When You’re Strange
My opinion of Jim Morrison is not a secret, but in case you’ve just arrived on Tomato Nation: hate. Morrison’s poet-shaman-of-the-bacchanal persona comes off to me as just that — a persona, sophomoric, obvious, contrived. The intellectual curiosity his defenders point to is more of the pretentious same. I read Blake in high school, too, but it didn’t estrange me from sophisticated rhymes and bathing.
So why did I pick at the scab by watching When You’re Strange? I like documentaries even if I don’t always care for the subjects, and writer/director Tom DiCillo is the mind behind one of my favorite movies, Living In Oblivion, so I had high hopes.
Alas, while my fascination with Morrison is more about how a medium-talent poet and nationally-ranked drunk got away with such douchey behavior for so long, DiCillo’s enthrallment is more sincere. The selection of Johnny Depp to narrate is a good one, but he’s obliged to observe of Morrison’s untimely death that “you can’t burn out…if you were never on fire,” and while the film uses a lot of fresh archival footage, the entire effort seems superfluous. Whether you dig it or not, the equation of Morrison’s cultural power isn’t all that tough to solve: the late ’60s + fuckable brawler-poet persona = Morrison.
It’s not boring, or a waste of time, exactly. I did learn a couple of things about the band’s musical background and framework, and Robby Krieger’s hair is mesmerizing — by 1969, it becomes a single proscenium dreadlock, standing away from the back of his head in a greezy tangle that had me wondering how he could even lie down on it. It just doesn’t add anything. I could have assumed that additional evidence existed of Morrison et al. capering around Joshua Tree shirtless, but actually seeing it doesn’t change the picture.
Tags: Johnny Depp movies Robby Krieger shut up Jim Morrison Tom DiCillo
I feel this way about a lot of “charismatic” people that don’t do anything for me personally–Charles Manson being the most extreme example (not that Jim Morrison was analogous to Manson in his life choices; it’s just the charisma angle.)Elvis, for instance, is someone who I can feel through time and space as having that something that mesmerized and enthralled: when I watch old footage of him performing, even towards the end, I think, “yeah, I would have screamed and wept, even if I felt silly afterwards. He’s just…just…oh, my.”
Granted, it can be much harder to judge how someone’s personal magnetism can affect the room from the outside, at the end of the story, and clearly it does exist, or plenty of musicians, actors and politicians would never have had careers. But when someone’s majikal flute playing doesn’t harmonize for me it’s hard to see a documentary or record of them as necessary, except perhaps as an historical record.
To me, both Morrison and Manson bring up the same reaction: if everyone around you weren’t stoned as a T-Rex on meth at all times, you never would have gotten away with this.
Oh my gosh! Thank you! I hate Jim Morrision too! So whiny. So overrated. So annoyingly pretentious and affected. Enough already baby boomers!
“I read Blake in high school, too, but it didn’t estrange me from sophisticated rhymes and bathing.” This made me laugh.
So did this: “Whether you dig it or not, the equation of Morrison’s cultural power isn’t all that tough to solve: the late ’60s + fuckable brawler-poet persona = Morrison.”
It is so hard with people that die young. What would 60 year old Morrison have been like?
He was not unintelligent. Yes on the intellectual curiosity/bathing thing, but it still goes a long way with me, though I wouldn’t have wanted to sit next to him on a plane. He just fell into a life that brought out the worst in him, at the worst possible time. Also he was good looking. It is sort of like professional athletes or models, people that have little to no incentive to develop any sort of inner life.
I loved The Doors when I was 14-16 and I’d rather stick a needle in my eye than listen to them now.
Perhaps being a native Californian just gives me more inborn patience for such people.
“To me, both Morrison and Manson bring up the same reaction: if everyone around you weren’t stoned as a T-Rex on meth at all times, you never would have gotten away with this.”
Jen S 1.0, can I steal this? I promise to use proper attribution :)
The concept of Jim Morrison, plus recently learning about the late 60s’ sci-fi film Barbarella have made me realize that quite a lot of people were on quite a lot of heavy drugs from 1960 to 1979. Because of that, it makes it hard to take anything from those two decades very seriously.
@kategm, spread the love! I’ve been trying to get “Jesus Starbuck Resurrecting Christ” far and wide ever since I saw it on Agony Booth (don’t worry, the author wants it to meme), so I’d be thrilled to see it crop up somewhere.
So he’s like John Meyers basically. Huh.
I agree that he is one of the most annoying people ever, but to be fair, his persona wasn’t really a put-on. He really WAS that much of a dick. Is that better or worse? I don’t know.
Sars if nobody has ever introduced to the glory that is Australian band TISM’s hilariously funny 8-minute spoken word diatribe against Morrison, called Morrison Hostel, please allow me the honour. It covers most of your objections to the man.
There’s a few Melbourne-centric references (that even as Sydney-sider I barely get) that may not translate, but the hatred is palpable.
A decent enough version can be found here. Goes without saying it’s very NSFW (this is a band that has a song called I might be a C***, But I’m not a F***ing C***, after all)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjRa0B5OYVM
@Soy: Brilliant. Especially the REO Speedwagon reference.
