Published in Los Angeles Free Press, spring 1971
Interview carried out by Bob Chorush
This interview is one of the last granted by Jim Morrison before it does not leave Los Angeles for France. Morrison evokes there freely with Bob Chorush, which succeeded John Carpenter in Los Angeles Free Press, the lawsuit of Miami, their last album, L A. Woman, then in the course of recording, and tackles subjects as various as the theatre, the cinema, poetry, the reptiles, the shamanism and alcohol.
Jim Morrison : There is no really history. No the scenario to be strictly accurate. With share that there is a hitch-hiker who... one does not see it, but one guesses later than it stole a car and he rolls downtown and the film stops more or less there. It takes a room in a motel, it goes in a something or night club like that. Here is about end of film.
Jim Morrison speaks about the history of his last film HWY. This summary of formless intrigue sticks étrangement to the new image of Morrison, that of the director épris of cinema truth. The James Douglas Morrison with which I spoke a few days ago was a man older than the man which I had expected to speak. Its hair grisonnaient, as its beard with which they seemed to merge, and it spoke about its past of rock'n'roll star as a prisoner speaks about his past of criminal with lawyer charged to obtain his parole. Morrison that I hoped to meet was to be delivered only in rare moments, its remarks carefully weighed still darkened by the shades of a past recent and testing.
Jim Morrison : It is amazing as people can believe you two years young person than you are not. I imagine that it is for that that it is necessary to continue to grant interviews. People believe the old newspaper cuttings. Two years ago, I satisfied a need that certain people of a personality had which represented a heap of things, then they created the thing themselves. It is like seeing photographs of baby or I do not know too what. It is embarrassing and funny at the same time.
Before making this interview with Morrison, I had prepared by reading three of his books (Lords, New Creatures and an American prayer), an interview granted to Rolling Stone, and newspaper cuttings which went back to quatres years earlier exactly. I expected to meet a doped alcoholic, one, a megalomaniac, a fine talker, a exhibitionnist, a rock'n'roll star, a realizer vêtu of a leather jacket and trousers in snakeskin, walking with the lizard celebrated under his arm. The first statement made with the press by Morrison prepared already the ground with the false ideas.
Jim Morrison : You can believe that it is an accident, that I received the ideal preparation for what I do now. It is like an arc tended during twenty-two years and that one releases of a blow... I was always attracted by all that spoke about revolt against the authority. That which is reconciled with the authority puts to form part of it. I like the ideas which speak to destroy or to reverse the established order. I am interested in all that treats revolt, disorder, chaos, and especially in the activities which seem not to have any direction. That appears me to be the way towards freedom, external freedom is the way which leads to interior freedom.
We are West. I would like all to conceive like an invitation with going towards the West. The twilight. The night. Sea. It is the end. Nothing of what goes in the direction of this image is useless. The world that we suggest is a new wild West. A bad and sensual world. Strange and obsessing, the way of the sun...
Morrison does not resemble any more the image which it put so many years to create. It does not wear any more clothing out of leather or snakeskin. It takes a beer with the lunch, and glass before and afterwards. He is his own archer, his own arrow travelling in time and space of the lapse of memory. The glance which it carries on itself, on its past or its future has something of Indian, it is a great depth. It now appears to hold of advantage to speak about its films that of music rock'n'roll, that it does not listen much any more. And it seems to want to clear up certain events of its life, of which recently its lawsuit for obscenity and interference in the flight of a plane. With the age, lawsuits and incidents of all kinds. Morrison became aware that the time of innocence is not any more.
Jim Morrison : I wasted an insane time and much of energy in the lawsuit of Miami. Approximately a year and half. But it is invaluable experiment, I imagine, because before this lawsuit, I had a vision teenager and naive American legal system. That somewhat opened me the eyes. There were types over there, Blacks, whose lawsuit took place before mine. That took five minutes, and they collected came or twenty-five years from prison. If I had not had unlimited funds or almost to continue to defend my case, I would be in prison for three years per hour that it is. The fact is that if you have money, you generally do not go in prison. The lawsuit of Miami revealed not badly things. For the moment, the business is in call to the supreme Court.
