There’s a thrilling moment a little before the halfway point of Amazon’s new limited series “Daisy Jones & the Six” in which two stars collide. The ethereal vocalist Daisy Jones (Riley Keough) has been invited to perform her collaboration with a rising rock band, but crashes the stage a bit early and then refuses to leave after her one song has been performed. Daisy and the Six’s lead singer Billy (Sam Claflin) share the microphone for a while, if “share” is the word for what one does in a battle for territory; faces close together, they’re competing for a claim on the song they sing, competing to be heard. That rivalry is the essence of “Daisy Jones & the Six,” a flawed but compelling adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s 2019 novel of the same name. Reid has described her novel as “a Fleetwood Mac vibe,” if not precisely drawn from Fleetwood Mac’s story — and, as with the real-life Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, the two musicians at the center of this fictional group generate as much drama as they do music. Unlike Fleetwood Mac, Daisy Jones & the Six definitively break up in 1977, which we’re told at the start. As we watch Daisy, in the 1970s, stomp over the Six in an act of willful spotlight-seizing, we hear Daisy, in the 1990s, tell us that this was simply beyond her control.
“They wouldn’t let me leave!,” she laughs. We’re being told this story by characters looking back with regret. There’s little of the swirling heedlessness of blossoming attraction here, Billy is trying to keep himself from falling in love: At least notionally committed to the mother of his child (Camila Morrone). And Claflin, never more watchable than when he’s watching Daisy, sells the struggle nicely. But then, Daisy is primarily interested in herself — which is not to say she’s a narcissist, just someone who acknowledges she’s a born star. Daisy’s personality is huge, but it’s not just the band over which she’s running roughshod — it’s the show. Source: hollywoodgossip.co.in
A new book about The Doors and Jim Morrison seen from the road manager Vince Treanor: Behind The Doors. The Story Of A Legendary Band's Road Manager (2023) will not be available for purchase through Amazon or international bookstores. Behind The Doors. The Story Of A Legendary Band's Road Manager can only be ordered directly from the publisher Aldus Boek Compagnie, from Netherlands. Source: www.aldusboekcompagnie.nl
David Warren: Was the glue within The Doors falling apart?
Vince Treanor: After Jim Morrison's death, everybody was shattered, everybody was devastated. It was a case of a reformation of the band. It was a different sound and music. It wasn't The Doors anymore. I knew when I heard the music that this was not good. This just wasn't The Doors and it wasn't going to be a success. Nevertheless, we did the 1971 tour, the four performances, and sure enough, people did not like it. When the five guys played Doors pieces, the audience was ecstatic, really happy, clapping and cheering, when they played the new music, the excitement just wasn't there, they didn't have their hearts in it.
David Warren: A lot of rumors have been said to come from the 1980 biography No One Here Gets Out Alive.
Vince Treanor: That book was not factual. It's Danny Sugerman's dream about making himself an important figure in Jim and Pam's life. He was 14 at the time and claimed to be Jim's confidant. You have a 14-year-old who claims to be the confidant for a 24-year-old alcoholic. Danny was nothing more than a pest, he was a groupie. And I said so in the book. He was constantly trying to sneak into rehearsals, and we had a way to getting him out. Many times, he tried to ingratiate himself to Kathy, by going up and down saying 'I'll open the fan mail' so he hung around the Office, and every once in a while, Bill Siddons would give him some money and tell him 'Go over get me something to drink', sending him on silly errands just to get out of the place but he was nothing more than a pest. He claimed he helped The Doors to move into their new office. He didn't do any such a thing. He was a boy in school, it was 1968, he was 14 years old. What kind of an idiot has a boy moving The Doors into their new Office?
DW: Did it ever cross your mind that Jim Morrison would never return from Paris or that he'd die at such a young age?
VT: No, nobody suspected that, why would you believe that? Jim had called John a couple of weeks before he died and he said 'I'm feeling better, I wrote some new stuff and stopped drinking, I've cleaned myself up, I realize all the stupid mistakes that I made and I'd like to come back. How about we consider to get together again, you can look at my new stuff and we can go on.' I think Jim called John because he was the one who was adamant that he would never play with Jim on stage again. He was trying to let John know that things were different, that he was cleaned up, and two weeks later he was dead. Nobody suspected that, why would we? There were a couple of post cards and a letter suggesting that things were going well. He and Pam were enjoying their stay in Paris and he was fine. Pamela Courson was a terrible influence, she was one of the sources of his disquietude, they fought often and violently.
DW: Do you think Pamela Courson contributed to his early death?
VT: Absolutely. First, she was a junkie, she was manipulative, she had him buying her heroin. They argued a lot. She had him buying all the clothes for her boutique Themis and then she gave the clothes away to her friends, Jim would be buying more clothes and she'd give them away to her friends. The whole place was a den of iniquity. She and her heroin buddies would be over there shooting up and smoking grass, while sitting on the floor telling each other how wonderful the world was, while Jim was out there trying to earn money, at that time he was doing HWY. She was one of the causes of Miami's debacle. First, Jim had seen the Living Theater performance, second he had a violent fight with Pam before he got on the plane, then he was totally drunk by the time he got to Miami. When he heard about the Miami promoter cheating him, and he was determined not to do a show in Miami, that was why there was so much talking and not so much singing. You could talk to him when he was sober, and it was interesting cause he could talk about things that people didn't know, understand and didn't think about. That made him seem extremely brilliant.
The times have changed for the worse. I like steam locomotives, rockets, electronics, I love the machinery, all the things that made the United States great, the industry that made America great. America lost its heavy industry and will never be great again until the United States wakes up and realizes it handed its technology to China and they made China not only strong but a strong enemy. That was a stupid thing to do. That's what greed does, a lack of foresight, and the fact that you can get into bed with the politically opposed, and make a goal of it and you can't do it. All you do is make them a stronger enemy. Source: www.popexpresso.com
-Patricia Butler: In the spring of 1973, Pamela Courson was living in San Francisco with Michael Verjaska. She had been friends with Michael for a few years but they became lovers after Jim died. She was also dating Randy Ralston. My sources of information about Pamela not being a heavy heroin user before Jim Morrison's death are: the LAPD report; Pamela's autopsy report; January Jensen and Ellen Sander's recollections; Ellen Sander hastened to refute Pamela's rumored heroin addiction while she was in Paris, and after. "When she stayed with me, I did not see her do anything like that. And if she was a heroin addict in Paris -- it's awfully hard to hide it. It's not like you can put it down for a week. I saw no evidence of any kind of hard drug usage while she was at my house, and I was with her almost constantly." January Jensen, who lived in nearby Sausalito and became Pamela's confidante, echoed Ellen's observations.
