Sexual Frequency, Kings & Groupies of Rock

Declines in Sexual Frequency among American Adults, 1989–2014: It’s not clear why sexual activity is down. The study points to some possible culprits, like a decline in happiness in people over 30. American adults had sex about nine fewer times per year in the early 2010s compared to the late 1990s in data from the nationally representative General Social Survey. Sexual frequency declined among the partnered (married or living together) but stayed steady among the unpartnered, reducing the marital/partnered advantage for sexual frequency. Declines in sexual frequency were similar across gender, race, region, educational level, and work status. In analyses separating the effects of age, time period, and cohort, the decline was primarily due to birth cohort/generation. With age and time period controlled, those born in the 1930s (Silent generation) had sex the most often, whereas those born in the 1990s (Millennials and iGen) had sex the least often. The decline was not linked to longer working hours or increased pornography use. Age had a strong effect on sexual frequency: Americans in their 20s had sex an average of about 80 times per year, compared to about 20 times per year for those in their 60s. The results suggest that Americans are having sex less frequently due to two primary factors: An increasing number of individuals without a steady or marital partner and a decline in sexual frequency among those with partners. Source: link.springer.com

Half a century after Pamela Des Barres’s heyday, free love has been replaced with Tinder and the musicians who prowled the Strip are now denizens of classic rock radio. It’s a strange and often scary world. “It’s a dream era that’s never going to come again,” says 'Queen of the Groupies' Des Barres: "In the 60s we were in the throes of a very important revolution, spiritually, emotionally, psychically, sexually—every kind of way. I wanted to express myself along with all these people I admired so much. Part of that, being a groupie, was standing out. I made a lot of my clothes. The outfit I had on one of my times with Jim Morrison, I had on a striped bell-bottom set with a matching little bag that I made. The next time I saw him, I had on a vintage purple velvet ‘30s dress that I had cut off into a mini. Des Barres remembers "making out passionately" with Morrison, spread out on top of her and thinking, "this is the most beautiful man I have ever seen. He was so gorgeous, everything about him was just perfect." It was a different time. All of a sudden women could express themselves sexually, freely. Much more than now. It was a time when we felt, ‘Okay, we’re really coming into our own here.’ Taking the birth control pill out in public and being proud of owning our femalehood. But that’s really fucked up right now. Source: www.vogue.com

Jim Morrison's image was so iconic it was even copied by Elvis Presley. Bill Belew fashioned a black leather costume for the King, almost entirely based on Morrison's. It not only resurrected Presley's career, but also reestablished him as a sex symbol. The comeback of The King of Rock in 1968 was inspired by The Lizard King. Feeling trapped inside a badly scripted movie, Morrison, the tormented hedonist, found it easy to wander from scene to scene with scant regard for reality. Pamela Des Barres, the notorious rock groupie with whom Morrison had a less-than-torrid affair in 1967, spoke of a quiet man who read her poetry, with an occasional temper. They enjoyed walking along the shore, going to parties, taking drugs, but mostly just necking.

Jim Morrison "wasn't as promiscuous as people say he was," Danny Fields remembers: "I don't think he loved to fuck around. He was sort of passively promiscuous. He didn't go out with the specific intention of picking girls up and he certainly didn't order people to get him girls. His life was a series of rather long relationships and always had his woman somewhere. He was so sexy... but I think he found it uncomfortable to be adored by men."  -"Mr Mojo: A Biography of Jim Morrison" (2015) by Dylan Jones

