TL-DR Dept. - Jim Morrison

Unusually Sensitive and Artistic editorial illustration from Foam-O-Graph©

Yes probably, Morrison was the insufferable, sulky, belligerent drunk he's written off as. So what? It's not like he's going to come by your house and piss on your couch while slurring half-remembered lines from Baudelaire. You don't have to put up with his inconsiderate egocentricity, so what's your problem?

A mediocre poet, you say airily. Well, being a mediocre poet is more than not being a poet at all, which is what you are, you bum. And he was a better poet than many poets who didn't look so good in leather pants.

When the still sea сonspires an armor
And her sullen and aborted currents
Breed tiny monsters
True sailing is dead

Yebbut, he was so-oo pretentious! As I never get tired of hearing myself type: pretension is the mother of art. Without that vaulting ambition, nothing is achieved.

He couldn't actually, you know, sing? Here's John Mayer, who understands the technical aspects of singing better than I do:

He’s most commonly described as a baritone because his voice sits comfortably in a lower tessitura, with a dark tone and chest-dominant production. His range wasn’t about flashy high notes—it was about power, color, and attitude.

• Comfortable power in the low-mid range
• A naturally darker, thick tone
• Strong speaking-to-singing connection
• Less emphasis on bright, ringing top notes
• Slow, confident timing
• Controlled roughness
• Minimal vibrato (often more straight tone)

Morrison didn’t build his identity around vocal acrobatics. He built it around command. Here’s the big mistake: people think Morrison equals “sing low.” What he actually did was sing heavy.

This is good stuff, right? Read the whole piece here. So yes, he could sing. Like a motherfucker. And he had one of the most immediately recognisable voices in rock (or anywhere).

Morrison was one of the great frontmen. Yes, I know about frontwomen, we had Gracie here a few days back. There are no frontmen no more, no larger-than-life figureheads, not nohow. None. Guys who can command the attention of an audience through sheer intensity of performance, through their wild, burning presence. Elvis, James Brown, Iggy Pop. And Freddie Mercury, perhaps the last of the breed, not that I give a toss for his Saturday morning car wash music.

What we have today in the place of this magnetic electric planetary pull is niceness. Paradigm: Chris Somebody, the singer with Coldplay (is that a group?). Performers today are respected for niceness. All that testosterone strutting is a bit cringe, right? Mr Somebody is doubtless a nice guy. So, I'm sure, are Tedeschi and Trucks. None of them is likely to get his [or her - Ed.] tackle out on stage. I doubt there's a line of groupies at the stage door eager to suck them off or blow coke up their ass through a bendy straw. A shoulder pat, perhaps! A shared shy grin? ROCK AND FUCKING ROLL! Being in a Coldplay audience must be like wallowing through a sloppy sludgy soup of niceness and affection. I'm like, literally crying with niceness here! Which may be preferable to a mosh pit hammer party, but I'm not sure.

Morrison was our last bastard Dionysian, howling down the ancient days; stoned, immaculate, and absolutely live.

"It's the pictures that got small."