Jim Morrison © Manfred Rehm
47 years ago "Doors" frontman Jim Morrison died. Fans are still fascinated by him today. In the meantime, Morrison, who would now have turned 75, is also taken seriously as a poet.
The room is dark, only a spotlight illuminates the stage. A young man lying on the floor. He breathes heavily, otherwise no sound is heard. Then he laughs defiantly in the audience's face, rolls around on stage, shouts out. "The future's uncertain and the end is always near," he sings."
The lyrics of "Roadhouse Blues" will come true. Jim Morrison, singer of the American rock band "The Doors," dies in Paris at the age of only 27. With their performances, the band coined the term rock theater, moving between psychedelic rock music and something new, unknown.
Where does the band name "The Doors" come from??
Born 75 years ago, on 8. December 1943 in Florida, the future world star wrote his first poem when he was only nine years old. In his student days in Los Angeles he founded the "Doors". The name comes from a quote by the English poet William Blake:
"If the gates of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite."To create a transition between this world and the next, to expand human perception – this artistic goal linked the musicians of the 1960s with artists of the ilk of Charles Baudelaire, Ernest Hemingway or Arthur Rimbaud.
A double life?
But the success had destructive consequences. Drugs and alcohol took their toll, as they did on his idols. And Morrison always seemed to find the role of rock star double-edged. In the 2009 documentary "When You're Strange," there is a scene in which the "Doors" arrive at an airport.
Every musician gives his name and instrument. The singer is the last to be asked for his name. "Oh," he says, "Jim."When asked about his occupation, he only responds with a boyish laugh. It is a magical moment – and in retrospect also a sad one. For all his escapades, Morrison took music seriously. He regarded the stage show as the creation of a new, a kind of in-between world.
Sex symbol and teen idol
On the one hand, at the height of success, he declared that only on stage he really opened up. On the other hand, he felt increasingly uncomfortable, highly stylized as a sex symbol and teen idol. He moved to Paris and wrote poetry. Shortly before he left the country, a U.S. court ied a warrant for the singer's arrest for allegedly making obscene gestures during a concert. It was only in 2010 that he was posthumously acquitted.
Paris, where he felt close to the idols of the past and at the same time believed to recognize a better future, was for Morrison a state of limbo and at the same time an ordeal. He died before he could find a compromise. The cause of death remains unclear. The common version: he died of heart failure and was found dead in his bathtub. Of course, there are always new doubts about this theory.
People make pilgrimage to his grave
Morrison had visited the famous artists' cemetery Pere Lachaise in the east of Paris a few weeks before his death – and was fascinated by its peace and beauty. He became his own final resting place. Nearly 50 years after his death, hundreds of fans still make pilgrimages to his fenced grave day after day.
Not only a fence separates them from their idol. The inconspicuous gravesite is also under video surveillance, and the posting of graffiti is punishable by fines of up to 15.000 euros fined. Tourists, meanwhile, can also book "memorial trips" and walk in Morrison's footsteps through the French capital.
"When the Music's Over"
The inscription on Morrison's tombstone alludes to Greek mythology and the rock star's self-staging as a returned Dionysus. "Kata Ton Daimona Eaytoy" it says, "according to his own mind". Whether the fence would also be in Morrison's sense, however, may be doubted. The ballad "When the Music's Over" laments the terrible state of the earth, from which people would have taken the freedom with their fences.
These and other of Morrison's poems are read in universities today – the fulfillment of a dream cherished during his lifetime to be taken seriously as a poet.