-Frank Lisciandro: I read the so-called first-hand account written by Alain Ronay which was published in Paris Match magazine. He contends that he was there and that he knew what happened. Then again, I spoke with Mrs. Courson—Pamela’s mother—who told me what Pamela told her over the last few years, which contradicts what Alain Ronay wrote. This was a private conversation, so I never have written about it or told anyone in the press. What I will say is that if what Pamela told her mother was true, and if I understood what her mother told me, then it would contradict the major points of Alain Ronay’s version of events. There’s been a lot of talk that Pamela was some sort of heroin junkie. I don’t know that for a fact; I only know that from hearsay. I never saw any marks on her arms, and I never heard her or Jim ever talk about heroin at any time. Likewise, Babe Hill admits to taking nearly every drug known to man with Jim, but he categorically denies that Jim ever used heroin. With the exception of Pamela, there is no one who spent more personal time with Jim than Babe. And anyone who says they were around Jim as much as Babe, is just not being truthful. I think Babe would have seen heroin use by Jim. Heroin was definitely around so Jim could have definitely gotten some, but I just don’t think he would have hid that from Babe or me. And to complicate the matter, there are people out there who make comments about Jim and tell stories about him who didn’t know him at all, but these are the same folks who endlessly speculate as to who Jim was or make up stories because they want to pretend that they really knew Jim Morrison. The fact is that 90% of what I hear about Jim Morrison strikes me as being totally wrong; absolutely and totally wrong. Source: rokritr.com
An advocate for the downtrodden, Lou Reed gave a voice to those who were never heard before. He showed us people just like ourselves, but although they were underground, they were in no way beneath us. We could easily become them. Bettye Kronstad was Reed’s first wife. She met him as a young college student in NYC in the fading embers of 1968. She memorably recounts meeting him in an elevator where Reed tried to impress her by acting like an imperious jerk and slapping her rear. From meager beginnings, she eventually found herself falling for the moody artist. Ms. Kronstad writes about Reed inviting her to his last performance with The Velvet Underground in August of 1970, and this was the point at which their relationship began. Ms. Kronstad writes of that fateful concert at Max’s Kansas City “The band played notoriously loud, and Cale’s droning climbed over, around, and through us, yet you could also hear Lou singing – screaming, really, over the instruments. Lewis sang his heart out – sometimes, I could have sworn, right at me. It was a bit intimidating.” This would all be fine except for the salient fact that by August of 1970, John Cale had been gone from The VU for nearly two years. He had been fired from the band after a show at The Boston Tea Party in September of 1968. Okay, so this was that kind of book.
Ms. Kronstad and Reed were in an erratic orbit of each other as Reed left The Velvet Underground, worked for his father’s business, and ultimately made his name as a solo performer. The dialogues contained within the book depict the mercurial Reed as a tortured, emotionally insecure artist who bluffed his way through life to protect his damaged core to the best of his ability. While attempting to work in theater, Ms. Kronstad decided to give Reed a chance, to the extent that she and Lou were living together for several years as Reed came to depend on her for emotional stability. Given that I can’t begin to remember anything that I say to someone the next day, never mind 48 years later, the conceit of the book to recount exchanges is entirely suspect to my eyes in the veracity department. While the exchanges may or may not have happened, the emotional truth of the bouts of emotional and chemical dependency between Bettye and Reed do have the whiff of truth to them. Along the way the pills that Ms. Kronstad was fine with gave way to the demon in the bottle, Johnny Walker Red, who ultimately kept pushing her away from Reed even as she became his emotional crutch by the end of their time together. Like many drug users, she “drew the line” at needles, only to see Reed succumb many times over their relationship. Ironically, they finally married near the end of their tumultuous relationship, around the time of Reed’s “Berlin” album. Ms. Kronstadt was comfortable with a song like “Perfect Day” recounting the details of their intimacy together, but when Reed used her painful family history as inspiration for “Berlin’s” harrowing narrative, then she finally came to the point where she had to leave Reed. That wasn’t the end of the tale, though. Reed’s manager talked her into accompanying Reed on his crashing and burning “Berlin” tour where she was expected to “mind” the erratic Reed until she walked out on him, finally, in Paris in 1973 after a cocaine fueled argument.
The doomed relationship depicted here seemed to set the tone for the self-destructive Reed throughout much of the seventies. Bettye Kronstad lives today in Wytheville, VA. While I doubt things played out exactly as depicted here, Reed was depicted with both light and shadow with all of his personal strengths along with his worst tendencies. Lou Reed was a gifted, pivotal artist who dramatically expanded the vocabulary of rock to encompass literary concerns. Yet at the end of the day, he was also a troubled man whose destructive defense mechanisms took their tolls on both himself and those around him. By the end of the book, I marveled at Bettye's ability to leave him behind and move forward on her journey. Source: postpunkmonk.com
As Madeline Bocaro (writer for Dazed & Confused and Mojo magazines, and author of biographies Stardust: The David Bowie Story (McGraw Hill, 1986), and The Wild One – The Story of Iggy Pop (Omnibus, 1988) stated after Lou Reed's passing: "Ironically, Lou's influences were Bettye LaVette, Doc Pomus, Delmore Schwartz, Edgar Allan Poe, 1950s Doo Wop… somehow it doesn’t come out that way, but Lou did it his way. His life was saved by rock n’ roll. But who was Lou Reed? A crazy, cool, sarcastic genius who influenced thousands of lives across several generations. Reed had a bad rep for a nice guy. His masterpiece was Berlin. His 20th and final solo album was Hudson River Wind Meditations (2007). He was finally at peace."
Angela Bowie: David [Bowie] was the one who was gaga over the Velvet Underground. He just thought the Velvet Underground and Lou Reed as a songwriter was the greatest thing that ever happened. Also whatever David was into I immediately took interest. I was that naive and that much of a youngster at that time, I believed that if I echoed what he said, and trumpeted it louder, people would believe what David said was important. As David started talking about Andy Warhol I never told him I thought he was an idiot. I’d shut up on that part. I was the perfect hostess. Iggy Pop and The Stooges were awfully nice to me. I don’t know if somebody had told them that I was well-intentioned or basically nice underneath it all. I suppose the only person who I was really very nervous of knowing was Iggy but I mean he was a sweetheart. I liked Lou Reed intellectually. I loved his conversations, he was so articulate and intelligent, but personally I didn't find him sexy, although he had a sort of romantic, sexy aura. I always thought that he was totally asexual. I did a lot of listening when Lou and David spoke about New York and David would draw him out and get him to talk about what was going on in New York and it was very easy to impress David because England was very backward; I mean, it was against the law to commit sodomy. So you gotta understand where David was coming from is not because he was stupid, or because he was juvenile, or naive, it was because he was looking at it with this whole look of an English man.
