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How Jim Morrison Killed Rock ’n’ Roll

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.

Credit: Elektra Records

How the Doors Song ‘Riders on the Storm’ Defined Jim Morrison

When The Doors first formed in 1965, starting a song with a lightning crack and an apocalyptical atmosphere was out of the question. In the eternal summer of peace and love, the flowery sanguine sound that most of the mainstream music in the era propagated was in direct contrast to the iconoclasm that followed shortly after.

Jim Morrison: True to His Genius

Had he not overdosed in Paris in 1971, Jim Morrison would have been 67 years old this December 8.

The legendary star of the Doors called his childhood “an open sore,” and told his band that he was an “orphan.” Later they discovered he had a mother after all. In 1967, she was sitting in a front row seat her son, “The Lizard King,” had reserved for her in the Washington auditorium. During the show’s climactic number, "The End," he sang “Mother, I want to…” then barred his teeth and snarled “FUCK YOU!” He refused to see her again. Nor did he ever again see his father, a Navy admiral. “Father?” he sang, “I want to KILL YOU!”