Has it really been 44 years?

[jaxson50]

Jim Morrison died July 3, 1971, I was driving my girl friends VW bug driving her to work when the announcement was broadcast over the radio.

[SteveFord]

It doesn't look like he went to Africa to live the life of a poet/shaman and will pop back up, does it?

 

He was such a great talent but there just wasn't anyone to tell him to quit being such an idiot and sober up.

 

 

 

[jaxson50]

1435971032[/url]' post='1672661']

He was supposedly a drunk a-hole. The Doors were okay but not the status that they are elevated to.

 

Brian Jones also died on July 3, in 1969, but who cares if he was a asshole....tough crowd.

[jdgm]

He was such a great talent but there just wasn't anyone to tell him to quit being such an idiot and sober up.

 

This is basically it and could apply to quite a few who never came back.

Rebellion against paternal/parental authority was a lot of it in his case. But that was the 60s.

Morrison and many others who went the same way had big problems at a young age and ultimately were unable to surmount them.

 

However these problems were also part of the cause of their creativity. I haven't expressed it very well but I'm sure you get my meaning.

[jaxson50]

1436003432[/url]' post='1672780']

This is basically it and could apply to quite a few who never came back.

Rebellion against paternal/parental authority was a lot of it in his case. But that was the 60s.

Morrison and many others who went the same way had big problems at a young age and ultimately were unable to surmount them.

 

However these problems were also part of the cause of their creativity. I haven't expressed it very well but I'm sure you get my meaning.

 

I just like Morrisons voice, never really wanted to psychoanalysis him. He was a rock n roller who made some good music and died young. That list is long.

 

[RowdyMoon]

I just like Morrisons voice, never really wanted to psychoanalysis him. He was a rock n roller who made some good music and died young. That list is long.

+1

 

 

also July 4th is/was Alan Wilsons birthday sadly, another one of the 27 club, passed Sept 3 1970.

 

speaking Of Alan Wilson and Jim Morrison.......Morrison did sit in with Canned Heat for a couple of numbers Aug 15, 1970...a little over 2 weeks later Wilson would pass.......very rough pic of the event......Wilsons not in that pic tho

 

 

[SteveFord]

The Doors music has really stood the test of time.

 

If their first album was released today it would still knock everybody's socks off. Compare that album to the tripe which passes for music today. Taylor Swift? HA!

 

 

 

[sparquelito]

I had a conversation with Jim Morrison years ago in Paris. Maybe I can shed some light on this subject:

 

It was a chance meeting down in a cafe off the Rue de L’Unbathed, late summer 1970 I think.

I was sitting at a small table by myself, smoking Gauloises and trying to drink-off a small hangover I had going with a glass of Cabernet Swinevienon.

It wasn’t helping, as I recalled, so I began working on the whole bottle. (Nothing rinses those rough little sweaters off your teeth like a dry French red wine.)

 

I was just picking a fleck of cork off of my tongue when a deep voice rumbled off to my left.

“Don’t you hate it when that happens?” I turned and peered into the shade of the cafe awning. Seated at a table next to the brick wall was a long haired fellow with a substantial beard and aviator sunglasses.

I recognized him instantly, even with the facial hair and shades.

 

“Not really,” I responded as I contemplated the bit of cork under the morning sun, “Sometimes this is the only roughage I get all day.”

 

The fellow invited me over to his table, so I grabbed the bottle and vaulted the iron rail to join him. He shook my hand and introduced himself as Jimmy.

“You’re American, right?”, he inquired politely.

 

I replied that I was, and we sat in silence for a moment. I had recently affected a beret, and was failing in my attempt to grow a small goatee.

I explained that I was on a long sabbatical from school, and was summering in Paris. I just wanted to blend-in, I guess.

 

“Well, Maurice Chevalier you ain’t,” my new breakfast companion offered.

“Look, just because you’re living in Paris doesn’t mean you’ve got to try and be un bon Parisian. Look at me, I’m just a redneck, and I never try to pretend otherwise. These Frog’s will respect you more if you’ll just relax and be yourself.”

 

I thanked him for his advice, and poured us both a glass of the red.

 

“Say, Jimmy, you are Jim Morrison, aren’t you?”, I ventured. “I don’t want to be rude, but I thought Jim Morrison was a sophisticated, eclectic San Francisco poet. Not a redneck by any means.”

 

He raised his sunglasses for a moment and peered at me with his eyes, and then looked left and right before he responded. “Alright, you got me there. I WAS Jim Morrison the singer/poet for awhile, but not anymore. I got tired of living a lie.”

 

Jimmy topped off his glass and continued, “See, the popular music industry, and even the Haight Ashbury phonies wouldn’t have come to see Jimmy Don Morrison from Melbourne, Florida. I was a Navy brat, and grew up mainly on coastal Florida bases. I only moved to California when I started college.”

 

Jimmy paused to take a sip of wine. “ You wanna know where I first met Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead? We were butchering hogs on the same crew at a slaughterhouse outside of Modesto! How do you think he lost that finger? Jerry’s was playing weekends with the Black Mountain Boys at the time, and needed the extra money to get thru the week. I tell you, he’s just a country boy at heart, but that kinda thing isn’t in vogue right now.”

 

He reflected on that memory for a moment or two and then spoke again.

“I am ashamed to admit it, but I was trying to be somebody I wasn’t, kinda like you there Maurice, in order to sell records. But not anymore!” With that, he leaned over, removed my beret, and chucked-it away, and burst into a hearty laugh.

 

Quite by accident, the offending headgear landed on a nearby table, and knocked a cup of coffee onto the lap of a beautiful young French lady.

She stumbled up out of her seat and stormed past our table on her way out.

“Le PIG!!”, she spat at Jimmy, and then dismissed me with a, “Le Enfante Terrible‘!!!”

 

Jimmy Don leaned over and admired her form as she departed. “Quite a handsome toilette‘ on that little Fifi.”

He smiled and leaned back in chair. “She’ll be back, though. I’ve noticed her scoping me out for days now. I’m going to have her in the sack by lunchtime, or my name is not The Formerly Great Lizard King!”

 

“Wow, I’ve got to confess, this is all quite a revelation to me. Country boy, skirt-chaser.....”

I took a breath to form my next sentence correctly, “I was under the impression that you were a bit of a San Francisco poofter.”

The wine was not only curing my hangover, but had made me a little bold and overly-familiar.

 

“I know, I know, I get that all the time,” he said. “You heard a story about that night in Max’s Kansas City, me going down on Jimi Hendrix, right?”

 

I confessed that he had hit the nail on the head, although the pun was lost on me at the time.

 

“Well, here’s how that story got started; I had been on a bourbon and barbiturate bender all day. Jimi rang me up at my hotel about an hour before the gig at Max’s was to begin, so we didn’t have enough time to go get some sit-down food.

Jimi knew a great Barbeque place right around the corner, so we went in there and got some ribs to go.”

 

The bearded fellow topped-off his glass and poured the dregs of the wine into my glass before he continued the story, “He and I scarf-down the vittles back stage, and then before you know it, it’s time for him to go on. Jimi straps-on his Stratocaster, wipes his mouth-off with his sleeve, and goes out there and starts to play. I head over to the bar and resume my whiskey drinking, and sit back to enjoy the show.”

 

He stopped for a second. “You want to split another bottle? I can order us something better than this paint thinner here.”

 

A proper bottle of Bordeaux shows up, and we enjoy a swallow or two of that before Morrison resumes his story.

 

“So I’m sitting there watching Hendrix play, and as he gyrates and wails on it, something on his guitar keeps catching my eye. I lean forward and try to focus, which isn’t easy because of all the alcohol and pills in my system, and sure enough, there is a hunk of pork rib clinging to Jimi’s volume knob. He’s up there playing his *** off, and the crowd is grooving on it, but he never washed his hands you see, and his doggone supper is smeared all over his guitar!!”

 

Jimmy drums his fingers on the table and fumes for a moment. “I hate that kind of stuff, man. It’s so unprofessional! Jimi picked up a lot of bad habits while playing the Chitlin’ Circuit after his stint in the Army, and that was one of them. He never washed his hands after eating, and his axe was always messy as a result! People are always talking about how ‘fluid and effortless’ Jimi Hendrix’s playing is....., SHOOT! That ain’t fluid, it’s BARBEQUE SAUCE!!”

 

I interject, “So, you weren’t going up there to, um, blow him or anything, you were just trying to...”

 

Morrison exploded, “I crawled up there to get that messy piece of pork rib off his guitar! I figured if snuck up there quietly, and licked the barbeque off the damn thing real quick, nobody’d hardly notice. I was just trying to do him a favor.”

He grinned sheepishly and reflected, “I know it sounds stupid, but heck, you do stupid stuff when you’re under the influence. Look at what happened to me in Miami!!”

 

“Anyway, after that, the word got out that I got down in front of Jimi Hendrix onstage, and pretty soon the whole world thinks I’m a damned switch-hitter. Why do you think I’m living over here in Paris, for God’s sake. These people don’t care what you do, you can walk around in mime paint and hold up a sign declaring you’re the Queen of Normandy, they don’t give a s#$t.”

 

Jimmy Don seemed to lose his steam and sat there swirling his wine glass around for a bit.

 

“You know why I left the Doors?”, he suddenly offered, lowering his voice. “Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger were even bigger pigs than Jimi was.”

This bit of gossip seemed to be a vindication for him.

“Ray was always spilling his lunch on his keyboard, and then trying to play the damn thing with coleslaw all over the keys. And Robby always had Twinkie filling and stuff stuck on his strings. What slobs! Unprofessional slobs, I tell you, I just couldn’t stand it.”

 

He glanced up toward the cafe entrance and suddenly smiled. Standing there was the previously-angry coffee-stained girl. She fidgeted by the awning and stared at him with a meaningful look in her eye.

 

“Alright, boy, looks like I’ve got a date.” He threw a few bills down on the table.

“Thanks for the wine and the company, and um, everything.”

 

He paused and put his hand on my shoulder. “Look, why don’t you consider going back to school? I don’t think this is the place for you. I’ve got an old friend who dropped out for awhile, but he went back and finished and even got his teaching certificate. Fella by the name of Leonard Skinner. Teaches and coaches boys athletics down in Florida now. He used to say, ‘Big wheels keep on turnin’. I think that meant, ‘Get on the train, boy, or it’s going to leave you behind’. Or something to that effect. Anyway, think about it. Nice meeting you, Maurice.”

 

Morrison walked away, put his arm around the girl, and strolled off down the avenue. I never saw him again.

A year later he was dead, as was Hendrix. I guess the train left both of them behind.

 

Anyway, I went back to the States, finished elementary school, and went on to have a pretty good life.

 

I’ve never looked at popular music quite the same way again. To this day, I can never hear a Hendrix song or a Doors tune without getting a little melancholy, and more than a little hungry for some barbequed ribs.

 

[sparquelito]

Same with John Lennon, apparently.

 

If you believe Cynthia Lennon, that is.

[RevDavidLee]

I had a conversation with Jim Morrison years ago in Paris. Maybe I can shed some light on this subject:

 

It was a chance meeting down in a cafe off the Rue de L’Unbathed, late summer 1970 I think.

I was sitting at a small table by myself, smoking Gauloises and trying to drink-off a small hangover I had going with a glass of Cabernet Swinevienon.

It wasn’t helping, as I recalled, so I began working on the whole bottle. (Nothing rinses those rough little sweaters off your teeth like a dry French red wine.)

 

I was just picking a fleck of cork off of my tongue when a deep voice rumbled off to my left.

“Don’t you hate it when that happens?” I turned and peered into the shade of the cafe awning. Seated at a table next to the brick wall was a long haired fellow with a substantial beard and aviator sunglasses.

I recognized him instantly, even with the facial hair and shades.

 

“Not really,” I responded as I contemplated the bit of cork under the morning sun, “Sometimes this is the only roughage I get all day.”

