Jim Morrison Top 10 Commandments 0607

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Special Report - $47

The Top 10 Commandments of Jim Morrison

Priceless Prescriptions for the Soul More gloppy, pretentious, pseudosurrealistic, hyperliterary, quasi-mystical prose has been written about The Doors than about any rock group ever. Whenever The Doors are mentioned in print, the similes fly like shrapnel in an air raid. They are unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged, they are the messengers of the devil, they are the patricide kids, the Los Angeles branch of the Oedipus Association, the boys next door (if you live next door to a penitentiary, a lunatic asylum or a leather shop). So say the metaphor makers anyway.

Lilian Roxon, Rock Encyclopedia, 1969

Jim Morrison just won’t fade away. Despite many attempts over the years

to put the final nail in his coffin and banish him forever from our

consciousness, The Doors are as popular as ever. Lots of critics said the group

wouldn’t last, but millions of fans of all ages continue to say otherwise.

Unlike most other music from the 60’s, The Doors are still fresh, compelling,

and relevant. For a band that was dismissed by major rock critics like Lester

Bangs, Greil Marcus, Robert Christgau, and Dave Marsh (to name only a

few), the list of what some might call astonishing facts about The Doors goes

on and on. Consider the following:

In 2010, the hit television program Cold Case featured all Doors music in

an episode called Metamorphosis. In 2000, National Public Radio selected

Light My Fire as one of the NPR 100, its “list of the most significant American

musical works of the last century.” In 1999, twenty‐eight years after


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Morrison’s death, he was chosen by a live VH‐1 studio audience as the #1

frontman in all of rock and roll. 45 million Doors albums have been sold since

1991, a year in which Caryn James wondered “what the fuss is about” in her

review of Oliver Stone’s The Doors. Morrison’s grave in Pere Lachaise is one

of the top Paris tourist destinations and is said to be the 3rd most visited

celebrity gravesite on the planet. People from all over the world make it a

destination, not just a place to visit while in Paris. The word “pilgrimage” has

been used by various writers trying to figure out the continuing allure.

Morrison’s legacy is still highly controversial, with some calling him an

intrepid seer and others a mock‐Dionysian sex god. No one doubts the

genius of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, or The Rolling Stones, but The Doors’

artistry is still widely debated and often ridiculed. Even today. In early 2011,

Alex von Tunzelmann said this about the Oliver Stone film: “Itʹs a bloated,

pompous, unbalanced film, which looks great but has nothing going on

beneath the surface. This is the biopic Jim Morrison deserved.” In 2010,

Stephen Holden summed up Morrison as “faintly ludicrous” and “a

charismatic male pin‐up.” In 1991, George Will pilloried Morrison in

Slamming The Doors, his double‐length Newsweek diatribe: “Jim Morrison is

dead, dead as a doornail. He has been since 1971, when he expired, bloated

and burnt out, in a bathtub in Paris at 27, not a moment too soon. His life was

a bad influence.” Dave Marsh wrote in 1979 that The Doors were the most

“overrated group in rock history.” Many people apparently agree with

Marsh, Will, and von Tunzelmann. But anyone who thinks that there is

“nothing going on beneath the surface” of Jim Morrison is very badly

mistaken and missing out on something of extreme importance.


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This Special Report focuses on Morrison’s Commandments for breaking

through to higher consciousness and self‐knowledge. I am not going to

explain the continuing popularity of The Doors and their meaning in any

detail. I happen to think that they are the most underrated group in rock,

despite all the accolades, but I haven’t listened to 10,000 bands. Here, I am

mainly interested in what Morrison did in order to have us reach higher

knowledge. As I see it, Jim Morrison was a fearless explorer of the unknown

who made an amazingly profound discovery of universal significance.

Morrison journeyed to the edge of consciousness and brought back findings

of great importance to all of us. He had something of the utmost magnitude

to teach EVERYONE. And I mean EVERYONE. If you can fog a mirror, this

includes you.

There is unique healing power in the music of The Doors, and Morrison

wants you to experience it for yourself. He knows that the music can take

you to places you’ve never been, places you want to go. The nourishment

Morrison offers in songs like Soul Kitchen goes way, way beyond chicken

soup. I think it can be argued that The Doors created the ultimate self‐help music.

The Doors may well be the most important tool you will ever find to help

you on your journey towards self‐discovery and actualization. It is certainly

one of the easiest and most pleasurable. One reason The Doors continue to

have so many fans of all ages is that the music sounds so good.

