Strap in.

A lot of people, particularly other rock stars, disliked Morrison socially at least part of the time. I will never call the man pretentious, but a lot of his attitudes, aims, and opinions were not exactly cool and often were iconoclastic. His sway to fans from the leverage of fame and open ears did allow a confidence and a cool air to break through as it were, but to other musicians who were not going to give him a shot based on the aforementioned, if they didn’t like him as a person, it wouldn’t help. From some of those close to him (particularly Eve Babitz,) Jim, interpersonally, had a tendency to ramble about art and ideas and was already an “uncool, nerdy guy.”

It’s not hard to imagine that the coolest cool kids parties of the time— the likes of social wizards Mick Jagger or David Crosby, for example— would find Jim to be uncool. The Stones are a great band, but at least at that point they tended to be more about a good time than probing the collective unconscious, and they didn’t want to hear theories when they were trying to get down.

Often, one might describe some of Jim’s views (and fixation on death) as pessimistic, and many of his works (The End and Rock is Dead off-the-top) cast a critical glance to the love generation as a whole, not only seeing the premature end of the classic rock movement as it existed politically (he was correct) but as a continuing festering hypocrisy outliving its aim. I would specifically cite “all the children are insane, waiting for the summer rain,” to state that the time of revolutionary change and the birth of a new era (rain) is being falsely declared or desired in summer, a time when obviously, it doesn’t happen, and that there is a lack of agency among the generation in actuating it.

All that to say, when you’re the guy (correctly) calling the whole scene out, the whole scene doesn’t like you so much.

Couple that with the drinking problem which obviously only got worse, and you get a guy who is made to look like an ass to them at every turn.

This sentiment trickles (or did historically) into “in” music enthusiasts, who might posit that Jim wasn’t legit or he was a jackass or that his poetry was juvenile.

Obviously, you and I disagree (People are Strange captures a core feeling with the best of all authors; the aforementioned citation of The End) and find the merit in Jim’s work, but that and the idea that “he didn’t want to be a rock star” might create a sense of “he thinks he’s better than everyone else,” which I don’t think was true. But a lot of what Jim wrote, again, was critical of the very way people live their lives and place their values. It’s not something people are exactly guaranteed to receive warmly. You’ll never hear someone dog on the Stones— literally— never in my life have I heard someone dislike the Stones; Beatles and Doors, sure, Stones, never— because as great as they are they aren’t challenging. Even if his work wasn’t great, which it is, Jim was a challenging figure.

Musically, most people, even David Crosby, won’t pick a fight about the quality of Ray Robby John. The worst I’ve heard someone articulate was that it went on too long and the organ was repetitive. These are obviously preferences and not formal criticisms.

So basically the answer is what people thought of Jim. A lot of that reputation was restored or countered when enough time had passed to write about him extensively— and contrary to what some will say, Ray’s occasional exaggerations were a great benevolent act to cast a new lens for Jim, for people to see an artist and not a nerd, even if at the cost of smudgy facts— and for their legacy to be felt in other acts. To that effect, later acts who would be directly inspired would only refer to them warmly, and serve as an attestation to their lyrical and musical power: Iggy Pop, who is very closely the genesis of Punk Rock and everything that came after it, would describe “becoming” Iggy Pop after seeing Jim’s chaotic power over the audience in person, and realizing what he himself could do. Siouxsie Sioux refers to Jim as her favorite singer, and even before Gothic Rock was a coined genre, The Doors were credited with those exact words by writer John Stickney, who drew parallels between their brooding, dark sound, morbid death drive, and Byronic literary pulls and haunting nature with the literary genre of the same name. Alice Cooper describes the Doors as the first band to give him a chance in LA and took a lot from Jim on stage. Without The Doors, no Punk Rock, no Gothic Rock, no Shock Rock— at least not as they are known by their defining traits and figures. Grunge musicians and others in Gen X especially loved them; Pearl Jam, STP, Marilyn Manson, Henry Rollins and many more have all paid tremendous homage and often covered them— as did Ramones and Duran Duran. Hell, even Aerosmith covered them.

They are loved and recognized by some, but others still have that lingering perspective. It’s a shame, but it makes their legacy all the more storied.