Published in Rolling Stone, spring 1971
Interview carried out by Ben Fong-Torres

Doors recorded in four-bit byte their last album, L A. Woman, when one of the most significant journalists of Rolling Stone, Ben Make-Torres, saw them in Los Angeles.

Now that the lawsuit of Miami was behind him, Jim could speak about it freely. The interview appeared in March 1971, little time before its departure for Paris

Los Angeles. Jim Morrison and Doors are back to Hollywood and work on a new album, this time without the producer Paul Rotchild, an album of inspiration blues, known as Morrison of the original blues, if such a thing exists.

Morrison, the sexual ex-symbol of the rock'n'roll of the West coast, the poet who describes itself as King Lézard, was declared guilty, at the end of a two months lawsuit in Florida, indecent exhibition and to have employed publicly a language obscene during the concert which it gave in Miami in March 1969. It is currently in bail, and its business is always in call, probably for an indefinite time.

Jim Morrison continues despite everything his career with Doors, and continuous to make the transition between the rock'n'roll, poetry and films. He appears a few years moreover now, and, if he always has this pace jungle, its face, with its long black hair and this beard which devours its cheeks, recalls today more the lion Tarzan. Moreover, it took a little plumpness. Discrete on the business of Miami in the interview which it gave to Rolling Stone in July 1969, as it was quiet during the lawsuit, Morrison appeared more laid out with speaking when I met it in Hollywood, as if it made a point of clearing up certain things of the past, to discuss Doors and to replace the afaire of Miami in its context, with complete freedom.

Do you always regard yourselves as King Lézard?

Jim Morrison : It was two years ago, and even at the time it was a little ironic. I said that to half to really laugh.... It was a sentence which one could take again easily. I thought that everyone would have guessed that it was ironic, but apparently they thought that I was insane.

Would you say that you are classified among those of which some say that they incarnent the death of the rock'n'roll?

Jim Morrison : Eh well, I said that the rock'n'roll had died since years already. What the rock'n'roll means for me, it is... for example, there is twenty or thirty years, the jazz was the kind of music towards which people went, and of whole crowd danced on top. And then the rock'n'roll came to replace that, and a new generation arrived and it called that the rock'n'roll. Another generation of kids will come in some time, a swarming generation, and it will find another name. It will be once again a music which will touch people and will make them move.

But, twenty years ago or thirty years, the music did not éait yet the symbol of all a new culture or a subculture.

Jim Morrison : But, you know, each generation requires new symbols, new people, new names, they veulents to mark their divorce of with the preceding generation. They will not call that the rock'n'roll... You do not see that there is a cycle in all that, all the five or ten years, when one sees all these people gathering, essaimer, to meet in the idea of rupture... When you think of the rock'n'roll, you think music. I want to say, m^me if you do not include/understand the words, you would have still all the reasons to react.

And Miami? Will this history all affect your choice to give concerts?

Jim Morrison : I believe that Miami was the climax in all the concerts which we gave. Subconsciously, I think that I tried to finish some, of reducing the things until the nonsense, and that only went too well.

When did you have the feeling which the things ceased being amusing?

Jim Morrison : I believe that a certain moment ago when one is over the same wavelength with his public, and then one grows together and one becomes aware of it. It is not that you exceed your public, simply, the things must take another direction.

Could the blues be this direction?

Jim Morrison : Not, it is right a return so that we like more. What does we let us appreciate them and the others not that we made a music which we did not like. When one played in the clubs, I will say that half of what one did were blues, and the discs which we recorded are a reflection, but I believe that it is in the old blues that we are at our top. I like the blues, because it is fantastic to sing.

We play in this moment with the bass player of Elvis, Jerry... good blood, I forgot his name [ Sheff ], and for the first time, we record on the spot even where we repeat, with a studio on the floor. We work with the same sound engineer as for the preceding albums, Bruce Botnick. Paul Rotchild is not in the blow this time. It is with mutual suitability, one was said that it was time... to follow a different way.

What do you await lawsuit of Miami, apart from your personal freedom?

Jim Morrison : You know, I espèrais... or I thought that this business had one to have a great repercussion, of being exemplary, but the things did not turn in this way. It is undoubtedly one of the reasons for which they so much made trail this lawsuit. The speed would have played in our favour, the business would have drawn the attention more. In fact, one of it is not involved at the national level. After all, it was perhaps as well, I were relieved of it of a certain way, because there was no true ideal concerned.

