“C’mon people don’t you look so down, you know the Rain Man’s comin’ to town,
Change the weather, change your luck,
And then he’ll teach you how to… …find yourself”
— “L’America” by James Douglas Morrison (December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971)
I’ve been thinking about this here note for several months – my tribute to Jim Morrison. Marking the 50thanniversary of his passing.
This holiday weekend, I think it best to honor him as a quintessential American – with all the pathos and bathos embedded therein. Though his vision was always dark and often twisted, he, in any event, called things as he saw them. There will never be another one like you, he once sang. Well, Jim. Back at ya.
A songwriter from an even earlier era (George M. Cohan) once wrote about a real live nephew of Uncle Sam, born on the 4th of July. Jim died on the 3rd (my mother’s 36th birthday), admonishing us that no eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.
Lately, I have wondered what he would think of the America as he would find it today – two full generations after he shed his mortal coil. And can only come up with the following:
The country’s mojo, I believe he would tell us, in biting, stinging rhetoric, is in free fall.
But let’s back up for a bit. The history of Jim and The Doors fits with precision to the time and place it in which it unfolded – Los Angeles of the 1960s. In 1967, through a series of improbable events, Morrison, then a middling student at the vaunted UCLA Film School, found himself transformed into the front man of what arguably was the greatest band that America (and maybe the world) had ever produced.
The Doors were an odd, mismatched lot. Doomed from the start and knowing it all the time. But determined to kick up an absolute sh!tstorm before while the ride lasted They didn’t even have a bass player (Ray Manzarek’s magnificent keyboard did double duty on those essential, percussive bottom notes). Jim wasn’t a musician, or, before the Doors, even a singer. He just kind of fell into the role.
The band came together on the shores of Venice Beach, and started pumping out records, angry Rock and Roll, that could match, in sonic force, anything issuing from Zeppelin or the Stones. Jim was a raging alcoholic, who couldn’t be relied upon to show up to gigs, or, if he did turn up, to adhere to any agreed upon musical sequence. He stumbled about, stirring up crowds to such a passionate, violent frenzy that by 1969, it became difficult for them to even book any shows, or, having booked them, to complete a coherent set.
The beginning of the end came in Miami, more precisely, in Coconut Grove. At the Dinner Key Theater, on March 1, 1969. Accounts vary, but it appears, to delicately summarize, that while on stage, (and indisputably inebriated) Morrison performed some benign forms of mock masturbation and fellatio on tragically under-rated guitarist/songwriter Robbie Krieger.
It was the type of thing that, these days, not even the censors at the Disney Channel would think of cutting. But those were different times. Miami was not the sex/party capital it is today. It was a conservative city with pseudo-medieval values, run by middle-aged men with thick glasses and pocket protectors.
The cops arrested Morrison, and he was looking down the barrel at 10 years in Raiford State Prison. So, he bounced. To Paris (Our Paris). And never came back (And we haven’t gotten there. Yet. We will).
But not before recording one last album of absolute perfection – L.A. Woman (which along with London Calling, Blonde on Blonde and Tumbleweed Connection forms my Mount Rushmore of Records). Across countless listenings, I can’t find a single note that I can bear part with.
The title track is so jarring that words fail me. A ride along the freeway, a roam across midnight alleys, through your suburbs, and into your blues. A pulsing but heartbreaking trip to nowhere.
But God oh Mighty! What a ride!
And then, somewhere in the middle (introduced by Jim as a “change of mood from glad to sadness”), the song shifts keys from A Major to A Minor, and into the haunting, clairvoyant chant – “Mr. Mojo Risin” – which, as any true Doors fan will tell you, is an approximate anagram for Jim Morrison.
Just as L.A. Woman was being unleashed onto the masses, the news broke that Jim had died. How or why? No one knows. He had been buried in Pere Lachaise Cemetery – near Chopin, Wilde and Bernhardt, for a week before anyone over here knew he was dead. Speculation as to what happened that day has ensued ever since.
In result, and for at least a decade after, the Faithful held out hope that he hadn’t died, that Mr. Mojo Risin would re-appear. Somehow. Somewhere. Just as the song itself reverts to A Major in thrilling crescendo.
But 50 years on, there’s still no sign Mr. MJR, and, by now, we can be fairly certain he ain’t coming back.
