Who was the first artist to be arrested onstage?
When rock and roll first began, everyone who picked up a microphone was looked at as a modern-day outlaw. It seems insane to think that someone could be considered dangerous for the sole crime of playing a guitar, but unless they were squeaky clean like The Beatles, turning up an amplifier and getting some distortion out of an electric guitar was practically a symbol for riots and revolution whenever someone played their first gigs in the 1960s. But even if it upset a few people, there was no one suspecting that the police would have to get involved when they took to the stage.
After all, no one thinks they are risking their lives or the lives of their fans by playing music. The whole point is to create a communal vibe and give everyone a chance to be themselves, and around the time of the Summer of Love, it’s hard to believe that anyone preaching about Flower Power was in danger of causing chaos in the streets or encouraging everyone to viciously fight those in power.
But not every band of that era was looking to be that cordial, either. Lou Reed may have been extremely well-read for a rock and roll poet, but listening to The Velvet Underground would never sit well with some parents. It was easy to get on board with a song like ‘San Francisco’, but Nana was probably going to draw the line when little Susie brought home a record that had a song all about S&M and waiting to score some drugs on the streets of New York.
If that’s what New York sounded like, surely the sunny side of California had something brighter to offer. The Beach Boys had given everyone a great look at what fun in the sun was supposed to be, but for all of the chaos that came from people like Iggy Pop and Alice Cooper at the time, Jim Morrison had the distinction of being the first frontman to upset the police from the stage once The Doors played a gig in New Haven, Connecticut.
So, how did Jim Morrison get arrested?
The Doors already represented everything dark about the hippie generation, but none of their music was supposed to be violent. It was only what people interpreted it as, and while there were certainly dark elements to their songs like ‘The End’, that didn’t give the police any reason to jump to conclusions so soon when they found Morrison backstage with a girl.
Deciding to mace Morrison hours before showtime was far from the best idea, but whereas this could have been solved with an apology, Ray Manzarek remembered the officer taking every wrong step, saying, “The guy said, ‘I’m really sorry. I didn’t know who you were.’ I said, ‘OK, if you’re famous, you don’t get maced, but if you’re just a kid, then you’re gonna get it.’ Hey, man, it doesn’t work that way.”
And once Morrison had a microphone in his hand, he figured that he would have some fun with the police officers. All the ‘Lizard King’ antics came down in an instant in the middle of one of their jams, and once Morrison referring to the cop that maced him as a “little blue pig”, that was enough for their security to bring an end to the show, especially when he implied that the cops would have gladly maced anyone else in the crowd if they had the chance.
Could the cops have handled it differently? Absolutely, but as it turns out, Morrison’s way of taking matters into his own hands was too much for some people to take. Although the incident would be immortalised on the album Morrison Hotel when the frontman shouted at New Haven on the song ‘Peace Frog’, his arrest was only further proof that the division between law enforcement and the counterculture was about to become a big problem.
