Remembering Jim Morrison
- by Paul Beston
THE DOORS FRONTMAN AND HIS ADMIRAL FATHER LIVED A GENERATION'S TURMOIL.
Addled, dressed in black leather, Jimmy Fallon, had all the mannerisms down: he swayed as he held onto the microphone stand, head lolling on his shoulders during the instrumental breaks; his eyes alternated between passion and oblivion. He had the vocal style down, too—the semi-croon that could ascend to an alarming shriek.
Adding to the effect, the band playing behind him were dead ringers for the dead singer’s lost mates: The Doors, the seminal sixties band fronted by Jim Morrison. But instead of evoking dark psychic worlds, Fallon’s Morrison sang the lyrics from the PBS program Reading Rainbow. He inserted poetry, as Morrison often did, into the song’s instrumental section—but instead of “The Graveyard Poem” or “Horse Latitudes,” he recited from Goodnight Moon and other nuggets of childhood literacy.
