Reflections on Jim Morrison

Here's a sobering thought. It has been 38 years since Jim Morrison died. If he was alive today, he would be 65 years old.

But fate decreed that Morrison, who died on July 3, 1971 at the age of 27, would remain forever young -- in memories, in still and moving images, and in a short but rich discography of poetry set to music.

Let's pretend. Let's say that Morrison hadn't died, and that he and The Doors had continued to record and perform.

"I have a recurring dream in which Jim has just returned from France [where he died] and has accomplished what he went there for in the first place – to rest, get clean, change his rock star lifestyle," Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek told me in a 2008 interview.

"We talk about where he’s been and what he’s been doing. I ask him if he’s been working on any new material, and just before he answers, I wake up. When I first told Robbie [Krieger, Doors guitarist] about it, he said, 'Yeah, me too!' He had had the same dream.

"As for the direction our music might have taken, I think it would probably have been more along the lines of the album [An American Prayer] we did after Jim died that concentrated on the words, the poetry."

Manzarek spins a convincing story, and given Morrison's well known fascination with the occult, who knows? Maybe he did find a way to communicate with his surviving band mates from the other side.

As for speculating what might have been, I've long since resigned myself to remembering the forever young Morrison. The Lizard King. Mr. Mojo Risin'. The ill-fated, self-destructive artist. The guy who haunted us both before and after The End.

In memory of James Douglas Morrison 12/8/43 - 7/3/71

^{Photo courtesy Elektra Records}