Page 28 - Classic Rock (February 2020)

THE DOORS

he end of the 1960s found The Doors – one of the dark-star
American groups who had exemplified the freewheeling spirit of Checking in, or checking out?
From the photo shoot for the
that groundbreaking yet troubled decade – teetering on the abyss. cover of Morrison Hotel.
With Jim Morrison increasingly becoming the victim of his own
T hype – drunk and out of control most of the time, a danger to
himself and others – the rest of the band feared for their own futures.
“The boys did not hate Jim,” insists former Doors tour manager Vince
Treanor. “The boys did not dislike Jim. The boys wanted Jim to be part of the
group, but they couldn’t take the trouble that Jim was causing. They couldn’t
take the loss of [so many] performances as a result of his behaviour. They
couldn’t take the loss of all the record sales. They couldn’t deal with the loss
of radio time. The censure that went down, the newspaper articles, the pastors
and the righteous ministers with their boyfriends in the closet that got up and
were saying how terrible The Doors was and how perverted Morrison was.
The whole thing. They didn’t want to deal with that kind of bad, negative,
horrible publicity.”
And yet, in the drawn-out aftermath of the arrest of Doors frontman
Morrison after he allegedly pulled out his penis on stage at a concert in Miami
in April 1969, ‘bad, negative, horrible publicity’ followed The Doors around
like a cloud of flies.
The release later that year of The Doors album The Soft Parade, an
overindulgent confection of lyrical navel gazing and musical self-importance,
had not helped the band’s sagging reputation. Jim Morrison was now
a bearded and bloated parody of the lit-up boho poet he still saw himself as,
while keyboard player Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer
John Densmore were way past long-suffering, and now deep into despair
about their rapidly shrinking career prospects. Suddenly everything about
The Doors was a drag, man.

‘In the drawn-out aftermath of the

arrest of Jim Morrison, ‘bad, negative,

horrible publicity’ followed The

Doors around like a cloud of flies.’

“As Jim got more out of control – the roomful of gunpowder waiting for
somebody to light a match – Ray became more alienated and isolated from
him,” Treanor says. “Now Ray never disowned Jim, but he never did what we
all should have done, which was to say: ‘Look, asshole, smarten up, you’re
wrecking everything!’”
Treanor recalls how Morrison once told him: “People wanna see me drunk
on stage”. “I said: ‘Nobody wants to see you do that. They want to see a Doors
performance. They do not want see you lumbering around the stage drunk,
forgetting your words and putting on a show where you stand there babbling
nonsense. Put on a Doors show, sing Doors music, stop the nonsense, because
it’s only gonna hurt!’”
Indeed, as 1969 ended the hurt seemed to be coming down on everyone.
America was still waging war in Southeast Asia. Britain was still crumbling,
while Europe remained aloof. In rock, the dream as personified by Woodstock
in August – an event from which The Doors were pointedly absent because,
according to their manager Bill Siddons now, “they exclusively headlined and
did not want to be one of many”, but which Robby Krieger once explained
away as being because they thought it would be a “second-class repeat of the

mob surrounding his Bentley outside
“Nobody a Hertfordshire pub. Neil Boland’s death is
ruled an accident, but the episode haunts
actually the drummer for the final eight years of his
pointed a life. “Nobody actually pointed a finger at
him and said: ‘You killed your best friend’,”
finger at him said Pete Townshend. “But that was the
JANUARY 4 thing that went through his head.”
KEITH MOON ACCIDENTALLY and said: ‘You
KILLS HIS CHAUFFEUR killed your JANUARY 16 KEITH MOON & NEIL BOLAND: GETTY
The looning takes on a darker tone when JOHN LENNON’S “SICK” ART
the wildman Who drummer runs down best friend.’” EXHIBITION IS SHUT DOWN
Words: Henry Yates his chauffeur while escaping a drunken Police raid John Lennon’s Bag One

28 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM