Bob Dylan's "I Contain Multitudes", Jim Morrison's "Newborn Awakening"

"I Contain Multitudes" feels like Dylan saying his valediction. Now, he’s also been saying his valediction since his first album ("See That My Grace is Kept Clean," "Don’t Think Twice," "It’s All Over Now Baby Blue," every album seems to have one version of it), and I ain’t saying this will be his last album, but this sounds like a man who is summing it all up and saying goodbye, farewell, and good luck. But it also sounds like he got to that place where “I know my song well before I start singing.” He is filled with Americana -- chock full and he is opening the spigot and blasting it out at us. Except it isn’t a blast. It comes out with grandeur and dignity like a waterfall, but these two last songs are like viewing a waterfall from the top and bottom at the same time. From this stoic statement of mortality he peels away the details of his journey with the grace and conciliation of a master making his peace. Partners who wronged him are forgiven (“I’ll drink to the man that shares your bed”), follies of youth are relived (“I frolic with all the young dudes”) and secrets confessed (“Got skeletons in the walls of people you know”). In another flurry of pan-cultural references, he lays claim to the fear of Anne Frank, the guilt of Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘Tell-Tale Heart’, the adventure of Indiana Jones, the experience of William Blake and the danger of “them British bad boys” The Rolling Stones. His conclusion evokes Frank Sinatra’s: “I have no apologies to make”. Source: www.nme.com

Patricia Kennealy: "As a major Doors fan I wanted much more. As a practicing rock critic I was not slow to smack Jim and The Doors for it. I was rougher on Jim Morrison in print than on anyone else in rock & roll magazines. The pressure was on them all--on Jim far more than the others, as the perceived leader and public focus, the musical linchpin (they couldn't make it without him, and how well we all knew it; indeed, we have seen it proved every day, every hour, since July 3 1971). But it was almost impossible for Jim to write songs on the road when they were touring, they couldn't spend time in the studio making records for which Jim would have had to have written songs, which he couldn't write because they were on the road."

RidderOnTheStorm1969: Even that crackpot Patricia Kennealy announced Fireheart to be published on 3 July 2021, half a century since the day Morrison died. "This compilation of Jim Morrison's private communications to me during the years 1969, 1970 and 1971 -- his true 'lost writings' -- save for some confidences which are of such incandescent intimacy as forever to preclude publication poems of unapologetic eroticism." Again, we don't need to hear about your sex life, lady. Supposedly that one night stand was sexually awesome, although I have my doubts. "I have chosen to announce its future publication now, in this silver anniversary year of Jim's death. But then again, the Courson family is apparently in charge of Jim Morrison's estate. My original, long-held intention was to destroy all this before my own death, and so to take it with me back to Jim. Fireheart will surprise many and astonish most, will show a Jim that not even my memoir Strange Days could show; and what it will prove most uncontrovertibly is that this is a man of matchless spirit and sensitivity, by no means the drug-benumbed catspaw who is the only Jim his various biographers seem able or willing to understand or accept." And yet not only has Fireheart not materialized, but Kennealy has gone oddly silent about it. I don't think she's mentioned it in years. It's an ugly thing to say that somebody faked up stuff, but there are only two possible reasons for Kennealy to withhold this material when she could easily have published it years ago, thus "proving" herself to the fans. I think the material she claims exists does not exist, and she's invested too much of her love story in these never-seen letters and poems to ever admit it. Or the material does exist, but it's by Kennealy and not Morrison, and she does not want the material exposed to the scrutiny of handwriting experts. Either way, it's pretty damning. She never gives any kind of excuse for not publishing it except to get pissy and defensive. Honestly, the only material we've seen from her trove of alleged vast material is a single poem that she claims she co-authored with Morrison… which I guess is her excuse for it sounding nothing like any of his other poems. We'll see in 2021. I suspect that if Kennealy is still alive in that year, she will not release anything. This begins to smell of hollow blustering when you realize how far Kennealy has backed down on this Fireheart thing - all the way. It feels like someone is bluffing with a completely empty hand.

Jim Morrison used a sort of psychic stunt double, the Lizard King persona, as self-protection and a creative mask. Yeah, most of the Jim Morrison "biographies" out there usually have an agenda behind them. As do the "memoirs" written by aggressive one-night stands who want the world to believe that they were "the one". Judy Huddleston, Linda Ashcroft, and Eve Babitz claiming that Jim incessantly repeated how beautiful they were and he told them earnestly "I love you". All of these ladies seem nutters, exaggerating their affairs to the nth degree, although none of them reaches the depths of delusion of Ms Kennealy. I have no problems when the liaison is retold in a plausible fashion (Mary Werbelow, Pamela Zarubica, Peggy Green, Janet Erwin, Eva Gardonyi). But the honest ones always acknowledge they couldn't ever shadow Pamela Susan. Although he could have a roving eye with the ladies, no doubt, Morrison was clearly devoted to Pam Courson. Pamela Zarubica recalls how Morrison ignored the backstage mocks from Pam when he became the front man in The Doors. "He only would allow Pam make those jabs." I really question Eve Babitz's claims (she says Pam was "mean" and "controlling," she hints Pam had an abortion that wrecked Jim emotionally) or Mirandi Babitz's: "They could both be terrible to one another. Pamela could be an instigator, and Jim could be totally calm but she'd escalate things to a fever pitch. She would tear into him with her nails. Sometimes he slapped her back." Raeanne Bartlett: Some called friends as Mirandi Babitz are not fair to Jim & Pam's memory and spread lies. Both could be temperamental but I doubt those stories of violence. Mirandi also insinuated Pam had worked as "a semi-pro". What a nice friend! Pamela resented The Doors for wasting Jim's talents. They just took him for granted. I don't think it was inherently personal, but in Paris, she scoffed at them trying to complete L.A Woman without him. It also got worse after his death because she disagreed with them trying to sell the music for ads. They sued the hell out of her not long after Jim was in the ground, too. Jim was very polite and well behaved around Pam's family, including her grandmother, and they liked him even if they didn't fully approve of his wild image. Most of Pam's letters, photo albums, and mementos are in private family collections. Sadly, her family have absolutely no desire towards doing anything regarding Pam's legacy. I only recommend The Jim Morrison Scrapbook by Jim Henke, Frank Lisciandro's books Friends Gathered Together and An Hour For Magic. Florentine Pabst, from whom Oliver Stone got the Thanksgiving Day burnt turkey story, is thinking about writing a book of her own. She and Jim's friendship has been confirmed and acknowledged and Pabst can prove what she is saying is true, so that may be another book worth waiting for. She collaborated (as a choir voice) with Morrison in his poetry album An American Prayer.

“Newborn Awakening” (from An American Prayer) uses the Doors’ “Peace Frog” in the background and closes with a great solo piano from Ray Manzarek:

“Resident mockery. Give us an hour for magic. Gently they stir, gently rise. The dead are newborn awakening. With ravaged limbs and wet souls. Gently they sigh in rapt funeral amazement. Who called these dead to dance? Was it the young woman learning to play the ghost song on her baby grand? Was it the wilderness children? Was it the ghost god himself, stuttering, cheering, chatting blindly? I called you up to anoint the earth. I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin. I called you to wish you well. To glory in self like a new monster. And now I call you to pray.”