Great. Now I am going to have People Are Strange in my head all day. Don’t really care one way or the other about Morrison, but Lost Boys was an obsession in high school.
I’ve always said that Jim Morrison is proof of how sometimes all a person needs is beauty and charisma.
Pamela Des Barres wrote a little bit about him in “I’m With the Band,” and, though she’s not trying to make him sound like a tremendouche, that’s certainly how he comes across.
@Abigail: He would have been an douchier, frattier Keith Richards. Once an asshat, always an asshat.
I can’t stand Morrison, either, and I think it has a great deal to do with the fact that I was born in 1968, not too far after the end of the boom, with trailing-edge older cousins, and my parents were folkies (to be fair: 50s-and-prior Pete-Woody-Weavers folkies, not Buffalo Springfield folkies), so all that boomer shite has been shoved down my throat since gestation. I was completely over it by age 12, when someone asked me “The Who or the Beatles?” (I chose the Police); 1980 and this shit was being debated for reals by people who were still crapping their nappies when both bands broke up, so imagine my tolerance level 30 years after that.
I know quite a few X-ers who feel that the boomers’ deification of some of their heroes is excessive & not validated by the level of talent demonstrated. The reverence for people of middling-or-only-slightly-better talent but massive persona has always been around (see: Byron), but with Morrison, the drug lens has truly screwed with perception on the scale of gravitational lensing. I really believe (at least I profoundly hope) that he will be just another Wikipedia entry after the boomers are gone, necessary only for cross-referencing in sophomore twentieth century culture studies.
Count me in on the “fans of Sars who are fucking delighted to hear this” camp. I HATE haaaate Jim Morrison and The Doors.
Once on a first-internet-date, I liked the guy enough to go back to his place, and when we walked in, oh my. I saw several framed Doors album covers on the wall, and a box set on the shelf.
I knew right then that it was going no further.
Oh, Jim Morrison :-) I finally got my husband to listen to the GBC cd all the way through, and he completely lost his shit over the “shut up, Jim Morrison!” section.
“…shut up, Jim Morrison, and stop telling your mom you want to f*ck her!”
I should say that I don’t hate all their songs; I like a few of them, and enjoy the parts in others when Morrison either isn’t singing or the lyrics can’t be understood. For the most part, though, each song is too long, and even the three-minuters feel self-indulgent somehow.
He’s far from the only shite poet in rock and roll, of course, and I try to remember that, in the ’60s, a lot of rock explorations of death and sex and differing consciousness and blah hippie blah really were revelatory to people after years of pop music centering around “let’s surf and chastely hold hands.” And I am compassionate about adolescent symbology as employed by actual adolescents; we all wrote about dead leaves, it’s part of the process. Morrison just never progressed, and for me, it’s like…I already sat through this workshop.
Please, where would all of our 14-year-old selves have been without the “magic” of Morrison? By 16, that magic is gone of course, but I fondly look back to those more innocent times – don’t you?
I was a really big fan of the Doors in high school and college, but now when I read this and every other rant against Jim Morrison I think “. . . you’re not wrong.” It’s funny how maturity brings about a total change in one’s opinion; it doesn’t help that every year I hate the Boomers and their crap a little bit more. I still like some of the Doors’ songs, however.
Long ago I watched a very funny bit where a comedian did an impression of Morrison wearing big floppy clown shoes during “The End.”
— “Father?”
— “Yes, son?”
— “I want to kill you. Mother, I want to-”
— “Oh, go back to bed, Jim!”
Thank you so much for this. Even though he died long before I was born and I’ve only ever seen him in archival footage and heard the songs on movie soundtracks, I hate this guy. What a dick. I’m so thankful my parents, despite being baby boomers, were not into him. Dad was in Vietnam in the late 60s so he was all about the rockers and hated hippie music (never ask him his opinion of Jane Fonda.) Mom was more of an Elton John/Beatles girl, though not fanatically so.
I’m sorry, I will put Jim Morrison and the Doors up against the FUCKING BEATLES any goddamn day. Most overrated artists in the history of anything, ever. Middling poetic talent? I give you “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” “We all live in a Yellow Submarine” “We’re Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; we hope you will enjoy the show,” etc.
Crap, apparently I did something hinky when typing out the skit, it should end with the “flop flop flop” sound of Jim walking back to bed.
I remember going through my big Doors phase at around 17, and I put my tape in while driving my mother to the store once. She sighed, turned off the radio and said ‘sweetie, maybe when I was younger and in an altered state of consciousness, but not now’. Now that I’m a grownup myself, I completely understand what she meant.
@ferretrick
Oh yes.
But if we’re going to talk irrational hate ons, Pink Floyd really tops my list. People have been trying to talk me out of that one for years. Hello, it is irrational?
@ferretrick – Backstreet Boys of the 60s.
The drama kids in my high school revered Jim Morrison to levels I was never able to understand. I was raised on my parents’ music (they were born in the last two years of the ’50s), so given that context for the era, even in my early teens when everyone else my age was writing Doors-esque poetry, I found them lyrically shallow and musically thin. Now you kids get off my lawn while I put on this Stéphane Grappelli record.
