Part 3 (2/2)

No It's a wonderful record, but I wouldn't consider it the finest of the Rolling Stones' work I think that Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed were better records They're more compressed You knohen you put a double albu that could have been left off and would have made it maybe better

But, you know, Exileits reputation just seeer now than it was back then I remember it didn't really sell well at the tile off it And ere still in this phase where eren't really co dry the record like one would do noith a lot of singles Iat the financial and come success at the tio back and look at the reviews, you'll see I'ot very indifferent reviews And I love it nohen all these critics say it was the uys who, at the time, said it was crap! Anyway, I think Exile lacked a bit of definition I' supercritical, I know, but the record lacks a little focus

But that's part of what seems to lend the record its force It seems like a work of world-weariness-the work that results from a time of disillusion In that sense, it also seems a bit of a definitive seventies work

Is it? I don't knohat the seventies is really all about Spandex trousers, isn't it? And, you know, funny clothes? I think Exile was a hangover from the end of the sixties

Were the seventies a harder ti from the records, perhaps they were Ion, butwell, it's a long way froone on Exile The Rolling Stones is just a straight-ahead rock & roll band

Do you consider that a li, but I like the lih, the Rolling Stones seemed to define what rock & roll could be at its best You know, ”The World's Greatest Rock & Roll Band” and all that

I never truh I did put up with it, I suppose

I mean, people have this obsession: They want you to be like you were in 1969 They want you to, because otherwise, their youth goes with you, you know? It's very selfish, but it's understandable

the legacy of jio, in theto define itself as the binding force of a new youth community, the Doors became the houseband for an American apocalypse that wasn't even yet upon us Indeed, the Los Angeles-based quartet's stunning and rousing debut LP, The Doors, flew in the face of rock's new e positivist ethos, and in effect helped forument that persists until the present day in popular ing fro a fusion of s, and idealise, the Doors had fashi+oned an album that looked at prospects of hedonism and violence, of revolt and chaos, and ely Clearly, the Doors-in particular the group's thin, darkly handsoe that many other pop artists did not understand: that these were dangerous tierous not only because youth culture was under fire for breaking away from established conventions and aspirations On soer was also internal, that the ”love generation” was hardly without its own dark ieneration so bound on giving itself per itself a perht and license fro

Consequently, in those moments toward the end of the Doors' experi about wanting to kill his father and fuck his e and , even so Stones, Morrison's lyrics were a recognition that an older generation had betrayed its children, and that this betrayal called for a bitter payback Little wonder, then, that the Doors' ful favorite a in Vietnam, in a here children had been sent to kill or die for an older generation's frightened ideals Other groups were trying to prepare their audience for a world of hope and peace; the Doors,roup's best, the effect was thoroughly scary, and thoroughly exhilarating

Now, a generation later-in a ti and anti-obscenity sentiments have reached a fever pitch, and when, abroad, the Doors'A in the Gulf War-Jim Morrison seems more heroic to many pop fans than ever before Indeed, a film like Oliver Stone's The Doors-which is the most ambitious, epic-minded movie yet produced about rock culture and its discontents-can even ument with cultural history But back in the midst of the late 1960s, it seemed rather different To roup had pretty much shot its vision on its first albue Days (October 1967), the iness-the sense of rapacity, of persistent momentum, that had made the previous alburession or dread that Morrison's earlier lyrics had s tended too often to the e Days”), or to flat-out pretension (”Horse Latitudes”) It was as if a musical vision that, only a few ent had turned flatly morbid, even parodic

In addition, Morrison hi and alcohol abuse and public misbehavior that would eventually prove so ruinous to him, his band, his friends, and his family Some of this behavior, of course, was simply expected of the new breed of rock hero: In the context of the late 1960s and its generational schis use, or of flouting mainstream or authoritarian morality Soh on certain other occasions-such as the December 1967 incident in which Morrison was arrested after publicly castigating police officers for their backstage brutality at a New Haven concert-these gestures of defiance helped e political sensibility More often than not, though, Morrison's unruliness wasn't so esture of countercultural bravado as it was si hubris and out-of-control dissipation

In other words, so far darker than artistic or political ambition fueled Jim Morrison's appetite for disruption, and in March 1969, at an infamous concert in Miami, this sad truth came across with disastrous results In the current film version of this incident, Oliver Stone portrays the concert as part pageant and part travesty, and while it was perhaps a bit of both, most firsthand accounts have described the show as si mess The Doors had been scheduled to perform at 10 PM, but had been delayed nearly an hour due to a dispute with the show's proe, Morrison was already inebriated, and continued to hold up the perfor more to drink A quarter-hour later, after the s inthe audience to co the evening, he pulled on the front of his weatherworn leather jeans and threatened to produce his penis for the crowd's perusal (Oddly enough, though more than twenty years have passed, and more than ten thousand people witnessed Morrison's perfore-it has never been clearly deter hiht) Finally, toward the end of the show, Morrison hounded audience e with him, and the concert ended in an easy version of the chaos to which the singer had long professed to aspire

