Watch Rare Live Footage of The Doors Recording 'Wild Child'
- by Tom Taylor
When The Doors first formed in 1965, they shook up the flower power scene with a visceral sense of revolt. When Life journalist Fred Powledge witnessed them three years into their wavering odyssey, Jim Morrison was in full swing, and he wrote: “Once you see him perform, you realise that he also seems dangerous, which, for a poet, may be a contradiction in terms.” Powledge, by all accounts, was not your typical Doors fan, his role in journalism at the time was covering the civil rights movement in a political sense, however, Morrison seemingly captivated him as a sort of unfathomable rock ‘n’ roll Christ at the precipice of counterculture.
“Morrison is a very good actor and a very good poet, one who speaks in short, beautiful bursts, like the Roman Catullus,” Powledge wrote. “His lyrics often seem obscure, but their obscurity, instead of making you hurry off to play a Pete Seeger record that you can understand, challenges you to try to interpret. You sense that Morrison is writing about weird scenes he’s been privy to, about which he would rather not be too explicit.”