At that time in England you realize how repressed they were and how even the slightest hint of that kind of scandal could mean the difference between someone getting a recording deal or someone spending their life playing working men’s clubs in the North of England and never actually becoming really popular, well yeah, you have to remember this is like late 1960s, beginning of the 1970s. It was very different and so when Lou Reed would talk about the Factory and Candy Darling and all of these incredible characters who Andy Warhol was making stars out of, for David that was like America must be the most wide open, wonderful place. And so what I mean is you’re like looking at it from a social mores, and from the point of view that if he hadn’t had all of those experiences, when they asked him in that Melody Maker article and he said he was bisexual, he would never have had the balls to do that unless he’d been around Iggy and Lou and realized that fuck it, if the English wanted to behave like that with that kind of hypocrisy, fuck it, but there was this place in the States where things were changing - not that much in the Midwest but David didn’t know that, he just knew New York. Both Lou and David were extremely professional–which is an over used word–let's says, manic about detail and getting it right and so that’s what they were involved in; they were involved in the musicality of doing something incredible. The Ziggy Stardust tour ended in L.A.–and then Iggy was at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. He was in a terrible state. Iggy was staggering around and apologizing. I can’t remember what he’d done. Maybe he'd tried to fuck me or something. I picked him up off the floor and carried him to my suite. I think David was just as stoned as Iggy was. Later, at the Mercer Arts Center I met David Johansen when he was going out with Cyrinda Foxe so I knew him a little more than I knew Johnny Thunders, these guys were all so cool, too, so sweet. That’s what everybody doesn’t realize is that there was ten years of this stuff going on before the Sex Pistols. I mean, Malcolm [McLaren] even says it and everybody else. The New York Dolls, The Stooges, The Ramones: I thought they were fabulous, because it was caricature and cartoon-like and larger than life.
I don’t know if Lisa Robinson promoted David Johansen and Cyrinda Foxe as a great couple, but they were a great couple. I thought they were terrific but I only know my own feelings about them but this is a personal opinion and I just felt that Cyrinda always had very little vision as far as her own talent was concerned. Then I think that for her to leave Johansen and go with that crap guy in Aerosmith who was a total ignoramus, you know, compared to David, who was bright, intelligent and treated her well. I mean, she was my friend, I loved her to death, but I’ve never been able to fathom her perception of men. Johansen positioned himself to be with her, he wanted to be with her, he was smart, it would appear to me that he would be an extremely supportive person to be with and stay with. As soon as David [Bowie] said he was going to put Cyrinda in the “Rebel Rebel” video I knew he was fucking her. I think it’s incredible that David and I were together for so long. I can only put it down to my stamina and endurance. I must be some kind of masochist to have been able to endure it. And with David the first thing that shocked me was he could write such intelligent lyrics and so it was very much in the same mode of Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, you know, they wrote intelligent lyrics. Now, you could laugh and say, “Now I wanna be your dog” is an intelligent lyric? Yes it is! Those lyrics conjure an image in your mind. —Backstage Passes: Life on the Wild Side with David Bowie (2000) by Angela Bowie
Robby Krieger: In the fall of 1966. The Doors had recently arrived in New York City to play a month-long residency at the Ondine Discotheque, to finish the mixing of our debut album, playing five half-hour sets each night, finishing just shy of sunrise. On our nights off, drummer John Densmore and I explored jazz clubs in the Village. During the daylight hours, keyboardist Ray Manzarek and his girlfriend, Dorothy, ventured out to the museums. Even though the New York crowd hadn’t heard our songs before, they seemed to dig us, and the local groupies seemed fascinated by these mysterious aliens from California. I had brief flings with several of them, including Rory Flynn, a six-foot-tall model I knew from back in L.A., who also happened to be Errol Flynn’s daughter. I found out later that the groupies at Ondine’s compared notes with one another and bestowed ratings on their conquests. I didn’t get much attention from anyone after Rory, so I must not have rated too highly. Before I met my wife, Lynn, she was hanging out with her friend Peggy at the New York apartment of a guy forebodingly known as Danny Overdose. Peggy found Danny’s supply of liquid Owsley acid (a particularly potent formula) and said, “Let’s have a tea party!” Instead of placing a single droplet on their tongues, Peggy and Lynn filled up half a teacup each and started sipping. A normal acid trip kicks in after about a half hour; the Owsley hit them almost instantly. The people outside on the street suddenly appeared to have bizarrely long necks, and their heads were bobbing around like they were in some sort of spooky cartoon. In hopes of finding a new way to look inward, I tried an alternative to acid: morning glory seeds. I had heard that by eating the crushed seeds I could achieve a similarly psychedelic high. So off I went to my local florist. Despite my wife Lynn’s negative experiences with acid, she had no interest in meditation and rolled her eyes whenever John or I talked about it. For all my dedication and practice, she said she never saw much of a difference in me. I was already a mellow guy. According to her, if I got any mellower I would drop off the face of the earth. Lynn’s mom was a fanatic Catholic who dragged the family to regular church services and forbade any of her eight children to curse, even though she herself cursed all the time. Lynn’s dad was generally laid-back, but her mom had wild mood swings and kept the whole house on edge. When Lynn was a teenager, her brother told their mom that Lynn had gone on a date with Sammy Davis Jr. It was an absurd story, intended to inflame their mom’s simmering racial prejudice, but it worked better than expected. Lynn’s mom not only flipped out in the moment but held it over Lynn’s head for years, no matter how many times Lynn attempted to explain that it was a joke. Lynn had to get out. She couldn’t take the pressure and the hypocrisy and the oppression, so she escaped into New York City to go clubbing whenever she could. At only sixteen years old she moved into an apartment on the Upper East Side with one of her closest companions, a gay hairdresser named Kenny. By the time Lynn was eighteen, she had friends at clubs all over the city, so she had no trouble getting into the Ondine Discotheque when the Doors made their New York debut in 1966. I didn’t meet her that night, but Jim Morrison did. She met the humble, gentlemanly version of Jim and was predictably charmed by him. That night, with the enthusiasm of a tourism board member, Jim told her all about Los Angeles, and how the West is the best. Palm trees, sunshine, beaches… she was sold. She and her friends drove cross-country and saw that Jim wasn’t lying. But he hadn’t been too forthcoming about his relationship status. One day during her visit, she was hanging out at Jim’s house on Rothdell Trail in Laurel Canyon when Pam walked in and shrieked, “Jim! Who’s that?” Lynn asked. “Oh, this is Pam, my girlfriend.”
Jim had failed to mention Pam before then. Lynn wasn’t naive; but a secret, official, live-in girlfriend? Lynn ran out of the house and down the steps past the Canyon Country Store. Jim chased after her, shouting, “Don’t go!” Somehow, Jim convinced Lynn to keep hanging out with him. She went back to New York and they met up whenever the Doors traveled east, and she saw him whenever she took trips out to L.A. with her friends. It was the beginning of the hippie era, and L.A. wasn’t as crowded or as noisy as Manhattan. At first it was almost too peaceful for Lynn, but after a while — convinced that she could maybe solidify things with Jim if she lived a little closer to him — she finally made the move to Laurel Canyon. Jim tested Lynn’s limits just as he did with everyone else. Once they were at a party at a fancy Malibu beach house, with a deck that stretched out over the sand. Lynn was leaning over the railing when Jim grabbed her ankles and hoisted her over the edge. He held her dangling there as the blood rushed to her head. She screamed, “Get me up! Get me up!” He made a single demand: “Tell me you love me.” She could barely sputter out the words because she was so furious, but she told him what he wanted to hear and he pulled her back onto the deck. At first it was easy for Lynn to cope with Jim’s behavior because she had been surrounded by one type of craziness or another her whole life. But he kept pushing. Lynn’s relationship with Jim officially ended for good when she moved to a house at Horse Shoe Canyon with a new group of friends.