My first real attraction to The Doors came from the lyrics. Something

about Morrison’s words made them quite different from other songs on the

radio in the 60’s. Instead of boy meets girl, teen heartbreak, and fun in the

sun, we had someone who sang about the unconscious, travel, snakes, and


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freedom. I happen to love the sound of The Doors, but if the lyrics were

devoid of meaning like most pop fare, there would hardly be any staying

power. The Doors would just be another flash in the pan. Does anyone listen

to The Association, The Box Tops, the Strawberry Alarm Clock, Donovan, or

the Turtles, all of whom had huge hits in 1967? Where are they now? Are any

of them in regular rotation on radio stations around the world? Was any of

their music recently included by Rolling Stone readers on the list of Top 10

songs of the 60’s? I don’t think so.

Anyone who calls Morrison “pretentious,” “banal,” “evil,” “satanic,” or

“nihilistic” doesn’t have the slightest idea of what The Doors were all about.

Sex, drugs, rebellion, and rock and roll hardly begin to sum up the group, yet

this is how The Doors have often been defined. Instead, Morrison was the

living embodiment of the artist and shaman who combined mythology and

music to interpret what Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers called “the divinity

inherent in nature.” Morrison used a “secret alphabet” (Soul Kitchen) and

spoke in a “new language” (The WASP). He provided symbols and signposts

to guide us, using the hero’s journey as a dominant theme throughout his

work.

The hero’s journey ultimately leads to a treasure of one kind or another.

Morrison coined the phrases “the only solution” (Shaman’s Blues) and “the

gold mine” (The End) to symbolize the extraordinary prize that he had found.

These pairs of three words each are extremely profound. They stem from a

coherent and positive philosophy, not from nihilism, eternal dread, or the

abyss. They represent a mental discovery that makes Morrison much more

than just an entertainer or a singer or a poet or a sex symbol or a chick


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magnet. He may have been all of these, but he was also a thinker of the

highest caliber.

Follow the Top 10 Commandments and acquire the secret knowledge that

Morrison achieved. Morrison knew the extraordinary power of Doors music

to transform consciousness and change lives for the better. That’s why he

said, “If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the

limited ways in which they see and feel.” Enjoy the music and find yourself

on the journey of your life. This is the beginning, not the end.

Before we look at the Commandments, a few notes about my list. First, all

are from a Morrison song or poem. Songs by guitarist Robby Krieger like

Light My Fire and Touch Me may be absolutely first‐rate, but they are hardly

major compositions like The End or When The Music’s Over. Second, the

Commandments are all in the affirmative. They are not prohibitions, as in the

Bible’s “thou shalt not kill.” They stand for positive actions that Morrison

wanted us to take. Third, I wanted to make sure that you can put “thou

shalt” at the beginning of each Commandment so that the phrase reads like

an order. Example: “thou shalt” break on through.

This rule means that important Morrison declarations like “You cannot

petition the Lord with prayer” (The Soft Parade) don’t make the cut. Also left

out are exquisite lines like “Some call it heavenly in its brilliance. Others,

mean and rueful of the western dream” (The WASP). These lyrics may not

qualify as Commandments, but they and many more gems are absolutely

essential if one is to understand Morrison’s timeless vision and what it means

for each of us. The late Lester Bangs, far and away the worst Doors detractor

and cynic, pejoratively said that “Yew CAN‐NOT pe‐TISH‐SHON the Lo‐


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WARD with PRAY‐er” was a “Bozo moment” and a “drunken yowling

sermon.” On the contrary, Morrison is dead sober when he shouts out his

rebuttal to a proposition he says he heard in seminary school. (By the way,

Morrison’s voice‐as‐instrument must be heard to be believed.) Morrison’s

declaration is an unqualified indictment of the notion of a personal God. It is

based on profound illumination.

Sandy Pearlman once mocked Morrison by saying, ʺAs if, there in the

background, a great world system can somehow be perceived.ʺ Pearlman

was far from alone in his misunderstanding of Morrison’s vision. Despite

such ridicule, that world system is there. It exists independently of Morrison

and is available to all of us. And no world system outranks it in importance.

That’s why Morrison called it “the only solution.”

The depth and profundity of the hidden meaning behind The Doors

makes the mysteries of the The Da Vinci Code, The Secret, and the CIA

Kryptos puzzle look like childʹs play. I say that with all due respect. A

detailed examination of the treasure that Morrison found is beyond the scope

of this Special Report, but you can learn more in my book Jim Morrison and

the Hero’s Journey.

* * * * * See two limited-time special offers at the end of this report.

