Jim Morrison’s birthday is December 8. To pay tribute, we’re republishing an article from the June, 1981 issue of High Times, in which Tom Baker responded to the depiction of himself and his late friend in the bestselling Morrison bio No One Here Gets Out Alive.
…they shambled down the street like dingledoodies, and I shambled after them, as I’ve been doing all my life, after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time. The ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop, and everybody goes ‘Awwwwwwwwwww………………!”—Jack Kerouac, On the Road
When I first read those words I was a freshman in high school, living in San Francisco, just a long boccie-ball toss from North Beach. For a long time afterward, I was convinced I might be one of Uncle Jack’s “mad ones” who would explode across the stars like a “blue center light.” When I reached my 30th birthday I settled for being another Kerouac. But by then I had met two people who, beyond a doubt, fit that classic description of cosmic brilliance: James Douglas Morrison and his wife, Pamela Courson. In their tragically brief and mercurial lives, they would make up one of the most volatile and intensely dramatic romances of modern times.
I had been living in New York City for three years, tending bar in Greenwich Village, studying acting with Lee Strasberg and working steadily in off-off-Broadway and regional theater, when I impulsively and unwisely it turns out, …
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Author: High Times / High Times
