Angels Dance And Angels DieButler, Patricia. Angels Dance and Angels Die:
Jim attributed his mercurial temperament to a problem that he told Tandy he couldn’t discuss with his parents and that he demonstrated no interest in discussing with her.
At Tandy’s urging, Jim agreed to meet with the assistant minister of the Westminster Presbyterian Church to discuss this mysterious problem.
But if the session did any good, the improvement certainly wasn’t reflected in Jim’s behavior, and it’s doubtful that Jim ever confided the true nature of his problem to the clergyman.
In high school, Jim had hinted to Jeff Morehouse that he had experimented with homosexuality during his time in Alameda, stories that Jeff wasn’t sure were true or just calculated to shock.
Collected Works of Jim Morrison: Poetry, Journals, Transcripts, and Lyrics
Morrison, Jim. The Collected Works of Jim Morrison
"I have tried to learn more about homos but it’s not easy to discuss. This is true about sex in general, even more than philosophy or religion."
Ray went with Dorothy to a gay movie, Jean Genet’s Un Chant d’Amour. Ray goes into great detail about the many homo-erotic scenes in it and comes across as a bit bi-sexual himself. When the film ends and the lights come up, he spots Jim.
Light My FireManzarek, Ray. Light My Fire
"At this hippest of hip events in Berkeley, 450 miles from UCLA, who should be there but half the Doors. I call to him, "Hey, Morrison." He sees me and grins. "Ray." "What are you doing here, man?" I ask. He pauses for a beat. "Well, I’ve come to see the movie. What about you?" I smile. "Ditto." He says, "Some flick, huh?" I can only nod my head, raise my eyebrows, and say "Whew!"
Summer With MorrisonJakob, Dennis C.. Summer With Morrison:
This next part should properly be called: Jim Morrison on the subject of homosexuality.
I remember that once he told me of the peculiar tension that occurs in a gay bar as the clock approaches 2 a.m. – the legal limit in the State of California for the purchase of alcohol. He described the frantic search to find a partner – or face the prospect of a lonely night. I had wondered then how he, the nocturnal creature that he was, had come upon this information.
Then one day, Jim said to me and Vic the Painter: "You ever been to a gay bar?"
We told him that we hadn’t.
"It's amazing. All this energy starts to build up slowly around the midnight hour, ‘cause the bar has to close soon."
"Amazing."
"You wanna go?" he said. Now on the boardwalk in those days there was a bar that was split right down the middle, with gay Males on one side and Lesbians on the other side. So Vic and I and Jim went inside.
There were a lot of men in there milling around on the left hand side, eyeing each other. I just stood there without ordering a drink and watched the "soft parade" of flesh move slowly in circles around itself.
I gained nothing from the experience, but I noticed one gray-haired stoutly built character say to a friend. "He's the one I’d like to go home with tonight." And he was indicating Morrison.
Jim made no move toward anybody. He just stood there as usual with his eyes cast down to the floor and said nothing.
"How far does he want to take this?" I whispered to Vic, nodding at Jim.
"Don’t ask me," Vic shrugged.
So after awhile the three of us left. It was not too late, as I recall. The magic hour of 2 a.m. was still far away. All I remember with any degree of vividness was the conspicuous display of white tennis shoes on almost everybody, the symbolism of which escapes me to this very day. So that is the extent of my knowledge of Jim’s "alleged" and furtively whispered knowledge of homosexuality. It may or may not have been extensive. Let others say what they will if they choose. As for myself, I've always taken "deviant" revelations about any and all celebrities with a grain of very low grade salt.
Then there was the time Jim met Sal Mineo.
I remember it was on the Sunset Strip in daylight in some movie theater there. I don’t remember how it started, but I do remember Mineo's intense interest in Jim. Jim just stood there, the same way he did when we were surveying that Venice West gay bar. Did Mineo know he was being examined in return? That’s an interesting surmise. There's no question in my mind of his attraction to Morrison’s personae. It was very vivid and intense. But Jim as usual wore a mask.
So Mineo invited me over to his elaborate pad just north of the Strip. It had an Oriental look to it, with water flowing. Mineo wasn’t interested in me nor I in him. I just kept wondering what Mineo was after. It was apparent he wanted some information about Jim. He was curious about Jim's masked demeanor.
"Is it me?" he asked. "Is it because of what I am?"
"No, I don't think so," I replied. "It's just his way. He’s always like that."
"Because I would just love to have him over, you know?"
"I’m sure you would. A lot of people like you would."
Mineo just nodded. He just wanted information. An edge he could use on Jim. But he never got it from me. And I never knew Jim to get any closer to Mineo other than this one encounter.
So, you out there, be careful. You know or think you know something. But, unless you're really there, you don't know it at all for sure. The rest I leave to Diaries and "revelations." What are they to me? I was there. I make my Confidential Report to you out there this way: I never saw him make a homosexual advance towards me or anyone, ever. I only heard rumors. And you out there know what I think of them. It's as simple – and as complex – as that. As for Jim's wife Pam, she too, was straight. She once mentioned that two of her girl friends had come together in a Lesbian experience. But she wouldn't have any of it. She completely rejected that kind of experience, I don’t believe she ever changed.
