William Douglas Morrison Popular Books

William Douglas Morrison Biography & Facts

James Douglas Morrison (December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971) was an American singer, songwriter and poet who was the lead vocalist and primary lyricist of the rock band the Doors. Due to his energetic persona, poetic lyrics, distinctive voice, erratic and unpredictable performances, along with the dramatic circumstances surrounding his life and early death, Morrison is regarded by music critics and fans as one of the most influential frontmen in rock history. Since his death, his fame has endured as one of popular culture's top rebellious and oft-displayed icons, representing the generation gap and youth counterculture. Together with keyboardist Ray Manzarek, Morrison founded the Doors in 1965 in Venice, California. The group spent two years in obscurity until shooting to prominence with their number-one hit single in the United States, "Light My Fire", taken from their self-titled debut album. Morrison recorded a total of six studio albums with the Doors, all of which sold well and many of which received critical acclaim. He frequently gave spoken word poetry passages while the band was playing live. Manzarek said Morrison "embodied hippie counterculture rebellion". Morrison developed an alcohol dependency, which at times affected his performances on stage. In 1971, Morrison died unexpectedly in a Paris apartment at the age of 27, amid several conflicting witness reports. Since no autopsy was performed, the cause of Morrison's death remains disputed. Although the Doors recorded two more albums after Jim Morrison died, his death greatly affected the band's fortunes, and they split up two years later. In 1993, Morrison was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with the other Doors members. Rolling Stone, NME, and Classic Rock have ranked him among the greatest rock singers of all time. Biography Early years and education Morrison was born on December 8, 1943, in Melbourne, Florida, to Clara Virginia (née Clarke; 1919–2005) and Lt.(j.g.) George Stephen Morrison (1919–2008), a future rear admiral in the United States Navy. His ancestors were Scottish, Irish, and English. In August 1964, Admiral Morrison was commanding U.S. naval forces during the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The following year, in 1965, the incident was a leading pretext used to justify U.S. engagement in the Vietnam War. Morrison had a younger sister, Anne Robin, who was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1947, and a younger brother, Andrew Lee Morrison, who was born in Los Altos, California in 1948. In 1947, when he was three to four years old, Morrison allegedly witnessed a car accident in the desert, during which a truck overturned and some Native Americans were lying injured on the side of the road. He referred to this incident in the Doors' song "Peace Frog" from their 1970 album Morrison Hotel, and in his spoken word performances "Dawn's Highway" and "Ghost Song" on the posthumous 1978 album An American Prayer. Morrison described this incident as the most formative event of his life, and made repeated references to it in the imagery in his songs, poems, and interviews. Morrison believed the spirits or the ghosts of those "dead Indians leaped into [his] soul," and that he was "like a sponge, ready to sit there and absorb it." Morrison's family does not recall this traffic incident happening in the way he told it. According to the Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive, his family did drive past a car accident on an Indian reservation when he was a child, and he was very upset by it. The book The Doors, written by the surviving members of the band, explains how different Morrison's account of the incident differed from that of his father, who is quoted as saying, "We went by several Indians. It did make an impression on him. He always thought about that crying Indian." This is contrasted sharply with Morrison's tale of "Indians scattered all over the highway, bleeding to death." In another book, his sister says that his version of the event is likely exaggerated, writing that, "he says we saw a dead Indian on the side of the road, and I don't even know if that's true." Raised a military brat, Morrison spent part of his childhood in San Diego, completed third grade at Fairfax Elementary School in Fairfax County, Virginia, and attended Charles H. Flato Elementary School in Kingsville, Texas, while his father was stationed at NAS Kingsville in 1952. He continued at St. John's Methodist School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and then Longfellow School Sixth Grade Graduation Program in San Diego. In 1957, Morrison attended Alameda High School in Alameda, California for his freshman year and the first semester of his sophomore year. In 1959, his family returned to Northern Virginia, where he graduated from George Washington High School, now a middle school in Alexandria in June 1961. While attending George Washington High School, Morrison maintained a grade average of 88 and tested in the top 0.1% with an IQ of 149. 1961–1963: Literary influences Morrison's senior year English teacher later said, "Jim read as much and probably more than any student in class, but everything he read was so offbeat I had another teacher (who was going to the Library of Congress) check to see if the books Jim was reporting on actually existed. I suspected he was making them up, as they were English books on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century demonology. I'd never heard of them, but they existed, and I'm convinced from the paper he wrote that he read them, and the Library of Congress would've been the only source." Morrison went to live with his paternal grandparents in Clearwater, Florida, and attended St. Petersburg Junior College. In 1962, he transferred to Florida State University in Tallahassee, and appeared in a school recruitment film. At Florida State, Morrison was arrested on September 28, 1963, for disturbing the peace and petty larceny while drunk at a home Florida State Seminoles football game at Doak Campbell Stadium. A voracious reader from an early age, Morrison was particularly inspired by the writings of several philosophers and poets. He was influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, whose views on aesthetics, morality, and the Apollonian and Dionysian duality would appear in his conversation, poetry, and songs. Some of his formative influences were Plutarch's Parallel Lives and the works of the French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud, whose style would later influence the form of Morrison's short prose poems. He was also influenced by William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Baudelaire, Vladimir Nabokov, Molière, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Honoré de Balzac, Jean Cocteau, and most French existentialist philosophers. 1964–1965: College experience in Los Angeles Morrison soon transferred to the film program at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he enrolled in Jack Hirschman's class on Antonin Artaud in UCLA's Comparat.... Discover the William Douglas Morrison popular books. Find the top 100 most popular William Douglas Morrison books.