Webeditor: a brief look at John's struggle to keep it together from his book Riders on the Storm.
The Doors on The Jonathan Winters Show 1967
Hadn’t we turned down lots of offers before agreeing to the Smothers Brothers’ because their politics were cool and controversial, and Winters because we liked his bizarre sense of humor? But you showed us all by not moving an inch during “Light My Fire,” didn’t you? It was an uptight, stiff vocal performance, and I felt you were hurting the band as the end of the song approached and you were giving nothing as far as emotional singing goes.
When your voice started to crack at the last chorus, I was worried. Then when you leaped into that weird prop rope fence, none of us could believe it.
Did you even hear the stifled laughter when you knocked it down and got tangled up in the ropes? You must have noticed the big silence from everyone after we ended the song. I wondered if you were okay, Jim. Fuck the career, did you need help? It felt like we had just witnessed a short seizure from a schizophrenic … How did it feel to you? Of course, no one asked you, did they? We all just sort of avoided you for a few minutes and then acted like nothing unusual had happened. Jim, no one dared confront you.
We sensed rage and a possible explosion too near the surface to mess with in dealing with you. It seemed to have a lid on it - Pandora’s Box with all the demons that wanted to be released. We never opened the box - had a dialogue with you about deeper undercurrents in one’s psyche - so we had to deal with your demons seeping out of the sides. A hopeless situation.
I keep blaming myself for not having done anything to help you, to stop you, but I was only twenty-three.
Los Angeles, 1968
Another afternoon, during the Waiting for the Sun sessions, we all arrived at the studio an hour or two late, which was now the norm. I guess no one wanted to be there, except that we loved making records. Jim always came in an hour or two after the rest of us. Around 5 P.M., he straggled in with his new “family” - Freddie, the blond guy, and a female version of Charles Manson.
It was amusing when Jim’s buddies pulled up Mrs. Manson’s skirt in the vocal booth and were playfully encouraging any comers to have themselves off in her ass, but it was also disgusting and pathetic. She was clearly in a drunken, downer stupor.
What the fuck happened? We had created such a great thing and it was going sour.
I told Paul Rothchild I was quitting. He sat me down and told me I was in one of the most envied and respected groups in the world. I kept thinking of what Paul had said about Jim a few nights before, after one of his binges. He told Ray, Robby, and me that we were witnessing a special psychological experience, and we should get as much tape on Jim as fast as possible because he didn’t think he was going to be around long.
But I felt something more. The Grim Reaper. I couldn’t see how Ray and Robby could turn the other cheek. I knew Robby could feel Jim’s pain, but he was too shy to do anything. I knew he liked the success and didn’t like confrontations. I wished Ray would, or could, have stopped the madness. He was the one who put this group together. At least that’s what the press has been saying the last several years. So I wasn’t waiting for the others to stop Jim.
I walked back into the studio, took one look at Jim and his friends, and said, “I quit!”
Then I threw my drumsticks down on the floor and stormed out the door. It was my statement against this insanity. I didn’t know what I’d do with myself the next morning. When I awoke, I made some herb tea, did my yoga, and cut my fingernails. Keeping them short helped me resist scratching my rash, which had resurfaced.
At noon I decided to go back to the studio. I was drawn back because I didn’t know any other way to live. I didn’t want to give up the one thing that had been consistent in my life for many years: music. I felt real stupid driving down from my house in Laurel Canyon to TT & G recording studios at Sunset and Highland. I also felt the black Morrison cloud still hanging over the place as I walked in, but, thank God, I got the same treatment Jim always got when he fucked up: silence. I couldn’t have stood being ridiculed about coming back.
I took a deep breath, walked into the control room, and said, “What song are we working on today?”
Los Angeles, 1971
The phone rang on a Thursday morning.
“Hey, man, how ya doin’?” said the voice I knew only too well, the whiskeyed voice that struck terror in me.
“Hi, Jim,” I replied tentatively, thinking that he was the last person in the world I wanted to talk to. “How is it over there?” I added. “How’s France?”
“Okay. Not bad,” Jim said noncomittally. “How’s LA Woman doing?” He didn’t sound loaded. Too early in the morning? Wait a minute, I thought. It’s early evening there.