By early ’68, though, we were both officially single, and Lynn's hilarious sense of humor, her East Coast edge, and her fearless spirit set her apart from other girls and made her irresistible. So one night when I found out that Lynn was going to be at a party at a mutual friend’s house, I made sure to attend. I had recently bought a burgundy Porsche 911S, so I gallantly offered Lynn and her friend a ride home. Like every dumb guy, I tried to show off by gunning the engine and taking corners at dangerous speeds. Nothing physical happened that night, but it was the first chance Lynn and I had to really get to know each other, and we started hanging out. I never asked Jim how he felt about me dating Lynn because he still had Pam, so it seemed like everything had worked out well for everyone. About a year later, Lynn and I moved into a house in Benedict Canyon that would later become the inspiration for the song “Hyacinth House.” Later, Jim complimented me on my choice of partner. He never went after Lynn again. Lynn and I remain together to this day. Set the Night on Fire is dedicated to her. "This book is dedicated to Lynn Ann Veres, my wife of fifty years so far. She’s the only person I’ve ever met who lets me be me. And that’s why I’ll always love her."
Pamela Courson never tried to put a wedge between Jim and the band. She never meddled in our creative process. I always thought she was good for Jim. Their relationship may have been tumultuous at times, but they never had any major fights when I was around. They made their own rules. It was clearly an open relationship since they were both seeing other people, and that incited trouble from time to time. But they genuinely seemed devoted to each other. A true couple. And even their unstable version of stability was better than Jim bouncing from girl to girl every night. Pam used to date Arthur Lee from Love, who called her Yellow Tooth due to her discolored incisors. But her sweet looks outweighed her dental shortcomings enough that John hit on her at the London Fog before Jim ever did. Her squeaky voice and goofy demeanor made her appear sweet and innocent, but she was crazier than Jim in some ways, taking up with weird guys and doing heroin. To many men that would be a negative, but Jim had finally met someone who could walk on the edge right alongside him. Pam was too flaky to get into poetry or literature on the same level as Jim, but she was smarter than most people realized. Some people question whether she was calculating the cost-benefit of dating Jim in the name of a financially comfortable future. I can’t say that wasn’t a factor, but she still legitimately loved him. It was a complex coupling, to say the least. The bottom line is that she was weird, he was weird, and they were lucky they found each other to be weird with. Pam and I were both Capricorns so we always got along well. She seemed to get along with the other band members and all our girlfriends, too, even after Lynn’s awkward introduction to her at the Rothdell Trail house. But Jim and Pam were often in their own bubble. I don’t think Pam ever consciously tried to separate Jim from the rest of us. She just hung out with all these junkies and oddball Europeans, and the separation naturally evolved. I can’t say for sure that moving to Paris with Jim in 1971 was her idea, but I’ve always believed that her long-standing affair with a French count/heroin dealer must’ve factored into her enthusiasm for the idea. After Jim died, Pam returned to the States, exited the airport, got in a cab, and entered into a heroin-fueled fling with the driver, who happened to also be a drug dealer. I saw her only a few times after that. She was still the same Pam, but her silly side had been blunted by severe depression. She never wanted to talk much about what had happened in Paris, of course. The last time I ran into her was when Lynn and I met Ray and John and their wives for dinner up in Sausalito. Pam coincidentally walked into the same restaurant with another new boyfriend and made chitchat but then excused herself to eat at a separate table. There has always been speculation about whether Pam’s fatal overdose was accidental or intentional. I couldn’t possibly say. I just know she was sad. And one way or the other, the grief took her. —"Set the Night on Fire" (2021) by Robby Krieger
Investigating heroism in mate choice: An article published in the July issue (2021) of Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, by Bhogal and Bartlett, sheds light on the importance of heroism in the context of mate selection. Participants were required to read various scenarios (four involving a target with low/high heroism, plus two control situations) and rate the desirability of the target for both short-term relationships and long-term relationships. Compared to men, women expressed greater desire for heroic targets. Nevertheless, heroism mattered to both sexes. Desirability of heroic romantic partners: It is puzzling why heroism exists at all. After all, heroism is quite nonadaptive. According to Dunbar and Kelly, “Brave, courageous and self-sacrificing individuals” should be rare, “both in evolutionary terms (sacrificing self for unrelated others is not an ideal way of promoting your own genes) and in terms of lifetime survival chances (the more risks taken, the greater the likelihood of disaster).” However, we also need to remember the following: While it is true that heroes are risk-takers, heroes’ risk-taking is prosocial. Perhaps this explains why women are attracted to heroic men. After all, care and concern for others are important qualities in a supportive romantic partner, particularly one who might become a parent one day. In their own investigation, these researchers found male bravery had the biggest impact on female choice for short-term sexual partners. For long-term partners and friends, however, altruism was more important. And to the extent heroism relates to risk-taking, it might signal fitness (in mating situations), thus increasing the desirability of the person as a romantic partner, at least for short-term relationships. As Bartlett and Bhogal state, “Through displaying heroic behavior, one can signal that they can bear the costs of behaving heroically, thus making them more desirable in mate choice contexts.” Source: www.psychologytoday.com
“Against the exceptional individual are the great numbers of men, trained in a vice that ensnares them.” —Jim Morrison
Jim Morrison talked of his cosmic soulmate Pamela Courson to one of his last lovers, Eva Gardony: “She was a child when we met, and I feel responsible for her because she never grew up. She has been everything for me, my mom, my sister and my daughter.’ And he forgave her a lot of things. Even though at times she was impossible to be with—because she would be stoned or bad tempered—he would say, ‘She’s a sweet child.’ It was touching he just felt he had to take care of her the rest of his life. They argued, both had their grievances, like ‘You done that to me, and for that I done that to you.' But they always gravitated back to each other after every little escapade. He always spoke of Pamela with total affection. Pamela was quick, she was witty, she was funny; she was neurotic. She had the clarity of a child, with very good intuitions, and an innocence that Jimmy loved in her a great deal.” —"Jim Morrison: Friends Gathered Together" (2014) by Frank Lisciandro
"It wasn’t that I didn’t like Jim Morrison. I just didn’t really know him as a friend. One time, I was at the Tropicana Hotel, on Santa Monica, and out of my window I saw Jim and Bryan MacLean standing, face to face. All of a sudden, Jim socked Bryan in the mouth, pretty hard. Bryan made the mistake of mentioning Pamela or something. I actually thought that was the best thing I’d ever seen Jim Morrison do. Bryan said that they were arguing and Jim hit him square in the mouth. I said to myself, “Regardless of what I think, Jim Morrison’s got a heart.” —"Arthur Lee: Alone Again" (2001) by Barney Hoskyns
"Everything that he did with his power, his fame, it was all about some greater good," Rose Marie Terenzio (his former executive assistant at George magazine) said of John Kennedy Jr. "He's truly missed for the way that he gracefully took that mantle of responsibility and lived an honorable life full of integrity—and he's missed for what we all want, which is somebody to look up to and to be proud of."
