“Dead presidents”: Jim Morrison’s dark obsession with the JFK assassination
The civil rights movement, Cuban missile crisis, Apollo 11, US involvement in Vietnam, the advent of Beatlemania, mods versus rockers, the death of Marilyn Monroe, and Woodstock; the 1960s managed to pack a lot of world-altering events into just ten short years. Perhaps the most infamous of them all was the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy. The 1963 murder sent shockwaves around the world, and its effects are still felt today. Curiously, though, the events of Dealey Plaza were of particular interest to The Doors frontman Jim Morrison.
It should come as no surprise that the death of JFK occupied a particular space within the mind of the ‘Riders On The Storm’ singer. After all, the assassination was an unparalleled event in terms of scale and magnitude. For the first time in modern history, a US President had been killed in broad daylight, on camera, in front of hundreds of members of the general public. On top of that, JFK had been a fairly progressive politician for the time, placing particular focus on the civil rights movement and ending the war in Vietnam.
As a result, his assassination – and the sketchy circumstances in which it occurred – fueled a lot of conspiracy theories and anger, particularly among young people. In fact, it is often said that the death of JFK, and the regressive policies enacted by his replacement, Lyndon B. Johnson, was a major catalyst for the advent of the counterculture age and hippie movement. Given that he was a leading figure within that movement, it stands to reason that Morrison would think about the assassination on a pretty regular basis.
What’s more, the notebooks and lyricism of Morrison and The Doors regularly made reference to the event. Most notably, the songwriter drew upon the events of 1963 in the song ‘Not to Touch the Earth’ from 1968.
Within the track, Morrison morbidly sings about a ‘dead president’s corpse in the driver’s car’, which is a clear reference to the assassination of Kennedy, who was killed while riding in the back of a Lincoln Continental limousine in Dallas. The Doors were not the only band to take inspiration from the death of JFK, but Morrison seemed to harbour something of an obsession with the event.
Interestingly, Morrison has a strange connection with the assassination through his father, George Morrison. Morrison Senior was a high-ranking admiral of the US Navy who took control of the USS Bon Homme Richard on November 22nd, 1963, the very same day that Kennedy was assassinated in Texas. As such, Admiral Morrison’s first task on board was to announce the death of the president to his crewmates. Of course, his 20-year-old son Jim would not have been aware of this at the time, but it provides yet another cause for The Doors frontman to take an interest in the death of JFK.
Ultimately, one of the predominant reasons why Morrison took such an interest in the assassination was probably the simple fact that he aimed to be something of a counterculture revolutionary. The assassination of a president is an unparalleled tragedy in the eyes of many US patriots, whose values tended to be at odds with that of hippie rockers like Morrison.
So, by referencing the assassination on tracks like ‘Not to Touch the Earth’, The Doors were being shocking and controversial, just as Jello Biafra was a decade later when he chose to name his band Dead Kennedys. Neither of these groups are particularly suggesting any kind of conspiracy theories or morbid fascinations with the assassination, they are simply trying to be shocking, rebellious, and countercultural. Furthermore, referencing the death fits in pretty well with the kind of anti-authority stance that many hippie bands like The Doors tended to adhere to.
