The doors who is alive

For decades, the late- Ray Manzarek always hinted that Doors frontman Jim Morrison might still be alive. It was kind of creepy, because he was obviously just doing it to try to keep the sales up or something.

Maybe he went too far. Robby Krieger went on to say that the Doors' album, An American Prayer , which featured him, Densmore, and Manzarek, creating new music behind Jim Morrison's previously recorded poetry stands among his favorite pieces by the Doors. It was poetry, and jazz, and I bet you that would have been the direction.

That was the whole idea behind it — like I said, poetry and music together. But, he says, he still regrets not calling out Morrison on his abusive relationships with women. I hated his self-destruction … He was a kamikaze who went out at 27 — what can I say? Quite a lot, it transpires. Morrison was a man who was spectacularly good at being a rock star — a lithe figure in leather trousers, prophesying about death, sex and magic on some of the biggest hits of the s — Light My Fire, Break on Through and Hello, I Love You.

But he was catastrophically bad at the rest of life. Like many alcoholics, he could be reckless, selfish and mercurial. He had lobbied to get Morrison off the road before his death, and even quit the band at one point. So what if we have one less album? It was another era.

Kamikaze drunk. Of course he would be sober. He was smart. Densmore, 75, is a defiant survivor of the music scene he helped build. Next month, a documentary about another of his bandmates, the keyboardist Ray Manzarek, who died in , will be released. People certainly thought he was. It is not usual to spend years in court trying to stop yourself from earning millions of dollars to prove a point about the value of artistic integrity over the pursuit of money.

He wrote a book about the case, published in , and donated the profits to the Occupy movement. I guess he was taking painkillers and brown powder, too. I mean, it sounds horrible, but at least you rode the train all the way to the end — you never checked out early.

Densmore grew up in the west LA suburbs. College put him on to jazz, and he worshipped at the altar of Coltrane and Davis. He was 21 when he met Morrison, who was tall, bookish and handsome. We were street scientists exploring the mind. I experimented with cocaine during the 70s and 80s. Ugh … drug. I hate that word. I was shocked when heroin became popular.

Even Jim knew heroin was a serious drug. Heroin tried to make you forget everything. It scared me. So I stayed away.