• Join the fun on July 3 with the Celebration of the Lizard Online Festival. You could win a copy of The Doors Collection DVD or other valuable prizes!

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They come out on stage not to entertain but to preach, with all the disdain and cold fury of a revivalist preacher confronting an audience wallowing in sin.

This Way to the Egress, Newsweek

The Top 10 Commandments of Jim Morrison

I Break on through (to the other side)

II Wake Up!

III Dance on fire as it intends

IV Ride the snake to the lake

V Take a journey to the bright midnight

VI Surrender to the waiting worlds that lap against our side

VII Learn to forget

VIII Live in light of certain South

IX Take it as it comes

X Get here and we’ll do the rest


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Let’s examine the Commandments in reverse order, working up to the most

important one.

X Get here and we’ll do the rest

The End, The Doors

Kurt von Meier had discovered in him rich “suggestions of sex, death, transcendence.” What transcendence did he have in mind, death through sex or sex through death?

“The first on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, the second on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays.”

Bernard Wolfe, Esquire

This Commandment is from The End, the most important Doors

composition. The song is a priceless prescription for salvation emanating

from deep spiritual knowledge, not “nebulousness passing for depth,” as

Robert Christgau mistakenly claimed. Prior to the line “Get here and we’ll do

the rest,” Morrison has told us to head West. It might seem like the West is

California, but Morrison is actually referring to the mythological West. The

hero’s journey consists of three main elements: the hero, the dragon, and the

treasure. Each of these elements has numerous variations across time and

culture. The most widespread version has the hero venturing West in order

to confront and defeat a dangerous obstacle such as a dragon. When the hero

is triumphant, he is reborn at midnight in the East, attaining the treasure.

“Get here” is Morrison’s command to join him in overcoming the dragons,

which he once called the “dark forces.”


An American Prayer, An American Prayer

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IX Take it as it comes

Take It As It Comes, The Doors

Their intentions were quasi-profound, but their music was fairly pedestrian, and the bulk of Morrison's opaquely platitudinous lyrics was chuckleheaded word spinning….saturnalia, incestuous rape, and other debauched sensualisms were the working themes, but they were the narcissistic fantasies of an imaginary sybarite.

Timothy White, Rock Lives

In this Commandment, “Take it as it comes,” Morrison tells us to take life

as it unfolds. Elsewhere in the song, he tells us to slow down. The

breakthrough to freedom that Morrison urges takes place when we achieve

stillness and a quiet mind. Liberation takes place at what T.S. Eliot calls “the

still point.” We must be completely in the present, free of fear, desire, and

anticipation. (This song was said to have been written for Maharishi Mahesh

Yogi, Founder of the Transcendental Meditation Program.)

VIII Live in light of certain South

Something in the combination of the lyrical and musical vibrations created by this band has yet to be explained. Given only 27 years on this planet, Jim Morrison became possibly the most mysterious and controversial rock and roll star in history.

Jim Ladd

Morrison had recorded his own poetry in the studio in December, 1970.

Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore set some of it to music in

An American Prayer, released in 1979. (An American Prayer is said to be the

top‐selling poetry album in history.) “Wow, I’m sick of doubt” precedes the


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line “Live in light of certain South.” Morrison, who has attained the treasure,

has gotten beyond doubt. He has achieved the light (“the gold mine”), and

one aspect of what I call “gold mine knowledge” is complete certainty.

Morrison wants us to experience this state of zero doubt, hence his command

“Live in light.” An American Prayer is Morrison’s final poetic summation.

VII Learn to forget

Soul Kitchen, The Doors

Of all creative bands in the history of rock music, the Doors may have been the most creative. Their first album contains only masterpieces and remains virtually unmatched. Jim Morrison may well be the single most important rock frontman. He is the one who defined the rock vocalist as an artist, not just a singer… They are the closest thing rock music has produced to William Shakespeare.

Piero Scaruffi

In order to experience higher consciousness, you need to let go of false

notions. You need to “learn to forget,” or unlearn, much of what you know or

think you know. It’s like peeling away the layers of an onion to get to the

core. Here, the layers represent falsehoods and illusions, and the core is final

truth. Campbell noted the ancient idea that the transcendent lies within each

of us, waiting to be discovered. The Hindu concept of maya comes to mind,

where much of what we think we know is an illusion, a false way of

perceiving reality. Breaking through to higher consciousness involves

forgetting many untruths.


