2011-01-24

The Fisher Lizard King

Not too long ago, I got sucked into another viewing of Oliver Stone's bloated Doors movie.

(To clarify - pretty much everything Oliver Stone does is bloated. One night back in college, my best friend Chuck and I got higher than Cheech & Chong on a Concorde and went to see JFK. Stoned out of our gourds as we were, we still recognized it as the bloated filmic turd it was, and we were totally open-minded to any kind of conspiracy theory going around at the time.)

Other than Val Kilmer, and the unintentional hilarity of Kyle McLachlan as Ray Manzarek, there is not much going for this movie. And yet I watched it. I sat there on my couch and watched the whole thing. And it got me to thinking about The Doors, and how I can never really tell if I'm ambivalent, fascinated, or entirely disdainful when it comes to this band and its "legacy." Let's go with "mixed feelings," shall we?

Because if I really sit here and do the math, I'm looking at a jazz combo with really crappy lyrics sung by a dude who thought he was Rimbaud reincarnated. Which is why it was rock and roll. Go ahead and bring the hate, Doors fans. Deep down you know I'm right.

Just about every band that has had one of its key members die before his or her time is guaranteed to reap certain unfortunate benefits, ranging from the outright deification of said member to validation in the form of scholarly tomes regarding the band's significance. Nowhere is this more the case than with The Doors. And nowhere else in pop culture are you going to find as many scavengers posing as self-appointed flame keepers and experts.

I don't know what to make of Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, who claims to be his widow, because they did some kind of pagan binding ceremony 40 years ago. On one hand, she's like the dotty creative writing teacher who probably has a lot of gargoyles and geodes and wizard statues in her office. On the other, she's like that one ill-advised dalliance you had in your early twenties who still insists you were "soulmates" years after the fact. Only Jim's not around to roll his eyes at her.

Similarly, I am pretty sure that Jim would want to give Ray Manzarek a good slap in the puss. My God, what a self-important git he is. Whole drinking games can be created around an interview with Ray Manzarek. Whenever he mentions he was in The Doors - drink. Whenever he refers to Jim Morrison as a "shaman" - drink. Whenever the camera pans onto him hunched over his keyboard grinning like a plastic Halloween skull - drink. I will always give Manzarek grudging props for producing the first four X albums, but the guy is a pompous ass. The only bigger pompous ass is Oliver Stone.

And this ultimately leads me to the link my friend Jeff sent me, from a guy who may or may not be Jim Morrison. Of all the dead-celebrities-who-aren't-actually-dead hoaxes, this one's pretty good. I like the fact that he admits straight off that his poetry was pretentious, because ALL poetry is inherently pretentious. And he more or less calls Manzarek a tool, which is hilarious. But is it REALLY Jim Morrison? Here, for your consideration, is a "current" photograph:

Awesome. It's the kind of picture that you have to look at a couple of times, like, "You know, that DOES kind of look like the guy." And he's in hip waders. I love the idea of Jim Morrison as a caustic old spore living somewhere in Canada, fishing and calling Ray Manzarek a tool on MySpace. It's so insane that it could almost be plausible. If it's Jim Morrison for real, I love him. If it's not, I love him anyway.

lisamcc at 3:48 p.m.

4 comments so far
sam
2011-01-25 00:31:44
ok i would agree with you up till the point where if you go watch that video of the doors at the hollywood bowl it gives you a different perspective. they didn't take themselves all that seriously, everyone else did.
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Mike Burchett
2011-01-25 01:17:09
I had a roommate the insisted on hanging a pencil version of the "Jim Morrison With No Shirt" picture up in our college apartment. Hence, I still hate The Doors.
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LisaMcC
2011-01-25 01:47:08
Sam - I don't doubt that they initially didn't buy their own hype. But Ray Manzarek most certainly does now.

Burchett - thank God. Because if you'd come on here trying to convince me that they're awesome, I'd have to seriously doubt that we're related.
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Jeff
2011-01-25 05:37:40
Interesting page, eh? At least Myspace is good for something these days. That geezer damn well appears as if it could be Morrison circa now. Stranger things have happened.

I appreciate your take, particularly the title. Heh. And I myself grinned at how you painted Manzarek as a plastic Halloween decoration! [It conjured the image of "Made in China" embossed on the back of his noggin.] He always brought to mind the Peanuts' Schroeder, if Schroeder became corporeal and grew up to be a smug prick who knew nothing of shame. But ya gotta love Agent Cooper in that blond Oliver Stone brand fright wig! I think a high school drama department could drum up a more realistic rug. Meanwhile, I think of party-line Doors hatred as the flip-side of blind Velvet Underground worship. Again, nothing's black and white.

It's a given that every hipster band and their brother-in-law's ex-wife's gynecologist's former college-era band name-drops the Velvets as an influence. And while the Doors certainly are responsible for spawning shittier/more-mainstream brethren that the V.U., for every lion-maned metal band that donned leather and lascivious asininity, Morrison and Co. also helped pave the way for self-professed punk/post-punk fans the likes of the Stooges, Sex Pistols, and Joy Division. As for Jimbo, dead or alive, I dig that the Free Morrison Myspace stresses gauging his impact with regards to the context of his times.

Morrison, like Lou Reed, may have had his buffoonish moments [and who among us hasn't?], but rendering him as a 21st century cartoon is too easy, especially for the misinformed and/or Oliver Stoned.

This concludes my lame attempt at a robust Lester Bangs.
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