Did Jim Morrison’s final show with The Doors signal his downfall?
Jim Morrison was an elusive figure of rebellion and counterculture whose life, particularly his final year, is shrouded in myth and legend. After forming The Doors with his friend Ray Manzarek in the mid, at a time when he was pretty much living off beans and LSD, Morrison became known as their poetic and captivating frontman.
During 1966, the band were given a residency at the “sleazy” Los Angeles club London Fog, which Manzarek described as a crucial part of the band’s development, where they “became this collective entity, this unit of oneness … that is where the magic began to happen.” However, the release of their 1967 single ‘Light My Fire’ gained the band widespread recognition, staying at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks.
The Doors went on to release a string of successful albums, including Strange Days and Morrison Hotel. They were also known for their infamous live performances, with Morrison even becoming the first person to get arrested onstage.
Such incidents as the Miami gig, where a drunk Morrison taunted the audience, instructed them to get naked, apparently exposed himself, and simulated oral sex pale compared to the band’s final ever concert. On December 12th 1970, in the Warehouse concert hall in New Orleans, the band had no idea that their performance was actually going to be their last.
Morrison had been a heavy user of psychedelics during the 1960s, but he had instead turned to alcohol in the remaining few years of his life. David Dutkowski, an official archivist of the band, stated that Morrison had been “living his life like a Roman candle burning at both ends for the last five years.”
The charges that Morrison was facing for the Miami incident of indecent exposure and profanity were looming over Morrison, who was sentenced to six months of jail with hard labour and a $500 fine. The musician was in the process of appealing his sentence when he embarked on his final tour. However, by this point, Morrison had become a caricature of his former self – he was now bloated and unkempt, incapable of performing with the same fervour as he did before.
According to Dutkowski: “Fans didn’t even recognise him. They were expecting this guy to run around the stage and jump off. At this point, he just wanted to stand at the microphone and sing.” During his final performance at the Warehouse, Morrison was unrecognisable. Drunkenly taking to the stage, he sang the wrong song lyrics, told jokes without a punchline, and even collapsed on stage, refusing to stand up.
Manzarek recalled: “Halfway through the set, his energy, his vital force, his chi, just left him. It became a vapour.” But nothing could prepare audiences for what Morrison did next. Promoter Don Fox remembered, “Jim started talking about life and death and what was going on in the world in 1970. All of a sudden, he took the mic stand and started smashing it and smashing it right into the stage floor. And then he walks off. There’s a hole in the stage. He drove the mic stand right through. He’s the only artist I’ve ever seen put a hole in the stage.”
The band called off the rest of the tour and decided to spend time in Los Angeles, where they recorded L.A Woman. Despite the fact that Morrison was really happy with the album, he decided to move away to Paris with his girlfriend to live more peacefully. Tragically, the icon was found dead in his bathtub just a few weeks later, aged 27.
The truth is Morrison’s downfall began way before his final performance with The Doors. The infamous Warehouse concert simply acted as one final, tragic demonstration of the devastating effects of alcoholism.
