How John Fogerty Comically Exposed the "Cheerful" Side of Jim Morrison at a House Party
- by Tom Taylor
Jim Morrison resides somewhere in our consciousness as a character more so than a man. He is a rock ‘n’ roll edifice concocted in a test tube—all hair, leather, sullen and enigmatic. If you were to draw a Rockstar, you may well draw Morrison. And beyond that, he is the archetypal doom poet too. Most fabled musicians have an air of fiction about them in our minds, but Morrison took that to new heights.
Seemingly, he even had this effect on his peers, and that was without the embellishing impact of retrospect. As Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman John Fogerty would come to know when he hosted a party in his suite at the Fontainebleau and Morrison rocked up. Like everyone else, Fogerty had heard the fabled tales of mystic rock ‘n’ roll horseman and he set about striking up a bond.
As Fogerty recalls in his memoir, Fortunate Son: My Life, My Music: “I remember being in the kitchen there, saying stuff like, ‘Yeah, man, I really think the machine are gonna take over,’ stuff I halfheartedly believe.” Fogerty thought that this line of conversation would be ideal to draw Morrison into an enamoured chat given the Book of Revelations style poetry that The Doors frontman was prone to passionately extolling.
