Travel: Experience Needed

YOUNG LION

WHY WE’LL ALWAYS LOVE JIM MORRISON. BY KAREN ALBERG GROSSMAN

There’s something about Jim Morrison: a haunting juxtaposition of sexuality and innocence, so brilliantly captured in Joel Brodsky’s photographs. Reflecting Morrison’s vulnerability along with his rebelliousness, Grammy-nominated Brodsky did nine album covers for The Doors. “Jim was shy,” recalls Brodsky’s widow Valerie at a recent Morrison Hotel Gallery reception in Manhattan. “I remember a photo shoot when he spent

He was the quintessential showman.”

much time playing with our daughter rather than talking to adults. But when the camera was on him, he came alive.

Beneath the inner shyness, outer surliness and struggle with drugs and alcohol that led to his ultimate demise (in 1971 at age 27), Jim Morrison was his music: soulful, tormented, filled with longing. And it is precisely this longing (perfectly expressed in his beautiful baritone) that touches us still, even those who now reject the counterculture values of the 1960s.

Despite the popularity of his music (and his poetry) with a new generation, Morrison presents a bit of a conflict for those of us beyond the era of sex, drugs, and rock ’n roll.

Singer Patti Smith once put it this way: “Watching him perform the first time, I felt both kinship and contempt…” But who can argue with essayist Daniel Nester, who observes, “Just talking about Jim Morrison, I dare say, makes us old men feel young and free again.”