The Lizard King and the Donald
I was watching a documentary about The Doors tonight, just after the National Football Conference Championship game ended. I was surfing, really, not looking for anything in particular, when I came upon the program and thought, Let’s sit here a minute. There’s not much about The Doors I don’t already know- not much that’s in the public record, anyway -but I’m always curious to see if there’s anything an exposé can reveal that I don’t know, and sometimes there is. Besides, I’m always intrigued to watch old footage of Jim Morrison doing just about anything, but especially performing. Tonight, for example, there wasn’t much footage I hadn't seen before, but I did learn that Robbie Krieger, the group’s guitarist, had only been playing electric guitar for six months when the band formed in 1965. I knew about John Densmore’s jazz drumming background, and that Jim had never sung before, and that Ray Manzerek played the bottom on keyboard bass because the group could never find a...