The Doors, Unzipped: The Naked Truth About Jim Morrison's Indecent Exposure Arrest
- by Ian Winwood
DID HE OR DIDN'T HE? EITHER WAY, IT TOOK A LONG TIME FOR AMERICA TO FORGIVE THE LIZARD KING'S ACT OF LEWDNESS
On March 1 1969, in Miami, Florida, Jim Morrison could be seen performing any number of acts that sensible citizens of a Southern-state city would have found distasteful.
Onstage, while clutching a live lamb to his breast, the Doors frontman announced: “I’d f--- her, but she’s too young.” He also called the audience of 10,000 “a bunch of f---ing idiots”. Then, during the song "Love Me Two Times," he performed mock-fellatio on guitarist Robby Krieger’s Gibson SG.
But did Morrison really expose himself indecently, the offence of which he was accused in the next morning’s Miami Herald, and for which he was convicted the following year? In the decades following the singer’s death in Paris in 1971, this supposed transgression has played no small part in burnishing Morrison’s popular mythology, yet the chances are that it never happened.
