Remembering Jim Morrison (December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971) | Don's Tunes

 

The Doors’ singer Jim Morrison, left, and drummer John Densmore, circa 1968.

Photo: Estate of Edmund Teske/Getty Images

Jerry Hopkins: Do you have songs you like better than others?

Jim Morrison: 

I'll tell you the truth, I don’t listen to the stuff much. There are songs I enjoy doing more in person than others. I like singing blues — these free, long blues trips where there’s no specific beginning or end. It just gets into a groove and I can just keep making up things. And everybody’s soloing. I like that kind of song rather than just a song. You know, just starting on a blues and just seeing where it takes us.

 Jerry: You were quoted recently as saying you thought rock was dead. Is this something you really believe?

Jim: It’s like what we were talking about earlier in the movement back to the roots. The initial flash is over. The thing they call rock, what used to be called rock and roll — it got decadent. And then there was a rock revival sparked by the English. That went very far. It was articulate. Then it became self-conscious, which I think is the death of any moment. It became self-conscious, involuted and kind of incestuous. The energy is gone. There is no longer a belief.

I think that for any generation to assert itself as an aware human entity, it has to break with the past, so obviously the kids that are coming along next are not going to have much in common with what we feel. They’re going to create their own unique sound. Things like wars and monetary cycles get involved, too. Rock and roll probably could be explained by … it was after the Korean War was ended … and there was a psychic purge. There seemed to be a need for an underground explosion, like an eruption. So maybe after the Vietnam War is over — it’ll probably take a couple of years maybe; it’s hard to say — but it’s possible that the deaths will end in a couple of years and there will again be a need for a life force to express itself, to assert itself.

Interview July 26, 1969 by Jerry Hopkins  / Rolling Stone 

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