At the tieous, but within days, the Miaal officials had inflated the pitiable debacle into a serious affront on Miami and the nation's moral welfare; in addition, Morrison himself was sized up as a foul embodiment of youth's supreround to an i days were finished Amid all the hoopla that would follow-the public debate, Miami's shaesture that evening for what it truly was: the act of a man who had lost faith in his art, himself, and his relation to the world around hier knehat his audience wanted from him, or what he wanted from himself for that matter, and so he offered up his most obvious totem of love and pride, as if it were the true source of his worth The Doors' lead singer-who only two years before had been one of rock's s alcoholic and clownish jerk He needed help; he did not merit cheap veneration, and he certainly did not deserve the horrid, moralistic-minded brand of jailhouse punishment that the State of Florida hoped to impose on him

Of course, Morrison never received-or at least never accepted-the help that ht have saved him By 1970, the Doors were a show-business enterprise with contracts and debts, and these obligations had been severely deepened by Morrison's Miaations, the band would produce five alburoup'sstudio efforts, Morrison Hotel and LA Woly authoritative, blues-steeped works that showed Morrison settling into a new, lusty, dark-humored vocal and lyrical sensibility But if Morrison had finally grown comfortable with the idea of rock & roll-for-its-own-sake, he also realized that he no longer had much of consequence he wanted to say in thathe cared to say in the context of the Doors

In March 1971, Morrison took a leave of absence fro with his common-laife, Pamela Courson, moved to Paris, ostensibly to distance hiors of rock & roll, and to regenerate his vocation as a ht have coeneration had experienced in the last few years, as the idealis sense of fear and futility (Certainly there were gliun to acquire soht about the reasons and sources for his-and his culture's-bouts of excess) As it turned out, Morrison si to some witnesses, he sometimes lapsed into depression over his inability to reinvoke his poeticsuicide notes

Finally, at five in theon July 4, 1971, Pamela Courson found Morrison slurin on his face At first, Courson thought he was playing a death-gah, Morrison was playing no game His skin was cold to his wife's touch Jie twenty-seven, s before, he had decided was thecertainty of his life

INITIALLY, Morrison's death seemed to be the end for the Doors In fact, the rock co with a sad sense of logic The year before, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin had died as well, also of causes brought on by the use of alcohol or drugs Now, Morrison's death-which had beenfatalities were likely to be one of the htest prodigy h the surviving Doors-keyboardist Ray Manzarek, druer-went on to make two trio albums under the band's name, they could never really rebound from Morrison's death If, in some ways, Morrison had turned out to be the band's roup's central claim to an identity or purpose, and without hih, over twenty years after Morrison's death, the Doors enjoy a renewed popularity that shows no signs of abating-a popularity that, in fact, ht have proved far roup The roots for this renewal trace back to thethe advent of the punk er rock & roll fans and an to feel that the pop world had lost touch with its sense of daring, thatrown too tie and distance As punk rose, it brought with it a reevaluation of rock history, and as a result, soher-minded bands of the late 1960s-such as the Doors, Velvet Underground, MC5, and the Stooges, all of whom had explored so their short-lived careers-enjoyed a new currency that transfor and pervasive influences

The Doors' revival was also helped along by Francis Coppola's use of the band'sCoppola's repellently beautiful iles by napal ”The End,” made vividly plain that the best of the Doors' , been a brilliant and irrefutable soundtrack to one of the more notorious examples of reat debt to No One Here Gets Out Alive, Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugarly accurate) account of Morrison's life and death The book's excitable chief theme (a theme that has been appropriated and advanced by Oliver Stone in his film) is that ”Jim Morrison was a God,” a dark-tempered, visionary poet as also a heroic exa a life of relentless excesses

In other words, Jiradually been rehabilitated into one of the more indelible, widely revered heroes of the 1960s, or of rock & roll history at large for that matter In part, this has happened because several of the people involved in this curious reclaacy, and because they have found that there is still a considerable career to behis and the Doors' history But what is perhapsis to ask why Morrison's revival has played so well and so consistently with the modern rock audience of the last decade or so In other words, what does a contemporary rock audience find in Morrison, or need froeneration? After all, we are told repeatedly that this is a more conservative era, and that in particular, today's youth is far more conservative than the youth of the 1960s If that's the case, why does such a large young audience continue to revere an artist that appeared to be so radically hedonistic (even nihilistic) in his outlook?