Kevin Myron (Celebrity & Spectacle: The Making of a Media Event): John Jr. signifies purity and virtue since the act of publicly shaming his cousins is an attempt to separate himself from those negative connotations. There is also a discourse of family betrayal running through John’s figure, that he somehow broke the code of family protectionism. Here, we see that in life the acceptable discourses for a Kennedy figure might be much more complex and controversial than in death. Last, if we analyze all of the television tributes and coverage of John Jr.’s death, we get the realization of the American dream, where the Kennedy family is seen as American Royalty, with John Jr. as the fallen prince. We get a vision of politics, where liberal is not seen as a dirty word. John Jr. embodies the Kennedys’ brand of compassionate, pragmatic democratic politics even though he never ran for office himself. We saw John Jr. as the newest tragedy from a family virtually defined by the dialectic of tragedy/success. I want to address Carolyn Bessette here now. She is a powerful image and certainly powerful from the perspective of the image of the marriage. She does a lot of things symbolically and from the perspective of a sign to perpetuate this. First of all, she fulfills the popular myth of Camelot. There must be a queen or at least a princess in Camelot, and Carolyn Bessette filled that purpose in a very, very compelling way. —Celebrity & Spectacle: The Making of a Media Event/Mediated Realities of the JFK Jr. Tragedy (November, 1999) edited by Gregory Payne
The sister of Doors singer Jim Morrison said their father, a decorated flag officer in the U.S. Navy, offered to resign as his son became a counterculture icon. George Stephen Morrison served from 1938 until 1975, retiring as a rear admiral with 15 career decorations, including honors for valor and merit. He fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. In a recent interview with the Del Mar Times, Anne Morrison Chewning recalled that her older brother had been known for misbehavior long before he found fame with the Doors. “Jim was loads of fun,” she said. “He would do pranks and silly things, and he would get us into trouble on the Navy base.” Even though the first song Morrison wrote was a collaboration with his pianist father, Anne said that George Morrison “just didn’t understand Jim’s poetry, and he was clearly not into rock ‘n’ roll.” At one point, the officer wrote a letter to his son, telling him to “to give up any idea of singing or any connection with a music group because of what I consider to be a complete lack of talent in this direction.”
Anne – who compiled an upcoming book of Morrison's writings – added: “I only heard this later, but my dad offered to resign from the Navy if what Jim was doing was upsetting to the Navy – and my dad loved the Navy! It was really special to him, and he didn’t want anything to upset the apple cart with the Navy. But, in the end, he didn’t have to resign.” Both of Morrison’s parents outlived him by decades, and although they were estranged at certain times, Anne said the singer told people they were dead in order to protect them from his world. On the subject of the Doors song “The End,” which refers to a character killing his father and sleeping with his mother, Anne noted that "people would whisper to me: ‘Are your parents upset about ‘The End?’ And I’d say: ‘Not in the least. The lyrics are just a Greek myth.’ Jim did it in a new way, and I loved the drama of it.”
On his record label biography distributed in 1967, Jim Morrison listed his parents as dead. "He just didn't want to be involved in dad's life," Chewning observes today. "And he knew dad probably wouldn't approve of some of the things he was writing and singing about - and his behavior and his life. He was just totally the opposite of my dad. So, I think he just decided to separate." Chewning moved back to California with her husband and infant son shortly after discovering that her brother was a rock star. Hearing that the Doors were due to fly into Los Angeles, she decided to surprise Morrison at the airport. "We went and met him - my husband and my little son. Jim looked at me and said, 'You don't happen to be my sister, do you?'" It was the start of a joyful reunion for the Morrison siblings. Chewning dropped in on a Doors session, where Morrison gave a sweet mid-song shoutout to her baby boy. Source: people.com
They also visited the home Morrison shared with his girlfriend, Pamela Courson, and cooked them a Thanksgiving meal. "We'd see him, but not often," Chewning admits. "We were all in our 20s, I was pregnant. People were just busy in their own lives. You didn't know that soon it would be the last time. There just wasn't an urgency, which was the sad thing. I didn't ever see him perform. I wish I had." When Jim Morrison died on July 3, 1971, at the age of only 27, he left behind a formidable library of notebooks and loose-leaf. One scrap bore the heading "Plan for Book," followed by a short outline for how to organize his original works. He never lived to finish the project, but now, 50 years after his death, his family has fulfilled his creative wish. Chewning, who wrote the prologue for “The Collected Works,” is the co-executor of her late brother’s personal estate. She devoted years to compiling and guiding this comprehensive new book, which includes a foreword by novelist Tom Robbins and an introduction by Frank Lisciandro, Morrison’s close friend and collaborator.
“I knew several Jims,” Lisciandro writes in his introduction. “The shy loner who was my classmate at the UCLA School of Film; the rock performer who was always raising the stakes on what was culturally acceptable; the lyricist, poet and writer who surprised me with notebook pages of complex poems and gifts of self-published books ...” In one of his notebooks from the trial, Morrison wrote: “The joy of performing has ended. Joy of films is pleasure of writing.” Those sentiments are shared by former Doors guitarist Robby Krieger. His memoir, “Set the Night on Fire,” is due for publication this fall by Little, Brown and Company. The Morrison men were never able to put aside their differences - in life, at least. "It's too bad," says Anne Morrison Chewning. "Pam called my dad after Jim had died and said they had talked about Jim reconnecting. It had only been five years or six years. That's really not very long in terms of most lives."