 

The fellow invited me over to his table, so I grabbed the bottle and vaulted the iron rail to join him. He shook my hand and introduced himself as Jimmy.

“You’re American, right?”, he inquired politely.

 

I replied that I was, and we sat in silence for a moment. I had recently affected a beret, and was failing in my attempt to grow a small goatee.

I explained that I was on a long sabbatical from school, and was summering in Paris. I just wanted to blend-in, I guess.

 

“Well, Maurice Chevalier you ain’t,” my new breakfast companion offered.

“Look, just because you’re living in Paris doesn’t mean you’ve got to try and be un bon Parisian. Look at me, I’m just a redneck, and I never try to pretend otherwise. These Frog’s will respect you more if you’ll just relax and be yourself.”

 

I thanked him for his advice, and poured us both a glass of the red.

 

“Say, Jimmy, you are Jim Morrison, aren’t you?”, I ventured. “I don’t want to be rude, but I thought Jim Morrison was a sophisticated, eclectic San Francisco poet. Not a redneck by any means.”

 

He raised his sunglasses for a moment and peered at me with his eyes, and then looked left and right before he responded. “Alright, you got me there. I WAS Jim Morrison the singer/poet for awhile, but not anymore. I got tired of living a lie.”

 

Jimmy topped off his glass and continued, “See, the popular music industry, and even the Haight Ashbury phonies wouldn’t have come to see Jimmy Don Morrison from Melbourne, Florida. I was a Navy brat, and grew up mainly on coastal Florida bases. I only moved to California when I started college.”

 

Jimmy paused to take a sip of wine. “ You wanna know where I first met Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead? We were butchering hogs on the same crew at a slaughterhouse outside of Modesto! How do you think he lost that finger? Jerry’s was playing weekends with the Black Mountain Boys at the time, and needed the extra money to get thru the week. I tell you, he’s just a country boy at heart, but that kinda thing isn’t in vogue right now.”

 

He reflected on that memory for a moment or two and then spoke again.

“I am ashamed to admit it, but I was trying to be somebody I wasn’t, kinda like you there Maurice, in order to sell records. But not anymore!” With that, he leaned over, removed my beret, and chucked-it away, and burst into a hearty laugh.

 

Quite by accident, the offending headgear landed on a nearby table, and knocked a cup of coffee onto the lap of a beautiful young French lady.

She stumbled up out of her seat and stormed past our table on her way out.

“Le PIG!!”, she spat at Jimmy, and then dismissed me with a, “Le Enfante Terrible‘!!!”

 

Jimmy Don leaned over and admired her form as she departed. “Quite a handsome toilette‘ on that little Fifi.”

He smiled and leaned back in chair. “She’ll be back, though. I’ve noticed her scoping me out for days now. I’m going to have her in the sack by lunchtime, or my name is not The Formerly Great Lizard King!”

 

“Wow, I’ve got to confess, this is all quite a revelation to me. Country boy, skirt-chaser.....”

I took a breath to form my next sentence correctly, “I was under the impression that you were a bit of a San Francisco poofter.”

The wine was not only curing my hangover, but had made me a little bold and overly-familiar.

 

“I know, I know, I get that all the time,” he said. “You heard a story about that night in Max’s Kansas City, me going down on Jimi Hendrix, right?”

 

I confessed that he had hit the nail on the head, although the pun was lost on me at the time.

 

“Well, here’s how that story got started; I had been on a bourbon and barbiturate bender all day. Jimi rang me up at my hotel about an hour before the gig at Max’s was to begin, so we didn’t have enough time to go get some sit-down food.

Jimi knew a great Barbeque place right around the corner, so we went in there and got some ribs to go.”

 

The bearded fellow topped-off his glass and poured the dregs of the wine into my glass before he continued the story, “He and I scarf-down the vittles back stage, and then before you know it, it’s time for him to go on. Jimi straps-on his Stratocaster, wipes his mouth-off with his sleeve, and goes out there and starts to play. I head over to the bar and resume my whiskey drinking, and sit back to enjoy the show.”

