Light My FireManzarek, Ray. Light My Fire
Now, the first time I spoke to Jim about his parents, back in Venice, on the beach, he said, "My parents are dead."
I was shocked... "You mean, you’re an orphan?"
He hemmed a bit. "Well, you know...it’s like, uh..."
"How long have they been dead? Since you were a kid, or what? I mean, who raised you?"
"Ohh, my parents raised me."
I breathed a sigh of relief. He looked away. Kind of turned his back to me. "It hurts, doesn’t it?"
He didn’t respond. He just looked out at the water, then he spoke softly, to the ocean. "They’re not really dead."
I couldn’t hear him over the roar of the waves. "What did you say?"
He turned to me. "They’re not dead. I just made that up."
I couldn’t believe it. What a thing to say about your family.
"Why?" was all I could muster. He hemmed and hawed again. "I just...I, uhh...I don’t want to see them." And then the real shocker. "Ever again."
"What does your father do?"
"He’s in the Navy...." He shuffled his feet, embarrassed. "They just made him an admiral. He’s in Vietnam."
And there it was. Death. Vietnam. Military. Professional killers. Admiral! No wonder Jim was conflicted.
"Military, Jesus. Must have been hard on you, huh?" I said, softly.
"Fuck yes, he was."
"You want to talk about it?"
He started to walk along the beach. "Not really."
I didn’t say anything. I just walked with him, in case he needed a friend. A shoulder.
"He was real strict," he finally said.
Probably glad to unburden some of the weight. "He ran the house like he ran his ship. When I was a kid he was the captain of the Bonhomme Richard." Jim laughed. "They called it the Bonny Dick."
I laughed, too. "That’s funny...the pretty dick."
"We had to be all shipshape and correct."
The blockage was slightly opened.
"We had to call him 'sir' and my mother 'ma’am.' He wouldn’t stand for any fucking around; no goofing off."
"And your mother?" "She had to go along with him. I mean...he was her husband, after all."
And then he closed up. The blockage back intact. Holding in the anger, the fears, the resentment, the demons.
We walked on in silence, Jim kicking at the water...and his memories.
Set the Night on FireKrieger, Robby. Set the Night on Fire
[Pamela Courson's] red hair was the cherry on top. Jim’s mom was a redhead, and I realized in the studio when we were recording “The End” and Jim was repeatedly screaming “Fuck the mother, kill the father!” that his Oedipal complex was for real. He confided in me once that he saw his mother’s face in the moon when he took acid. I only met his mother once, very briefly, when she showed up at one of our shows in Washington, DC.
Jim told our crew he didn’t want to see her, so everyone was running interference to keep them apart. She and I politely shook hands and exchanged some small talk and I didn’t see why Jim was so upset by her presence. After the show, though, Bill Siddons told us how her kindly facade had disappeared.
She had been bossing around our crew and complaining angrily that the lights weren’t good enough for her son. An erratic, volatile redhead swinging dramatically between selfless affection and selfish aggression? Freud would’ve had a field day with the whole thing.
I Remember Jim MorrisonGraham, Alan R. I Remember Jim Morrison
Unlike the many baseless myths drummed up about him, Jim never treated his family poorly. Rather, he just wanted to pretend they no longer existed in his new world. It was an action that ultimately made it easier for him to pursue the opposite lifestyle – one that was free flowing and creative with no antiquated rules and ideals under which he had to live.
Jim’s father was a career militarist. He was a stern authoritarian ruling the roost by the widely-held military tradition of “dressing down”. Dressing down is a severe reprimand or a form of scolding intended to instill discipline and punishment.
Jim Morrison’s real story or missing facets have been carefully guarded by his family for over 30 years, and more than likely, will never be completely told. Anne Morrison, Jim’s younger sister, could write a book tomorrow about her Jim, the one the public never knew.
When she reminisces, her memories are of a protective older brother who loved her very much. He nurtured her with art, literature, theater, philosophy, poetry, and music. Anne, like Jim, has always been highly intelligent and very well read. Unlike Jim, she was very shy and sheltered. Having an older brother to show her the ropes was a cherished asset. Both she and her little brother, Andy, looked up to Jim and adored him. He was the leader of their pack.
Lizard King Hopkins, Jerry. The Lizard King
Steve's cousin Thad Morrison told me that Jim ultimately came to resent the alienation that resulted from the long absences and the secrecy: "I think the ultimate break between Jim and his father was over Steve's putting the Navy ahead of the family, which is what you had to do when you were an officer."
