Light My FireManzarek, Ray. Light My Fire
"You know, man, you really ought to get a haircut. Your hair looked so much better about three months ago. Why don’t you--"And he exploded! He jumped out of the chair, threw the glass down—merciful God, it didn’t break—and stormed toward the door. "Don’t ever tell me what to do, Ray!" he shouted at me. "Don’t ever do that again." He opened the Mondrian door and then turned and shot me an enraged look. A look unlike any I had ever seen in his eyes before. "Nobody tells me what to do. Nobody!"
I couldn’t believe it. I was shocked, outraged. I thought, What are you hollering at me for? I’m on your side. I’m here to protect you, to see that your art flourishes, to help you stay out of trouble. And then a terrifying thought flashed through my mind for the first time: To help keep you from...killing yourself. And a sadness swept over me. A deep darkness with the green thing wrapping itself around my gut. An emptiness. A longing for the sun. He was shattering himself, psychically. He was imperceptibly destroying himself. He was, perhaps, going mad.
He glared at me again. "Understand, Ray?!"
I nodded. "Yeah, sure, Jim. Whatever you say, man."
And he was gone. Slammed the door and was gone. I had just confronted "Jimbo" for the first time.
Everything was going great, and then Jim walked into the office one day and said to me - the hammer was about to fall again - "Ray, I wanna quit."
His head slouched down. He half mumbled under his breath, "I don’t think I can take it anymore."
That stopped me. It froze me. I could only stare at him. He finished the beer, far too quickly.
Finally, I spoke. "But...why, Jim? What’s wrong?"
His head slowly came up. Our eyes met. "I think I’m having a nervous breakdown."
"Oh, man. No, you’re not. You’re just drinking too much. It’s starting to get to you."
"No, Ray. I’m telling you...I’m having a nervous breakdown. I want to quit."
Panic attack again. My heart was racing. "You can’t quit. Not now!"
"You guys can go on without me. Get another singer, or something."
"I don’t want to work with another singer. I wanna work with you. Jesus Christ, Jim, I never said this before...but, I love you."
He looked up at me again. Through those too-old eyes. "I love you, too, Ray."
"Well, Christ, let’s not break it up now. I’ll tell you what...let’s give it six months. If you feel the same way then, we’ll break the band up."
"And you’ll go on without me?"
"Jiiimm" - I was sounding like Pam - "I don’t want to think about that now. I just want you to feel good."
I sat down next to him. Put my arm around his shoulder. "You’re not having a nervous breakdown, you’re just tired. You gotta stop burning the candle at both ends."
He smiled for the first time. "Yeah, I guess I do get a little excessive."
The tension was broken. The air came back into the room. Kathy, Leon, and I laughed.
"Just a bit," I said.
"Okay, six months," Jim said.
"But I tell ya, Ray. I think I’m having a nervous breakdown."
Kathy finally spoke. "Jim...go home and go to bed. Just let Pam take care of you for the next couple of days. You need to rest."
"Yes, Mother," Jim responded.
"And don’t drink," I added.
"I don’t know about that, Ray." And he stood up and headed for the door.
"Don’t call me for a couple of days, Kathy."
"I won’t, Jim," she said.
And then he looked at me, and his eyes became vulnerable. "I don’t feel so good, man." And he was out the door.
Now, however, I realize he was having a breakdown. It was an impending psychological split.
Jimbo was trying to take over. To destroy the band. To kill the shaman. To silence the poet. Jimbo, with the help of those cowboys, was seeking dominance. He was trying to obliterate the Jim Morrison I knew and create a new, degenerate persona...Jimbo the shit-kicker. Jimbo the evil. Jimbo the dog-man. That day in the office, Jim knew he was in a battle for his soul. He knew he was up against a formidable opponent. He just didn’t know whom he was fighting. All he could feel was that he was being torn apart. Ripped in two. And he came to us for help. Jim didn’t want Jimbo to take over but he was losing the battle on his own. If only I had known then what I know now. I could have helped him.Jimbo wanted to destroy the Doors. And when he couldn’t, he eventually took Jim to Paris...and destroyed himself.
Friends Gathered Together Lisciandro, Frank. Jim Morrison: Friends Gathered Together
Frank Lisciandro: Do you think he was suicidal?
Rich Linnell: Not seriously.
Frank Lisciandro: That’s like saying someone’s a little pregnant, Rich….