Jim Morrison & Pamela, Lou Reed & Nico: Rock 'n' Roll Angst and Redemption

Jim Morrison articulated again his belief that rock was dead: ‘The initial flash is over. What used to be called rock’n’roll – it got decadent. It became self-conscious, involuted and kind of incestuous. The energy is gone. There is no longer a belief.’ When asked if he might consider to be bisexual, he answered: ‘I’m hopelessly heterosexual!’ Jim also offered to discuss the merits of ‘alcohol as opposed to drugs’, explaining that ‘getting drunk you’re in complete control up to a point. It’s your choice, every time you take a sip. I guess it’s the difference between suicide and slow capitulation.’ Today, despite the record-straighteners, the kiss-and-tell memoirs from former lovers and friends, the online now-it-can-be-told memories, less is known about Jim Morrison and The Doors than ever before. In the acclaimed 2009 documentary When You’re Strange, the depth of what we don’t know about The Doors is revealed as staggering, almost infinite. Never mind the deeply troubled, irresponsibly generous, irrefutably talented, handsome-as-a-matador-in-his-prime real-life person that was James Douglas Morrison. Never mind the books he quietly read, the sweet love he secretly made, the cronies and the hangers-on—how much he despised them but hated himself more. Pamela Des Barres says that her first thought after hearing of his death was for Pamela Courson. Despite the crack-ups, the freak-outs and hate trips, she still believes that: ‘He was in love with Pamela Courson and that was it.’ 

‘He was Jim fucking Morrison and he was a kid... a child. And of course he’s in this playground and he’s going to fuck around with it, but he was really in love with her.’  One day at the end of June, 1971, walking to the beautiful Place des Vosges, Morrison slumped on a bench and wrote what would be his last poem, ‘The Sidewalkers Moved’. ‘Join us at the demonstration,’ he wrote, thinking back to the Paris riots of 1968, while staring blindly into his own unimagined future. Morrison, like Blake, clearly draws a distinction between what is and what is not possible through the imagination. Like Blake, Morrison glorifies the imagination in his work, arguing that when generate our reality through our imagination, our imagination does not see that reality as fixed; much to the contrary, it allows us to see beyond a fixed set of structures, perceiving our reality, like Blake argues, as infinite. —"The Poet Behind the Doors: Jim Morrison's Poetry and the 1960s Counter-Cultural Movement" (2011) by Steven Erkel

Jim Morrison was used to crazy women, groupies, and hangers-on. Even his girlfriend Pamela was crazy, with her flaming red hair and her refusal to play by Jim’s rules. Jim and Nico began to fight a lot, mostly when they were drunk and high. But often when they were simply having sex. Not like Nico used to fight with Brian Jones, though. Jim would never beat Nico up. They simply ‘enjoyed the sensation,’ Nico said: ‘But we make love in the gentle way.’ Then suddenly it was over. Not when Jim or Nico decided, but when Pam decided. Once Pam had found out where Jim was and who he was with, she began a new affair of her own with a French aristocrat named Jean de Breteuil with apparently permanent access to high-quality heroin, which Pam also now began ‘experimenting’ with. She knew what Jim’s reaction would be when he found out and began thinking about it, in those frozen hours he was always most terrified of right before dawn, during the coldest, darkest moments of the night-day. Jim pretended not to care. Then early one morning, while Nico was still passed out, Jim got in his car and drove back to L.A. and Pamela – as he always did eventually, as he always would. Not even leaving a note behind. 

"City Lights" (from Lou Reed's album The Bells, 1979) isn't only about Charlie Chaplin but about a lost America, the implication being that, in these late modern times, all the lights in the world might not be enough to bring us together. The time has come to call the fathers home from the stale curbstone shores. Sometimes they're bad and Take No Prisoners. But who then do they finally hurt but themselves? And when they give of themselves, they reaffirm what great art has always been: an act of love toward the whole human race. Lou Reed is a prick and a jerkoff. He's also a person with a deep compassion for a great many other people about whom almost nobody else gives a shit. I won't say who they are, because I don't want to get too schmaltzy, except to emphasize that there's always been more to this than drugs and fashionable kinks, and to point out that suffering, loneliness and psychic/spiritual exile are great levelers. The Bells isn't merely Lou Reed's best solo LP, it's great art. —Lester Bangs (1979, Rolling Stone)

Berlin isn't my favorite Lou Reed album, that distinction belongs to 1979's The Bells, but to deny that it is among the most important works in his collection would be extremely misguided. Critic Michael Hill pointed out that Reed's album was, "met with confusion, revulsion and anger" upon its initial release. The Velvet Underground's chanteuse Nico would later claim that Reed, "wrote me letters saying Berlin was me." Who exactly Caroline was based on has been conjectured about for years. Was it Nico? Was it Reed's wife at the time Bettye Kronstadt? Caroline is a composite that manifests as a fevered brew of vulnerability, paranoia, suffering and bullying. She is certainly one of the most unforgettable characters in rock history and she inspired some of the most penetrating and memorable lyrics of Lou Reed's career. No one before or since has managed to capture urban angst or the frustrations of addiction, depression, and ultimately redemption better than Lou Reed. Much more than being rock's dark prince, Lou Reed has reminded us for forty years now that there is indeed light at the end of the longest and blackest tunnel. —Moon in the Gutter (2013) by Jeremy Richey

