WHEN YOU’RE STRANGE

By Kevin Martinez

“Wait until the war is over,
and we’re both a little older.”
—Jim Morrison, “The Unknown Soldier”

Almost four decades have passed since the death of Jim Morrison, lead singer of the American rock band the Doors. Morrison was not the only famous musician of the 1960s to meet an untimely end. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, and others also died under tragic circumstances, usually drug-related. Why the early deaths? And what was it about the era that produced such unique artistic individuals? And why are such artists so few in 2010?

Director Tom DiCillo’s latest film, When You’re Strange, is an unsuccessful attempt to answer some of these questions. There are no surprises in this film for fans of the music, and yet it does manage to humanize the members of the Doors and offer some partial insights for those unfamiliar with the so-called “counterculture” of the 1960s.

Thankfully, When You’re Strange does not go down the obvious route of interviewing various “talking heads” to tell its story. From a technical side of things, it is so well edited that it almost defies the “music documentary” category and seems more interested in presenting a gripping narrative.

The documentary begins with Morrison driving along a stretch of California desert. The car radio announces the death of the same Morrison in Paris, at the age of 27. It is an eerie¹ scene, because Morrison now seems to be a ghost wandering the earth. In reality, these shots are from his aforementioned² film, but they are integrated so ingeniously into When You’re Strange that one could easily be forgiven for thinking that this is an actor portraying the singer.

Then the obligatory 1960s montage: the John F. Kennedy assassination, images of the civil rights movement, antiwar students clashing with police, American flags burning, and naked hippies frolicking³ in parks. Depp narrates approvingly, “The days of Ricky Nelson and ‘Leave it to Beaver’ are over.” While this no doubt sets the mood for the Doors and their music, the film never gets much deeper than that. DiCillo presents the MTV version of history, and the viewer is left to ponder about the more disturbing questions.

Ultimately, from the sociological point of view, rock ‘n’ roll was the product of the growing confidence of American working class youth after Second World War, and also the breakdown of racial barriers in the face of the mass struggles of the 1950s. The desire to push the musical boundaries and abandon the old social conventions went along with those processes. Popular music then caught on to and helped nourish the anti-establishment sentiment of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Jim Morrison, we learn, was born in 1943. His father was future admiral George Stephen Morrison, who was serving as commander of US Naval forces in the Gulf of Tonkin during the famous incidents in August 1964 that were used as a pretext for a sharp escalation⁴ of the Vietnam War.

Morrison begins as a shy poet, but later breaks out of his shell (to say the least) as the band members become more and more confident in their musical abilities. DiCillo’s narrative depicts Morrison as someone who relishes⁵ the spotlight, but we are never provided enough insight into what he really might be thinking and feeling.

At a certain point, the touring and the constant commotion⁶ begin to take their toll on the band. While working on an album, Densmore gets up and leaves the studio, declaring he can’t take it anymore. He returns the next day, and the band soldiers on⁷ as if nothing happened.

But the live shows are becoming too much for the lead singer, who threatens to quit the band to concentrate on his poetry. Instead of coming to listen to the Doors play music, fans are increasingly drawn to the spectacle of Morrison’s performances and expecting (and often getting) a circus. Some shows end in riots or are cancelled by the authorities, who view Morrison as a corruptor of the youth.

The Doors are able to record several studio albums, but Morrison descends into alcoholism. Increasingly alienated⁸ by the music industry, he retreats to Paris, where he dies of a heart attack in 1971.

Many leading rock band members who played in that era specialized in self-destructive behavior, finding themselves in many cases torn between the immense pressure exerted by a predatory industry and the demands, musical and social, inevitably posed by the widespread popular radicalization. From Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys to Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd, it seems very few musicians from the 60s and 70s survived unscathed⁹. This issue has rarely been seriously explored. The easy path is merely to paint a picture of a “shooting star” whose trajectory is inevitably short and tragic.

If the Doors were just about ingesting drugs and “having a good time”, why would anyone still listen to them? That ethos defined plenty of bands from the 1960s and, needless to say, defines many more now, most of whom are entirely forgettable.

What made the Doors stand out from many of their contemporaries? For one, Morrison’s extremely aggressive and bold, if sometimes misguided, approach to delivering a song. For another, the band introduced dark and gloomy subject matter into pop songs, yet performed them with considerable verve¹⁰ and enthusiasm. Songs like “The End” (“This is the end, beautiful friend”) were at odds with the artificial cheeriness of many mainstream bands of the time.

This “dark” element pointed to the violence in American life (and Morrison’s own family connection with that violence), both at home—in the student unrest and ghetto rebellions, and political assassinations—and abroad—the saturation bombing and other ¹¹atrocities in Vietnam. A memorable feature of Doors concerts in the late 1960s was Morrison’s mock execution by a firing squad, made up of the other band members, during performances of “The Unknown Soldier.”

DiCillo hints at some of this at key points in the film, juxtaposing¹² songs like “The End” with the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. In another sequence, “Riders on the Storm” plays over images of American children playing in suburbia followed by Vietnamese children fleeing the destruction that surrounds them. How surreal to think that such haunting music was made at a time when another part of the world was in flames!

At the very least, DiCillo’s film reminds us—if only inadvertently—that in 2010, the killing is far from over, be it in Afghanistan or America. Where are the Doors, or better, of the twenty-first century?

Questions

1. In the beginning of the article the author mentions musicians who died young under tragic circumstances. Can you name any of them according to the text and your own knowledge?

2. What does the author tell us about the origin of rock ‘n’ roll?

3. How was the music of the 60s influenced by the events that took place at that time?

4. What problems does a person face being a popular musician?

5.What’s the main idea of the film?

Comment on the following extract

“Morrison was not the only famous musician of the 1960s to meet an untimely end. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, and others also died under tragic circumstances, usually drug-related. Why the early deaths? And what was it about the era that produced such unique artistic individuals? And why are such artists so few in 2010?”

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 1212