Mr Mojo by Dylan Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s ‘Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)’and Willie Dixon’s ‘Back Door Man’ – avant-garde pomp and deep, dark blues. The Monkees they most certainly weren’t.
    â€˜The End’, an eleven-and-a-half-minute epic in which Morrison spelt out his existential theories, closed side two – a sprawling, bombastic poem, it became the band’s anthem. If ‘Light My Fire’ identified them as a
Billboard
pop band, ‘The End’ cast them as art terrorists. It bordered on the pretentious – Morrison taking his ‘ring out the old, ring in the new’ theme to extremes – yet somehow the band got away with it. When they recorded it, they had only performed that version (complete with the Oedipal section, where Morrison expresses his desire to fuck his mother and kill his father) once before. As Paul Rothchild said, ‘ “The End” was an always-changing piece. Jim tended to use it as a kind of open, almost blank canvas for his poetic bits and pieces, images and fragments, couplets and the little things he just wanted to say, and it changed all the time . . . After it was down on record, they could listen to it and tended to perform it that way, but Jim still used to leave something out, put something else in, transpose verses.’
    In July 1967 a much-abridged version of ‘Light My Fire’ was released as a single. It quickly climbed the American charts, staying at number one for three weeks and selling over a million copies, becoming the biggest selling single of the year in the process.(The first single from the LP, ‘Break On Through’, had previously sunk without trace.) Written by Robby Krieger, it would become their best-selling single, and it remains their best-known song. ‘In order to compete with Jim’s songs, I knew I’d have to be pretty good,’ said Krieger in 1988. ‘I figured I’d keep it on a universal scale and write about earth, air, fire or water. I picked fire, mainly because I always liked that song by the Stones, “Play With Fire”.’
    In his best Elvis Presley voice, Morrison poured heart and soul into the song, sending out an invitation to all the young girls in the world. ‘Jim had this idea of the band being like a shooting star, going up real fast and being a huge success,’ said Krieger. ‘For him, it was too slow in happening, even when “Light My Fire” hit. But without it, we probably would never have stayed together.’
    But they did, basking in the attention the song’s success brought them. Overnight, like all good pop sensations, the Doors became a little larger than life itself.
    The Doors
was greeted with open arms by the world’s rock press, given rave reviews by all the critics who counted. There were those who didn’t understand what the band were doing, but they only helped to fan the flames surrounding their success. To the press, who quickly realised that the Doors revolved around the lead singer, Morrison was a godsend – a handsome,articulate, intelligent rock singer increasingly capable of giving good copy. Morrison was never lost for words, and always provided journalists with sufficient quotes. He knew which journalists worked for which papers, and he tailored his interviews accordingly, always coming up with the goods.
    â€˜He proved quite early on that he was his own master manipulator,’ said Danny Fields. ‘I don’t think there was anything, any magazine, he didn’t get [coverage in]. He never asked, where is this coming from, how am I getting this, I want more. He gave the journalists what they wanted, and he got what he wanted in return. He did seem in many ways that he was a thousand years old, in his cunning, and his ways to control people . . . even though he acted like an adolescent. But because he was so calculating, and manipulative, he wasn’t the kind of guy