Happy Birthday, Jim Morrison
Special Guest Star Frank Lisciandro
You’re warmly invited and encouraged to listen to these audio clips—hearing the words come alive adds a richness you won’t want to miss.
For those of you who know me (even a little), you probably know that I am a near-lifelong fan of James Douglas Morrison, better known to lovers of rock-and-roll as Jim Morrison—lead singer of, and chief lyricist for, the rock band The Doors.
December 8 of this year happens to be Jim's 82nd birthday, or would have been. But as you probably already know from pop culture lore, Jim's arrow-released-from-a-bowstring life ended abruptly in a Paris bathtub at the young age of 27.
Yet there is much more to Jim's story than the caricaturish no-holds-barred "Lizard King" schtick that made my eyes bleed in the Oliver Stone movie.
In his brief time on Earth, Jim managed to write hundreds of songs, give thousands of concerts, publish two volumes of his own poetry, and become something of a style icon (unbeatable hair, leather, etc) and futurist. But I didn't know anything about any of that until I met Frank Lisciandro lo these many years ago.
Frank's a well-known filmmaker and photographer who met Jim when they were classmates at UCLA's film school.
He became one of Jim's closest friends, made two films with him, and shot countless photos of Jim in action—including this one, an iconic image Frank captured at the 1968 Doors show at the Hollywood Bowl (© Frank Lisciandro, used by permission).
Frank has also edited several anthologies of Jim's poetry and written a number of books chronicling his time with Jim. Since Jim's death in 1971, Frank's tireless work has given the world a much fuller and more nuanced portrait of Jim the man, the poet, and the friend.
(A good place to begin is Jim Morrison: Friends Gathered Together, available on Amazon and elsewhere.)
So Happy Birthday, Jim. I'm grateful that you lived, and not only because of your music and poetry—but even more for bringing me and Frank together. You were lucky to call him your friend, and now so am I.
Someday (in the distant future, of course) I hope the three of us will all sit down together and have a few laughs—like three old friends catching up after a long while apart.