Set the Night on FireKrieger, Robby. Set the Night on Fire
This time Jim was dangling a dozen floors above the unforgiving concrete and honking traffic of Fifty-Eighth Street. And judging from the gratuitous nudity, he was even drunker than usual, so I didn’t have much confidence in his grip. We raced across the room to pull him back in. If we hadn’t been there, he probably wouldn’t have been able to rescue himself. Then again, if we hadn’t been there, he probably wouldn’t have jumped for the shock value in the first place.
Once we pulled him back inside, Jim tackled me onto the bed. While John and Ray secured the window, Jim kept me pinned down as he jokingly writhed around, pretending to put the moves on me. Sure, it was the sixties, but I didn’t swing quite that far. I shoved him off the bed and watched him cackle with laughter on the floor. Looking back, I think Jim subconsciously knew that John or Ray would never have put up with his impromptu Greco-Roman seduction act. Jim was always driven to test his limits, and even at his most intoxicated, he was still instinctively aware of exactly what those limits were. That night, he saw me as the band member with the best sense of humor. So I was the limit he decided to test.
Krieger, Robby. Set the Night on Fire
It’s funny to me now, but it wasn’t funny to me at the time. I was twenty years old, the youngest member of the band. I didn’t have any authority over these guys, and I didn’t have any understanding of how to cope with this level of chaos. I was constantly being placed at the crossroads between rock ’n’ roll stardom and scooping our lead singer’s brains off the pavement. We stayed in Jim’s room for another hour or so as he calmed down and passed out. The next day he greeted me as if nothing ever happened. Jim rarely remembered his drunken fits, leaving the rest of us to pick up the pieces. I told him what he’d done, and it was like he was hearing a story about someone else. His reply, as usual, was something like "Wow, that’s terrible" or "Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize."
Bill and I watched helplessly as Jim pounded shot after shot of whiskey at the bar before we went on. Jim wasn’t mad or anything: he had just made a decision to get wasted, and he was sticking to that decision. I couldn’t keep track of how much he actually drank, but it was at least enough that any other mortal human would’ve had to get their stomach pumped. Surprisingly, the show went well. Until I was in the middle of a solo and Jim thrust his hand into my crotch and grabbed my balls. Hard. In junior high my friends and I called it "goosing" and did it to each other all the time, but I couldn’t believe Jim did it to me onstage as a grown man.
I nearly broke his arm with my guitar neck, and he recoiled like an injured puppy. That sobered him up pretty quick. I wasn’t quite as mad as when he tackled me naked during the previous year’s trip to New York, but I was still pissed. In the dressing room afterward he immediately went into his sheepish routine:
"Man, I’m so sorry, I’ll never do that again..."
"You’re goddamn right you won’t ever do that again!"
He knew he had fucked up, and I knew he had drunk so much he didn’t know what he was doing. He was so contrite, and his apologies still worked on us back then. I let it go.
Manzarek, Ray. Light My Fire
Frank [Lisciandro] finally got it! But then Jim occasioned that response in many men. And some of them hated him for it. They hated the forbidden feelings that Jim’s androgyny would stir up in them. They didn’t know whether to beat the shit out of him or grab his tight little buns.
Friends Gathered Together Lisciandro, Frank. Jim Morrison: Friends Gathered Together
Eva Gardonyi interviewed by Frank Lisciandro:
Frank Lisciandro: Do you think Jim had any homosexual activities at all with anybody? Did he ever talk about that?
Eva Gardonyi: I don’t think so. I even asked this. I usually ask those questions, but he did not confess to any, no.
Frank Lisciandro: Nor has Vaya ever confessed to any...
Eva Gardonyi: No, and Jim said if Vaya would ever touch him, he would kill him. But he said, "I tolerate him, but would he ever touch me, I’d kill him." Yeah, so he definitely wasn’t into that, but he allowed [gay men] to be around him and there were more than one around him all the time.
Frank Lisciandro: Well, they were around Pamela. Didn’t they gather around Pamela: Ned, Vaya...
Eva Gardonyi: Yeah, but that was an access to get to Jim.
Frank Lisciandro: So when Pamela had all these gay ‘friends’, you think they were trying to get access to Jim….
Eva Gardonyi: Yeah, yes. I know it for a fact with Vaya. After Jim’s death, he certainly wasn’t interested in hanging around Pamela.
Sounes, Howard. 27: A History of the 27 Club:
A former actress named Ronnie Haran was sufficiently impressed to hire the Doors as the house band at the Whisky a Go Go, further along Sunset Strip. She also invited Jim to stay with her at her bungalow on Westbourne Drive… Ronnie Haran says her relationship with Jim was not sexual, surprisingly, possibly because Jim was ‘too stoned’. She also suggests that his interest may have lain elsewhere. ‘I know he was testing the limits of bisexuality. He used to talk to me about wanting to have an affair with a guy to see what it was like.’
John Rechy wrote City of Night, a homosexual novel that lent its title to lines in the Doors’ song "L.A. Woman". I tried to read it many years ago but couldn't get through it, it's just gay sex after gay sex.
A few biographers refer to a transcript by Max Fink, Jim's attorney, that has some lurid bits and a tragic childhood anecdote, but it doesn't feel reliable.
The transcript was from a book Max wrote and was trying to sell. The lurid bit reads like a dime store novel and the tragic childhood anecdote reads like something copy and pasted out of a psychology textbook. So I've left it out.