“Great! It’s really doing great,” I said enthusiastically. “‘Love Her Madly’ is a hit and everyone really likes the album.”
What I was not going to tell him was that we had already started rehearsing. Without him. We’d done it before, but this time I had an eye for going on without him. As hard as it was to admit it, I couldn’t bear the thought of going through another recording session with the rock-’n’-roll world’s Dr. Jekyll.
“Yeah, everything’s great.” I wondered if he could pick up the subtext.
“Well, maybe we should do another one?”
“Sure, Jim, good idea.”
Bad idea, I thought as I fumbled with the receiver and cleared my throat uncomfortably. I hope I never find myself cooped up in a recording studio with you again. It’s nice that you want to rock ‘n’ roll again, especially with us, but I think it’s for the wrong reasons. You never did anything because you thought it was going to sell. But maybe you’ve realized that the four of us are a great team. You must not be writing the Great American Novel over there as you had hoped to. Probably drinking the Great American Novel.
“When do you think you might come back?” I asked him, while hoping it wouldn’t be for a long time because because I wanted to take him up on his suggestion that Ray, Robby, and I should do some instrumental. Betrayal? Of Jim - or the fans? Of ourselves? Fuck it! It’s a relief to play without Morrison.
“Oh, a few months.”
“Elektra wants ‘Riders on the Storm’ as a second single off the album, so you’ve got plenty of time.”
“A second single … wow. … It must be doing great.”
“Yeah.”
But I knew we were going on without him. And I was relieved. I just hoped Ray and Robby would go for it. He can’t come back, I thought. He would just want to play the blues, the slow, soulful, monotonous blues, which is great for a singer like him, but boring for a drummer like me. I cursed to myself as Jim carried on about life in Paris. If he came back I knew the other band members would give in. Even I wouldn’t be able to say no. If he reappeared, I saw us spending the rest of our lives in dumpy clubs and in grumpy recording sessions. The down side of a great peak. I thought I would die.
Or could I quit? Yes. We’re not going down to the Golden Bear kind of dives with the old blues man. No way, Jose. Fuck it, I resolved as we spoke. I can quit. I can really quit this time.
“All right, well … see ya later.”
“Yeah, thanks for callin’.”
I hung up, shaking, relieved. Then I thought, Jesus Christ! Wait a minute. Ray and Robby and I have already rehearsed some great instrumentals tracks. Maybe there is no going back. We’re committed. Wait till I tell the others. They won’t believe he wants to make another record … in his alcohol-drenched condition. I knew his sobriety was temporary. “God,” I said with a sigh.
Three weeks later...
“Jim’s dead,” Robby said to me as I entered the Doors’ office in West Hollywood. There had been dozens of death rumors and even threats, but by the seriousness and sadness on Robby’s face, I knew this was finally it.
Paris, 1975
I turned back to the surreally decorated tombstone. What were you saying in your songs that could possibly defend your courting of insanity and nearly dragging us down with you? What was your fucking message, Jim? Anarchy? Why did I put up with it all those years? For the money? The fame? The girls? All these years later I feel like I betrayed myself, compromised, that I was never man enough to stand up to you and really quit. Oh, I stormed out once - in Michigan - remember? But I came back. You knew I would, didn’t you - how?
“C’mon, John, we gotta go,” said Danny.
I waved them on. “I just need another minute.”
After they’d gone: silence. Then the rain started pattering on the moss, filling up a corner of the dirt inside the plain gravesite. A couple of flowers floated limp in the mud. Jim, I’m real proud of what we did, I whispered to my old friend’s burial plot, but I’m weary of only being known as your drummer. I don’t know who I am. I’m thirty-one years old, I know that. Outlived you by four years, you son of a bitch. I realize now that I wasn’t very conscious about my path in life at the time. At least you fulfilled your prophecy, even if you had to die to propagate the Doors’ precious myth. Our secret death pact. Nonverbal, of course.