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VI Surrender to the waiting worlds that lap against our side Moonlight Drive, Strange Days

If velvet came an inch deep, if endless bits of baklava never began to cloy, they’d arouse sensations like those that invade you when you listen to The Doors. You mingle in the sweet, rich sensuousness of the music; the music mingles in you. Listeners close their eyes and smile beatifically. It is as if The Doors play on some secret frequency that directly affects the smile center of the brain.

Susan Szekely, Teen Talk, New York Post

This Commandment is one of surrender. Morrison is telling us to

surrender to the life force or higher power that informs the universe. This is

not the same as resignation, by the way. One might call it active surrender.

The previous line in Moonlight Drive is “Let’s swim to the moon, let’s climb

through the tide.” In mythology, water is a symbol of the unconscious as well

as rebirth (for example, the baptism ritual). The moon is associated with birth

and death, and with its phases, the notion of rebirth. Morrison instructs us to

explore the unconscious and make it conscious. There are parallels here and

elsewhere in the lyrics to the belly of the whale motif found in The Bible. (In

Star Wars and Harry Potter, the same theme of descent into the unconscious

takes on other forms.) Recall Morrison’s oft‐cited line “there are things

known and things unknown and in between are The Doors.” The very name

of the group has relevance. Here, doors symbolize a passageway from

ignorance to knowledge. Moonlight Drive was the first song Morrison sang to

Ray Manzarek on the beach in Venice and is the “origin” of The Doors.


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V Take a journey to the bright midnight

End of the Night, The Doors

What’s the difference between artistic ambition and pure pretentiousness? When one listens to the Doors, this question can never be far from one’s mind. Yes, the group often does blow open the namesake doors of perception in many a young child’s fragile eggshell mind, but these same minds also tend to reach a point at which they are ashamed at having been so transfigured. Once they break on through to the other side, they find themselves embarrassed to realize how little substance there is to the Doors’ parables of transgression. The garage-goth organ and the sinewy guitar figures remain alluring, perhaps, but the overriding silliness of Jim Morrison’s posturing, his portentous, overenunciated delivery and his egregious lyrical overreach, becomes impossible to ignore and all too easy to ridicule.

Rob Horning, Generation Bubble

“Take a journey to the bright midnight” refers directly to the

mythological journey of the hero. We have already seen its basic outline:

hero, dragon, treasure. This trinity is psychological, not physical. The hero

must overcome the danger in order to win the treasure and be reborn. “At

the nethermost point of the night sea journey, when the sun hero journeys

through the underworld and must survive the fight with the dragon, the new

sun is kindled at midnight and the hero conquers the darkness.” This passage

is from The Origins and History of Consciousness, by Erich Neumann. All

the elements of the hero’s mental journey are encapsulated here. In a story

from No One Here Gets Out Alive, by Danny Sugarman and Jerry Hopkins,

Morrison is said to have knocked The Origins and History of Consciousness

off his bookshelf when he threw an empty beer can at a wastebasket and

missed.

IV Ride the snake to the lake

The End, The Doors

I think that his importance should not be underestimated because I really think that his art was changing people. I think that when you walked out of a Doors concert, you walked out changed. Your perception was altered and it wasn’t some transitory drug-induced “wow I saw the light” kind of thing. It was something where Jim showed you. He got up there and either you said, “this guy is completely nuts and I’m never going to do this again” or you said “we can do anything. I can do anything.” To me he showed us all the possibility of change and the possibility of growth because he lived it and was it.

Bill Siddons

The snake is a timeless symbol with many meanings. Let me clear up any

misperceptions once and for all: snake does not equal penis in Morrison’s

usage. Morrison is of course wholly aware of Freud and others who may

reduce the snake to a body part (and I am oversimplifying here), but

Morrison uses the snake primarily as a symbol of consciousness. Like the

dragon, the snake can be an obstacle to be overcome in the West. It is also the

uroboros, a well‐known symbol of psychic liberation and freedom.

Images of the Snake Across Cultures


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The familiar image of the snake biting its own tail symbolizes the cyclic

nature of the universe: life from death, creation from destruction. Renewal,

regeneration, and rebirth are all highly associated with the snake, which

sheds its own skin.

In Buddhist mythology, the King Cobra often appears to the left of the

Buddha, protecting the Buddha from the elements. In a tale familiar to all

Buddhists, Amitābha is a Buddha of immeasurable radiance or infinite light.

Upon illumination, a great lake of bliss with lotus flowers appears. Morrison,

who tells us to “ride the snake to the lake,” is likely combining the snake of

consciousness with the illumination that ends at the lake. There are other

stories about snakes and ancient lakes in mythology, so I do not want to tie

The End to one specific myth. Suffice it to say that this is song involves very

complex imagery, and it took Morrison more than a year to complete.

