Booking the ticket hasn’t stopped me from hedging about this trip. Just feel irresponsible even considering being away this long. My wife has her hands full with three boys when I am around to help, and I worry they’ll turn her into a shivering shell of a human while I'm away. (That's me if she's away a few hours.) The lawn will be three feet high, and a revolution will have occurred at my office. Who do I think I am just taking off? Leaning heavily toward pulling the plug and eating the frequent flyer miles.
Caught a few minutes of a PBS funding drive last night that included classic rock-and-roll footage from the old Ed Sullivan show. It reminded me of a reason I want to visit Europe and in particular, Paris. Annette and I visited Paris for four days back in 1997, but we didn’t visit Jim Morrison’s grave at at Père-Lachaise Cemetery. I’ve always regretted that. Why do Americans, or frankly, young people from around the world feel the need to see the Lizard King’s finally resting place?
The few minutes of the Sullivan footage I viewed last night included the classic The Doors performance of Sept. 17, 1967. The story is legend. Sullivan and his producers asked the band to change the lyric “Girl, we couldn't get much higher” from Light My Fire to “Girl, we couldn’t get much better.” Morrison, of course, sang the song with the lyrics intact, and you can see other bandmates, particularly guitarist Robbie Krieger chuckling in the background. Sullivan, who apparently could hold a grudge with the best of them, banned the band from future performances to which Morrison replied, “We just did The Ed Sullivan Show.”
The silly Sullivan censorship story aside, I remain incredibly struck by Morrison’s stage presence. He had a good voice, but by today’s musical standards, where American Idol churns out super-human falsettos on an annual basis, Morrison’s baritone doesn’t stand out. Yet has there been a more charismatic lead singer in the history of rock-and-roll? As a viewer 42 years after the Sullivan performance, you still can’t take your eyes off the man. Confident, cool, vulnerable, theatrical… a living, breathing Adonis. The Doors cranked out a lot of music before a bearded, bloated 27-year-old Morrison died in Paris in 1971, so the man didn’t exit at the peak of his career. Nonetheless, he was still too young, and his attitude and abilities as a poet and lyricist have helped generations of literary adolescents survive their teenage years.
Of course, sometimes we look too hard for heroes. While Morrison was strutting around the Sullivan stage and inspiring future generations of rebellious teenagers, my dad (who was born the same year as Morrison) was on an airplane to Vietnam. He and my mom, just recently married, would spend the first 13 months of their marriage apart while dad served his country in a brutal war. Four years later, when Morrison died, The Doors' lead singer reportedly had 20 paternity suits pending against him. (According to Wikipedia, none of the claims against his estate actually were successful.) Just wanted to add a little levity to this fawning review of a dead celebrity.
Nonetheless, I still want to see the grave of Mr. Mojo Risin (an anagram of Jim Morrison) And that’s one reason I haven’t completely nuked Eurotrek 2010.