Rich Linnell: Yes, I realize that. It didn’t escape me. You see, I think Jim liked to flirt with death a little bit; do things that were dangerous, but I don’t think - in my mind at least - it ever translated to being suicidal. There’s a certain moroseness attached to suicide, a certain futility attached to that, and those things I never sensed in Jim in any serious way. The only futility that might have occurred in Jim was the futility or the difficulty of trying to be someone other than the persona he had created: the sex symbol, the rock & roll star. I think it was more frustration with the difficulty of trying to be someone else, rather than futility or depression to the extent of suicide. It never occurred to me that he would commit suicide.
Frank Lisciandro: Do you think Jim could have committed suicide?
Babe Hill: No.
Kathy Lisciandro: No
Cherri Siddons, wife of Bill Siddons The Doors' manager.
Cherri Siddons: On his twenty-fifth birthday we were walking down the stairs of the office and he said to me, "Well, I made it to twenty-five, do you think I’ll make it to thirty?" And we both knew he wouldn’t make it to thirty.
Frank Lisciandro: Do you think Jim could have committed suicide?
Cherri Siddons: No. Never.
Frank Lisciandro: Didn’t you know he had a problem with alcohol?
Bill Siddons: It was 1967. I knew he had a lot of serious problems, but I didn’t know what they were. I just knew that he would put more alcohol into his body than anybody I ever knew. I thought he was trying to commit suicide, because the quantities didn’t make any sense to me. He did everything to excess. He was always pushing the limits.
Frank Lisciandro: Did he die because he took on one risk too many?
Babe Hill: Maybe, that’s very, very possible.
Frank Lisciandro: Do you think alcohol played a part in his death?
Babe Hill: Yeah. If he had been drunk for several days up till that time, I mean we’d seen that many times. Like that time before when he was over in Europe and took all those big chunks of hashish. He was so drunk that he didn’t remember that he had taken some, and he took some more. Like I say, he didn’t do marijuana, but he would smoke marijuana when he got real drunk. He’d do anything when he got real drunk, except stick a needle in his arm.
Frank Lisciandro: What was his aversion to needles, do you know?
Babe Hill: It wasn’t an aversion, it was just something he didn’t do. It’s just something I know he never did.
Rolling Stone, Jerry Hopkins 1969
Jim Morrison: Getting drunk … you’re in complete control up to a point. It’s your choice, every time you take a sip. You have a lot of small choices. It’s like … I guess it’s the difference between suicide and slow capitulation.
Wonderland AvenueWonderland Avenue, Danny Sugerman
Jim reacted to Pam's early departure to Paris to find them a flat with unreserved abandon. He took to the town, stopping in every bar he'd ever been in to have a drink and say goodbye. He went on a month-long bender during which time he called every phone number he had to say 'so long', crashed two cars, and kept going until he was slowed down by a fall from the second floor window ledge at the Chateau Marmont.
Usually Jim avoided doctors if at all possible, but this time he was in so much pain, he had to go. The doctor told Jim he'd punctured his left lung. I'd heard the news in a confidential way and I was sworn to secrecy. Jim either didn't want to worry anyone or didn't want his trip to Paris jeopardized, I couldn't be sure which.
The doctor had given Jim specific instructions to take it easy. Jim, meanwhile, seemed bent on disobeying and continued his farewell drink as if uninterrupted. All the while he never slept in the same bed twice.
"Listen to me, Danny. You know that fall I took out of the window at the Chateau the other week? You know, usually I just sorta bounce, pick up and hop along unscarred? Well, that one really hurt, man. I must be getting old or brittle or something. I think that's some sort of sign. All the other times, nothing happened. I don't know if it was just luck or my constitution, or a guardian angel, or what. But I was thinkin', ya know that nine lives trip? Well, I'm like that cat, and that fall was my last chance. Next time there'll be no next time. Next time, it's over."
Sounes, Howard. 27: A History of the 27 Club
(Mirandi Babitz, a friend of Jim’s girlfriend Pamela Courson and the sister of Eve Babitz). Mirandi came to know Jim well, getting a unique insight into the domestic life of the Lizard King when she and her musician husband, Clem Floyd, stayed briefly with Jim and Pamela.
Mirandi, too, was a drug-user. Later she cleaned up and became a therapist, counselling addicts. Looking back, she believes that Jim had a range of problems, including ‘bipolar disorder, depression [and] total addiction’.