What happenhappen does other arrests whose you were the object?
Jim Morrison : One discharged to me for all the remainder. One now works to erase all that, because it is never good but this kind of thing is reproduced on your criminal record.
This criminal record, it is significant for you?
Jim Morrison : What there is, it is if something of really serious arrives to you, you have a rack and the things are only worse then.
One could believe in one moment that they were going to have to you. There was this federal charge of diversion of plane, not?
Jim Morrison : Eh well, the offence fell under the blow from a law recently voted to fight against the diversions of plane, but it was not really a diversion of plane. It was only one play a little bit too thorough and exuberant. We of did not threaten anything the life of people or this kind thing. In fact, we were discharged because one of the hostesses confused me with someone else which was with me. It was a history of place on the aircraft. The hostesses said that it was such or such place which had caused problems. And they identified me as being the person who occupied this place. It charged me me because I was the only person who had a known face. They tried to have me. I do not know, it is right an example like people whom you can meet on the aircraft.
The trouble, with all these charges, it is that people whom I know, of the friends to me, find that funny and they want to believe that it is true and they accept it like such. Which does not like me believe quite simply that it is because I am the incarnation of all that they regard as being the evil. On the two sides, that is turned over against me. I went over there, in Phoenix, for the lawsuit. I have even due to go back several times there so that the things are definitively cleared up.
Which chances do you think of having as regards Miami? There is nothing any more but one load retained against you maintaining, not?
Jim Morrison : In fact, there are two of them. But I am optimistic, I believe that I have a good luck. One appealed on several points. Initially, they never could prove anything apart from the fact that I employed a language obscene, which we never denied. We tried to prove that the use of a language obscene did not go against the contemporary values to communeauté of the town of Miami. For that, we wanted to take along the jury to see all films of the kind Woodstock and Hair. Hair, the spectacle, passed downtown at the time of make that one reproached me, and the actors were almost naked on scene every evening and there was no necessary age to attend the spectacle. Books which were full with coarse words were even in circulation in the libraries of college. The judge us arefusé there morion and wanted to stick to make accused. They produced thirteen witnesses. Each one of these witnesses was is a police officer who worked over there this evening, is somebody which worked for the city and was being there him also, that is to say a relative of police officer. In fact, their larger witness was a sixteen year old teenager who was the niece of a police officer and who had not even paid to attend the concert. His/her uncle, the police officer, had made it enter free, it and his boy friend. All their testimonys were very contradictory. They had a whole a version different from what had arrived.
I intended this girl to treat somebody of small bitch.
Jim Morrison : I did not intend it to say that, but it is what one said to me. All kinds of people took photographs this evening, and there is not of them only one which proves that I exhibé itself, nor even as I started to do it. The other loads selected were it, I believe, only to give a little more the serious one to all the circus. Simulated masturbation, oral copulation...
On yourself?
Jim Morrison : Masturbation on myself and the oral copulation on the guitarist. There is a photograph of this scene inside the small pocket of album 13.
Is it a lamb which held in the arms this evening?
Jim Morrison : A quite alive lamb. There was this type which was there, Lewis Marvin of Moonfire. It travelled and explained with which wanted to hear it its philosophy of non-violence and the vegetarianism. It was useful of this lamb to show its principles. If you eat meat, then you kill this small lamb. It gave it to me to the medium in the concert. I kept it one moment in my arms. It was interesting. There was much noise, a great disorder. It was almost deafening, but the lamb breathed normally, it hummed like a cat. It was slackened perfectly. I believe that what one says of the lambs which go to the slaughter-house is true. They do not feel anything. Finally in short, the judge limited the witnesses of defense to the number of the witnesses introduced by the charge, which is a completely arbitrary operation.
All did these witnesses, you have them while passing an advertisement?
