Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend

I recommend this book by Stephen Davis! First, it's comprehensive, well-written and truly interesting. (His research and contacts are cited at the back.) Unlike other bios you will find on Jim Morrison, this book is written in linear fashion and does not jump around, leaving the reader confused. You begin to get a good sense of Jim's development from the time he was a teenager. Unfortunately, it does take many years to discover the reality of a celebrity's existence... While they are alive their reputations will be protected to some extent, so it is often after death that the public will learn what drove a celeb to do what they do. This is one of those books that, I feel, tells it like it really was. It's a sad read, but it is compassionately and honestly written. I love how Stephen Davis develops the two sides of Jim's personality: the sensitive poet and student; the shamanistic freedom-fighter; the romantic and the troubadour... (That side of Jim we would all like to believe in forever, and this was his soul talking to us.) The other side being the hitchhiker, the rebel, the drunk, the chauvinist, the redneck and potential murderer. It becomes evident Jim Morrison suffered from neglect as a kid. His father wasn't nurturing, perhaps actually severely abusive in ways Jim could never name. His life became a statement of rebellion. He was a mentally challenged young man. He had panic attacks and seizures. He was inhibited and shy; he was also a bully. Prior to these situations one is left wondering if Jim, as a child, ever truly felt safe. He was acclimated to death at an early age; also the mis-use of power over others who were helpless. He wasn't able to discipline himself because he did not respect authority (unless they were writers or dead poets). He was too smart for his own pants. After reading this book I get the impression Jim struggled to find intellectual equals. He knew he could easily exploit people through their fears of freedom and truth. He liked to push everyone's buttons. He made this his destiny. This book brings me to believe he became apathetic once he realized most of the people around him were living through him vicariously. So even though he had great fun being the lead singer for The Doors, he quickly outgrew them. He was trapped by the prestige of money and fame. He didn't know how to cope with it. He was an old soul who understood that everything is illusion, so he played with people's illusions. He was not delusional so much as he understood life is not all about living in emotion. When it came to other people and their emotions, he must have felt stifled and suffocated. Jim Morrison was drunk and stoned on LSD for over half his life. He was able to get away with creating all kinds of trouble because people seldom called him on it. With alcohol and LSD, Jim cultivated bravado and used his intelligence to make statements about choices, and about freedom, through his poetry and music performances

I can't disagree that Davis uses conjecture more than would be preferred in a well-researched biography. However - he scores big with his on-the-record accounts from Alain Ronay about what really happened in Paris the week of July 3, 1971. Lots of reviews have complained that there is "no new information", but I've read all the Morrison books available, in print and out, and until now I'd never read an account of the undertaker arriving at Jim's and Pam's apartment to pack his corpse in ice. Have any of YOU? Didn't think so. Highly recommended.

...would have to be my favorite section of this exhaustive and telling memoir. Jim Morrison's long, slow slide into depression, hopeless alcoholism and his inevitable death is one of the most heartbreaking stories I've ever read. The details of his final hours, his violent illness in the early morning of July 3, 1971, his final call of.."Pam, are you there?" and his body being found in a tub of bloody water (smiling)and his eventual burial in Pere' Lachaise with only a handful of people present is so poignant it actually makes me wonder what was going through his mind during his last days. While author Davis over-analyzes The Doors live performances and the social, political atmosphere of the times, his narrative style is clear, concise and always engaging, this is a brisk read for a volume nearly 500 pages in length. A Fascinating Book about A Fascinating and Misunderstood Young Man. Highly Recommended.

Stephen Davis outdoes himself and his previous classic of rock biography with his new book. Well, in my opinion, Jim Morrison is inherently more interesting than the boys of Led Zeppelin, though both flirted with the dark magic of Kenneth Anger. And also now, because Morrison is dead, Davis doesn't need to concern himself much with libel laws, except to protect thr reputation of the innocent who are alive. His focus is on the paradox of ontology, of Morrison's being, and why is it that a boy who on the surface led a pretty privileged suburban life wound up living as an adult a life of creativity, unhappiness, and mystery. No other writer has come close as this to explaining Morrison's art in terms of his childhood and his background, and partly Davis' success stems from his finger on the pulse of US and world history during the 1940s and 1950s. We see Morrison very much in tune with contemporary developments in music, poetry, art and cinema, showing that he was not some isolated genius, but part of an interweb of action and reaction that accompanied the Cold War and its discontents. If, as Davis alleges, Morrison was the victim as a teen of sexual abuse by someone within his own family, a military figure at that, it would go a long way towards explaining how "The End," etc, came to be written.