Eric Burdon is one of the most powerful vocalists from the 1960s. Although he didn’t pen ‘The House of The Rising Sun’, his voice wraps around the words like the familiar strains of a writer singing his own work. And that’s exactly what we get on ‘The House of The Rising Sun’, The Animals’ blistering rendition of a blues standard.

Travel to the Père Lachaise cemetery on the outskirts of Paris, and you will find one of Europe’s great necropolises. Under a canopy of ash, maple and hazel, cobbled pathways cut a bewildering maze through endless rows of grand tombs. Along this path, tourists amble along with fixed brows, searching for one of the famous names that litter this land of the dead. Many will be keeping an eye out for one name in particular: that of Jim Morrison, who was buried here in 1971 after dying from a drugs overdose in his Paris apartment.

What a voice!

It really does sound like The Doors’ frontman Jim Morrison is calling out from beyond the heavens, beyond the grave, beyond consciousness—just beyond. The feeling, his vibe, of course, adds to the strangeness that permeates his band’s hit “Strange Days.”

The older I get, the more I think that the one thing that unites most countercultural icons is that they were all walking, talking paradoxes. Forgive me if I sound cynical, but it seems that every figurehead of the hippie age was talking out of their arse.

In 1969, Jim Morrison made a film called HWY: An American Pastoral. The opening shot of the movie sees a stretch of asphalt unspool with the credits painted onto it before the camera eventually arcs towards the bruised sky of a moody desert dusk where the desolate moon hangs like a milk bottle top on a washing line awaiting the hissing company of the night.

We’re digging into our vault of extraordinary musical history to bring you a collection of some of The Doors lead singer Jim Morrison’s favourite books of all time, which include everything from beat novelist William S. Burroughs to the romantic poet William Blake. It’s an essential reading list for any budding Lizard King.

Patti Smith is a bonafide icon and one of the most influential musical artists of all time. Many have tried and failed to imitate the mystique of the heroine we all know as the ‘Punk Poet Laureate’, which tells you a great deal about the quality of her artistry. Unique to her lived experience, Smith’s extensive back catalogue is a varied yet thrilling journey.

We’re dipping into the Far Out Magazine vault to revisit a momentous occasion in the career of the counter-culture kings The Doors. It was a moment which could have quite easily cost them their career but, in the end, may well have made it. It was the moment they were banned from The Ed Sullivan Show.