Nico just once offered an example of the peyote visions she endured with Jim Morrison: "The light of the dawn was a very deep green and I believed I was upside down and the sky was the desert which had become a garden and then the ocean. I do not swim and I was frightened when it was water and more resolved when it was land. I felt embraced by the sky-garden." Soon after, she started to write a song lyric, possibly her first, titled Lawns of Dawn. Nico told Morrison that she did not know how to compose. She could not follow the mechanics of writing. Morrison told her to write down her dreams, literally, write down the images she remembered. He started by imitating other writers, Celine and Blake, and he realized that they were writing down their dreams. Their affair, a torrid mixture of drinks, drugs, sex, fights and poetry, lasted little more than a month before this Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden and drifted down their separate roads. They were tired of each other, were exhausted by each others titanic demands. Aside from the authority she had received from Morrison to compose, and the slanted introduction to English poetry, she kept two prevailing souvenirs of their liaison: his blood in hers, and red hair. —"Nico: Life and Lies of an Icon" (kindle, 2017) by Richard Witts

Private Worlds (Debunking Insanity Myths), Trippy make-out session with Jim Morrison

Private Worlds (1935) directed by Gregory La Cava (Happy Anniversary!): Claudette Colbert plays Dr. Jane Everest, a psychiatrist in charge of the male ward at The Brentwood clinic, a progressive mental hospital. Her partner is Dr. Alex MacGregor (Joel McCrea), with whom she has partnered for many years. Despite their professional relationship the pair are not involved romantically — MacGregor is already married to Sally (Joan Bennett), an innocent and trusting girl who adores Jane and trusts Alex — until he gives here reason not to, while Jane pines for a love lost during the first world war. Things begin to go awry when a new hospital superintendant is appointed: Dr. Monet (Charles Boyer) who arrives with his sister Claire (Helen Vinson) in tow and begins to shake things up at the hospital. Monet believes there is no place for a woman in the upper echelons of the medical profession, and banishes Jane to the outpatient clinic. 

Colbert’s Jane Everest is a surprisingly modern breath of fresh air: She’s intelligent, witty, professional, and most importantly, respected as a superior physician by all of her male counterparts —even Boyer’s Monet, in his own time. The film works hard to break various commonly held beliefs about mental institutions and the mentally ill, with entire scenes dedicated to debunking myths. In a key moment that really typifies the movie’s point of view, McCrea’s character says, “I find very little difference between sanity and insanity.” Gregory La Cava, who did most of his directorial work during the silent era (though he helmed such well remembered movies as My Man Godfrey and Stage Door, among others), does a fine job with this material. La Cava’s camera pans in both directions and zooms in and out on the leering faces of the disturbed patients, as the soundtrack becomes a cacophony of screams and cackles. Combined with the near pitch-black setting the scene takes on an expressionistic feel very much out of character with other domestic films of the time. Source: cin-earter.blogspot.com

"I decided it was time for me to take LSD and find out what was really going on. I looked in the mirror and saw my heart beating in my eyeballs, the galaxy throbbed through my quivering veins; I could see trees growing up my cheeks and animals being born in distant dimensions. Ghostlike souls endlessly circled inside my bulging brain, and I was one with them all. The Doors where playing the Hullabaloo Club at Sunset and Vine and I made sure to have a bottle of Trimar for the event. I desperately hoped that Jim would arrive, scoop me up, take me backstage and kiss my lips off. And that's exactly what happened. I had a couple of hankies in my bag, and during our make-out session we indulged wildly in the mind-damaging drug. I had never kissed anyone while high before and it was a revelation! I melted in his mouth like honey, my whole body became a sticky liquid, and his fingers on my face pushed holes through my cheeks like they were on fire and left gaping holes where honey gushed out. He took me by the hand and we climbed a rickety ladder up to a dingy, dark loft where a bunch of old lighting equipment was rusting away, and taking my muskrat jacket, he laid it out on the wooden planks like a damsel in distress."

