip to tell about it, for traveling with Morrison was like riding a rickety roller coaster. Being a kamikaze pilot in the wild blue yonders of irrational consciousness, Jim lived that old Native American saying, "Hey! Today is a good day to die!" When the official announcement of his death came in 1971, I was skeptical. Had any companies held business risk insurance policies on Morrison and those other dead rockers? If so, who had collected, and how much? And why had it been those among the most politically influential who had died? Was it simply in step with the tradition of Western art for such luminous personalities to bow out at young ages? Then there was the suspicion that Jim had rigged his supposed death with Pamela's help, shedding his rock star identity so he could get on with his real work, poetry. It wasn't the first time rumor had circulated that he'd departed this life. All we were left with was Pamela's word, a French death certificate and an unmarked French grave. Well, it was a fittingly mysterious exit for such a rare and gifted showman/shaman. Dead or alive, I'm sure Jim loves it that nobody knows for sure. The first day we met, what was uppermost in his mind was the book of poems he was then working on - how could he get it published and taken seriously without his rock 'n' roll image interfering? It wasn't until after 1971 that large numbers of people learned that rock star was his job and poetry was his real work. Well, Jim it was a hell of a way to peddle poems but you pulled it off. Magnificent. There's no arguing with success. Congratulations, wherever you are.

I interspersed the article with images of the photo journal (and from the photo journal) An Hour for Magic.

Check out the photo journal, An Hour for Magic by Jim's friend Frank Lisciandro