Joan Didion - "Waiting For Morrison" in The Age Of Rock (Sounds Of The American Cultural Revolution) & her collection of writings The White Album

My copy of this is signed by the former owner (George J. Gill) and dated August 3, 1974. Note: "DOORS" in white and blue on cover. However, considering most of the articles, and photography are copyrighted 1967-1969, this edition is probably from 1969. Cover design by Nicole De Jurenev.

The book is dedicated: "In memory of Richard Farina", who you might remember inspired Been Down So Long, with his novel Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me. The book also contains an article by Farina, on Joan Baez (whose sister Mimi, Farina was married to) and Bob Dylan.

Photography Copyright  © 1969 by Elliot Landy.

Here's another copy of Didion's article on The Doors from a collection of her writings from the early 1980s - The White Album - just because it's such a good article...

'The Doors were the Norman Mailers of the Top Forty, missionaries of apocalyptic sex.'

'There was a base player borrowed from a band called Clear Light.'... Doug Lubahn

'It was Morrison who had described The Doors as "erotic politicians."'

Tennyson: 'The word that is the symbol of myself' and 'Repeating my own name to myself silently'.

Hello, I Love You and Baudelaire's "Á une passante"

1980s copy of Baudelaire's poetry

As well as the oft-cited musical resemblance of Hello, I Love You to The Kinks All Day And All Of The Night (and the never cited - up until now! - resemblance of My Eyes Have Seen You to The Kinks You Really Got Me, both of these tracks making the top ten in the US in 1964 - remember... Morrison's original Elektra bio had The Kinks as one of his favourite rock/pop groups), the resemblance also between the lyrics of HILY and French poet Charles Baudelaire's Á une passante from his collection of poems Tableaux Parisiens is quite striking...

Compare for instance the lines (badly translated here by Joanna Richardson in 1975) to the lyrics of HILY:

Tall, slender... Noble and lithe, her leg was sculptural... She holds her head so high, like a statue in the sky... her arms are wicked and her legs are long...

Early 1960s copy of Baudelaire's poetry, in French only

Of further note... as memory serves me (well or badly), HILY was used on the soundtrack of Oliver Stone's movie Platoon, The Cure have also covered HILY, as well as Nigel Kennedy on his Doors Concerto and there has also been a hit parody of the song by R.E.M. (although perhaps not evident as a parody at the time) with their track Pop Song '89 from their album Green. Here's the uncensored version of the latter:

Iggy Pop - The Passenger (And Morrison's "The Lords")

As Iggy (Jim Osterberg) Pop has freely admitted on several occasions, certain phrases from Morrison's poetry (The Lords) were lifted for the lyrics of the track The Passenger from Pop's album Lust For Life from 1977 (featuring David Bowie - Doors/Morrison connection #4 - on keyboards and vocals, and the rest of what was to make up the bowie-led band Tin Machine):

Modern life is a journey by car. The Passengers [my emphasis]
change terribly in their reeking seats, or roam
from car to car, subject to unceasing transformation.
Inevitable progress is made toward the beginning
(there is no difference in terminals), as we
slice through cities, whose ripped backsides [my emphasis] present
a moving picture of windows, signs, streets,
buildings. Sometimes other vessels, closed
worlds, vacuums, travel along beside to move
ahead or fall utterly behind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4hPnZUMBwA

Interestingly, other than having Danny Sugerman as his manager* during one period of his life, Pop also sang vocals on a version of L.A. Woman on July 3rd 1974 in the Whisky, backed by Ray Manzarek on keyboards and other musicians... Also, Iggy was to be involved in fronting Manzarek's band Nite City in the late 1970s but had a falling out with Manzarek.

*Read Sugerman's Wonderland Avenue