"What a face he had! One of God's greatest gifts to rock and roll was that guy's face. And there he was right above me, his lips parted and his eyes closed, going in and out of focus as I inhaled my hanky. He drove my Oldsmobile all around Hollywood and I sat next to him, his ring around my neck, and we talked about Trimar. He said it might be 'hurting our heads' and gave me a lecture on drug abuse, telling me the persona he put forward was an elaborate act, and he really wanted to be noticed as a poet. On our way to Tiny Naylor's on La Brea, he grabbed the bottle of Trimar, and threw it out the window into a yard full of overgrown ivy: 'Now we won't be tempted.' We had date-nut bread and fresh orange juice while the sun came up, then cruised the silent Strip to a little hotel where he was staying during his feud with Pamela. After some heavy necking, he climbed from behind the wheel and said, 'I really want to see you again, darling, come here and see me or call anytime.' That was the only time I had my hands on Jim Morrison; I never went all the way with him. He turned out to be very much a one-woman man. As far as I know, he spent the rest of his life with Pamela, and the relationship was of the stormy nature, but I guess he loved her madly. I didn't dare return to the green house after she ordered me out. Jim Morrison prodded and provoked, tested everyone around him to see if he could get an honest reaction. The last time I saw him was right before he left for Paris. I was walking down La Cienega. Jim was on the other side of the street, driving a big convertible, and he turned left into the Benihana parking lot, stopping me dead in my tracks. He told me how nice it was to see me again and how pretty I looked. He took my hand and kissed it; then he backed into the honking traffic and careened down the street." —"I'm with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie" (2005) by Pamela Des Barres

Jim Morrison, Lou Reed, Their Rock Wives

Apparently Jim Morrison and Pamela Courson encountered each other at a midweek party at UCLA. She was radiant, laughing, and seemingly with another guy. Jim circled around her, looking for an angle, but Pam wouldn’t make eye contact. According to Jim’s friend January Jansen, “He saw her there across the room and wanted to meet her, so he asked around until he found a friend of hers who could arrange a proper introduction.” They chatted for a while, and she told him she was taking art classes at Los Angeles Community College. The following weekend, in early April 1966, Pam Courson came to the London Fog. While John Densmore and Pamela were talking in one of the Fog’s booths, Jim Morrison made his move and sat down with them. Ray Manzarek tried to accurately describe this encounter: “Once their eyes combined, their psyches did a caduceus up the staff of Mercury and their souls sprouted wings. They were mated. Olympian. Cosmic.” Jim Morrison later told that when Pamela finally took him home at dawn, it was the first time he’d ever really made love. A few nights later, they went on their first date, to see French director Claude Lelouch’s hit film A Man and a Woman. Pamela had an electric, star-quality presence that could kill all conversation when she walked into a room. She hated the Doors, thought the whole thing was way beneath Jim's talents. Jim didn’t argue with her, just reminded her that the Doors were paying the bills for her rent, the boutique, and everything else. Jim was crazy about Pamela, and so he pampered the hell out of her. She always gave him a lot of attention and admiration and he also showed a great deal of kindness and loving behavior toward her.—"Angels Dance and Angels Die: The Tragic Romance of Pamela and Jim Morrison" (2010) by Patricia Butler

Jim Morrison: “To me, politics is nothing more than the search of certain individuals for private power. They can cloak it in any ideological, romantic or philosophical terms they want, but it’s essentially a private search for power.” Wallace Fowlie, the distinguished biographer of Arthur Rimbaud, began teaching Jim Morrison’s poetry at Duke University. Similar courses were offered at Yale and Stanford. Fowlie later published a critical study, Rimbaud and Jim Morrison: The Rebel As Poet.

Jim Morrison & Pamela (People are Strange) video. Soundtrack: "People are Strange", "Love Her Madly", "The Crystal Ship", "Hello, I Love You" by The Doors, and "Oh, Jim" by Lou Reed.