The truth is, Jim Morrison is an ideal radical hero for a conservative era Though he may have lived a life of defiance and rebellion, it was not a defiance rooted in any clear ideology or political vision, unlike, for example, the brand of rebellion that John Lennon would come to aspire to Morrison's defiance had deep personal sources-it derived from a childhood spent in a family with a militaristic and authoritarian disposition As such, Morrison's nificant or without e of hard-won courage, and that courage is partly what today's audience recognizes and loves about him

But Morrison's defiance also often took the forard-an unconcern for how his iht moralists, but to the people who loved and depended on hies and cultivated his hedonism in sometimes remarkably conscienceless ways, and unfortunately, this habit may also be part of what many rock fans admire or seek to ee their audience in various humanitarian and political causes, and in a tiures advise the young to make a virtue of modesty or abstinence, there are numerous fans who are unmoved by these admonitions A few artists, such as Guns n' Roses [or, in 1997, Marilyn Manson], are seen to live out this bravado for today's defiant types, but none, of course, have lived it out quite as effectively as Ji his audience: ”I don't know about you, but I intend to haveshi+thouse explodes” It isn't so e so beyond the domain of the self In a sense, it's siard that becaan-Bush era

But the costs of this bravado can be sizable, and it would be nice if the custodians of Morrison and the Doors' history were more scrupulous about how they portray the nobility of his excesses or the fascination of his death But then, the ht to test the bounds of cultural freedo of not merely established American culture, but of family, friends, and rock culture as well; and who died because he just could not reach far enough or be loved deservedly enough, is probably too good, and too da or exploiting

After all, in so elee of having halted the singer's decline before he one on to even worse behavior or art, and to a large degree it also helped absolve him for the failures of his last few years It's almost as if, somewhere, somehow, a ood grace to die, then ould reive hiard and cruelty and drunkenness, and recall hi mystic-visionary Plus, there's a certain vicarious satisfaction to be found in his end If you like, you can admire the spirit of someone who lived life and pursued death to the fullest, without having to emulate that commitment yourself Which is to say, Morrison has saved his less nervy (and sation

And so Jim Morrison died, and then, with the help of forraphers, pulled off the perfect coer and his band ht never disappoint our renewed faith, because there would be no new rowth or our continuing perceptiveness In short, it was a comeback in which Morrison would be eternally heroic, eternally loved, and eternally raceless to beat up too much on a dead man-especially one who already beat up on hi life And so, let's allow Jiards, he was perhaps just a bit too mean-spirited or selfish to be an easy hero of the 1960s, he has certainly proven to be in step with the temper of the last decade or so Never reatest visions and potential in an endless swirl of drugs, alcohol, insecurity, and unkindness, and never mind that he is dead Never mind, because in the end, death has been this rock & roll hero'sfriend

PART 3

re the territories

lou reed: darkness and love

Lou Reed is the guy that gave dignity and poetry and rock 'n' roll to syny, stumblebum passivity, and suicide, and then proceeded to belie all his achieve into a bad joke

LESTER BANGS

WRITING IN SCREEM

I met myself in a dreaht

LOU REED

”BEGINNING TO SEE THE LIGHT”

Seated in the dusky shadows of a San Francisco Chinatown bar, his face lit by the glow of a trashy table lamp, Lou Reed looks like an artful cos His thick, pale fingers tremble a lot, and his sallow face, masked with a poised, distant expression, looks worn But behind that lurid veil lurks a sharp, fitful psyche, and with several ounces of bourbon stoking its fire, it can be virulent

Lou has been ranting for almost an hour about his latest album, Take No Prisoners, a crotchety, double live set hailed by some critics as his bravest work yet, and by others as his silliest He seems anxious for me to share his conviction that it's the zenith of his recording career-so ht alienate even so brown eyes taper into bellicose slits ”Are you telling me,” he snarls, ”that you think Take No Prisoners is just another Metal Machine Music?”

Then, as quickly as he flared, Reed relaxes and flourishes a roguish smile ”It's funny,” he says, ”but whenever I ask anyone what they think of this record, they say, 'Well, I love it, but I'm a little worried about what other people will think' Except one friend He told ht it was very manly That's admirable It's like the military maxim the title comes from: ”Give no quarter, take no prisoners' I wanted to , it would push the world back just an inch or two If Metal Machine Music was just a one with it

”You may find this funny, but I think of it as a contemporary urban-blues album After all, that's what I write-tales of the city And if I dropped dead tomorrow, this is the record I'd choose for posterity It's not only the s I've ever done, it's also as close to Lou Reed as you're probably going to get, for better or worse”

He has a point Take No Prisoners is brutal, coarse, and indulgent-the kind of albunore (it hasn't even nicked Billboard's Top 200) Which is a shame, because it's also one of the funniest live albus (a potpourri of Reed's best known, including ”Sweet Jane” and ”Walk on the Wild Side”) serve merely as backdrops for Lou's dark-hu to somebody in the audience who objects to one of hiswith cheap, dirty jokes? fuck you I never said I was tasteful I'm not tasteful”