According to Jim's brother Andy it was the quasi-military way of disciplining the children that solidified the separation. Their parents had decided never to punish the children physically, but to find another way. The way they picked was to 'dress them down' (a military phrase), to tell them what they had done wrong over and over again, until reducing them to tears.
Andy told me that he always cried, but Jim learned to hold tears back. Today such practices are generally regarded as emotional abuse, which can in their way be as damaging as physical punishment.
One of the best interviews I got while researching the book came out of a weekend I spent with Jim's brother Andy, who was five years younger than Jim.
He remembered Jim's high school years in detail, but not entirely happily. He said Jim tormented him constantly.
Once, Jim taped Andy's mouth shut as he slept, because Andy's asthma was causing him to make too much noise.
"He'd pick up a rock and say, "I'll give you 10." You said, "No, wait a minute, no, no …" And he'd say, "One …" And you'd start to run and he'd say, "Fourfivesixseveneightnineten!" and clobber you.
Another time he came at me with one of those plastic dog shits, holding it in his hand in a towel. He chased me all over the house and finally caught me and ground it into my face and it was … rubber. And you're expecting something smelly, sticky, and warm.
He'd reach over when he was walking with me and somebody else and he'd grab the other guy and say, "Hey … my brother wants to fight you … mah bruther wonts tew faht chewwww, so what are you gonna do about it?" He'd turn your words back on you and make you look stupid. "Hey, man, what'd you climb that tree for?" I'd read in the paper that morning about the man climbing Everest and said, "Because it was there." And he said, "Yeah, but that pile of dogshit is there, are you gonna eat it?" What do you say to that? If you get on the defensive, that's it with Jim, you're dead.'
Sounes, Howard. 27: A History of the 27 Club
Along with the fact that Jim was raised in an atmosphere of military discipline and high expectations, it is surely significant that his father was away at sea for up to nine months of the year. This meant that Jim became 'the little man around the house', as Andy Morrison observes. 'So he and my mother – I'm not getting into the song "The End" or anything. There was nothing sexual, as far as I know – but they had a different kind of relationship.' Jim and his mother had the domestic arguments of a couple. 'I didn't know you wrestled with your mother,' observes Andy, of one fight he witnessed.
Although the Morrisons moved frequently, they lived within a community of naval families, Steve and Clara socializing with fellow officers and their wives. At boozy weekend house parties, Steve Morrison restricted himself to two gins and tonic. But Clara drank to excess. 'She drank too much when he was at sea,' says Andy, emphasizing that this became most noticeable after his father had made admiral.
'She'd have the captain's wife and the commander's wife [over to the house]. All the girls in the unit were like a bunch of hens, and they'd get together at night. I'd come home at one in the morning and they're still sitting around in the living room drinking. When Dad got home, he put a stop to that.' Like their mother, Jim and Andy were heavy drinkers in adult life.
Sounes, Howard. 27: A History of the 27 Club
Jim's family found out about his new celebrity when Andy Morrison brought The Doors album home. Having told his son that his musical ambitions were ridiculous, Admiral Morrison had a change of heart and telephoned Jim to congratulate him. Jim responded coolly. The admiral said it was a conversation during which "nothing of consequence was discussed".
In fact, father and son never communicated again. Clara Morrison was not so easily deterred. She called Elektra Records asking to speak to Jim. Her call caused surprise surprise in the office because Jim had told everybody that his parents were dead.
'[So] I get a call from his mother at the Elektra office,' recalls former label executive Steve Harris. 'They were playing in New York, and she said, "I need to talk to Jim, it's important to me." I said, "Who's calling?" "His mother." I didn't want to say, "You're supposed to be dead."' Persuaded that the caller was genuine, Harris gave Mrs Morrison the number of the hotel where Jim was staying. The next day members of the band told Harris that Jim was so upset by hearing from his mother that he'd got rotten drunk after her call. An edict went out that any further calls were not to be put through.
Clara Morrison remained determined to make contact with her boy. When the Doors performed at the Hilton in Washington DC on 25 November 1967, she went to the show with her second son, Andy, and his date, and introduced herself backstage to the band's manager, Asher Dann, who asked her to wait while he told Jim she was there. He assured Jim that there was time to meet his mother after the show, if he wanted.