The End is the most controversial song of The Doors. In 2010, Blender.com

ranked The Doors at #37 on its list of The 50 Worst Artists in Music History,

describing The End as “overblown screeds of nonsense.” Such a ridiculous

assessment shows how far we haven’t come in understanding The Doors. On

the other hand, Piero Scaruffi tells us that “The Doors are the closest thing

rock music has produced to William Shakespeare.” I don’t have more than

20,000+ CD’s like Scaruffi, but I doubt that any other group has produced the

quality and intensity of poetic drama that The Doors did.

One aside: the phrase “smooth hissing snakes of rain” appears in The

Celebration of the Lizard. Campbell talked to Moyers about seeing a movie “of

a Burmese snake priestess, who had to bring rain to her people by climbing

up a mountain path, calling a king cobra from his den, and actually kissing


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him three times on the nose. There was the cobra, the giver of life, the giver

of rain, as a divine positive figure, not a negative one.” Many of us think that

the snake is associated only with evil or with the downfall (the Garden of

Eden), but its symbolism can be both positive and negative. Morrison uses

the snake throughout his work, as it is one of the core symbols in all

mythology.

About The End, Morrison once said the following to New York Times

reporter Bernard Wolfe: “the theme is the same as in Light My Fire, liberation

from the cycle of birth‐orgasm‐death.”

III Dance on fire as it intends

When the Music’s Over, Strange Days

During a stage performance, Jim as the Dionysian reveler sang the modern myths and as the shaman he invoked a sensuous panic to make the words of the myths meaningful. He acted as if a concert were a ritual, a ceremony, a séance, and he was the medium communicating with the supernatural. He tried to shock people out of their seats, out of their ruts, out of their minds so they could view the other side of reality, if even for just a brief glimpse. His message was: break through any way you can, but do it now. Often the message was unfocused and so it got lost in the music, the myths, the magic and the mania.

Frank Lisciandro, An Hour for Magic

When the Music’s Over is Morrison’s second‐most important song. (Nick

Tosches made the absurd claim that this song and The End were the work of a

“pretentious fool.” You can view the music any way you want, but I say that

this was a very bad call.) The line prior to “Dance on fire as it intends” is “For

the music is your special friend.” In this section of the song, Morrison

comments on his own art and tells us that Doors music has intentions of its

own. The imagery of “Dance on fire” (as well as Krieger’s “Come on baby,


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light my fire”) is rich, complex, and universal. We’re way beyond “I want to

hold your hand” in terms of imagination and suggestiveness. Fire brings

destruction and ruin, but it also brings light and purification. Love is also

known as the eternal flame. The dance we are to experience through music,

which Morrison also calls “your only friend,” is one of transcendence,

salvation, and freedom. The unique music of The Doors intends that we find

ourselves. Morrison’s dictum is the same as the one at the entrance to the

Oracle of Delphi: “know thyself.”

II Wake Up!

The Celebration of The Lizard, The Doors in Concert

As for The Doors, I feel about them today much as I did when I composed the following review that wild July night thirty years ago: riff for riff, image for image, little red rooster for little red rooster, they were the most exciting rock and roll band America ever produced.

Tom Robbins, Seattle, July 1997

The Doors. Their style is early cunnilingual, late patricidal, lunchtime in the Everglades, Black Forest blood sausage on electrified bread, Jean Genet up a totem pole, artists at the barricades, Edgar Alien Poe drowning in his birdbath, Massacre of the Innocents, tarantella of the satyrs, L.A. pagans drawing down the moon The Doors….Jim Morrison, vocals. Morrison begins where Mick Jagger and Eric Burden stop. An electrifying combination of an angel in grace and a dog in heat. He becomes intoxicated by the danger of his poetry, and, swept by impious laughter, he humps the microphone, beats it and sucks it off. Sexual in an almost psychopathic way, Morrison's richly textured voice taunts and teases and threatens and throbs. With incredible vocal control and the theatrical projection of a Shakespearean star, he plays with the audience's emotion; like a child with its doll: now I kiss you, now I wring your neck….

