Brian Jones and Jim Morrison: two musicians joined in death
In Just Kids, Patti Smith writes of the late 1960s and early 1970s as a period shrouded in grief, fear and paranoia. “Few would survive the plagues of a generation,” she wrote as she reflected on her youth and the characters that filled it. “Taken down by the stardom they so desired, just out of reach, tarnished stars falling from the skies,” she eulogised, reflecting on the idols who “sacrificed themselves to drugs and misadventure”.
Two were lost on the same day, at the same age of 27, only a few years apart: Brian Jones and Jim Morrison, two casualties of July 3rd, albeit a couple of years apart.
Smith writes of both. In her world, as someone who truly idolised rock stars before she became one herself, Jones and Morrison were two of the purest beacons. She recalled seeing an early Doors show and that moment being one of the first where she dared to admit what she really wanted to be doing with her life. She writes of Brian Jones with the same awestruck admiration, spending her early years obsessed with The Rolling Stones, dancing to their songs on vinyl and cutting her hair to look like Keith Richards.
But it’s not about Patti Smith at all. It’s about the fact that her experience is common. At the same time, all across her city of New York, the United States, and the world, music fans everywhere were exactly the same. They were hypnotised by Morrison’s cult-leader-like energy. They were thrilled by the dynamic sounds Jones was bringing to the rock world, thanks to his vast musical talent and inspiration.
Brian Jones and Jim Morrison: doomed by design
Both were idols from the very beginning. Morrison made himself a legend the second he stepped onto stage or the second the world heard ‘Break On Through (To the Other Side)’ like a kind of strange, shamanic instruction threatening to whip the LSD generation into a death-defying frenzy. Jones was crafting timeless hits from the start, offering the world things like ‘Paint It Black’ as he was instrumental in starting and setting the Stones off. “No Stones without Jones,” the people sing, and they’re right.
Smith writes of their deaths partly because of this, and partly because they feel like cultural markers. As the 1960s seemed to darken to a violent end with more and more of its brightest stars being lost, more terrifying goings-on breaking out and a general sense of fear and unease building, the loss of two of it’s brightest lights on the same day and in quick succession meant more than just needing to mourn a musician.
The death of Brian Jones, found in his pool only days after the band had cut him loose, wasn’t just a saddening shock. It seemed to violently exemplify the result of the decade’s hedonism. Here was a bright talent burnt out and wasted on drugs. Years later, in 1971, on the same day, Morrison’s death was a reminder of the same message. Despite their god-like reputations, these two men were not immortal. They couldn’t defy death, they couldn’t live forever, they couldn’t escape the consequences.
Surely, no one truly needs an explanation here as to the connections between the lives of Jones and Morrison. In their 27 years, they made themselves stars. But, at the same time, it was clear neither had the self-control to save themselves in the spotlight. Instead, they spiralled, intensely, into addiction and violence. Both became incredibly divisive figures who pushed loved ones away and, in the end, couldn’t even do the thing they were talented at as their bacchanalian ways overtook everything else. They shared the same lack of impulse control and, in the end, were taken down by that same fact.
But there was also a spiritual tether that tied the two together even before their joint death day. In 1969, when Jones passed, Morrison was amongst the saddened masses. Upon his death, Morrison picked up his pen and wrote the Stones’ guitarist a poem. “I hope you went out / Smiling / Like a child / Into the cool remnant / of a dream”, he wrote as a blissful and beautiful ode to the musician, and an oddly prophetic one given that soon, many would hope the same of Morrison’s death.
