Top 10 Facts You Probably Did Not Know About Jim Morrison
Here are some cool and interesting facts you probably did not know about singer-songwriter, poet, lead vocalist and founder of The Doors, Jim Morrison.
Morrison loved philosophy, poetry, and 16th century literature at a young age. So at high school, he was known for his intelligence and his musical talents were unknown to everyone. When he attended the University of California, he pursued a career in film. He graduated from its film school with a degree in theater arts, not long before he formed The Doors that summer.
He should've been a mathematician or a doctor instead.
In several interviews, Morrison spoke about a traumatizing incident he witnessed during his childhood. He was in a car with his parents and grandfather traveling through New Mexico. During that, they witnessed that a "truckload of Indians" had hit another car. They were scattered all over the highway, bleeding to death. He referenced the incident in few of his songs and spoken-word tracks.
If you're a rockstar, it can sound kind of impossible to prefer a 50s country music artist over the so-called epic rock band Led Zeppelin, which was new at the time. But instead, Morrison often enjoys listening to artists who were popular in the past, such as classical music, Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra, or Elvis Presley. His favorite blues musician was Jimmy Reed.
Just before The Doors came on stage at The Ed Sullivan Show, they were not supposed to sing the original lyrics, as it contains references to drugs, but however they did. Ed Sullivan was filled with outrage and refused to shake hands with the band. So the band were just banned permanently from the show, instead of performing six more times. It paved a way for variety TV shows to hire grittier acts. You can tell how much Ed Sullivan hated rock and roll and hippies, as he tried to have Elvis Presley banned eleven years ago. They later went on to perform in The Smothers Brothers Comedy Show, which was one of, or the most controversial TV show at the time.
Just before The Doors skyrocketed to popularity with "Light My Fire", Morrison told all the band members that he would fake his death one day to help increased their notoriety. After Morrison's actual death in 1971, The Doors became more popular as they were about to break up due to the loss of Morrison.
After a concert in Miami on March 1, 1969, Morrison was in Jamaica, as he was smoking cannabis with his housekeeper. As he got more paranoid, he started freaking out at night, because he was starting to hallucinate that people were going to kill him. It was one of the most fearful events Morrison had.
Morrison wanted to release a poetry album called The Rise and Fall of James Phoenix in 1969, as he preferred it over the Absolutely Live album later released the following year, because the other Doors didn't like it. Morrison wanted the James Phoenix album to be made by a Philharmonic Orchestra.
When Morrison lived with Hungarian artist Eva Gardonyi for several months, he enjoyed listening to her ethnic folk albums from Eastern Europe and Africa. He liked Eva to dress up in black underwear and garter belts to pretend to be a stripper.
It took place at Tallahassee, Florida in 1963, when Jim Morrison was a UCLA film student before his musical aspirations. The mugshots are quite amusing to look at tho.
According to The Doors' publicist, he described Woodstock as Morrison did not see it as a "love festival" at all.