 

He stopped for a second. “You want to split another bottle? I can order us something better than this paint thinner here.”

 

A proper bottle of Bordeaux shows up, and we enjoy a swallow or two of that before Morrison resumes his story.

 

“So I’m sitting there watching Hendrix play, and as he gyrates and wails on it, something on his guitar keeps catching my eye. I lean forward and try to focus, which isn’t easy because of all the alcohol and pills in my system, and sure enough, there is a hunk of pork rib clinging to Jimi’s volume knob. He’s up there playing his *** off, and the crowd is grooving on it, but he never washed his hands you see, and his doggone supper is smeared all over his guitar!!”

 

Jimmy drums his fingers on the table and fumes for a moment. “I hate that kind of stuff, man. It’s so unprofessional! Jimi picked up a lot of bad habits while playing the Chitlin’ Circuit after his stint in the Army, and that was one of them. He never washed his hands after eating, and his axe was always messy as a result! People are always talking about how ‘fluid and effortless’ Jimi Hendrix’s playing is....., SHOOT! That ain’t fluid, it’s BARBEQUE SAUCE!!”

 

I interject, “So, you weren’t going up there to, um, blow him or anything, you were just trying to...”

 

Morrison exploded, “I crawled up there to get that messy piece of pork rib off his guitar! I figured if snuck up there quietly, and licked the barbeque off the damn thing real quick, nobody’d hardly notice. I was just trying to do him a favor.”

He grinned sheepishly and reflected, “I know it sounds stupid, but heck, you do stupid stuff when you’re under the influence. Look at what happened to me in Miami!!”

 

“Anyway, after that, the word got out that I got down in front of Jimi Hendrix onstage, and pretty soon the whole world thinks I’m a damned switch-hitter. Why do you think I’m living over here in Paris, for God’s sake. These people don’t care what you do, you can walk around in mime paint and hold up a sign declaring you’re the Queen of Normandy, they don’t give a s#$t.”

 

Jimmy Don seemed to lose his steam and sat there swirling his wine glass around for a bit.

 

“You know why I left the Doors?”, he suddenly offered, lowering his voice. “Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger were even bigger pigs than Jimi was.”

This bit of gossip seemed to be a vindication for him.

“Ray was always spilling his lunch on his keyboard, and then trying to play the damn thing with coleslaw all over the keys. And Robby always had Twinkie filling and stuff stuck on his strings. What slobs! Unprofessional slobs, I tell you, I just couldn’t stand it.”

 

He glanced up toward the cafe entrance and suddenly smiled. Standing there was the previously-angry coffee-stained girl. She fidgeted by the awning and stared at him with a meaningful look in her eye.

 

“Alright, boy, looks like I’ve got a date.” He threw a few bills down on the table.

“Thanks for the wine and the company, and um, everything.”

 

He paused and put his hand on my shoulder. “Look, why don’t you consider going back to school? I don’t think this is the place for you. I’ve got an old friend who dropped out for awhile, but he went back and finished and even got his teaching certificate. Fella by the name of Leonard Skinner. Teaches and coaches boys athletics down in Florida now. He used to say, ‘Big wheels keep on turnin’. I think that meant, ‘Get on the train, boy, or it’s going to leave you behind’. Or something to that effect. Anyway, think about it. Nice meeting you, Maurice.”

 

Morrison walked away, put his arm around the girl, and strolled off down the avenue. I never saw him again.

A year later he was dead, as was Hendrix. I guess the train left both of them behind.

 

Anyway, I went back to the States, finished elementary school, and went on to have a pretty good life.

 

I’ve never looked at popular music quite the same way again. To this day, I can never hear a Hendrix song or a Doors tune without getting a little melancholy, and more than a little hungry for some barbequed ribs.

 

 

That is one of the most interesting things about Jim Morrison I've ever read. Wow. Thanks for sharing!

[daveinspain]

I had a conversation with Jim Morrison years ago in Paris. Maybe I can shed some light on this subject:

 

It was a chance meeting down in a cafe off the Rue de L’Unbathed, late summer 1970 I think.