It was the traditional type of lawsuit in America, where it is a question of freedom of expression and of the right of whoever has a personal point of view to express it as a public and to be listened without the legal apparatus threatening and makes pressure. In fact, my lawyer made a speech with the lawsuit in which it exposed the fact that the history of the freedom of expression merged with that of the theatre. Right of an artist or a playwright to expose his sights. It was a brilliant description of this historical process, but it did not have any effect on the continuation. The First Amendment guarantees in theory the freedom of expression. There is a stop which stipulates that any dramatic or artistic spectacle is protected by this amendment.

In fact, the charge refused to audition all the witnesses who were supposed to point out this simple fact. One was completely within the framework of a criminal business. My lawyers had prepared to argue on the fact that, in all the cases, that which one showed me went of nothing against the contemporary values community, and they wanted to take along the jury to see Woodstock and other films of the same kind. Moreover, at the time of the lawsuit, the Hair spectacle was played in Miami, and this spectacle was not less obscene which facts that one reproached me, there was all these naked bodies with half which one saw on scene, and everyone could go there, there was no prohibition for the minors, but the judge expected this operation and it rejected motion.

But parallel was quite suitable for it? In Hair, to preserve this example, the language employed and this alleged obscenity form integral part of the action. Would you say each one of your acts which they fell under a dramatic process? You were spontaneous.

Jim Morrison : It is nevertheless about a spectacle which takes place on a scene. We do not speak about a political gathering. We sing songs that everyone knows. People who came to attend the concert have our albums, and they knew approximately what they had come to see.

Of what you were recognized guilty?

Jim Morrison : There was quatres heads of charge; behavior obscene and indecent exhibition in particular. And three offences or infringements; use of a language obscene, and... let us see seeing, oh! public intoxication and the other was related to the exhibition. It was a separate offence. So that constitutionally, they were wrong. one cannot twice show a person of the same offence. This precise point will constitute one of our reasons for call.

Why didn't one mention these problems at the beginning? Couldn't you ask for a reference of the lawsuit?

Jim Morrison : We asked obviously that the lawsuit be returned, and that an incalculable number of times, but our requests were systematically rejected.

There is another reason for call: the fact that I never could have an equitable lawsuit being given the ambient climate. The public oppinion broke out during one year and half; because of an unspecified newspaper or a rardio or of do not know which chain of television of Miami. There are two files full with newspaper cuttings coming from all the country. But there is a thing which was interesting to observe, each day, when one returned: our passages over the small screen. They were not authorized to film inside the courtroom, but they filmed the arrivals and the departures. And there was the point of view of the journalists on what occurred. The first days, they stuck to an almost political speech; it was what people during one year and half had done, but as the lawsuit proceeded, the journalists themselves, when they spoke about me and the people implied in the business, that was seen just in the newspapers and the articles which one wrote, tended to carry an increasingly objective glance on the lawsuit.

Let us speak about the immediate future of Doors. Other concerts?

Jim Morrison : Not, we do not envisage concerts for the moment. We are not attracted any more for the moment by the large rooms, and to play in the clubs one evening of time to other, that does not have really a smell. I believe that one will do one or two albums still, and each one will start from its side. Each musician of the group now has personal projects, which it has desire for realizing in all independence. I believe that Robby would like to do something in solo primarily... something with the guitar, and John always was... at the bottom, he likes the jazz and I suspect it E of wanting to produce an album of jazz. Robby and John produced there is a few years the album of a group of friends to them, an album entitled A Comfortable Chair. Both have really an ear for the production.

And you?  Do you have a film project? 

Jim Morrison: Ahhh... I believe that to the bottom, this is this that always interested me, well more than to be part of a group.  Do a film.  I would like to write and direct a film; I in have an in head, but there is a film that I did, and that was very not very broadcast, entitled HWY. 

Was it not projected to the Canada at the time of a Festival of the film Jim Morrison?  Which welcome he has received? 

Jim Morrison: One was said me that HWY had been welcomed with enthusiasm. 

This did not be the case to the Festival of the film of San Francisco... 

Jim Morrison: Feast of Friends (Festin of friends) was projected over there a year ago about.  I believe that they reacted more to the personality that to the film.  HWY was selected for the Festival of the film of San Francisco, but it next was refused for I do not know which reason.  This is a film that lasts fifty minutes, turned in 35 millimeters and in colors.  I there hold the principal role, and I realized it with some friends to me.  It was a little an exercise for me, a échauffement sort.  There is not intrigue.  Just an autostoppeur that flies a car... less, one guesses it after... and it rolls in city and takes a room in a motel or something and here, that finishes almost as that. 

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