How a gruesome dust road in New Mexico changed Jim Morrison’s life
In the story of every great artist, there is always a pivotal moment that helps shape that greatness. For Patti Smith, it was moving to New York, for Paul McCartney, it was meeting John Lennon, and for Jim Morrison, it led to a dirt road in New Mexico.
Shakespeare once said, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them”. Jim Morrison may just be one of the only people to harness all three.
Undeniably, he was born with greatness inside him in the form of his talent. A voice like that can’t be taught, and neither can poetry really, as Morrison’s songwriting power came from his singular view of the world. He has a particular eye and take on it all, and that’s one that seems to come from that mysterious, god-given place.
Obviously, he achieved greatness. All before his tragic death at only 27, Morrison made himself a legend. He was one of the biggest names in music thanks to his band, The Doors, and ever since, he’s remained the very archetype of a rock and roll frontman. As one of the best-known artists in the world, that greatness is long-proven. But when it comes to the third category, Morrison’s experience is a unique one as he would always claim that the origin of his greatness wasn’t his own soul, but the souls of others who mysteriously chose him as their home.
The story goes that in 1947, Morrison and his family were driving through New Mexico, where young Jim was only four years old, when, outside the car window, a scene unfolded. He always claimed that the family had passed by a devastating crash where a truck of Native Americans had flipped, creating a gruesome scene of bodies scattered across the road. In his personal mythology, Morrison always said that in that moment, he felt their souls enter his body.
“Indians scattered on dawn’s highway bleedin’ / Ghosts crowd the young child’s fragile eggshell mind,” Morrison sings of it in ‘Peace Frog’. It’s one of many references to this incident as the image kept repeating in his work. Across his posthumous spoken word record, he tells the entire tale across ‘Ghost Song’ and ‘Dawn’s Highway’, stating on the latter that the victims’ spirits “leaped into my soul, and they’re still in there”.
To Morrison, for the rest of his days, this moment from his childhood remained the most formative experience of his life as he truly believed that he was existing with several souls at work within him. To him, this made sense of his artistry, his emotions, his instability. It defined his whole life as he spoke and wrote of it often.
Yet, according to his family, it never even happened.
In his father’s memory, the family merely drove past a reserve where they saw a Native American weeping, stating, “We went by several Indians. It did make an impression on him. He always thought about that crying Indian”.
However, maybe a story about his childhood sensitivity and empathy didn’t quite match the image he was keen to create. So somewhere along the way, the story got twisted into one where he could tick off all three of Shakespeare’s tiers of greatness.