His conversation was also morbid, as was true of Pamela. ‘Him and Pamela, the two of them together were just always talking about death, [and] they talked about dying together.’ The couple acted out suicide fantasies on the twisting roads of Laurel Canyon. ‘They did things like take the cars up on Mulholland Drive and play chicken, you know, We’ll drive towards the cliff, and we’re totally stoned on acid, and we’ll see if we can stop in time, and maybe we’ll die together.’
Sounes, Howard. 27: A History of the 27 Club
Jim’s band mate Robby Krieger recalls a night in Los Angeles with Morrison and the Doors drummer John Densmore when Jim ‘was very depressed and he was talking about killing himself, which wasn’t that unusual, but we believed him. He just didn’t think it was worth it anymore, and life was horrible … And so we spent all night talking him out of killing himself …’ In the morning the musicians went outside to watch the sun rise, at which point Jim cheered up considerably. Indeed, he was inspired to write a song, ‘People are Strange’, which the Doors recorded the following day.
WebEditor: Both Robbie Krieger and John Densmore had very mentally ill brothers that committed suicide. Perhaps dealing with the mentally ill and their dysfunctional behavior was somehow normalized for them and made dealing with Jim more tenable. Perhaps Robbie and John were unconsciously trying to work out with Jim what they couldn't work out with their brother. From that point of view, I've included Robbie and John's accounts of their brothers here.
Set the Night on FireKrieger, Robby. Set the Night on Fire
Krieger's twin brother suffered from mental illness and eventually committed suicide, "When Ronny was eighteen, someone gave him some bad acid. He was overcome with a deep sense of dread, and he refused to come out of his room for a couple of days. Looking back, it’s clear that something was wrong with Ronny from a young age, but his bad trip seemed to amplify it. I tried to help him financially as the years went by, but I couldn’t help his mental condition, which gradually declined to the point of frequent short-term institutionalization.My dad, always the cheerleader for psychiatry, constantly pressed Ronny over the years to seek help. Ronny was never interested, but my dad finally insisted when Ronny’s mental issues manifested as stomach pains. He was diagnosed with manic depression.
The doctors treated him, gave him some medication, and he seemed better. For a while.A disturbing pattern developed. Sue would call me or my dad to tell us that Ronny had gone missing. This wasn’t like when Jim would get drunk and bail on a recording session only to turn up the following afternoon. Ronny would disappear for days, or even weeks, and become one of the nameless, wandering, vacant-eyed homeless people you see on the streets of any major city. My dad or Sue would drive around and find him, or the cops would pick him up. Usually down by the beach. We’d take him to a mental hospital and have him temporarily committed. They would put him on meds and he would normalize. They’d send him home and things would be fine.
Then, after a while, he would go off his meds and the cycle would start over from the beginning. The first couple of times we found him wandering, my dad and I had to physically wrestle him to get him into the car, but he eventually got as used to the routine as we did, and he would submit in silence. When he was on his meds, he would be fine for months, sometimes even years. We’d all start to feel optimistic. And then Sue would call again.And then, when Ronny and I were only in our mid-forties, Sue called one final time. They found Ronny’s body floating in the ocean not far from my old place on Topanga Beach. We don’t know if he fell in, if he walked in willingly, or if he was pushed. I never believed he’d do something like that intentionally, but, as I’ve been forced to learn more than once in my life, you can’t predict the actions of an imbalanced mind.
Sue told us that an ocean burial had been Ronny’s wish, so my parents and I went with her down to San Pedro harbor and boarded one of those special ash-spreading boats to say goodbye. We each said a few words; I told Ronny I hoped to see him in the next life. My dad poured the ashes over the side and said, "Well, this is what you wanted."
Riders on the StormDensmore, John. Riders on the Storm: My Life with Jim Morrison and the Doors
My brother... was living in an apartment in Westwood (at that time they were very cheap) and going to a psychiatrist after several stints at mental hospitals. Once when I dropped him off for his hour-long appointment he was so nervous I was sure the doctor was going to admit him or give him extra medication or something. When I picked him up, he was still bouncing his leg up and down as if there were ants crawling all over it.
I took him to his apartment, but I didn’t recognize the place. I had been there before, but this time it was a complete disaster. It was as if an atomic bomb had landed in his apartment. I had never seen a bigger mess. Dirty dishes in the sink piled to the ceiling, smelly clothing everywhere, and a bathroom where one was guaranteed to contract a disease.