I was at Lisa Robinson’s house when she got the call from Jim Morrison’s girlfriend Pamela, asking what she should do? Jim was dead in the bathtub. I didn’t want to lose Lou! His drinking scared me silly, but there was nothing I could do except monitor him as best I could. Lou’s favorite bar on Long Island was Jilly’s, where he had bartended on and off in the summers. The gays flirted with him, but there was nothing inappropriate or outrageous. Everyone knew that I was his girlfriend, and the boundaries were drawn. Lou’s flirting didn’t bother me. It didn’t mean anything to him and I felt secure in his love for me. Underneath all the posing, Lou was all man—a leader—and particularly courageous about his principles. He walked away from any situation if it meant he was not being true to himself. If he couldn’t follow his true course, he would give it all up—which was the main reason he left The Velvet Underground. He actually was crazy enough to follow his principles in the real world. At seventeen, Lou’s parents had sent him to see a psychiatrist who prescribed EST for his depression and mood swings. During the summer of 1959, he was treated at Creedmoor State Psychiatric Hospital in Queens, New York, where the EST treatments were administered without an anesthetic. At that time, the procedure involved putting him on a wooden gurney with a rubber block between his teeth. This was an experience that scarred Lou for life. It is commonly thought that EST was prescribed to Lou in order to cure him of his ‘bisexual tendencies,’ but he never told me this or even alluded to it. I think he told journalists this to be more sympathetic to the gay community, in part to broaden his appeal to that audience.

Lou was intent upon becoming successful as an original artist. He rarely talked about his personal writing process. Lou wrote under a kind of extreme cyclical personal pressure—in spurts, usually overnight, and after thoughts and feelings had built up in him so intensely that they came pouring out, often fully formed. His writing process was cathartic, and it allowed him to reach his most authentic truth. Lou never told me what to say, how to act, or what to wear. He always told me I looked great, whatever I wore. He had complete confidence and trust in me, and he let everyone around know it. David Bowie made it known that he was very interested in working with Lou, but the more Lou wished to impress someone, the less he acted like he cared.  —"Perfect Day: An Intimate Portrait Of Life With Lou Reed" (2016) by Bettye Kronstad

Lou Reed's Demos, Papers And Record Collection Soon To Be Public: Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed's widow, is donating his personal archive of recordings, photos and business records to the New York Public Library. Anderson says she hopes access to the archive will paint a more nuanced picture of Lou Reed than the tough guy in leather jacket and shades everyone knows. The collection includes thousands of hours of video and audio recordings and more than 300 boxes of papers, photos and other items spanning his six-decade career. There's a 1971 recording of Reed reading poetry. There's a bill from the legendary New York bar Max's Kansas City — "I really wanted it to not be deep in some vault where only people with white gloves can come. He was really democratic," Anderson explains. Source: www.npr.org

Happy 75th Anniversary, Lou Reed!

Happy 75th Anniversary, Lou Reed!

Lou Reed would’ve turned 75 today (March 2), and in the pantheon of rock and roll, there’s no other figure that exuded the enigmatic cool of Reed. From the Velvet Underground to his solo work, he was the standard of that unique breed of the rock and roll poet that no one else has really surpassed. Reed is the perfect New York icon, which was echoed by Patti Smith when she inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. Smith opened her speech with the following: “On October 27th, 2013, I was at Rockaway Beach, and I got the message that Lou Reed had passed. It was a solitary moment. I was by myself, and I thought of him by the ocean, and I got on the subway back to New York City. It was a 55-minute ride, and in that 55 minutes, when I returned to New York City, it was as if the whole city had transformed. People were crying on the streets. I could hear Lou's voice coming from every café. Everyone was playing his music. Everyone was walking around dumbfounded. Strangers came up to me and hugged me. The boy who made me coffee was crying. It was the whole city… I realized, at that moment, that I had forgotten, when I was on the subway, that he was not only my friend, he was the friend of New York City.” And he still is. Source: wror.com

Much like the Doors' frustrated poet and failed film student Jim Morrison, Reed, the lover of literature and rock 'n' roll, who was playing in bar bands doing top 40 hits at night and studying for his arts degree during the day (later taking a job writing knock-offs of radio hits for a New York publishing house), saw the Velvet Underground's purpose as being "to elevate the rock and roll song and take it where it hadn't been taken before." Source: www.smh.com.au