Jim Morrison: Ouais, and because one did the word too. There was more than three hundred people who were ready to testify that they had not seen anything of the facts that one reproached me. In fact, which occurred, it is that a journalist was with the concert this evening, or one had spoken to him about it, and the newspaper for which it worked made a first page with feeling on this concert while speaking about incentive to the riot. Citizens put themselves in anger at the reading of this article, and they started to call the police force by asking how one had been able to allow that and why me was not stopped. On my side, I took a few holidays in Jamaica, of the holidays that I had envisaged to take for some time already. And approximately three or four days after all this history, they delivered a warrant for arrest against me. Here how all comencé.
I spoke with Mike Gershman which was over there with you, and he said to me that you could not give concert any more during the course of the lawsuit. Is it true that you gave some all the same?
Jim Morrison: All that I made, it is to go to spend one day on the island of Wight, and I returned at once. One could have made some concerts, But we never knew in advance how long the adjournment of the lawsuit lasted
Did the lawsuit take place one day out of two, not?
Jim Morrison: Ouais, but they changed all the time. One never knew. Fortunately that I had the wee-ends to rest me. It was really a test.
Do you believe that he wanted to sanction you you or culture?
Jim Morrison: I believe that it was with a certain life style that they wanted some. I do not believe that I was aimed personally. I had put the foot on a nest of Frelons. Nobody was tender with me. People who attended the lawsuit seemed to take pleasure there. I believe that people who read of it the report deformed in the newspapers contributed them also to create a climate of hysteria. A few weeks later, it y aeu this gathering against the decency, I want to say against indecency, has the Bowl Orange, orchestrated by this famous actor.
Well-known for its decency.
Jim Morrison: Exact. The President congratulated the kid which was with this gathering. the thing then extended to all the country.
Did you feel excluded from your own defense?
Jim Morrison: Ouais, I felt like a spectator, but would not have liked to defend me myself because I would have very rotten in the air, I am sure. It is not as easy as that has the air of it.
You testified, not?
Jim Morrison: I was not obliged to make it, but us summons itself known as that it could be a good thing for the jury to see what I resembled because all that it had been able to do during six weeks that had lasted the lawsuit, it was to look at me and nothing other. Then, I testified during two days. I do not believe that that affected least the continuation. They make so much trail the things that at the end of one moment everyone of fout. I imagine that it is always like that. They muddle so much the things which you cannot any more what think. It is the way which has the company to assimilate a horrible event.
After having cleared up all these legal questions, Morrison seems more at ease still to speak about the past. Somebody had said to me that formerly it had been very near to the theatrical Company of Los Angeles, until the group assembles Children of the Kingdom (the child of the kingdom), a study of the thoughts and intrigues in slides of a rock'n'roll star. The resemblance between the protagonist of the history and Morrison seems much more than one coincidence. The protagonist, like Morrison, endeavours to include/understand what occurs in the head from people who came to see it. Morrison had made theatre with its way in front of a large audience in Los Angeles, to which one tells that it asked: What do you want? You did not come to listen to music. What is this you want? What do you really want?
Jim Morrison: I saw half of the Children of the kingdom. I did not attend the spectacle until the end. The part put to me badly at ease. Not that I do not appreciate the satire, but it was really too close to me. I believe that people go to the concerts of rock'n'roll because they are pleased to be found in the medium of crowd. They test of it a strange feeling of power of and safety. They like this contact with hundreds of other people who resemble to them. As a singer, I am that which focuses the attention of all lemonde, because you need an excuse to gather in group. Otherwise, it would act of a riot. Doors never knew any riot. It sometimes sometimes happened to us to push people a little because one all the time intended to speak about riots in the concerts and one thought that it would be good to have ours. Everyone did it. Then, I tried to stimulate some small riots, you know, but at the end of one moment, I understood that it was a joke. That did not carry out us nowhere. You know what, one arrives from there at a point where people think that the concert will not be good if each one does not put at foutre a little the brothel. It is a joke because really, that does not carry out nowhere. I think that it is well better when all the meonde does not drive back its feelings abruptly, when each one lets this energy grow in him, that it walks it in the streets and returns at his place with. Rather than unnecessarily to lose it in a small explosion of adrenalin. Not, we never knew true riot. I want to say, a riot which escapes to us, something of violent one. What I call a true riot.
