What Was the Final Doors Song Jim Morrison Sang Live?
- by Tyler Golsen
When Jim Morrison approached the microphone on December 12th, 1970, there was already a commotion. For years, Morrison enthralled crowds with some of the most powerful and wild antics that rock audiences had ever seen. As the self-appointed Lizard King, Morrison cavorted and careened across the stage, leaving audiences in fits of hysterics.
Not so much when the band pulled into the New Orleans venue The Warehouse. The man who stepped onto the stage didn’t even look like Jim Morrison: this guy was bearded, slovenly, a little chubby, and largely immobile, practically leaning on the microphone stand for support between musical belching. The once-unstoppable force that was Morrison was now reduced to a drunken shadow of his former self.
Most of the recollections of The Doors’ career tend to stop here, or at the very least take this version of Morrison into Paris where he would eventually die less than a year later. But Morrison often went back and forth between the alcoholic mess that had become notorious and a more lean and focused lead singer. He gained and lost weight frequently, and on the rare occasion that he shaved, Morrison even sometimes looked like that svelte world-conquering frontman who helped The Doors ascend to the top of the pop charts in 1967.
