Is there really that much difference between Jim Morrison and Britney Spears?
On April 10, 1970 the Doors played Boston. This was the old days and they did two shows a night: early and late. Jim Morrison was pretty drunk for the first show and he was almost incoherent by the second. These days this performance would have played out exactly like a public meltdown. The paparazzi would have been there in droves: this was the band's first live performance since Morrison was arrested after a Miami concert. At that concert, the year before, Morrison allegedly flashed his man part from the stage at an audience packed with his underage teen fans. His fans celebrate this as a heroic act, and claim Morrison might not actually have done the deed, only used his mighty lead singer power to cast some theatrical illusion or mass hypnosis.
After that incident, the Doors took a break from the stage before deciding on a series of shows in 1970. The concerts were also taped by Elektra records for a live double album. This was an expensive thing to do in those days. In short: these were professionally and personally very important shows for the Doors and not routine stops on some tour. Looking back on this 1970 Boston show in 2007, Ray Manzarek, the band's former keyboard player, is more ecstatic than reflective: "This night is Over the Edge." The capitol letters are his. But Ray Manzarek has always been the chief myth-maker for Jim Morrison and frames the dead singer as an otherworldly Shaman. According to an article in the Nation in 2002, former Doors' drummer John Densmore, accuses Manzarek of also being the member of the band most eager to license the band's music for television commercials.
Back to April 10, 1970 (the full concert comes out for the first time later this month in a three-disc set) what happened was the Doors stumbled through almost three awkward hours of mostly instrumental music. The drunk singer rambled more between songs than he sang. During the second set, Morrison seems to have lost interest in the Doors music altogether. During "Light My Fire," he misses most of the song's lyric but does bellow out passages of "Fever," "Summertime," and "St. James Infirmary." He later grunts and slurs the syllables to some lyrics from "Light My Fire." The climax: a very out of key ending. This is music only for a hardcore fan to enjoy and, even then, only for historical purposes. As an actual real-time performance by a functioning group, this is a total embarrassment.
Now, just imagine how TMZ might have reported that night along with some of Morrison's drunken rambling? Mostly, Morrison was protected by his incoherence. Still the night often found the Shaman offering up bad Milton Berle: "Adolf Hitler is still alive. I slept with her last night. Come out from behind that false mustache, Adolf, I know you are in there." Mostly, though Morrison isn't that interesting or interested. The two performances last for almost three hours. Listening to the entire evening in one sitting recreates perfectly the uncomfortable experience of being stuck in a room with a belligerent drunk for too long. It sucks. And, really, isn't it sort of sad how, in 2007, Manzarek continues to mythologize his obvious wreck of a lead singer as a Shaman? He uses the word again in the press material with this concert release. You can't help but wonder, while listening to this, maybe, if someone around Morrison decided that rather than poetic prophecy, Morrison was in reality a pathetic lush and needed off the bottle ASAP, well, he may not have died of a heart attack on this day thirty years ago at age 27?
Anyway, Morrison never had to face the scorn of TMZ. He died long before Al Gore built the Internet. Today's stars are under a lot more scrutiny than Jim Morrison ever faced. But while times have changed, in reality the stars of popular culture have not. Listening to Jim Morrison in 2007 perform on stage (less than a year before his death), it is clear that he isn't a prophet, just a drunk. No one thought to point it out in 1970; yet, there is a reason this concert has sat in the vaults and never before been released. It shatters the myth of Jim Morrison. Yes, the Doors made some great music in the studio setting. Not that any of that is clear from this release. And, Britney Spears has her fans, too. That is the point: listening back to this night in 1970, Morrison sounds nothing like a noble prophet , more, like another generation's Britney Spears. Morrison, for the record, likes screaming, "Alright" over and over instead of saying, "Y'all."
Not much difference there.