Not, never at this point. I believe that all that has something to see with the theory of the swarm. The idea that when an animal population, it can also act of insects, starts to draw from the reserves of food, it essaime, gathers. It is its way of communicating. To work with a solution or to announce an awakening. To announce that there is a danger. Nature works to find a certain balance, and I believe that it is what occurs sometimes. In Los Angeles or New York and in the majority of the large cities, you feel encircled by crowd. Physically and psychologically. People become neurotics, paranoiac, and I believe that the concerts of rock'n'roll constitute a human manner of essaimer, to communicate this faintness of overpopulation. I did not consider yet the problem from every angle, but I believe that there is something. I think that apart from the writing and because of singing, my greater talent lies in my capacity instinctive to promote my own image. I always knew to handle the press, to leave the sentences of the kind We are politicians of erotic, this kind of things.
I grew at the same time as television are the grans magazines, I instinctively know what people want to hear or read, which they will retain. Then, I disperse this small jewels that and there, seemingly innocently, but actually I launch signals. I believe that Doors arrived at named point. Our music, our ideas, came at the good time. They can seem naive today, but two years ago still, said them incredible things. The degree of energy was incredible, and you could say about anything and almost end up believing in it. Today, it is finished. I believe that it was a question of association of musicians and opportunity. And we have without doubt be one of the first groups to be presented to us openly like artists conscious of themselves, and our career reflects this state of mind. It was a question of mode nor nothing of this kind. We would not have changed anything so that we were in any event. We arrived at the convenient period, here all, and we expressed what we feel. I am certain that we would have made the same thing in all the case. For example, the first album does not indicate a social conscience particularly, it acts only of universal personal feelings.
Each album marked a step in the direction of this social awakening, perhaps with the detriment of the music besides. While we travel and give concerts in front of increasingly important audiences, certain words started not to reflect our concerns more. Here what occurred primarily. We had not programmed anything consciously. The album that we record in this moment will probably plunge its roots in the blues. It is what we do of better. One will do perhaps also one or two anciennnes songs blues. Original blues. It will be good blues. It will not be like the type which plays of the blues to the guitar. Not, it will be electric blues, I hope. One never knows really when an album is begun, that can be completely different with the arrival. But it is the direction which one will take. It is the music which I prefer. It is that which I have the most pleasure to sing. I like also the jazz. But the jazz does not need really a singer. I push the guy to make a little more the instrumental one. They are a little reticent, and I would like that they come there.
For three types, they can really play a heap of musics, a heap of different sounds. I like all the reactions which our music can start. All that can push people to be thought. I want to say, if thanks to you a club or a room filled with types battered or buttered awakes and starts to think, then you made a success of something. It was not for that that they had come. They had only come to lose themselves. I do not know if you saw the installation which we have at the office or not. We have a room equipped in top. It is there that we record. It is not that we do not like the studios of Elektra, but we think that we make better things in repetition. We let a band turn. It is also much less expensive and more rapid of this way. It will be the first album which we make without producer. We work only with our former sound engineer, Bruce Botnick. I do not know if one can say that he is a producer or not. Let us say coproducer with Doors. In the past, the producer... it is not that it had a bad influence nor nothing, but without him, it will be very different. One will see well. In any event, one is together for best and the worst. There were some new songs on the album live. One year ago, we finished Morrison Hotel. It has been thus a year that we are not turned over in studio. A few years ago, I wanted to make the live one. To record things in Whiskey or elsewhere, but nobody was interested. Today, everyone awaits nothing any more but that, whereas I lost any interest with the thing. Though one has fun much more by doing that, I do not have all bonnement not desire for making the live one for the moment. I always like the music, but it interests me nevertheless less than front.