I don’t agree with @ferretrick precisely, since I think the Beatles deserve credit for being influential as they were, opening the door for bands I like to become popular in the States, and besides, George Harrison funded Life of Brian, without which I would be just a shell of a human. That said, I can’t stand them, either, and am glad other people feel that way. My friends who love the Beatles think this simple thing means I don’t know shit about music, ignoring all other evidence to the contrary. I think that’s the thing I resent the most about this band, that one is almost not allowed to dislike them. Well, you know what? Fuck that noise. Their vocals irriate the shit out of me and their lyrics and instrumentations have never gotten a rating higher than “sheer indifference.” UGH. I feel better now, haha.
You know, there are a couple of Doors tunes I don’t hate, and Morrison was certainly hot in his earlier years. But Denis Leary had it nailed in his “No Cure for Cancer” routine years ago:
“Let me tell you something. We need a two and a half hour movie about the Doors? Folks, no we don’t. I can sum it up for you in five seconds, ok. I’m drunk. I’m nobody. I’m drunk. I’m famous. I’m drunk. I’m fucking dead. There’s the whole movie, ok!? Big fat dead guy in a bath tub, there’s your title for you.”
Regarding the Beatles, I like some of their very early, less produced stuff, and I can concede their influence on rock music, blah blah blah. After that? Yawn. Not my thing. And it’s annoying when people act like you’re *required* to love the Beatles in order to be a fully-formed human. Bah.
The Beatles were more fascinating in what they generated–a shitstorm of amazement that changed an entire culture, musically speaking–then they were as actual musicians, at least to me. I am enthralled every time I read Ready, Steady, Go! and think about all the threads that tied Swinging London together, and how it really seemed like The Hand Of God was involved in getting these guys here, and Brian there, and the Decca tapes listened to by that guy, and on and on. But the music itself? I never minded it, but never needed it either.
I like the Beatles but only before the “Lonely Hearts Club Band” era, so I can see where the non-fans are coming from. It’s like you HAVE to love ALL the Beatles music or else you’re not a fan. Well, tough cookies because once I get into their hippiefied repertoire, I only want to hear “Hey Jude” and “Let It Be.”
Moving back on topic: Jim Morrison is still annoying, even while dead.
From kategm: “Jim Morrison is still annoying, even while dead.â€
That? Is perfect. I hope you don’t mind if I steal it anytime Mr. Morrison (or some other random annoying dead person) comes up in conversation.
Ugh, THANK YOU. Man, I tried so hard to like The Doors in junior high in the early 90s (because Jim Morrison was hot on that poster! and other kids liked The Doors! and hippie stuff was popular again!) But I could never muster more than a halfhearted enjoyment of Light My Fire and I couldn’t bring myself to sit through the rest of their Best Of album, because The Doors’ music is mediocre and boring. Maybe the endless organ riffs would be more interesting if I were high but I’ve never cared enough to find out.
Then later I learned what a tremendouche Jim Morrison was and was so glad I never got into them enough to be embarrassed about it now.
The comment thread here led to me downloading “Girl’s Bike Club” and laughing like a madwoman on the Magazine Street bus!
I like some of the Doors’ stuff (“Peacefrog,” along with the Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” remains one of the few classic rock songs you can dance to) but I never, ever thought Jim Morrison was hot. That famous poster with the Jesus Christ pose? Ugh, please put your shirt back on. Val Kilmer was hotter as Morrison than Morrison was himself.
Because I love finding excuses to pull KITH videos from YouTube: “Being a Doors Fan”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xillqqt0Y0
Also, speaking of the GBC, when is the Mel Gibson installment happening?
A while back, my best friend took the Facebook quiz “Which Rock Star Are You,” got the answer “Jim Morrison” and noted when she posted it that she had dated Jim Morrison’s son. There is a musician named Chris Bangs (not the English musician by that name) who, it seems, is acknowledged by the Morrison family as Jim’s son. Sometime in the early 1990’s my friend dated this person, though I didn’t know that until her Facebook post – she and I have been friends since 1979, but there was a period when we’d lost touch, and even if we’d been in touch, it’s unlikely she would have said, “This guy I’m dating is Jim Morrison’s son!”
I saw Val Kilmer when he was Bacchus (2009) and thought he looked great in person; he is very handsome. Websites often post pictures that show “oh, how dare this once-beautiful man age and gain weight” and I did see one of him on the parade float, from an unflattering angle, say “boy he looks fat!”
Totally unrelated to the post… except that it’s about another hated item, raisins:
http://foodnetworkhumor.com/2010/07/chocolate-chip-cookies-cartoon/
Jim Morrison probably loved raisins… :)
MizShrew: Please, steal away.
I’ve come back to report that I just finished reading Patti Smith’s memoir “Just Kids” and she admires Jim Morrison. I consider Patti Smith to be pretty much infallible and a personal goddess, so I’m going to have to reconsider Morrison. I’m a bit scared.
If I never hear “Peacefrog” again, it will be too soon. If anyone was ever at Hungry Charley’s on the SU campus, you know what I mean.
I’m not sure what was worse in college–the dudes who loved Morrison or the ones who idolized Ayn Rand. Both are rather odious.