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Hunter S. Thompson on Jim Morrison & The Doors
Byrnzie
Posts: 21,037
Hunter S. Thompson, having just installed a super-high-powered satellite TV receiver, describing
some of the more fucked up and cool shit he can now pick up:
Last night I pulled in a hazy black and white signal that was not even listed. It was an old Jim Morrison concert, or maybe a pirated video. These things are never made clear.
The Bird scans 22 satellites from West to East, six or eight seconds apart—maybe 200 channels full of old movies and Jesus freaks and raw network news feeds from places like WXYZ in Detroit, along with NASA transmissions from Houston and 40-year-old stag films out of Mexico City.
There is too much lame garbage—far more than a sane man can stand. With the right kind of equipment—or even the wrong kind, and a fine hand on the knobs—you can pick up the collected speeches of Henry Kissinger, a censored version of “Deep Throat”, and 101 Famous Games of the Harlem Globetrotters. There is no end to it: all day and all night, in some kind of relentless auto-reverse that never sleeps.
But you don’t get a lot of Jim Morrison. That is what we call a Special—straight black-and-white footage of Crazy Jim on stage in the old days, with a voice like Fred Neal’s and eyes smarter than James Dean’s and a band that could walk with the King, or anybody else. There were some nights when the Doors were the best band in the world.
Morrison understood this, and it haunted him all his life. On some nights he was noisy and lewd, and on others he just practiced—but every once in a while he would get it into his head to go out and dance with the big boys, and on a night like that he was more than special. Jim Morrison could play music with anybody.
One of these days we will get around to naming names for the real rock’n’roll Hall of Fame—in that nervous right now realm beyond Elvis and Chuck Berry and Little Richard—and the talk will turn to names like Bob and Mick, and to tunes like Morrison Hotel.
Play it sometime. Crank it all the way up on one of those huge obsolete wire-burning MacIntosh amps and 80 custom-built speakers. Then stand back somewhere on the mainbeams of a big log house and feel the music come up through your femurs...ho, ho...and after that you can always say, for sure, that you once knew what it was like to hear men play rock’n’roll music.
some of the more fucked up and cool shit he can now pick up:
Last night I pulled in a hazy black and white signal that was not even listed. It was an old Jim Morrison concert, or maybe a pirated video. These things are never made clear.
The Bird scans 22 satellites from West to East, six or eight seconds apart—maybe 200 channels full of old movies and Jesus freaks and raw network news feeds from places like WXYZ in Detroit, along with NASA transmissions from Houston and 40-year-old stag films out of Mexico City.
There is too much lame garbage—far more than a sane man can stand. With the right kind of equipment—or even the wrong kind, and a fine hand on the knobs—you can pick up the collected speeches of Henry Kissinger, a censored version of “Deep Throat”, and 101 Famous Games of the Harlem Globetrotters. There is no end to it: all day and all night, in some kind of relentless auto-reverse that never sleeps.
But you don’t get a lot of Jim Morrison. That is what we call a Special—straight black-and-white footage of Crazy Jim on stage in the old days, with a voice like Fred Neal’s and eyes smarter than James Dean’s and a band that could walk with the King, or anybody else. There were some nights when the Doors were the best band in the world.
Morrison understood this, and it haunted him all his life. On some nights he was noisy and lewd, and on others he just practiced—but every once in a while he would get it into his head to go out and dance with the big boys, and on a night like that he was more than special. Jim Morrison could play music with anybody.
One of these days we will get around to naming names for the real rock’n’roll Hall of Fame—in that nervous right now realm beyond Elvis and Chuck Berry and Little Richard—and the talk will turn to names like Bob and Mick, and to tunes like Morrison Hotel.
Play it sometime. Crank it all the way up on one of those huge obsolete wire-burning MacIntosh amps and 80 custom-built speakers. Then stand back somewhere on the mainbeams of a big log house and feel the music come up through your femurs...ho, ho...and after that you can always say, for sure, that you once knew what it was like to hear men play rock’n’roll music.
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A TRUE legend.
Fear and Loathing is one of the funniest books I ever read!
And as for Jim, well he was f***ing Jim Morrison...enough said! I would have loved to have seen what Hunter did.
*Ed Solo: Detroit 06-26-2011, Chicago 06-29-2011*
He is very dead. Johnny Depp shot his ashes out of a cannon a few years ago?
Any one here get to see Ed play with the Doors?
(I won't spend money on Morrison's poetry.. It's really terrible, in my opinion)
You can find it in 'Generation of Swine' (1988).
A leisure read back in university. Appealed to me because in my most influential time, The Doors were one band that reigned supreme for me and my circle of close pals. The Doors were a fallback band and we could rely on them to make the appropriate mood whenever we needed the appropriate mood.
Morrison Hotel (Peace Frog, Maggie McGill) was a great album, but one I liked- that I could never convince my friends to like as much as me- was Soft Parade.
Opening lyrics to title song:
Morrison at his finest:
When I was back there in seminary school
There was a person there
Who put forth the proposition
That you can petition the Lord with prayer
Petition the lord with prayer
Petition the lord with prayer
You cannot petition the lord with prayer!
Awesome song break:
Can you give me sanctuary
I must find a place to hide
A place for me to hide
Can you find me soft asylum
I can't make it anymore
The Man is at the door...
And then classic Doors. Fuking awesome!
some have scoffed at soft parade
but i fucking LOVE it
"what a long, strange trip it's been"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf9soeYILDQ
All of Jim's lyrics came FROM his poetry, so I've never understood when people say they like his lyrics but not his poetry. It was all the same stuff.
"To question your government is not unpatriotic --
to not question your government is unpatriotic."
-- Sen. Chuck Hagel