Tom Robbins, Seattle, July 1967

Originally appearing on Absolutely Live, “Wake Up!” was the opening

to a section of The Celebration of The Lizard. This multi‐part song was written

for Waiting For the Sun, but only Not to Touch the Earth made it onto that


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album. Paul Williams noted Morrison’s tendency to scream “Wake Up”

before singing Light My Fire in concert: ʺWhich is funny, because I doubt that

anyone thinks it is a direct command (save Jim)—nothing about The Doors

sticks out enough to require special attention, and ʹWake Up!ʹ is just

perceived as another part of whatʹs there, whether the person is there or not.ʺ

Williams obviously doesnʹt get it. (Note that the word “Buddha” means “the

awakened one.” Morrison borrowed freely from both Eastern and Western

mythology and many religious traditions.)

From Morrisonʹs viewpoint, we are not awake if we have not been

reborn. Morrison screamed “Wake Up!” in an attempt to jolt his audience

into a heightened state of awareness. Williams’ “nothing about The Doors

sticks out enough to require special attention” completely misses the point.

This is not ordinary music, not by a long shot. In a line that I love, Janet

Maslin called The Doors “the 60’s most self‐important rock band.” If they

were, they had every reason to be. They were certainly the most important in

the overall scheme of things. Maslin also gave us another gem in her 1991

review of the Stone movie: “for anyone who took the Doors half as seriously

as the Doors took themselves….”


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I Break on through (to the other side)

Break on Through (to the other side), The Doors

“I think what we are looking for is a way of experiencing the world that will open to us the transcendent that informs it, and at the same time forms ourselves within it. That is what people want. That is what the soul asks for.”

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

The mother of all Morrison Commandments, “Break on through” is the

essential Doors credo. “The other side” is not death or the lack of restraint, as

many superficial critics have contended. Instead, “the other sideʺ represents

spiritual rebirth, and one of its prerequisites is spiritual death. It is clear from

the lyrics that “the other side” is beyond physical pleasure and ordinary

temporal reality. Morrison, who was mocked by Tosches for his “messianic

urgency,” wanted us to get past our fears and limitations. He wanted us to

experience the bliss and rapture of spiritual awakening that is the treasure of

the hero’s journey. He knew that Doors music could be a potent force for

achieving salvation and the Mind of God.

Those are my choices for The Top 10 Commandments of Jim Morrison.

They represent only the tip of the Morrison iceberg. One critic said that

“Morrison is levels,” and he was quite right. The music can be enjoyed on its

own by listeners who don’t know a thing about Buddhism, Greek tragedy,

Sir James Frazer, Blake, or Freud. One doesn’t even have to know English to

like the songs, for that matter. But there is depth and insight to the work that

can be fully appreciated only if you know Morrison’s inspirations and

sources. The way Morrison put words together is the main reason why The

Doors have lasted this long. The lyrics have gotten far too little attention,


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especially when compared to the massive coverage of Morrison as a “sex‐

and‐drug‐filled bad boy of rock.” Yes, sex sells, but it’s not even close to

Morrison’s legacy.

Many critics have focused almost exclusively on the bulge beneath

Morrison’s pants. Robert Christgau and Stephen Holden have never gotten

beyond their absurd impression of Morrison as shallow sex symbol and rock

god. They’ve been listening to The Doors all wrong for more than forty years. I

want you to avoid that fate. On the other hand, Michael Cuscuna interviewed

Morrison for DownBeat and found a totally different person from the one he

expected. He writes that he was initially “dismayed at the prospect of

encountering another rock ego.” However, he ends by saying, “in Jim

Morrison, I found to my surprise a beautiful human being who, not unlike

Charles Mingus, has been a victim of sensational publicity and harassment

by silly journalists.” The “silly” journalism may be a good read, but don’t

think that this gets you inside The Doors.

There is much more here than meets the ear. The musicianship of Ray

Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore can be quite sophisticated, not

to mention mesmerizing. Their use of Bach, Coltrane, Eastern music, the

blues, jazz, and other influences is often overlooked. Although Morrison was

the visionary leader of the band, the musicians brought the words to life and

created songs that still have an extraordinary power to communicate more

than 40 years later. When You’re Strange Executive Producer Dick Wolf (of

Law and Order fame) calls Doors music “hypnotic and complex.”

I urge you to go beyond the superficial and the obvious. Get inside

Morrison’s “secret alphabet” and “new language.” Experience the hidden


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treasure within and embark on a lifelong journey of self‐discovery. If you are

interested in opening the doors in your mind, sign up for my July 3

Celebration of the Lizard Online Festival and check out my book Jim

Morrison and The Hero’s Journey.

