Jim Morrison is one of the most influential figures in the history of Rock music. Though he died in 1971, at the age of 27, his records sell better 25 years after his death than they did when he was alive. His band, the Doors, had a unique style, that was largely due to Morrison's song writing and performing. But, although the Band was extremely popular, Morrison's great influence is not primarily musical. Instead, it was Morrison's rebellion that made him a star. Because Jim Morrison embodied the spirit of teenage rebellion of the 1960s, in his life and in his death, he became a major cultural hero, and has remained one ever since.
Morrison was born in 1943, and his father was a career naval officer who eventually became an admiral. The family moved around a great deal, but Morrison led the life of a "product of a Southern upper-middle-class family" (Curtis 178). Like most middle-class American teenagers in the 1960s, Morrison attended college. He dropped out of Florida State University, and then dropped out of the University of California at Los Angeles, where he had studied film-making. In the summer of 1966, Morrison spent his time writing poetry and taking psychedelic drugs. He met a fellow film-school student, keyboard player Ray Manzarek, and sang some of his poetry to him. Manzarek suggested that they form a band, and Morrison chose the name "The Doors" from The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley's book about his "mystical experiences" with drugs (Jones 40). The band slowly developed its unique sound, and were spotted by a record company at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go club in Los Angeles. They recorded an album which was released in the summer of 1967. It contained the song "Light My Fire," and, when the song went to number 1 on the sales charts, "the Doors were on their way" (Hopkins 118).
The music of the Doors was unlike anything else in Rock at the time. As one critic described it, the group "crammed sex and...