“Today, we would just call him an A**hole.”
It was well known, by all who encountered him that he was mentally ill. Either severe bipolar or schizophrenic.
Maybe both.
Truly a mad genius.
He didn’t know anything about music. Nothing. And would vocalize the parts he wanted the band to play. He would also ask Robby and Ray for cords with certain “sound”. He also wrote the majority of memorable lyrics.
But liked to credit them to The Doors, to split the money evenly.
It was well known, by all who encountered him that he was mentally ill. Either severe bipolar or schizophrenic.
I’m not so sure about that.
Mad Genius?
That may be one way to put it.
I’d rather say he was a frustrated genius that was prone to outbursts because very few people around him actually took the time to understand what he had to say.
I don’t believe he thought he knew all the answers but he certainly believed he was one of the few asking the right questions. Thrust into fame and looked up to, he didn’t understand how people could admire and follow him without even understanding his questions.
Riders on the Storm
The drugs and drinking combined as an effort to experience what these people where thinking, and feed it back to them in lyrics, but ultimately an escape from his own frustrated reality of the superficial nature of our society.
I’ve read that he had really just wanted to be a poet, and didn’t really like the music part. But that was the only way he could get people to hear his poetry.
I like the album “An American Prayer” that the group did after Jim had died. Uses some of his poetry that he had spoken onto tape.
That “Mr. Mojo Risin”, one of the members recalls going into the room, and Jim is there with a pencil and paper.
“Whoa - man. I just seen this - it’ll blow your mind! Ya know ‘Mr. Mojo Risin’? If you rearrange the letters it spells Jim Morrison” - far out!!”
Later on the other member says “Of course we later found out that is what he had planned on all along!”