I’m the freedom man That’s how lucky I am

Jim Morrison, Universal Mind

My Story

Hello, thanks for reading, and let me introduce myself. Like others of my

generation, I remember hearing Light My Fire on the radio in 1967. It seemed

to be everywhere that summer. However, I thought then that The Doors were

just another pop group like The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones,

The Mamas and The Papas, and hundreds of others. In 1970, I started really

listening to the Doors, thinking that there might be something to the music. I

knew that Morrison had borrowed heavily from Blake, and his artistry

suggested that “Father, I want to kill you. Mother, I want to …” couldn’t be

dismissed as simply a rebel exorcising his Oedipus complex in order to shock

people and violate a taboo.

It seemed to me that The End had a “method to the madness.” If there was

any real meaning to the lyrics, I wanted to know what it was. Pete Johnson,

in a 1967 moment of “what was I not thinking” creativity, called the song

“singularly simple, overelaborated psychedelic non sequiturs and fallacies.”

Ooops. A lot of people have felt the same way about this song for decades.

Flash forward to Blender.com’s “overblown screeds of nonsense”


22

characterization. Despite the passage of more than 40 years, Jim Morrison’s

work is still far above the heads of many listeners.

I gradually became convinced that there was something “going on” that

wasn’t at all obvious to the casual listener. In 1972, when the three Doors

played in Boston, I was able to get a backstage pass and meet them. I also

literally ran into Dr. John, all dressed up in the door to his trailer on the

Boston Common. Who could forget such a sight? (He was recently inducted

into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.) Since then, I’ve been enjoying the music

and researching the group. I’ve collected dozens of books and countless

articles, albums, tapes, CD’s movies, interviews, and bootlegs. I’ve given

Doors lectures and spoken about them at numerous events.

I’m always interested in knowing what the newest take on The Doors is.

The band is no longer making music, but every so often the group re‐enters

the public consciousness. When the Oliver Stone movie came out, I was as

interested in global reactions to the film as the film itself. It is played

regularly on television even today.

The 2010 Morrison pardon for his Miami transgressions was another

occasion for a fresh round of debate about his legacy as well as that of the

60’s. The pardon was carried on the NBC Nightly News, with Brian Williams

saying that Morrison “remains a rock legend.” Such signs of Morrison’s

continuing appeal are omnipresent, from kids and adults wearing Doors t‐

shirts to the presence of Doors fan clubs around the world. Journalists and

critics pore over every Morrison factoid (true or untrue), and an

extraordinary myth surrounds him. It seems to grow in scope and stature as

time goes by.


23

The Doors have been scrutinized every which way but loose for more

than 40 years. In 1997, Geoff Barton wrote “you name it, the coals have been

raked over so often they’ve turned into brittle dust.” Yet despite all the

attention, Morrison is still the “best known, least understood” figure in rock

(to use Danny Sugarman’s 1979 phrase). Morrison’s words have been lost in

the swirl of sex, death, and controversy. His work remains elusive and

underappreciated. About the detractors, Morrison once said that The Doors

were the band “you love to hate.” I don’t care if you hate them; I want you to

understand them first.

In addition to being a Doors fanatic and the world’s leading authority on

the group, I am the author of God Does Not Play Dice: the Fulfillment of

Einsteinʹs Quest for Law and Order in Nature. I graduated from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was a Danforth Fellow in the

English PhD program at the University of California, Berkeley. I also have a

Master of Management from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University.

You can reach me at [email protected].

Praise for God Does Not Play Dice

“Very provocative, erudite, and solidly based on intelligent and logical thinking! Congratulations on making an excellent contribution to understanding the role of a higher intelligence in organizing the affairs of the universe!”

Pat McGovern, IDG Founder and Chairman, Co-founder of The McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT


24

Announcing the Long-Awaited Book

Jim Morrison and The Hero’s Journey: Inside The Doors to Salvation

and The Mind of God

Get on the Real Fast Track to Spiritual Ecstasy

Take the hero’s journey into the unknown and reap the extraordinary treasure of the life-changing music of Jim Morrison and The Doors. In the first book that really takes you inside Morrison’s stunning vision, I show how Doors music can transport you to transcendence, self-knowledge, and inner peace.

Morrison spoke in a “secret alphabet” (Soul Kitchen) and “new language” (The WASP), giving us symbols and signs to guide us on our individual quests. The music has survived in part because The Doors tapped directly into our unconscious mind and what scientists call the reptilian parts of the brain. Doors music has a way of getting inside you. It may well be the most important tool you will ever find to help navigate the soul’s journey.