Or am I hallucinating? You had started out for the void and Ray, Robby, and I, your Feast of Friends, supported you. To a point. We had no idea that you meant to do it literally. Now I wonder if I could have done anything to stop you, even while watching old footage and old interviews where we say, Well, somebody has to go out on the edge for the rest of us. Did I compromise myself? I have to know. A freezing gust of wind shook me out of my reverie. I spun around quickly and ran to catch up with the others. At the gate I put my arm around Danny’s shoulder as we headed down the cobblestones to Hervé’s car. Robby shook his head in deep despair. He had gone pale. He couldn’t even look at me. He just stared numbly out the foggy car window as we slowly pulled out of the cemetery.
Later, at the Regency period desk of my Paris hotel room, I gazed out the window over the city rooftops. The sun was trying (in vain) to break through the misty gray morning. I ate the chocolate mint left on my pillow by the maid the night before and laughed quietly at my L-shaped room. Another eccentric European hotel room. My eyes moved from the window with its view of the blue-gray Paris rooftops to the hotel stationery staring at me from the desk. I picked up the hotel pen and began a letter.
Dear Jim,
Well, we finally visited your grave. I can’t speak for the others, but I suppose I didn’t come to your funeral because I was so mad and disappointed in you the last few years the band was together. But you knew that. It took me three years to pay my respects, I’m ashamed to say, but I’m here. It wasn’t hard to find your plot with all the graffiti leading up to it. But I was shocked that there wasn’t any marker. It seems Pam, your girlfriend (or were you married?), ran off with the money we gave her. There were rumors that it went into her arm. Did you know she was into the brown powder?
Hey, that’s a low blow. I don’t know why I’m writing this to you. Proves how much you possessed all of us - me, at least. You’re supposed to be fucking dead, and here I am brooding over a letter to you in a hotel. But I don’t care. I’m still pissed off and hurting. I wish I would have had the balls to say some things to you back in the sixties, but you were incredibly powerful, and intimidating.
I’m extremely proud of our music, but there’s some things I’ve got to get off my chest. It’s too late - for you. But it’s not too late for me, and maybe some others, like the young kids who still idolize you. One of the newly carved quotes from your fans implies that you were into smack. I didn’t know that. How could I? I didn’t know you very well at all during your last days. I didn’t want to. It’s ironic how the parasites who met you at the end of your life, no matter how briefly, are now trying to cash in on your friendship.
While I couldn’t even look into your eyes. Those demonic eyes. I had to protect myself. Don’t ask me from what. If anyone could have pulled you out of your nosedive, it was Pam, only she started to slide into drugs, casual affairs, and general decadence along with you. I don’t know who encouraged whom, and blaming doesn’t do any good.
What was that big black Morrison cloud that hovered over your head? Anyone who came into close contact with you found himself under the fringes of that darkness. You were the fucking Prince of Darkness, Jimbo. At some point the myth we were building overtook us and started running things instead of the other way around. You’d think we could’ve torn it down or at least backed off a little. Or not underestimated the power of a myth.
But it was a Game Called Insane, as you say, and you were its Poet-Priest, as they say; I say it became a freak show. When did it get out of hand, Jim? What was the point of no return? I need to know because I’m still carrying a shitload of guilt around.
From an interview by Jenny Stevens in 2020
It took the Doors’ drummer, John Densmore, three years to visit the grave of his bandmate Jim Morrison after he was found dead in a Paris bathtub in 1971. He didn’t even go to the funeral. “Did I hate Jim?” Densmore pauses, although he is not obviously alarmed by the question. “No. I hated his self-destruction … He was a kamikaze who went out at 27 - what can I say?”
“It took me years to forgive Jim,” Densmore says. “And now I miss him so much for his artistry.”
Read more about John struggle to keep his sanity while being the drummer for The Doors:
After Jim had died, Densmore tried to stop Manzarek and the band's guitarist, Robby Krieger, from touring under the Doors name as well as selling the band’s music for use on a Cadillac commercial. “What can I say? Jim’s ghost is behind me all the time,” Densmore says. “My knees were shaking pretty strong when they upped the offer of $5m to $15m. But my head was saying: Break on Through for a gas-guzzling SUV? No!” Read about Densmore's struggle to keep the integrity of the Doors legacy intact:
The Doors Unhinged: Jim Morrison's Legacy Goes on Trial