And in the meanwhile, from my vantage point, the country can more accurately be described as Mr. Mojo Falling. We take for granted our good works (and the good things our good works have produced). We stand limply, languidly, greedily washing ourselves in our flaws, weaknesses and shame. We are quick to castigate our forebears for sins they had no idea they committed, and, against which, being dead, they cannot defend themselves.
The unpardonable transgressions of antiquity are, quite handily, the flavors of the month. The orthodoxy now proclaims that our society was established to eternally exploit certain subsets of its citizenry. The argument extends to virtually every aspect of our existences. Words, for obtuse, Orwellian reasons, are being banned in real-time. Arithmetic? Samesies. The rewards of merit are now recast as sins, to be replaced by a squishy construct (administered by an all-knowing, anonymous cast of our betters), referred to as equity.
For some, it’s working out just fine. Corporations slam themselves for conjured up moral failings, in the process buying them leeway to ignore their true failings. It may be their most profitable enterprise.
Our adversaries, of course are even more pleased with us as we scold ourselves and beg our own forgiveness — in the most effete manner that can possibly be imagined. As we exhaust ourselves in efforts to reduce our naughtiness, countries with which we compete commercially eat our economic lunch. Those that seek our outright destruction operate with a free hand, knowing, that while at one time we might come back at them in our full wrath, we now much prefer to wag our fingers at each other in acute, but tepid, disapproval.
So (Jim might ask and did):
“What have they done to the earth? What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her.
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn. And tied her with fences and dragged her down”
But don’t listen to Jim: a white male whose father was an admiral in our murderous Navy. The Doors’ records were produced by a subsidiary of Warner Brothers, home of the nefarious and arguably racist Bugs Bunny – a conglomerate that Wall Street has bought, sold, reorganized and financially re-engineered too many times to inventory – all to the significant profit of its prevailing overseers.
But what in heavens name are we wasting our time around here for not to point our unilateral efforts to the benefit of the Ruling Class of Wall Street? And recently, we’ve taken matters to the extreme – flooding the markets with liquidity and negative borrowing rates. Pumping cash not only to private enterprise, but also to consumers – to either spend down on products delivered by our coddled public companies, or to unwittingly invest it into a stock market that confuses many professionals, except to the extent that they are able to manipulate the uniformed behavior of retail investors.
The capital of Investment Nanny State is the United States Federal Reserve, the Balance Sheet of which, already bloated beyond recognition, has doubled to >$8T in less than five quarters. They have so much paper on hand that they’re lending it out to banks in the overnight markets, with the latter snapping it up to the tune of $1T – for a return of 0.02%. They’re still printing money and buying securities at a rate of $120B/month. The mere hint at them doing anything less sends investors into a panic. Which the Fed cannot abide.
So, investors continue to suck of the teat of our Central Bank, levering up at negative rates, gorging on the cream of this largesse, and, of course, issuing debt of every stripe – in record amounts – to keep the juices flowing. And the markets are rewarding this behavior like never before. Our indices are all at record levels. And going higher.
In advance of the holiday, everybody was getting tired of hanging around (with their ear down to the ground), but many managed to stick it out in order to evaluate and react to the June Employment Report. The Commerce Department rewarded them with about as tidy a package as could realistically be hoped for. 850,000 new gigs! This indicates that America might just be getting back to work. To trading its hours for a handful of dimes. But there are still 10 million unemployed across the Lower 48 (+2), and, by estimate, 10 million job opportunities left open. Perhaps these numbers will shrink contemporaneously, as a Federal Government — carrying $30T in debt — stops sending its citizens money to stay at home.
But I’m not counting on it, because mojo, once fallen, is not easily resurrected. I expect bureaucrats to continue to coddle corporations, investors and the masses – until some external force blows the whole gig up. Maybe it will be the Miami Police – in better use of their resources than those associated with their unfortunate actions on March 1, 1969. But I doubt it. Right now, they’ve got their hands full.
When this happens (just like Miami/1969), the music’s over. And the time comes to turn out the lights. I don’t think we’re there yet. The band’s still playing – in joyful, energetic beat that serves as the soundtrack for what has begun thus far, from an investment perspective at any rate, as a Summer of Love.
It won’t last forever; never does. And (paraphrasing the Liner Notes from a long-forgotten Doors album) I can still hear those first sorrowful strains of “The End” drifting in, from another room, to find us.
I can only hope that it finds us together. You and me.
But remember this: the butterfly still screams, the killer is still on the road, and the cold grinding grizzly bear draws hotter on our heels every hour.
So keep your eyes on the road.
TIMSHEL