Will you apply more to do films?
Jim Morrison: Ouais, I think, but nothing not in a hurry.
You already realized five films, isn't that right?
Jim Morrison: HWY is the alone true film that I did. I participated in several other films, but this did not be truly my films. HWY is it a lot more in this direction. I generally consider the films as the effort of a team, except in some very rare cases. I would like HWY to project. I think that it could pass on an educational national chain. This is a length question. You see, this is the film type that has not nothing commercial. It is too long to accompany a long measurement, but this is is not a long non measurement more. It lasts fifty minutes, this is not therefore very practical, but I believe that it would suit well to an educational chain.
I always was fascinated by the autostoppeurs histories that commit mass crimes. I wanted to do a film as that, but the things turned otherwise. This became a fantasizes more subtle. A day nevertheless, I will do this autostoppeur film, because I think that this is a good idea.
You play the role of the autostoppeur in HWY. Be actor, this is something that interests you?
Jim Morrison: No, it was simply easier of this manner.
There is two or three things that you in The Lords that kept my attention, as this sentence: THE ATTRACTION of the movie is anxious the fear of the death.
Jim Morrison: I believe that in the art, and especially to the movies, the people look for a confirmation of them own existence. Sometimes, the things appear more real having been filmed, and you can create a life pretence on the screen. But small cest aphorisms that compose The Lords, if I had been able to say them of another manner, I would have done it. One tends to ruminate them. Some are very serious. I wrote the bulk of this book to the era where I studied the movie to the ucla. It was really a thesis on the aesthetic one movie. I was incapable to do a film to that era, and all that I could do, it was to reflect and to write on the movie, the book comes from there. Many passages, for example those that concern shamanism, revealed themselves truly prophétiques some years later, because I had no idea to the era where I wrote them that it was the role that I would hold a day.
At the end of the Lords, you said that the Lords, this are those that check the art. Do I have well understand?
Jim Morrison: Enough strangely, yes, this is well this that I wanted to say. But not necessarily the art. This book speaks especially weakness feeling or of powerlessness that have the people when they are confronted to the reality. They do not check really the events, not even them own life. Something checks them. There where they approach the more close to this thing, this is when they look at them television set. Now, for me, the Lords represent something of completely different one. I do not know how to explain it. This is something that would be at the opposed. Sometimes, the Lords are a romantic race of people that found a means to check their environment and their life. Sometimes, this are simply different people of the others...
There he has someone to that you thought in particular?
Jim Morrison: No, the book does not concern anyone in particular.
I would like them to speak a little your poems.
Jim Morrison: of course. I listen you.
The New Creatures. There is a lot of creatures in all that you done. Lézards, snakes, skins of snakes. That is part of your reputation. The King Lézard. How all that he has begun?
Jim Morrison: I HAD a book on the lézards, the snakes and the reptiles usually, and the first sentence of the book captivated me: The reptiles are the descendants of magnificent ancestors. A something else that astonishes me, this is that they are perfect anachronisms. If all the reptiles of the world disappeared tomorrow, that would not change really balances it nature. This is a completely arbitrary type. I believe that they could survive, so nevertheless someone or something could it, to another World War or to an any global empoisennement of the planet. I believe that the reptiles would find a means of there to escape. It does not be necessary to forget nos more than the lézard and the snake are identified with the unconscious one are force them evil. This long poem, The Celebration of the Lizard, was an invitation sort to the forces of the night. But all that is ironic. I believe that the people not some return counts. There is not to take it to the serious one. As when one plays the mean one in a western, that does not want to say that this is you. It is just an aspect of oneself that one puts in spectacle. I do not take all that to the serious one. As a rule, this is irony.
But on the bottom, I always liked the reptiles. I grew in the Southwest, and I often caught lézards or toads. Evidently, I could not approach me also close to the snakes. I want to say, one does not play as that with a snake. There is at the far end of the human memory something that reacts violently to the snake. Even for that not some never saw. I believe that the snake embodies all that of which one is afraid. This is the reason this is if fashionable. It some always was thus.