“There’s so many young people who just see him as a rock star,” Chewning explains. “I want to dispel the ‘Lizard King’ and all those things that you hear. We wanted the reader to see the complete Jim, to see that he was a full writer in multiple areas, thinking in lots of different directions.” Agreeing that the trial made Morrison realize he needed a reset and led him to seek solace in Paris, Chewning says the trip was “kind of what he needed.” “He actually said, ‘Maybe I was ready to be done,’” she shares. “He was quite drunk and who knows what he was saying. But he said himself, ‘Maybe I wanted this to happen, so I could be done for a while.’ Later, reflecting on his conviction, he admitted, “Miami blew my confidence, but really I blew it on purpose.” For Chewning, going through her late older brother’s writings was bittersweet. She was amazed at the vast sum of writings he completed at such a young age. But it’s what Morrison envisioned for his future that touched Chewning the most. But there were glimmers of hope, as he also wrote about his “desire for family” and wished for “a chance to write my Paradise Lost?” “Doesn’t that break your heart?” Chewning asks, adding that she’d never heard him speak about wanting a family of his own, but that he was always “very sweet with children.” Source: www.thedailybeast.com
Most people would jump at the chance to spend any time at all at the Kennedy compound with one of America’s most prominent families. But Carolyn Bessette was not like most people. According to The Kennedy Heirs by J. Randy Taraborrelli, John F. Kennedy Jr.’s wife resisted visiting his relatives in Hyannis Port often when the topic was broached. Taraborrelli described Bessette’s reluctance to visit the compound and Kennedy’s insistence that she do so as the “recurring argument” the couple “just couldn’t seem to settle no matter how many times they tried.” Part of the reason Bessette objected to these visits was because she didn’t feel that she fit in with the athletic Kennedy crew. But perhaps the more pressing reason she wanted to avoid the Cape compound was to avoid the paparazzi. Bessette and Kennedy were hounded by the photographers almost constantly, and Carolyn was deeply affected by the invasion of privacy. Though at first she thought the Kennedy compound was a hideaway from the media, she changed her mind after seeing a photographer shoot her from the pier one day. “Now she felt she had to put on an act for public consumption, which added a new level of angst to going to the compound,” Taraborrelli wrote. “She was taking antidepressant pills just to get through it, she confided in her friends.”
And John wasn’t always understanding of Carolyn’s objections. According to Taraborrelli, Kennedy once brought up their recurring disagreement at dinner with friends, telling her, “Fine. Don’t come with me, hell if I care.” When she began to cry, he told her, “You’re crying because you don’t want to have fun on the beach with my family? I don’t understand you, Carolyn.” He thought she’d at least appeared to be having a good time during their family trips. Other friends think another reason was the resistance of Carolyn to accept the future role in politics his husband would have adopted at last. The most improbable source of their rows was romantic jealousy - although some not very credible acquaintances insisted Carolyn was very jealous of John's former girlfriend Julie Baker, whom she forbade of visiting their apartment. In fairness, Baker had been disrespectful when she was seen sitting one evening on John's lap in a quite inappropriate way. Longtime friends Sasha Chermayeff and Santina Goodman found Julie Baker's behaviour rude. On the other hand, the mere mention of Michael Bergin's name could unearth intense rage from John, according to these same anonymous friends. Source: www.instyle.com
John Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette were married at a Baptist church illuminated by candlelights, so dim inside that the Reverend Charles J. O’Byrne of Manhattan’s Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, where Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s funeral was held, had to read the service by flashlight. John’s cousin and closest friend, Anthony Radziwill, served as best man (as John had served as best man at Anthony’s wedding to Carole Ann Radziwill), and at the end of the ceremony John turned to Anthony to tell him that he had never been happier in his life. The man who could have had many women of high caliber had chosen as his bride one who was not rich or famous or ennobled by family background or particularly distinguished by any professional accomplishment. What Carolyn Bessette had were certain charismatic qualities—remarkable beauty, a unique sense of style, and a sharp intelligence. The media played the marriage as a Cinderella story, casting Carolyn as the commoner who had found true love with Prince Charming. —"The Newest Kennedy, the Stylish Carolyn Bessette" (September 29, 1996) by Elisabeth Bumiller
Once Pam Courson and I left Jim Morrison and his ex-girlfriend Mary Werbelow alone for awhile, and Pam said something I will never forget: “I feel sorry for Mary.” I knew it meant she was not threatened by the emergence of Mary. I knew that something had long been settled between her and Jim. Their relationship was deeper than either one of them had ever had before. I’d begun to suspect that something had been settled between the two of them – something unbreakable except by death itself. —"Summer with Morrison: The Early Life and Times of James Douglas Morrison, A Memoir" (2011) by Dennis C. Jakob
Sex in America: 1 in 3 young men aren’t having it! The study, published Friday in the journal JAMA Network Open, documents a steady decline: In 2002, 19 percent of men reported not having sex within a year. In 2018, that increased to 31 percent of men. While the majority of study participants were sexually active with about one partner, young Americans report having less sex over the past two decades. These changing sex trends aren't trivial — research shows sex is positively associated with longevity, life satisfaction, lower blood pressure, and well being. If people aren't having enough sex, it could influence mental and physical health. "These findings deserve attention because sexually intimate relationships are important for many — though certainly not all — people's well-being and quality of life," co-author Peter Ueda, a researcher at the Karolinska Institute.
The study—To determine how much and how frequently people in the US are having sex, researchers harnessed data from the General Social Survey. This is given every other year — this study documents from 2000 to 2018. Researchers asked questions like: “About how often did you have sex during the last 12 months?” with response options ranging from “not at all” to “more than 3 times a week." They also asked: “How many sex partners have you had in the last 12 months?” Choices ranged from “no partners” to “more than 100 partners.” The team stratified sexual frequency into four categories: sexually inactive (no sex during the past year), once or twice per year, 1 to 3 times per month, and weekly or more. More men than women reported having no sexual partner and 3 or more partners. Meanwhile, fewer men reported weekly or more sexual activity and one sexual partner. Across the entire age range, men reported dwindling sex lives. At the start of the study, 9.5 percent of men across the age range were sexually inactive. By the end, that number grew to 16.5 percent, with most of the increase occurring between 2012 to 2014. The percentage of 18-to 24-year-old men who were sexually inactive in the past year increased from 18.9 percent to 30.9 percent when the study concluded.
In contrast, sexual activity in the total age range remained stable among women throughout the study. However, when broken down by age group, sexual inactivity increased among women aged 25 to 34. All women reported less sex weekly, a trend that was driven largely by younger women. Meanwhile, while women reported less sex, they did report an increase in sexual partners. Among women, there were no strong links observed between sexual inactivity and employment status or income level. Scientists haven’t pinned down what's causing the stark sexual decline, but the study's authors say the trend may stem from a range of factors: changing sexual norms, stress, the rise of social media, smartphones, time spent online, and busyness of modern life crowding out intimate relationships. Interestingly, one might think the rising popularity of online dating would increase people's sexual activity and number of partners. This study doesn't show that to be the case. Beyond the root causes of sexual activity — or inactivity — Ueda hopes to determine to what extent sexual inactivity is associated with dissatisfaction. Some people may choose to abstain from sex, while others' lack of sexual activity is a source of stress and worry. Ueda also stresses that it's time for more open, nuanced public discussion not only about having sex but not having it. "Sexual inactivity and potential dissatisfaction with it seem to be sensitive topics," Ueda says. "While much work has been done to promote a frank and nuanced discussion about sex and sexual activity, it would be in our best interest to also be better at talking about not having sex." Source: www.inverse.com
In Blue Velvet (1986), Lynch's main characters should definitely be looked at as archetypes rather than real people. The film has a lot to say about gender roles and gendered gazes, and accomplishes it by having characters representing different places on the spectrum of gender. For example, Jeffrey and Sandy represent neuters; their relationship is so bland and sexless. Frank (Dennis Hopper) isn't just hypermasculine but also hyperfeminine; he wears lipstick and weeps openly at songs. He's the uber-gender. Even the name Frank Booth is a euphemism for the male and for the female genetalia, respectively. The gas mask that he carries around and inhales from shows a kind of vaginal envy; it wraps around his face like he was performing oral sex on a woman, compare this to a pipe which is the more obvious choice for showing drug consumption and also very phallic. It's like he carries it around as a substitute for having a vagina.
