The circular reasoning of old man Depp’s cheerleaders: Depp’s failed marriage and failing career got a boost because social media hated on Amber Heard in a jury trial saturated by social media, “proving” Depp’s failed marriage and failing career was all the fault of Amber Heard.
Wow, such a vindication for Mr. Depp.
A far more complex and interesting scenario: (because 1960s not 2020s) the Dionysian god Jim Morrison and his jealous assassin, Mick Jagger.
There’s a no-nonsense, British, punk rock, animus which doesn’t like Jim Morrison. I met an English, punk rock fan, playwright at the Iowa Workshop in the early 80s and when I said I liked the Doors, he spit out, “they’re depressing. Hello I love you, let me jump in your grave.” OK, I thought.
I remember reading (a long time ago) that Mick Jagger saw the Doors concert at the Hollywood Bowl in July 5th of 1968 and said they were “boring.” Maybe they were. Doors live shows were known to not always be good. I pretty much shrugged when I heard Mick’s opinion.
Apparently—sorting things out from fairly reliable hearsay—Jagger (with a group which included Stones producer Jimmy Miller and Marianne Faithful) flew to LA—immediately after finishing Beggars Banquet—in a mad fit of jealousy, to check out the Doors. Mick offered Jim powerful LSD in hopes of sabotaging Jim’s historical performance at the Hollywood Bowl, the prestigious arena reserved for jazz and classical music titans. Not only that, Jagger watched the Hollywood Bowl concert from the front row with Jim’s girlfriend, Pamela Courson, on his lap. Another rumor in this context: it was Marianne Faithful who brought the heroin to Paris (from where the Stones were recording Exile On Main Street in the south of France) which ended up killing Jim.
Beggars Banquet was considered a “comeback” album by the Stones, but this was p.r. hack news, typical of most rock “journalism.” The heralded “comeback” in 1968 by the Stones was nothing of the sort.
First, their 1967 album was, despite some bad reviews by those same rock “journalist” hacks, a gorgeous record, including stunning tracks, such as “2000 Light Years From Home,” the haunting quality of which the Stones would never duplicate again. 1967 is, according to many, the nadir of the Stones. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is corporate industry execs talking. Listen closely to “2000 Light Years From Home.” The drumming alone on this recording is superb, the exact feel of which was later used to energize what is considered their best song: “Gimme Shelter.” This detail alone, along with the song’s overall magnificence, makes “2000 Light Years From Home” a candidate for Best Stones Record. (Most Stones fans would laugh at this. I don’t care.) There was no need to effect a “comeback” from what they did in 1967.
Second, 1968 saw the steep decline of the Stones’ founder and multi-instrumental, musical, genius, Brian Jones—nothing “comeback” about that, either. The Stones turned back into a blues cover band after Brian Jones’ death in 1969. It’s no secret that Brian was reviled and shunned by Keith and Mick (perhaps justifiably). It’s also true the 1960s Stones catalog is stamped with the songwriting credits, “Jagger/Richards” somewhat falsely—how false is difficult to tell. Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts quietly made it clear: Jagger and Richards did not write every “Jagger/Richards” song.
The Beatles gave us lots of “John songs” and “Paul songs” (even as they were marked “Lennon/McCartney”) and there are tons of anecdotes on how Beatle songs were written. On the recent Beatles documentary, we see the song “Get Back,” something Paul was fooling around with, become the song we all know—and note how the input of the other 3 Beatles was crucial, even though it is “Paul’s song” (and Lennon gets official songwriting credits with Paul.)
Stones lore, by contrast, is a songwriting mystery—there is not one identifiable song written, from start to finish, by either Mick or Keith. The Stones apparently had “ideas” the whole band worked on. There is one Stones songwriting anecdote—and only one—which gets repeated over and over again (Beatles gossip features hundreds of popular songwriting stories) and that’s Keith waking up and finding the riff to “Satisfaction” on his tape recorder. The Stones first self-written hit (released January, 1965), “Last Time” (Jagger/Richards) features an insistent riff which “makes” the song. The guitarist who plays (and wrote?) this hit-making riff is Brian Jones.
One more anecdote: Thanks to a famous French filmmaker, there’s a clip of Mick, Keith, and Brian working on “Sympathy for the Devil” from Beggars Banquet; the three are sitting in a circle with Brian and Keith each strumming an acoustic guitar to the song-in-process. Mick, sans instrument, is focused, not on Keith, but on what Brian Jones is doing.
Finally, this Stones “comeback” occurred in the following context: touring (in sports arenas while selling merchandise) not songwriting, the rock industry bigwigs figured out, was the way to get rich. This meant Jagger, dancing about in large venues like the Hollywood Bowl, was the “comeback” formula. The shy, self-effacing, genius of a Brian Jones was no longer needed. Jagger ostensibly flew to LA to meet Morrison so he could get tips on performing for large audiences—the Stones had not toured in 15 months. Morrison, lying on his motel bed, resting up for the concert on July 5, listened to Jagger say he was ashamed of his dancing. The witness to this meeting reported that Jim (a newcomer threatening to usurp Jagger as the world’s greatest lead singer) asked Mick about Brian Jones and Jagger rolled his eyes, saying Keith was now with Brian’s ex-girlfriend. The Doors were on the verge of becoming bigger than the Stones in the summer of 1968; that August, “Hello I Love You” hit no. 1, Jose Feliciano’s 1968 cover of “Light My Fire” (1967) was a top 5 hit, and the Doors would begin a successful European tour in September.
How did Morrison do on LSD with Jagger (and Pam) scrutinizing him from the front row? There were complaints he didn’t work the crowd and more or less simply sang. The press said Jim was “boring.”
Jim’s Hollywood Bowl performance was stellar. He smirked a little. If he was unnerved by Jagger and Pam in the audience, or hindered by drug use, it was difficult to tell. Jim was a shaman, oblivious to human concerns and the vain, businessman’s world of Mick Jagger—and this is perhaps one of the reasons that Jim is the greatest front man ever. This is not to take anything away from Mr. Jagger, a tremendous musical force.
One word about the Doors in general: they really were transcendent. The Doors were on another level. Not better. But significantly different. Theatrical, but not in a cheap way. Oddly, strangely, the chemistry of this foursome moved the band beyond the rock template, even though that’s mostly what they were doing. Miraculously, they were almost classical. Not faux classical—like prog rock or jazz fusion, which is not classical at all, and which the Doors themselves sometimes fell into, in undisciplined stretches on stage. On the tight-rope of near-failure, the Doors intimated the touch, the mood, the attitude, the feel, of classical music.
Morrison 1, Jagger 0.