Jim Morrison (The Doors) - where does he stand lyrically?

I think he’s an interesting lyricist but I wouldn’t necessarily call him a great poet. His lyrics work well in conjunction with his vocal delivery and The Doors’ musical atmosphere. Reading his words off the page, they just sound like strings of random imagery and non-sequiturs, but in the context of the music it somehow makes sense.

 

I have long thought kind of the opposite; in that he moved away from being poetic for a whole song, to settling for more terse yet prose lines, like some songs on L.A. Woman. He said himself to the press then that lyrics aren't even important in rock and roll.

 

I’ve always loved American Prayer. It creates a unique mood.

I honestly didn’t know enough about poetry to say who a great poet is.

 

of course James Douglas looked like a real genius poet laureate when compared to Ray's "hot beef injection" interjections ....

 

I'm kind of piggybacking on Densmore's comment that the snake imagery could get old. Not saying that the song didn't have innovative or worthy lines.

 

I am sure Croz said he was o.k. despite their mutual dislike

 

Was Jim Morrison a poet? Yes, he was. There was certainly many banal Doors songs, but in each and every one Morrison could offer a clever turn of a phrase, and there were so many evocative lines in which the imagery is haunting and memorable, that for a rock singer (and rock in general offering a host of sophomoric lyrics) he was quite a successful poet....

The time to hesitate is through
No time to wallow in the mire
Try now we can only lose
And our love become a funeral pyre

Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain

When you're strange,
Faces come out of the rain

Cancel my subscription to the resurrection
Send my credentials to the house of detention
I got some friends inside

Dead president's corpse in the driver's car

Your ballroom days are over, baby
Night is drawing near
Shadows of the evening
Crawl across the years

Breakfast where the news is read
Television children fed
Unborn living, living dead
Bullet strikes the helmet's head

But it's getting harder
To describe sailors
To the underfed

Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding
Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile
Egg-shell mind

I see your hair is burnin'
Hills are filled with fire
If they say I never loved you
You know they are a liar
Drivin' down your freeways
Midnight alleys roam
Cops in cars, the topless bars
Never saw a woman
So alone

There's a killer on the road
His brain is squirmin' like a toad
Take a long holiday
Let your children play
If ya give this man a ride
Sweet family will die

 

WAY down on the list. Dude is massively overrated. I can't repeat that enough. I've tried with the Doors many times over the years. Not my thing and it's mostly Jim's fault.

Does it rank worse than Robert Plant and the Hobbit lyrics?

...maybe...

...but maybe not...

still, though...Jim was overrated and just bad.

 

High school level drunken bufoonery is in the eye of the beholder.

 

It still has a contemporary feel to it. And although many rock fans hate to hear it when talking Doors, Stones, Eagles, etc. from this time, there are elements of disco in it. Hell, even Morrison's shirt collars were getting longer in the early 70's. And what is "Funkytown" if not "The Changeling?" Dadadada da-da-da-da-da dadada da-da-da-da-da...

 

He was far from average , but in no way someone who can be called a great poet

 

I consider Jim Morrison a poet & singer.

As a Rock lyricist, he was one of the very best.

 

"The Doors? Jim Morrison? He's a drunken buffoon posing as a poet." © Almost Famous

 

Didn't Robbie write Light My Fire?

 

Yes he did. Except for that stanza I quoted. There is a notable difference between that and the rest.

 

Yes, but Morrison added those particular lines.

 

Ah ok. Yes it does read like Jim's.

 

If he's a "poet", he's not a good one. Rhyming "fire" with "fire" and "higher"? I can do that...

 

thanks for this.. never noticed it...

 

This works for me also. His lyrics absolutely match the needs of the music to my ears .

The other thing is .. who among us here reads lots of stand alone poetry, not just lyrics?

I’ll be the first to admit I don’t, so it may be a case of we like what we like but I’m not sure all that many us are reading enough poetry to put Jim’s work in any kind of context.

 

I'm gonna knock you flat when we meet at the Monsters of Poetry festival.

 

2 pages, 42 replies, OP has not done anything but ask the question. so @RoughAndRowdyWays - what do you think of Jim Morrison's verse?

 

Anyone can be a poet ;however, that doesn’t mean they are good poets.

If Jim Morrison considered himself a poet, then he is a poet. He wasn’t a very good one.

 

I signed out to do some housework! and well, i think Jim is good. But to me his poetry maybe isn't extremely visceral or it just is not to my specific taste. When it is read alone that is. within the Doors it works fine!