Jim had no intention of meeting her. He asked to be driven to the airport as soon as he came offstage. Dann went with him, without telling Clara Morrison that Jim wouldn't be meeting her. 'I guess she got the message [when] I didn't come back,' he says. 'It's a sad story, but I guess that was part of his make-up, one of those demons inside his head …' Looking back, Dann concludes that Jim hated his parents. "Probably hated them. You know, The End related to his parents."
Clara Morrison was crying as she walked back to the car where Andy was waiting with his date. Andy agrees that his mother was hurt to be snubbed by Jim, but hastens to add that she was tough. 'She got over it.'
Here is an insight into the psychology of the Morrison family, a family whose emotions were subjugated by military discipline to the point at which a child could turn his back on his parents, and a mother was expected to face rejection by her son with equanimity.During the next four years Steve and Clara Morrison followed Jim's career closely in the press. '[Mom] kept all the newspaper articles and all the magazines,' says Andy. 'They were proud of him.' But they didn't see or speak to Jim again.
Rolling Stone, Jerry Hopkins 1969
Jerry: In your early, biographies, it says your parents are dead – yet your family is really very much alive. Why the early story?
Jim: I just didn't want to involve them. It's easy enough to find personal details if you really want them. When we're born we're all footprinted and so on. I guess I said my parents were dead as some kind of joke. I have a brother, too, but I haven't seen him in about year. I don't see any of them. This is the most I've ever said about this.
Admiral Morrison, Jim's dad, response to "The Miami Incident".
The Miami Incident On March 1st, 1969 The Doors perform at the Miami Dinner Key Auditorium and Jim Morrison is later faced with numerous charges - such as exposing himself onstage . Read all about it on MildEquator.com.
Letter to Jim's dad from Jim's probation supervisor regarding the Miami incident:
"Pre-Sentence Investigation"
September 30, 1970
Dear Admiral George Morrison:
I am presently conducting a pre-sentence investigation on your son.
As you are probably aware, Jim has been found guilty of indecent exposure and profanity in Dade County. Jim tells me that it has been two or three years since he last had any contact with you.
I would very much appreciate any comments that you would care to make regarding your son's behavior and his present situation to include in my investigation.
The sentence date has been set for October 30, 1970.
Thank you very much,
Robert Disher
Admiral Morrison's response to Mr. Disher
October 2, 1970
Dear Mr. Disher:
Thank you for your letter of September 30.
I appreciate this opportunity to comment on my son, Jim.
I saw him last about five years ago during his senior year at UCLA. He was successfully completing his fourth year of college. As in all his academic work through grade school, high school, and college, he was an excellent student. While he had always been an intellectual rebel, he had always obeyed and respected authority.
In 1965, I began a two-year assignment in England. Although I invited him to join us in London after graduating, he declined to start his own career. Since that time, he has been completely independent of me financially and in every other way. We have very little contact with him since that time due partly to the physical separation and partly because of some criticism from me.
While in London, I was called by an old friend in California who had been approached by Jim for a loan to finance his first record. Concerned by his appearance, particularly his long hair, the friend called me. I, in turn, wrote Jim a letter severely criticizing his behavior and strongly advised him to give up any idea of singing or any connection with a music group because of what I considered to be a complete lack of talent in this direction.
His reluctance to communicate with me again is to me quite understandable.
Since returning to the United States, I have on several occasions made an effort to contact him. One time I was successful in talking with him by telephone. Our conversation was quite pleasant and I congratulated him on his first gold album, but nothing of consequence was discussed. We have had no direct contact since that time.
However, while we all lived in California in 1969, Jim's younger brother and sister visited with him frequently and got along famously as they always did during their childhood days at home.
Also, an old friend of ours had dinner with Jim in Los Angeles several months ago and reported to us that he was the 'same ol' Jim'.
I have followed his career with a mixture of amazement and in the case of Miami, great concern and sorrow.
While I obviously am not a judge of modern music, I view his success with pride. Based on my knowledge of Jim through his twenty-first year, I firmly believe that his performance in Miami was a grave mistake and not in character. I will always follow his progress with the greatest of interest and concern and stand ready to assist him in any way, should he ask.
Thank you again for this opportunity to affirm my conviction that Jim is fundamentally a respectable citizen.
Very truly yours, G.S. Morrison, Rear Admiral USN
