How Jim Morrison Killed Rock ’n’ Roll
- by Benjamin Myers
UNFAIRLY TREATED BY HISTORY, THE DOORS FRONTMAN TURNED YOUTH REBELLION INTO AN ART FORM – AND DID AWAY WITH IT.
There’s a moment in the Doors’ performance at the Hollywood Bowl in 1968 where you can discern precisely when the acid that the singer Jim Morrison secretly took beforehand takes effect. Self-conscious and static in the earlier songs, he loosens and comes alive, and, during the show’s closer “The End”, he becomes fascinated by a moth that has alighted on the stage.
With the band arranged as if they’re still playing in a minuscule club, and shorn of any showbiz visuals, they rely on the dark drama of their music and the captivating power of their frontman. “I think either he took too much,” the guitarist Robby Krieger remarked 40 years later, “or not enough.” It’s one moment among many that makes this performance film a captivating document of a band striving to transcend the juvenile pop format. This is comedy and tragedy. This is theatre.