I was sitting at a small table by myself, smoking Gauloises and trying to drink-off a small hangover I had going with a glass of Cabernet Swinevienon.

It wasn’t helping, as I recalled, so I began working on the whole bottle. (Nothing rinses those rough little sweaters off your teeth like a dry French red wine.)

 

 

I’ve never looked at popular music quite the same way again. To this day, I can never hear a Hendrix song or a Doors tune without getting a little melancholy, and more than a little hungry for some barbequed ribs.

 

 

You win, best story I have ever read on the forum and I 've been here a while…

[jaxson50]

1436057148[/url]' post='1673011']

I just read Keith Richards book. He said Brian Jones liked to smack around women. His words not mine. Not a tough crowd. An A-hole is is an A-hole no matter how you slice it.

 

I heard the same thing, the other members of the Stones had pretty much had it with his bs. Charlie Watts in particular was feed up with him.

[arlum]

If Pop, Rock, Blues, Jazz and Metal performers had to sign a morals clause to get a recording contract the talent pool would drop drastically. "Born to be Wild", "Walk on the Wild Side", "Hot for Teacher", "Tube Steak Boogie", "Brown Sugar", "One", etc. might have remained in the minds of miscreants rather than hitting the airwaves.

 

I mean ........ I can only listen to "Kumbaya", "How Much is that Doggie in the Window", and "Till There Was You" so many times.

[Mr. C.O. Jones]

If Pop, Rock, Blues, Jazz and Metal performers had to sign a morals clause to get a recording contract the talent pool would drop drastically. "Born to be Wild", "Walk on the Wild Side", "Hot for Teacher", "Tube Steak Boogie", "Brown Sugar", "One", etc. might have remained in the minds of miscreants rather than hitting the airwaves.

 

I mean ........ I can only listen to "Kumbaya", "How Much is that Doggie in the Window", and "Till There Was You" so many times.

+1 Thats why I normaly only care about the music.

 

@Sparquelito: Great story! Thank's.

 

I love The Doors, but not because of Jim. It's their music and his vocals.

And of course the lyrics. It was a crazy time of my life when I discovered their music, lot's of good (and some scary) memories!

[uncle fester]

On 7/4/2015 at 6:32 PM, sparquelito said:

I had a conversation with Jim Morrison years ago in Paris. Maybe I can shed some light on this subject:

 

It was a chance meeting down in a cafe off the Rue de L’Unbathed, late summer 1970 I think.

I was sitting at a small table by myself, smoking Gauloises and trying to drink-off a small hangover I had going with a glass of Cabernet Swinevienon.

It wasn’t helping, as I recalled, so I began working on the whole bottle. (Nothing rinses those rough little sweaters off your teeth like a dry French red wine.)

 

I was just picking a fleck of cork off of my tongue when a deep voice rumbled off to my left.

“Don’t you hate it when that happens?” I turned and peered into the shade of the cafe awning. Seated at a table next to the brick wall was a long haired fellow with a substantial beard and aviator sunglasses.

I recognized him instantly, even with the facial hair and shades.

 

“Not really,” I responded as I contemplated the bit of cork under the morning sun, “Sometimes this is the only roughage I get all day.”

 

The fellow invited me over to his table, so I grabbed the bottle and vaulted the iron rail to join him. He shook my hand and introduced himself as Jimmy.

“You’re American, right?”, he inquired politely.

 

I replied that I was, and we sat in silence for a moment. I had recently affected a beret, and was failing in my attempt to grow a small goatee.

I explained that I was on a long sabbatical from school, and was summering in Paris. I just wanted to blend-in, I guess.

 

“Well, Maurice Chevalier you ain’t,” my new breakfast companion offered.

“Look, just because you’re living in Paris doesn’t mean you’ve got to try and be un bon Parisian. Look at me, I’m just a redneck, and I never try to pretend otherwise. These Frog’s will respect you more if you’ll just relax and be yourself.”

