The Doors.

As a grade school kid, I was sickly. For three winters in a row, I caught pneumonia and had to spend four to five weeks at home alone during the day. January and February Wisconsin days.

With that much time to do fill, the options back then were very limited. You had two real choices. Radio or TV. I’d love to brag about artistic “free play” but that wasn’t me.

Daytime TV back then was mostly soaps and game shows, which I watched the first year but grew sick of by the time my annual incapacitation arrived the second year. So I migrated to the radio. There was no FM then. Everything was AM. But that’s OK because the AM was lush with exciting sounds and bigger than life personas.

For Milwaukee, it was WOKY, WRIT and WLS in Chicago. WOKY had Steve York (who I would later rent my mobile DJ unit out to and then accompany him to the hispanic warehouse district bars after the gigs), WRIT screamed “We’re IT!” and WLS owned the world. Enough has been written about the radio of that era, Larry Lujack has reached deity status for his historic WLS presence, so I need not describe my affliction. Suffice it to say, those long sub zero days trapped in the upper level of our NW side duplex were the start of my fascination with radio.

My listening carried over into the nights when I would hide a transistor radio under my mattress and sneak it out and listen til I fell asleep. One night my father caught me it and took it away. I turned my face deep into my pillow and worked hard to muffle my cry.

I had developed a rash on my hands and arms that got so bad that it required a doctor’s appointment. Both my parents went along. After my examination, they all had me wait in the reception area while they conferred.

The doctor attributed the itchy, pinkish lesions that covered my appendages to stress. He counseled my parents, particularly my father, to “loosen up.” He was Dr. Berk. A pediatric specialist on Milwaukee’s Burleigh Avenue. I remember him because his advice was a beautiful and valiant attempt.

They started by letting me stay up later. It was allowed to watch Johnny Carson’s monologue every night after that. I can’t tell you how much I miss him. (And, for that matter, how much I can’t stand Jay Leno.)

More importantly, I was given my transistor radio back.

The act of taking something away from a kid, something you know they love and something that you know has great value to them, that manipulative, insensitive, controlling treachery actually has the reverse effect of it’s unintended purpose. In it’s absence, I had developed a drug like addiction it’s ear bending gyrations and so when it was returned I went through a period of having it glued to the palm of my hand. And the song that was most often being played at that time was The Doors “Light My Fire.”

My mother had actually come to like the song. She had no choice, it was streaming constantly because I had three places to find it. If it wasn’t on 89 (WLS), I’d roll the dial to 92 (WOKY) and if it wasn’t there- then between the 13 and the 14 was WRIT. Somebody was ALWAYS playing it!

So it was with great pleasure that my mom told me that the band that sings that “Light yer fire” song was going to be on the Ed Sullivan Show. She was excited. So was I. My father? Well, he was going along with it.

As Ed came to the stage there was little or no applause, and then he said it,

“Here they are….The DOORS!”

We all watched in utter amazement. This was ED SULLIVAN? You couldn’t help but get enamored with Jim Morrison’s handsome, sexy and liquid performance. At one point, the camera came in close to his face and he just lit up the screen with warmth and effusive charisma.

He had me at “You…”

He appeared at first limp and disinterested. Then, over the course of two minutes enveloped himself in the words as they seemed to force themselves out.

I had to watch my parents faces. My mom couldn’t close her mouth. She was just so taken aback that “a guy like that” sang such a “nice” song. My dad just steamed. It was so fucking great! Morrison wasn’t just saying “Fuck you” to The Ed Sullivan Show. He was saying “Fuck you” to my dad too.

The final climatic shriek,

“Try to set the night on FI-RRRRRRRRrrrrrrre!”

burnt an indelible mark into the “Father Knows Best” cultural landscape of millions of households.

Then he stood in an exhausted Apollo-like statueque pose and turned and casually walked away.

I had to work hard hide my smile.

My mom, who was responsible for this, sat silent and then said,

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know he was…”

My dad took his clenched teeth on a beet red face and headed for the bathroom to take a big shit. His disapproval at that pivotal time in my young, impressionable life, cemented my love for The Doors and my yearning for more of whatever the hell that was.

Now I walk the beaches of Venice, California knowing that this is where Morrison and Ray Manzerek wrote the song. Jim Morrison looms large on a wall mural here but even larger in the psyche of it’s lifetime residents. And while Venice is now slowly gentrifying from a gang infested freak parlor show into a rich, radical, liberal, intellectual architecture and design capitol, the imprint of attitude is here to stay. It’s part of the genetic code. Given to you as you arrive. Very similar to the beer belly The Welcome Wagon hands out when you move from Milwaukee to Waupaca, Wisconsin.

John Densmore, the Doors drummer, is still here. He exemplifies what the spirit of that train of thought would become with the passage of time. He’s currently working with Henhouse Studios
and making efforts to branch out into different musical environments. On his new album “On Ray Of The Wine” he plays alongside Iranian master percussionist Reza Derakshani, an Egyptian bassist, and a Brazilian percussionist – the end result is a veritable melting pot of styles, all spearheaded by Derakshani’s rhythmic gymnastics.

I’ve come a long way from the sickly, radio addicted kid stuck in a dry, clostraphobic duplex living room on snowy days. But were it not for that time, I likely would not be looking forward to seeing the musclebound black guy in a red and white striped Speedo stand on one foot atop a ten foot step ladder holding two cobra snakes in his outstretched hands and then putting both of them in his mouth as I pass by on my way to the beach. These connections that we make aren’t accidents.

Oh and…

Thanks for taking away my radio dad. It’s really meant a lot to me.

I wonder if Densmore is going to show up for the drum circle tonight?

End.

Second Photo from top is Llarry Lujack.

Article link:

When The Doors Went On Ed Sullivan. CNN interview w/Ray Manzerek. 10/3/02.

~ by Scott on November 1, 2006.