AMG Review of Lost Interview Tapes Featuring Jim Morrison, Vol. 2: The Circus Magazine Interview

Lindsay Planer
All Music Guide

The interview featured on Lost Interview Tapes Featuring Jim Morrison, Vol. 2: The Circus Magazine Interview was conducted on October 13, 1970, by ~Circus magazine reporter Salli Stevenson at the Doors Workshop studios in West Hollywood, CA. Although Jim Morrison was actively avoiding reporters -- primarily at the advice of Max Fink, his attorney during the Miami obscenity trial -- Stevenson was among the very few with whom an audience was granted. Although during the course of the interview she readily admits to having a majority of her questions "coming from [her editor Gerald Rothberg in] New York," she challenges Morrison with several probing and thoughtful observations that touch on a wide spectrum of topics. Among the most interesting include his days at UCLA's film school and the repercussions of his indecent exposure charge in Miami, as well as his subsequent impressions of the American justice system. Morrison's comments are immensely thoughtful as he laboriously contemplates answers and reactions in what becomes a dialogue. Both Stevenson and the assignment photographer Kurt Ingham quiz Morrison about his labelmates the Stooges and other burgeoning boundary-pushing bands. In a macabre turn in the conversation, Morrison speaks about the concurrent passings of Canned Heat's Al Wilson, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix. While he doesn't go so far as casting stones at his late contemporaries, he does present somewhat philosophical explanations that lead him to discuss his own mortality. Morrison muses that he "hopes [his passing occurs] at about age 120 with a sense of humor and a nice comfortable bed," adding, "I wouldn't want anyone around, I would just want to quietly drift off." In less than nine months, he would do just that. This single-disc volume is available exclusively through the Doors' own website.