Transform Your Consciousness

Jim Morrison and the Hero’s Journey provides you with the key to Morrison’s timeless vision and the revolutionary meaning of “the only solution.” It takes you inside the powerful and surprisingly fresh music as no other book can. Exploring Doors classics such as Light My Fire, The End, When The Music's Over, Shaman’s Blues, and The Soft Parade, it illuminates Morrison’s breakthrough and show how his “spiritual psychiatry” intends to bring you to the Mind of God.

No matter where you are in your search for meaning and self-knowledge, Jim Morrison and the Hero’s Journey can accelerate your progress. Experience the thrilling pleasure, unsurpassed intelligence, and mind-blowing rapture of the music of The Doors. Newbies, hard-core Doors fans, and cynics will all find new and valuable insights. Avoid the fate of critics who have been listening to The Doors all wrong for more than forty years. Don’t waste your time like they did. Find what your soul is asking for – now.

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“The time you wait subtracts from joy.”

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25

See Excerpts from Jim Morrison and the Hero’s Journey on the Next Page

Order now for only $12. Save 33%.

Enjoy special early-bird bonuses that take you

inside the music as never before. This is a pre-publication limited-time eBook offer. Take advantage now and get the following extras:

• Bonus 1. A free interactive 60-minute teleseminar that will take

you inside Morrison’s mind. Attendance is limited to the first 100 people so that I can answer your questions personally.

• Bonus 2. The key to a secret online vault giving you access to hours of rare and hard-to-find Doors interviews, television specials, concerts, music, memorabilia, and much more. Access is limited to 250. This treasure chest has been years in the making and is a must for any Doors fan.

• Bonus 3. Excerpts of work-in-progress until the complete PDF is available (Fall, 2011).

This amazingly generous offer may be withdrawn at any time, so Order Now! For the cost of a lunch, you could change your life. Don’t let the doors close without you.

You are protected by a full 60 day moneyback guarantee. If you are not 100% satisfied for any

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26

Excerpts from Jim Morrison and the Hero’s Journey Doors music is about what Joseph Campbell called “the soul's high adventure, the quest of mortals to grasp the reality of God.” Doors concerts were often rituals designed to bring audiences to new worlds. The Doors combined poetry, mythology, spirituality, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and tragedy to take you places you’ve never been.

* * * * *

Far from being “singularly simple, overelaborated psychedelic non sequiturs and fallacies” (Pete Johnson) or “nebulousness passing for depth” (Robert Christgau), The End is a cogent, mesmerizing, and priceless anti-Freudian prescription for salvation emanating from deep and authentic spiritual knowledge. Morrison’s vision of liberation means the overthrow, the obliteration, of the cockamamie construction known as the Oedipus complex.

* * * * *

Morrison’s “the only solution” is what all of us are searching for, whether we know it or not. The treasure at the end of the journey is psychological. As Campbell rightly observed, “God is an intelligible sphere – a sphere known to the mind, not to the senses.” This means that those such as Stephen Hawking who are searching for the Mind of God won’t find it at the Large Hadron Collider.

* * * * *

Morrison was much too deep and intelligent for Timothy White and many others to fathom. Although Morrison wanted to be understood by the intelligentsia, most were too unintelligent to make sense of what The Doors were all about. The idea of a rock star who had something important to say didn’t compute. Ignorance is not necessarily bad, but condemnation without the slightest understanding is one of the sins of criticism. And the list of bad critics goes on and on. Even forty years after Morrison’s death, newbies such as Alex von Tunzelmann (an Oxford grad, no less) serve up inane analyses that completely miss the point. Reviewing the Oliver Stone movie in early 2011, she says, “It's a bloated, pompous, unbalanced film, which looks great but has nothing going on beneath the surface. This is the biopic Jim Morrison deserved.” Yeah, right. In spite of such shallowness and stupidity (it started in 1966, over 45 years ago), the music of The Doors has survived. And then some.

* * * * *

One question that has repeatedly been asked over the past for years is “Why are The Doors still so popular?” After all, Don Heckman wrote the following in The New York Times the month after Morrison’s death: “The Doors presumably will fade into the vague anonymity that always drifted just below the surface of their music.” Less than a decade after Morrison’s death, Dave Marsh called him "misanthropic and pretentious" and argued that The Doors were "the most overrated group in rock history." In 1991, Janet Maslin commented on the group’s “surprisingly long-lived popularity.” (Quite frankly, I’m not sure why she was surprised.) George Will claimed in his 1991 “Slamming The Doors” diatribe that Morrison “was a bad influence” who “left behind some embarrassing poetry and a few mediocre rock albums” containing “ersatz profundity.” If these critics are right, why do Doors albums sell in huge quantities for a group that hasn’t made music in decades?

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