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As you know, Jim Morrison was pardoned last December for his Miami transgressions. The mere mention of his name brought back old debates about the legacy of The Doors. Even though The Doors are as popular as ever, there are many who consider Morrison to be a nihilist, a drug addict, a terrible poet, and a bad influence.
I recently came across the following blog post by a high school teacher of religion:
Fancying himself a poet as well as a rock star, Morrison proposed that we “break on through to the other side,” but the only thing awaiting Morrison on the “other side” was death. Morrison was almost constantly drunk, offstage and on. He was vulgar and sadistic, having been arrested in Miami for fondling himself on stage. It is said that Morrison became sadistic, being sexually aroused by inflicting mental and physical cruelty by locking his girlfriend in a closet and setting her on fire. Once, while on stage in a drunken stupor, Morrison was reported to have repeatedly yelled, “I want to kill my father and f— my mother!” He had twenty paternity suits against him. He was dead by age twenty-seven, following the same path as that of rock legends Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, both of whom also died at twenty-seven.
Morrison was found dead of a drug overdose, lying in a bathtub in Paris in 1971, his skin “a lighter shade of pale,” vomit in his mouth and nose. Despite this, his name lives on in the annals of modern pop culture, with tourists flocking to his Paris grave, not merely in memory of his music but as a sort of pilgrimage to the ”icon.” University students, website surfers, and rock aficionados who look to rock music for salvation and truth hail him as a prophet. Morrison, unlike Mick Jagger or Tina Turner, is believed to have a depth of insight to his lyrics that has “answers” for today’s youth. As Morrison said, “For me, it was never really an act, those so-called performances. It was a life-and-death thing, an attempt to communicate, to involve many people in a private world of thought.” Sadly, his private world revealed that he was no “door,” only a doormat. His thoughts created a private hell—remnants of a nihilistic philosophy.
As a prophet of nihilism, Morrison thought that authenticity could be reached through a social revolution steeped in narcissistic drug abuse and rebellion. He advocated anarchy against traditional systems, without regard of there being anything better to put in their places. Despite his claims of being an intellectual, his life philosophy was as incoherent as his lifestyle.
It is very clear that the author of the above rant hasn’t looked at Morrison’s lyrics, preferring to focus on the man rather than the work. (And it looks like he bought into the Oliver Stone movie without reservation.) Morrison’s philosophy was not incoherent or nihilistic. The lyrics advocate a spiritual awakening and urge us to take the mythological journey of the hero in order to become reborn. I am not sure why Morrison was self-destructive, but there is no doubt that he took his art seriously and that he viewed his attempts to awaken us as a matter of life and death.
The Doors were perhaps the first of the new era of rock and roll, that is, to get away from the Frankie Avalons and what have you, the new era of rock and roll that brought theatrical quality to rock music. The English had had the theatrical attributes in rock and roll because of the great tradition of theater. The Doors, on the other hand, brought a theatrical aspect to rock and roll but not from the same kind of a place, not the music hall view of it, it was the film view of theater. It was a broader, deeper, more psychologically oriented theater than the rat tat tat tat tat tat theater of England, you know the music hall entertainment values. Yes, The Doors were one of the first American groups to realize the impact of entertainment, but it was very personal entertainment, it wasn’t the shiny entertainment. But the very deep, and sometimes dark, views of entertainment. Very much as Jim and the other Doors liked the darker directors of film.
He was a classic intellectual. He was in his way trying to be a Renaissance man. Certainly a Renaissance man of the mind if not of the crafts and trades. He approved of the da Vinci concept. And I never saw him without a book, either reading one or writing one. He was ultimately literate. And it wasn’t just Jim, by the way. All the Doors. It was the brightest band I ever worked with, bright not only intellectually but in the amount of light they gave off.
Perhaps as a finger in the eye to all the “squares” who were too “uncool” to reelect him, former Florida governor Charlie Christ made seeing through a pardon of The Doors’ perfect singer Jim Morrison one of his last acts in office. The pardon, which came from a unanimous vote by the state’s parole board, was granted on December 9, 2010, a full 41 years after Morrison was arrested for indecent exposure at a Doors show in Miami.
In March 1969, a 25-year-old Jim Morrison showed up late — and “far drunker than usual,” according to Doors organist — to an overflowing show at the Dinner Key Auditorium, in the Miami neighborhood of Coconut Grove. Although he was pretty well used to performing drunk, apparently Morrison was overly toasted even by his own standards. After he began insulting the crowd and cursing at them, he, according to police and witnesses, exposed himself on stage.
The show came to an end, the Doors left for Jamaica and the state of Florida stewed on the idea that Jim Morrison had drunkenly shown his junk to more than 10,000 of their youth. The Miami Herald reports that within a couple weeks, a decency rally was organized and 30,000 people, including Anita Bryant and President Richard Nixon by phone, turned up to call for Morrison’s head. He was indicted by a Florida court on six counts of obscenity and turned himself in. He was ultimately found guilty of two misdemeanors, exposure and profanity, sentenced to six months in the pokey and $500. This being America and Morrison being a star, he of course didn’t do any time. He was released for $50,000 and died in a bathtub in his Paris apartment two years later.
The problem was, no one had any hard evidence that Jim Morrison exposed himself. There were plenty of photographs of the moment in question, but none showed his exposed genitals. Lots of witnesses said they’d seen it happen, but at least one later recanted that testimony as an adult.
Charlie Christ saw to him getting a pardon as an “acknowledgement of Morrison’s ‘body of work.’” His widow, Pamela Meg Ryan Morrison isn’t altogether happy with the pardon, though. She disputes the conviction as a whole and thinks the pardon does a poor job of erasing the “suffering and all that he went through during the trial.”
Strangely, Morrison wasn’t a stranger to Florida before the Miami show. Before transferring to UCLA, he first attended film school at Florida State University. In 2005, a film made for the FSU admissions office was discovered featuring a young Jim.
The surviving members of The Doors have rejected an official pardon granted to their late frontman Jim Morrison by the State of Florida earlier this month, insisting that the singer is owed a full apology by the State as well as the City of Miami.
The pardon, for a lewd and lascivious behavior charge levied after a performance in Miami in 1969, was the result of a unanimous vote by Florida's clemency board, who took into account testimony by witnesses who said that they did not see Morrison expose himself and that the singer was arrested four days after the concert.
Nonetheless, the remaining Doors, along with members of the Morrison family, have issued a statement insisting upon a formal apology for the singer's arrest and prosecution. In the statement, Morrison's bandmates argue that he did not need "to be pardoned for anything," and allege that the charges "were largely an opportunity for grandstanding by ambitious politicians" and "an affront to free speech."
The Doors have plenty of reason to hold a grudge over this charge. This legal trouble is a crucial part of the band's history, and the arrest for charges of indecency resulted in an entire tour canceled by venues in each of the 20 cities on the band's itinerary. The controversy led to further investigation of the band, and intense public outcry from conservative critics. Though Morrison was eventually acquitted of all but two misdemeanor charges and sentenced to six months of hard labor, he was still appealing his conviction at the time of his death in Paris in 1971.