There is also maybe a small victory feeling to capture the snake and to clothe his skin.
Jim Morrison: Ouais, evidently. Which is the word? A totem. No, not a totem. A talisman. When I wrote The New Creatures, I was very naïve. The book did not be born of a taken one of sudden and deep conscience e the universe. This is a small one very naïve book, but it holds standing for the essential one.
Do you believe to be able to do just as well in the domain of the movie as you did it in the musical domain with the Doors?
Jim Morrison: And why not? I have a certain instinct for that. I think to be able to do just as well.
Let us imagine a film of the intensity of a concert of the Doors. The people would not remain a long time in the room, you do not believe?
Jim Morrison: I very much LIKE this remark. I never understood how the public of the movie rooms could be so passive. I believe that the public must participate in the creation, intervene, act. For example, it holds only to you to close the eyes as much of times as you want it, or to get up you and to walk five minutes. The person that does that will not see the same film that the one that remained seated sagement to his from beginning to end place, agreed?
You projected Feast of Friends (Festin of friends) during a live to San Francisco, no?
Jim Morrison: One did that? Yes, I believe that one had to do it to an era. We passed the film to the aquarius at the end of the concert, but that does not mean nothing. It was only because we had done this film and that we found it very good and also because persone did not want to distribute it. Then, one broadcasted it when one has been able. I am happy that one did it. This will be a good document on this period.
Do you think that the people, being given your notoriety and your passed singer, will have more tendency to appreciate your films or more the temptation to reject them?
Jim Morrison: I believe that this notoriety eventually can serve the film. This is less a luck to seize. If that does not walk, I would have with difficulty a second luck. But I believe that today everyone has a chance to do his film.
Do you believe that your reputation of singer of rock one will block you the way?
Jim Morrison: This that they always want, this is an album and they have even the audacity to want that you played the role of a singer to the movies. Be actor does not interest me. Nothing does not be bored me as much as this idea.
And your reputation of big drinker?
[long pause.]
Jim Morrison: I am gone through a period where I drank enormously. There was so pressure on me that I did not arrive to face. I believe that alcohol is a means to hold the blow when there is all these people around you, but this also is produced it boredom. I know people that drink because they are bored. I like to drink. Sometimes, that relaxes you and that stimulates the conversation. Of other times, that holds game, you go out to intoxicate you a night and you do not know where or with that you will rediscover yourself the next day. That can walk very well, as that can be disastrous. This is as a lance of dice.
It seems that there be more and more people that shoot up to the héro or take speed today. Everyone smokes grass. I believe that one does not consider anymore that as a drug. Three years ago, lam ode was at the hallucinogens. I do not believe that person have the force of supporter this kind of things eternally. One enters next into the category of the narcotics, alcohol, the héroïne and the hypnotiques kill the thoughts. This are killer of pains. I believe that this is for that that the people there have recourse. In my case, this is alcohol, because it is traditional. And then, I hate to be going to supply myself, as one says. I détete the connotation type pathetic that surrounds the does to find the joint, and never I do not do that. This is for that that I like alcohol, it suffices to go to the store or to the corner bar, and the matter is regulated.
I think that this that is arriving, this is that the people smoke so, and so frequently, that this is is not even more a trip. They some arrive to this that their cells tolerate all that without problem. That becomes just an element of the chemistry of the body. They are not even more really broken.
Morrison continues to speak. Always conscious of his picture. Relaxed. It is fascinated by a girl in mini-jupe that descends of a car on the other side street, and by Zap Comix. It wants to write a book on his process and wonders to which editor it will submit the history. It evokes a girlfriend to him that could be the biggest singer of the world. It appears nervous to the idea to rejoin the studio. It already has two hours of delay. But...
Jim Morrison: It n' there has not really history. Not any scenario strictly speaking... It rolls in city... it goes out... or something... here almost the end... and... when the music is finished, extinguish the lights...
The career films Morrison begins to pains.
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