 

I thanked him for his advice, and poured us both a glass of the red.

 

“Say, Jimmy, you are Jim Morrison, aren’t you?”, I ventured. “I don’t want to be rude, but I thought Jim Morrison was a sophisticated, eclectic San Francisco poet. Not a redneck by any means.”

 

He raised his sunglasses for a moment and peered at me with his eyes, and then looked left and right before he responded. “Alright, you got me there. I WAS Jim Morrison the singer/poet for awhile, but not anymore. I got tired of living a lie.”

 

Jimmy topped off his glass and continued, “See, the popular music industry, and even the Haight Ashbury phonies wouldn’t have come to see Jimmy Don Morrison from Melbourne, Florida. I was a Navy brat, and grew up mainly on coastal Florida bases. I only moved to California when I started college.”

 

Jimmy paused to take a sip of wine. “ You wanna know where I first met Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead? We were butchering hogs on the same crew at a slaughterhouse outside of Modesto! How do you think he lost that finger? Jerry’s was playing weekends with the Black Mountain Boys at the time, and needed the extra money to get thru the week. I tell you, he’s just a country boy at heart, but that kinda thing isn’t in vogue right now.”

 

He reflected on that memory for a moment or two and then spoke again.

“I am ashamed to admit it, but I was trying to be somebody I wasn’t, kinda like you there Maurice, in order to sell records. But not anymore!” With that, he leaned over, removed my beret, and chucked-it away, and burst into a hearty laugh.

 

Quite by accident, the offending headgear landed on a nearby table, and knocked a cup of coffee onto the lap of a beautiful young French lady.

She stumbled up out of her seat and stormed past our table on her way out.

“Le PIG!!”, she spat at Jimmy, and then dismissed me with a, “Le Enfante Terrible‘!!!”

 

Jimmy Don leaned over and admired her form as she departed. “Quite a handsome toilette‘ on that little Fifi.”

He smiled and leaned back in chair. “She’ll be back, though. I’ve noticed her scoping me out for days now. I’m going to have her in the sack by lunchtime, or my name is not The Formerly Great Lizard King!”

 

“Wow, I’ve got to confess, this is all quite a revelation to me. Country boy, skirt-chaser.....”

I took a breath to form my next sentence correctly, “I was under the impression that you were a bit of a San Francisco poofter.”

The wine was not only curing my hangover, but had made me a little bold and overly-familiar.

 

“I know, I know, I get that all the time,” he said. “You heard a story about that night in Max’s Kansas City, me going down on Jimi Hendrix, right?”

 

I confessed that he had hit the nail on the head, although the pun was lost on me at the time.

 

“Well, here’s how that story got started; I had been on a bourbon and barbiturate bender all day. Jimi rang me up at my hotel about an hour before the gig at Max’s was to begin, so we didn’t have enough time to go get some sit-down food.

Jimi knew a great Barbeque place right around the corner, so we went in there and got some ribs to go.”

 

The bearded fellow topped-off his glass and poured the dregs of the wine into my glass before he continued the story, “He and I scarf-down the vittles back stage, and then before you know it, it’s time for him to go on. Jimi straps-on his Stratocaster, wipes his mouth-off with his sleeve, and goes out there and starts to play. I head over to the bar and resume my whiskey drinking, and sit back to enjoy the show.”

 

He stopped for a second. “You want to split another bottle? I can order us something better than this paint thinner here.”

 

A proper bottle of Bordeaux shows up, and we enjoy a swallow or two of that before Morrison resumes his story.

 

“So I’m sitting there watching Hendrix play, and as he gyrates and wails on it, something on his guitar keeps catching my eye. I lean forward and try to focus, which isn’t easy because of all the alcohol and pills in my system, and sure enough, there is a hunk of pork rib clinging to Jimi’s volume knob. He’s up there playing his *** off, and the crowd is grooving on it, but he never washed his hands you see, and his doggone supper is smeared all over his guitar!!”

