From the Vault: Jim Morrison, Poet

“Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.”
~Jim Morrison (1943-1971)

This week we’ll get a little better acquainted with the short life of rockstar, poet, and icon Jim Morrison with the help of an beautiful radio documentary called Artist in Hell, produced by Clare Spark in 1971. Of course, it would be easy to focus on Morrison’s wild antics and excess, as that kind of behavior always leaves a high water mark on someone’s life for the ages to see, but instead, we’ll hear his closest friends describe the life of a tortured genius, a man with not nearly enough names for all of the colors he wished to paint. The Doors bandmembers Robbie Krieger and Ray Manzarek speak candidly about their close friend, as does producer Paul Rothchild; David Birnie, Digby Deal, Harvey Purr and others read from Morrison’s poetry and his Lord’s Notes On Vision.

In the second half of From the Vault, we’ll hear The Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek speaking at The Midnight Special Bookstore in Santa Monica on September 12, 1998. Manzarek speaks on The Doors and Morrison, reads some of Jim’s poetry, and he shares his insights and recollection on the transformation of four normal guys who met in Venice, hung out on the beach, and became one of the most legendary rock-n-roll bands the genre has yet seen.