I was a math guy. Shakespeare, Dickens, Poe? No interest – none. But then inspiration came to me from a most unusual and unexpected place, Danny Sugerman and Jerry Hopkin’s biography on Jim Morrison, No One Here Gets Out Alive. Out of nowhere, there was a huge resurgence in Morrison interest, culminating in a Rolling Stone cover that boasted, “Jim Morrison: He’s hot, he’s sexy, and he’s dead."
I’m not going to lie. The reason that I and my friends enjoyed that book wasn’t for Morrison’s love of Rimbaud. It was for the shadier, fun stuff. Jim skipping school for a few weeks after telling his teachers that he had a brain tumor. Jim ignoring Ed Sullivan’s demand that he change a lyric in “Light my Fire.” Jim possibly exposing himself in Miami. Jim having sex with a woman who liked to bring the drinking of her own blood into the equation.
That book was the greatest episode of Behind the Music, arriving at least 15 years before VH1 came up with the concept. But you know what? I came for the trash and stayed for the art. That book introduced me to Rock and Roll.
Whether Morrison was a poet on the level of Shakespeare or Poe was beside the point. He was cool, and he made the crazy notion of wanting to be a poet just as cool. I was soon reading about Bob Dylan and John Lennon. I fell in love with the work of Ray Davies, and then miraculously enough it led me back to all that tripe that they'd tried to introduce me to in English class. John Mendelsohn called Davies a modern day Miniver Cheevy, and I went back and reread the Edwin Arlington Robinson original. Suddenly, I noticed that the Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society was very reminiscent of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology.
Jim Morrison may have been a drunken buffoon, but he was nevertheless a very well-read drunken buffoon; and he was the one that convinced me how wonderful it was to create something out of nothing. If Thomas Edison hadn’t invented the light bulb, someone else surely would have figured it out, but indeed no one but John Lennon could have written “All You Need is Love.”
Was Morrison a great poet? It doesn’t matter. He was the spark that legitimized art for me.
As for drinking and drugs, I’d been exposed to them for years, and despite the fact that I went through a phase of Jim Morrison worship, I wasn’t particularly interested in either of them. Both Morrison and Hendrix died at 27, and I wasn’t oblivious to that part of the story.
Article comments
1 - JC Mosquito
I heard Shakespeare died of pneumonia - but the thing is, he supposedly contracted it due to exposure as he had spent overnight passed out under a tree after an evening out on the town.
I think you can have it both ways - Jimi was a genius, but don't inhale your own puke - or anyone else's, for that matter.
2 - Evan
I think it's great that Jimi is being used as a role model for teachers. He was so innovated and creative and I think thats the message. Clearly not to live like Jimi, which I don't think was so bad. He had a lot of pressure on him in general and his managers were terrible for years, which is why his live ended too soon.
3 - jamminsue
Brad:
Awesome! We most certainly need more sane voices like yours in tis world!
4 - Glen Boyd
Here in Seattle he is celebrated on murals downtown, and even by an entire museum (Paul Allen's Experience Music Project). I really don't see what the big deal is, and agree with you that writing him, the Beatles, or anyone else out of the history books is a pretty ridiculous idea.
Their personal lives notwithstanding (and this was the sixties were talking about here), the impact on culture made by these musicians far outweighs any of their more youthful indiscretions...which many of us who were alive at the time also share.
-Glen