 

Jimmy drums his fingers on the table and fumes for a moment. “I hate that kind of stuff, man. It’s so unprofessional! Jimi picked up a lot of bad habits while playing the Chitlin’ Circuit after his stint in the Army, and that was one of them. He never washed his hands after eating, and his axe was always messy as a result! People are always talking about how ‘fluid and effortless’ Jimi Hendrix’s playing is....., SHOOT! That ain’t fluid, it’s BARBEQUE SAUCE!!”

 

I interject, “So, you weren’t going up there to, um, blow him or anything, you were just trying to...”

 

Morrison exploded, “I crawled up there to get that messy piece of pork rib off his guitar! I figured if snuck up there quietly, and licked the barbeque off the damn thing real quick, nobody’d hardly notice. I was just trying to do him a favor.”

He grinned sheepishly and reflected, “I know it sounds stupid, but heck, you do stupid stuff when you’re under the influence. Look at what happened to me in Miami!!”

 

“Anyway, after that, the word got out that I got down in front of Jimi Hendrix onstage, and pretty soon the whole world thinks I’m a damned switch-hitter. Why do you think I’m living over here in Paris, for God’s sake. These people don’t care what you do, you can walk around in mime paint and hold up a sign declaring you’re the Queen of Normandy, they don’t give a s#$t.”

 

Jimmy Don seemed to lose his steam and sat there swirling his wine glass around for a bit.

 

“You know why I left the Doors?”, he suddenly offered, lowering his voice. “Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger were even bigger pigs than Jimi was.”

This bit of gossip seemed to be a vindication for him.

“Ray was always spilling his lunch on his keyboard, and then trying to play the damn thing with coleslaw all over the keys. And Robby always had Twinkie filling and stuff stuck on his strings. What slobs! Unprofessional slobs, I tell you, I just couldn’t stand it.”

 

He glanced up toward the cafe entrance and suddenly smiled. Standing there was the previously-angry coffee-stained girl. She fidgeted by the awning and stared at him with a meaningful look in her eye.

 

“Alright, boy, looks like I’ve got a date.” He threw a few bills down on the table.

“Thanks for the wine and the company, and um, everything.”

 

He paused and put his hand on my shoulder. “Look, why don’t you consider going back to school? I don’t think this is the place for you. I’ve got an old friend who dropped out for awhile, but he went back and finished and even got his teaching certificate. Fella by the name of Leonard Skinner. Teaches and coaches boys athletics down in Florida now. He used to say, ‘Big wheels keep on turnin’. I think that meant, ‘Get on the train, boy, or it’s going to leave you behind’. Or something to that effect. Anyway, think about it. Nice meeting you, Maurice.”

 

Morrison walked away, put his arm around the girl, and strolled off down the avenue. I never saw him again.

A year later he was dead, as was Hendrix. I guess the train left both of them behind.

 

Anyway, I went back to the States, finished elementary school, and went on to have a pretty good life.

 

I’ve never looked at popular music quite the same way again. To this day, I can never hear a Hendrix song or a Doors tune without getting a little melancholy, and more than a little hungry for some barbequed ribs.

 

 

Nice story sparq - just caught up to this from the other thread, it does fill in a couple blanks in JM's history...  any other escapades you can conjure up out of that imagination of yours - good reading 🙂

 

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

On 7/4/2015 at 6:27 PM, SteveFord said:

The Doors music has really stood the test of time.

If their first album was released today it would still knock everybody's socks off. Compare that album to the tripe which passes for music today. Taylor Swift? HA!

But Taylor Swift has glittery Les Paul's.

[Retired]

Interesting, thanks Sparkey. 

[Retired]

On 7/3/2015 at 5:37 PM, jaxson50 said:

Jim Morrison died July 3, 1971, I was driving my girl friends VW bug driving her to work when the announcement was broadcast over the radio.

It's 49 years ago now, and 2 months. 

[Sgt. Pepper]

8 hours ago, ghost_of_fl said:

And bodacious ta-tas. 

Ride the snake. 🐍

I'd let her ride my snake, but I'd duct tape her mouth shut, so she can't run her yap.

Edited October 9, 2020 by Sgt. Pepper