Jim Morrison and the Doors wield an unquestionable influence on popular music and the mainstream, but behind the rock’n’roll myths and the monstrous creation the band called Jimbo, there were four young men in search of something mightier.
Led by Jim Morrison’s intellectual capacity and thirst for discovery, the band explored its dark themes from a distinctly prophetic and Western perspective: spirituality, drugs, political, environmental and social concerns all played a role – it was the ’60s after all. But while Beat poetry, William Blake and Arthur Rimbaud swirled in Morrison’s mind, and the band laid down tracks that followed jazz, classical and Far East patterns, they more often than not landed at the center of the blues. Lured by its nighttime rhythm, its cinematic storytelling abilities and inescapable American history, the band resisted, but Jim’s connections to its rhyme schemes and emotional depths won out in the end: The blues is at once The Doors’ known and secret influence – among others explored here – and Morrison was haunted by them.
Chased by the stealthy demon alcohol until the end, and horrified by a past and future all too real to him, this telling of the Doors often-told story makes new connections with the subconscious tidal wave that carried Morrison from Gulf Coast Florida to California gold.
