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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.”
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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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21
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”
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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.
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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
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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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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
reason, I will give you a full refund. You can’t lose.
“The time to hesitate is through.”
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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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