In Inland Empire (2006), Nikki (Laura Dern), who has a jealous husband, immerses herself in a film role and her excessive identification with the character (and possible related infidelity) pull her into the subjective experience of the character as a version of her life and what she knows of her family history (Susan Blue trapped in the cinema theatre and Nikki's personal and epigenetic experiences as the story). From here she begins to glimpse a deep family history version of the underlying "folk tale" which serves as an origin of an embodiment of murderous jealous rage (the Phantom), an access to the male side of the experience, and an understanding that this all comes from a primal place of the collective unconscious (the rabbit room) where an eternal play of timeless torment plays out. Through the process of cinema, she is able to ritually sacrifice herself, take on a male aspect (the gun), find the room, eradicate the evil engram (an engram is a unit of cognitive information inside the brain, theorized to be the means by which memories are stored), the phantom, and unify with the damaged feminine victims bringing love and forgiveness. The universal field is healed of it's grievous flaw, or at least she had some good self therapy. There are so many layers to process in this, my favorite film, but I think the most emphatic "story" is that of humanity haunted by a pattern of jealous violence and a woman who braves a mystical trial to set things right. Source: news.avclub.com
-Patricia Butler: What would Jim and Pam make of the frenzy that still surrounds them? What of the theories buzzing around their lives, their relationship, their significance? The people who met them once or twice and now speak casually and familiarly of and for them? The May 1970 issue of Show magazine featured rock stars and their favorite clothing designers. Jim, of course, chose Pamela and her boutique Themis, saying in the article, “Pamela’s clothes are weapons, ornaments, and protection.” I suppose he had no way of knowing at the time that he and Pamela would have more need of protection from the prying eyes, pointing fingers, and lurid imaginations of strangers decades after their deaths than they did at the time. I had the opportunity to interview Tere Tereba, who was part of that Show magazine article. She designed the original clothing for the store, and became good friends with both Jim and Pam. In fact, she visited Jim and Pam in Paris and left them just two days before Jim’s death. "Pam Courson cared deeply for Jim and did want only the best for him," Tere Tereba said: "Jim always did what she said: he adored and trusted her so much! They loved each other and had great plans for the future."
I asked Tere Tereba how she thought history should remember the pair. She thought about it a second and then said, “They were just a really nice couple.” And I think she’s absolutely right. They were just a really nice couple and that’s how people should remember them. But they won’t. Because the thing about the dead is that they become blank screens upon which the living may project all their own personal hopes and dreams and imaginings without fear of contradiction. For all the quiet times Jim and Pam spent in private, it is the act they put on for the world—the dangerous rock star and his fiery girlfriend—that people will remember and judge and build upon for generations to come. And maybe that’s okay. It was Jim and Pam’s conscious decision to play the roles they did to distract public eyes from their relatively quiet private lives. Maybe their only mistake was in trusting the rest of us to understand that it was, after all, just an act. From what people told me, Judy Courson was pretty enough, but Pamela was a knockout. Judy had brown hair and didn't fare well in comparison with Pamela. By the way, Judy was only Pamela's half sister. It seems that Penny had Judy as a result of a liaison with a soldier when she was about 16. Corky adopted Judy after he married Penny and Judy's birth certificate was altered to list Corky as the father. Jim was driven nuts by all the women he fell in love with and actually respected honesty more than any other feature. The bone stuck in the throat of Patricia Kennealy that continually rails about Pamela's good looks, which were indeed very pretty, amounts to outraged insecurity.
-Gary James: What did you think of Jim Morrison? What was your impression of Jim Morrison?
-Ellen Sander: Jim was a very shy person. I kind of felt a certain understanding about him 'cause he was primarily a writer. I think that's how he liked to think of himself. He was just a very shy kind of person, but he was also an actor and a performer. He had a very well developed stage presence. As with many performers, his private life was very different. He was also a downstairs neighbor of one of my good friends, so I saw him on occasion there where he lived. So, I feel like he was shy and since the success of The Doors happened so quickly and so extremely, it was kind of hard for him to adjust. So, he spent a lot of time feeling oddly out of place and he would just put on his persona to deal with it. Source: www.classicbands.com
The Doors' very first compilation 13, originally released in 1970, turns 50 this year! To celebrate this milestone, 13 will be available for the first time in 37 years on August 7th! This 50th Anniversary edition features remastered audio by The Doors' longtime engineer/mixer Bruce Botnick, pressed on "Ink Spot" blue and white swirl vinyl and housed in a meticulously reproduced version of the original artwork including record labels and the printed inner sleeve.
Laurel Canyon is a very real place, but it comes off almost as a Brigadoon-style dream in the commemoration of the L.A. rock scene of the late ’60s and early ’70s that is director Alison Ellwood’s “Laurel Canyon” (2020) The first half the two-part docuseries on Epix, which premiered May 31, threw a spotlight onto the Byrds, the Doors, Buffalo Springfield, Mamas and the Papas, Love, Frank Zappa and others who drove the counterculture in the years leading up to Woodstock, and how they were folksy neighbors in L.A.’s least urban enclave. Ellwood does use a fair amount of audio from deceased subjects like Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Cass Ellliot, Arthur Lee and Bryan MacLean, so putting everyone in voiceover puts everyone back on the same mortal coil for cinematic purposes.
-Variety: You’d been wanting to do a film about this for 20 years, since you became fascinated with the Doors, so you were immersed in a lot of the lore. Were there any stories that you hadn’t heard before?
-Alison Ellwood: I didn’t know about the Doors/Love connection, in which the latter band helped the Doors get a record deal with Elektra, only to come to regret it. I had no idea that Alice Cooper met Jim Morrison or how he was tied to the Canyon at all. That came as a total surprise. Source: variety.com
Patricia Butler: Rainer Moddemann fled the scene when I tipped off Danny Sugerman what Rainer was posting in his page, and Danny went there and kicked Rainer's sorry ass, letting everyone know in no uncertain terms that Rainer was a liar and a thief and that the Doors planned to sue him up one side and down the other for the things he's done. As for the notion that anything in my book came from Rainer, this was not only never "rumored," but to anyone who knows anything about Rainer and his actions over the years, it's nothing short of ludicrous. Rainer had his shot with the Doors, and actually could have made something of that opportunity if he hadn't decided instead to lie (he was telling everyone that he was "the Doors European representative", which he wasn't, by any stretch of the imagination) and steal (he actually stole gold records out of Robby Krieger's home and stole photos from Danny Sugerman) and stab them in the back. Not surprisingly, Rainer is a big friend of Patricia Kennealy, and would do anything to stay in her good graces, including making up a lot of nonsense about Pamela Courson. How pathetic is it to make up things to denigrate a dead woman? By the way, while Pamela had many faults, she was neither a heroin addict nor a hooker, no matter how hard Kennealy and her friends work to make people believe otherwise.
