THE BOTTOM LINE ON JIM MORRISON'S VALUE AS AN ARTIST

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 Sometimes I get asked this question, may because I'm an old guy now who remembers the midnight bull sessions appraising the worth of pop stars: Was Jim Morrison really all that?

The Doors were a mixed bag for me; the first two albums are among the most important rock albums of all time, with the remainder alternating between the proverbial poles of brilliance and balderdash. As a band, they were simply sublime and unique, with the odd combination of blues, flamenco, classical, jazz, Artaud and epic theater being crafted in their hands to create a sound and feel that was singular and instantly identifiable. 

As a vocalist, Jim Morrison was often as evocative as the greatest fans proclaim, and it fit the half-awake twilight that seemed to be his constant state of consciousness. As a poet, though, I thought he was simply awful, fragmented, crypto-mystic surrealism that, save for some striking and memorable lines, collapsed from its flimsy elisions and obtuse vagaries. In his posthumous collections,, the pieces read too often like the notebook jottings of an introspective 17-year-old. I say that as one who was an introspective 17 year and is now an introspective 65-year-old. But the front man's low baritone had a rumbling, mulled-over quality that made even the worst images he  wrote sound urgent. 

It wasn't an uncommon habit of young aspiring poets of the day to pour over album lyric sheets provided by bands in an effort to discern deeply embedded meanings. It was a search for knowledge, another ageless activity among the species, and one can offer from experience that curious and impatient teens wanted it revealed at once, right now, immediately. Morrison's stoned swagger and crooning mysticism seemed just the man to serve up to an impatient that was in a hurry to grow up, or, altenately, given the singer's ongoing fascination with death, didn't want to grow up at all. Apocalypse now, right?

Morrison might have become the poet he wanted to be had he been able to write, edit, and finesse his work as he desired when he left for Paris. What I will say, though, is that being the vocalist in the Doors gave him the opportunity to go through his writings, his poems, and select many of the stronger passages for the band's more theatrical songs. The Doors, ironically seemed to be an institutional editor for Morrison's words, forcing the bard to decide which of his jottings was actually the most powerful, concise, emphatic.