Why was Jim Morrison too scared to play Woodstock?
One of the biggest misconceptions about contemporary music history is that anyone who was anyone was at Woodstock. In our rose-tinted recollections, it’s remembered as the ultimate musical event where the whole cast of the 1960s descended onto the farm and all of the decade’s favourite songs were played. That wasn’t the case, though, and while some rejected invites were for good reason, others weren’t. In the case of Jim Morrison, a man who seemed to fear nothing and know one, he was too scared to let The Doors play, saying no out of anxiety.
Imagine it: the sun has gone down, and a mass swarm of counterculture moves as one. The people dance and sway as if hypnotised by the music as the introduction to ‘Light My Fire’ begins, or the whole field moves as Morrison’s voice booms ‘Break On Through To The Other Side’. That’s what could have been, as The Doors were invited along to play Woodstock.
A lot of people were. For their first attempt at organising a festival, the people behind Woodstock were bold. They cast an incredibly wide net, seemingly sending an offer to all the names of the moment: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and so on. They all said no, though, some due to scheduling conflict, others due to a somewhat insulting lack of interest or belief in the festival, thinking it would either fail or be no different from any other. After the fact, after history was made, no doubt a mass wave of FOMO crashed down on them all as they realised their mistake.
But The Doors, or more so Jim Morrison, could not bring themselves to say yes, simply because they could not get through the mental battle that the invitation brought up.
It all simply came down to a premonition: Morrison always had a sense that something bad would happen if he played a big, wide-open, outdoor show like that. It had morphed into an intense fear that had him in its grip, so much so that the band said no. Or that’s the prevailing story, anyway. It’s said that Morrison had developed a complete paranoia about snipers and this feeling that someone, somewhere, was trying to get him and would, one day, if he was on a stage in the open.
It’s strange to think about – the mythical Morrison frightened of being so mortal. But he was. He was scared that he’d be shot dead at Woodstock, so the band didn’t play.
Maybe that’s true. According to their guitar player, Robby Krieger, the band simply didn’t think it would be good, a fact they regretted in hindsight. He said, “We never played at Woodstock because we were stupid and turned it down. We thought it would be a second-class repeat of Monterey Pop Festival.”
However, perhaps that’s just a front to avoid exposing his late bandmates’ insecurities. Either way, the band didn’t play, stealing from the world a moment that inevitably would have been historic, as one of the ultimate bands of the 1960s could’ve hit its ultimate stage.