Oh, and just another bit of info -- Rainer Moddemann didn't know Jim Morrison, or Pam either, even though he likes to try to convince people otherwise. My favorite story about Rainer is when he wrote a letter, in fact, to Jerry Hopkins, trying to convince Jerry he shouldn't deal with me. What Rainer didn't know, of course, was that Jerry and I were very close friends. So Rainer sends Jerry this letter full of all kinds of dire sounding lies (the best part was when he told Jerry he'd seen me drunk in Paris when Jerry knows I don't drink). Jerry sent me a copy of the letter he sent back to Rainer. It was quite entertaining, to say the least!
Patricia Kennealy: Contrary to the picture painted in the Doors mythology, Pamela Courson was no poster girl for the 60's spirited, enlightened independent feminist. Very much the opposite: she was a shallow, manipulative, junkie trollop. But she was so pretty. She really was. By her own life and death, Pamela Susan Courson furnished an incontestable proof: if she had had any guts or brains whatsoever, she would still be here, alive and crying, but alive and thriving. As I am.
Veteran rock journalist Barney Hoskyns indicated in his 2001 book, "Arthur Lee: Alone Again" the brief friendship between Arthur Lee and Jim Morrison. Hoskyns has quite a resume, having written for Rolling Stone, Harper's Bazaar, Spin, The Independent, and he also was Chief Editor at MOJO Magazine. In "Arthur Lee: Alone Again," Hoskyns states that Jerry Hopkins co-managed Love in 1965, and later Hopkins became a rock writer for Rolling Stone magazine. Jerry Hopkins would co-write with Danny Sugerman "No One Here Gets Out Alive." NOHGOA is one of the worst organized books I've ever read. It doesn't have an usable table of contents and there's no index at all. I found it odd that Hopkins didn't mention in No One Here Gets Out Alive that he'd managed the rock group Love. Hopkins described how Arthur Lee had helped The Doors get a contract with Elektra, but he failed to mention that he managed Lee's band, Love. Why? Maybe an old beef or some kind of resentment? Jim Morrison stated in 1967 that his favorite vocal groups were "the Beach Boys, the Kinks, and Love."
Arthur Lee encouraged Elektra Records’ founder and president, Jac Holzman, to sign the Doors. Barney Hoskyns asserts that Jerry Hopkins and Doug Lyon co-managed Love in 1965. Ronnie Haran, a talent scout/publicist for the Whiskey A-Go-Go began calling record companies, inviting representatives to come see what she called "the American Rolling Stones." A few actually came to check them out. The Beach Boys’ producer Nick Venet didn’t like them at all. Lou Adler was unmoved. The Rolling Stones weren’t impressed either. Nor was Jac Holzman, the thirty-six-year-old music producer and president of Elektra Records. Holzman was urged to see the Doors once more by Ronnie Haran, but also by Arthur Lee, the leader of Love. “Jim Morrison was an intellectual genius in the sense that he was well read – Voltaire, Camus, and all that stuff,” noted Ronnie Haran. “Arthur never read any of those books, but he was a street-smart genius. He was a natural perceiver of where people are coming from.” So Holzman returned and decided there was something appealing in Jim Morrison. By the fourth visit he found himself making his pitch, offering the Doors a contract. Jac wanted they understood that Elektra was a small business company whose tidy and tight-knitted organization was accessible. Arthur Lee had met Pamela Courson when she was living in his Laurel Canyon neighborhood. She was living in a dark Canyon garage reconverted into a house. She barely scraped by. Until they made it, then it wasn't unusual for garages to be rented out to the local musicians--they were cheap digs. Arthur Lee sort of took Pamela under his wing, and they dated for a short while. They had a love relationship that ended in friendship. Jim Morrison found Pam shortly after she had broken up with Arthur Lee. Source: love.torbenskott.dk
Arthur Lee: When I lived in Laurel Canyon, I used to walk from Brier to the Country Store on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. On my way down the hill, I liked seeing all the colorful people at the scene with their beautiful clothes. By then, it was fashionable to rent garages in the area as places to stay. I was coming up Kirkwood Drive one day and I noticed a girl dancing on the other side of the street. She had her garage door pulled up and I could examine her fixed-up garage home. She was a very nice-looking young lady, with shoulder-length red hair, freckles, and a cute figure. I don’t remember who made the first move, but both of us started talking. As I looked around her place, I noticed something was missing. I don’t remember if there was a refrigerator or not but I didn’t see any food around. When I asked if she would like me to buy her some groceries, she smiled and said “yes, thanks, my name is Pam.” And so it became a routine; as I walked or drove up Kirkwood, I would stop by her place and drop off some food and drinks for Pam.
I told her about my group Love, and I asked her if she would like to come up to my place and trip with acid. She said she would, and that was my first date with Pamela Courson. She told me she was from Orange County and she was a go-go dancer in The Strip clubs. Our relationship was good until I saw her flirting with other guys. So it sort of played out after a while, but we remained friendly. She was a good kid, but too flirtatious for my taste. Later, I would see Jim Morrison in Laurel Canyon from time to time, and now Pam was living with him. I found Jim Morrison to be a very interesting guy, although the girls seemed to appreciate him a lot more than I did. After a while, with Ray Manzarek playing the organ in the band, I could see that The Doors were doing something quite different. I told Jac Holzman to go down and check them out at The London Fog. So it was then that The Doors became the second West Coast group signed to Elektra Records.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like Jim Morrison. I just didn’t really know him as a friend. I had enough friends hanging around me at that time. One time, I was at the Tropicana Hotel, on Santa Monica, and out of my window I saw Jim and Bryan MacLean standing, face to face. All of a sudden, Jim socked Bryan in the mouth, pretty hard. Bryan made the mistake of mentioning Pamela or something else. I actually thought that was the best thing I’d ever seen Jim Morrison do. Bryan said that they were arguing and Jim hit him square in the mouth. I said to myself, “Regardless of what I think, Jim Morrison’s got a heart.” Bryan could really get on your nerves and it didn’t come off too good with Jim. After that, I lost sight of him. I think Jim Morrison was a very lonely person. He was always searching for something. Now that I think about it and put it all together, it seemed like he didn’t have a real self. He only lived on what he was told it was happening. He portrayed something that he thought was great but I don’t think he got a chance to be his true, natural self – or perhaps he didn’t like his natural self. He tried to become someone else. And it caught up with him. You finally catch up with yourself, you look in the mirror and you have to face yourself. —"Arthur Lee: Alone Again" (2001) by Barney Hoskyns