"Do you ever clean your fish tank?" I asked cautiously. The glass was completely green and you could barely see the fish. Being in his apartment felt like being trapped in a limo with you. "The fish are okay," my brother answered. He towered over my head now, and his black chest hair grew up out of the top of his T-shirt. A man. I could feel his unbalanced energy as he constantly bounced his leg.
I could feel from you a similar off-centeredness, only without any outward physical manifestations. I told him to come and stay with me for a week, and we drove to my house. We talked about his problems and it completely drained me. My intuition told me not to press him too much because it would be too intense for him to communicate calmly. When he got nervous, I got nervous. At that point, I felt, somehow, that I could get swallowed up in fear and panic as well.
In John Perry’s Far Side of Madness, it states that the only documented cure for schizophrenia has been someone dedicating his life (maybe ten years of intensive live-in work) to helping a specific person. It felt as if I were trying to keep someone above water who couldn’t swim. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to handle more than a few days of playing counselor. And he was my own brother.
I called Dad, and we got him into a halfway house before Julia came back.
On April 25, 1978, a call came from the halfway house in Santa Monica where my brother had been in residence for several months.
“Is Ray Densmore there?” “No.” “Are you John Densmore?” “Yes.” “I’ve been unsuccessful in trying to reach Ray Densmore. Are you his son?” “Yes.” I knew something was coming. “Would you give a message to Ray Densmore?” I thought of saying “sure,” but this sounded like an official call. “Yes.” “Jim Densmore has committed suicide.” “He has?” “Yes. Can you pass this on to your father?” “Yes.” “Thank you.”
He took one of the kitchen knives to his room and stabbed himself several times in the chest. Seppuku. Hari kari. And you thought you were intense. What rage. And pain. How do I assimilate this unbelievable act of violence my brother did to himself?
For several months after my brother’s death I was nervous about handling kitchen knives. I thought if I did it, too, it would somehow make it better. Atone for not saving him. Redeem something.
During the funeral, I looked around to the office where Debbie and my dad had heard the news from the undertaker how my brother died. I was out at the burial spot when they found out. He apparently was in a good mood after lunch that day at the halfway house, as is often the case with suicides. I guess they have resolved the pain because they know it’s going to end. He took one of the kitchen knives to his room and stabbed himself several times in the chest. So my brother committed suicide and [Jim] - another kind of brother - committed slow suicide.
Sounes, Howard. 27: A History of the 27 Club
It was now summer in Paris. Jim had made a reel-to-reel tape of himself singing drunkenly with two buskers he met on boulevard St-Germain and wanted to have the tape transferred to cassette, which was then coming into use. He asked Elizabeth Larivière’s boyfriend, Philippe Dalecky, if he would dub the tape. Philippe had met Jim a few times and found him unpredictable, depending on how much he had drunk. ‘I think he was fed up with everything,’ says Philippe, who noticed that one of the few things that lifted Jim’s spirits was watching children play. Their joie de vivre took him out of himself. Interestingly, Amy Winehouse derived solace from the company of children when everything turned sour in her life. Jim went to Philippe’s apartment to have the tape dubbed. Just after he had departed, Philippe noticed that he had left his carrier bag behind, with one of his notebooks inside. He ran after him. ‘Hey, Jim, you forgot this!’
‘It’s all right, keep it,’ replied the American. ‘See you. ’Bye!’ It is unusual for a writer to abandon his notebook, indicating that Jim may have been so far gone with drink that he didn’t know what he was doing, or that he had given up on his ambitions to write and, by extension, possibly on himself. Much of the verse he had written in the notebook (which Philippe Dalecky kept and sold years later to a collector) was nonsensical. But it wasn’t something a writer would simply discard. When Philippe looked through the book he found three words towards the end that struck him as significant. Jim had written: ‘I’m finally dead.’ In three weeks he would be.
Lizard King Hopkins, Jerry. The Lizard King: The Essential Jim Morrison
...it didn’t matter precisely how Jim died – whether he overdosed on something, had a heart attack caused by a blood clot or respiratory failure, or merely drank himself to death (as so many had surmised from the start) – the bottom line still read ‘suicide’. One way or another, he was dead of self-abuse, however slow or fast, and finding out how was merely a matter of determining the calibre of the metaphorical pistol he had held to his head.
Circus Magazine, Salli Stevenson, 1970
Salli: How do you think you'll die?
Jim: I hope at about age 120 with a sense of humour and a nice comfortable bed. I wouldn't want anybody around. I'd just want to drift quietly off, but I'm still holding out. I think it's very possible that science has a chance in our lifetime to conquer death.
