Mr Mojo by Dylan Jones Page A

same juxtaposition of forces. Like Elvis, he created his look from a variety of sources,clothes which were fundamental to the creation of the Lizard King’s image.
    To celebrate ‘Light My Fire’ reaching number one in the charts, Morrison went out and bought his most iconic piece of clothing, a custom-made black leather suit. But the image wasn’t all his. In May 1966, Morrison had seen the Velvet Underground perform at the Trip on Sunset Strip; in the audience was Gerard Malanga, a Factory stalwart (and later the Velvets’ biographer), dressed from head to toe in tight, black leather. Malanga’s outfit that night had a huge effect on Morrison, who quickly realised that to make any kind of lasting impression on the West Coast crowd he’d have to adapt the East Coast chic of the bohemian New Yorkers.
    Morrison’s leather trousers were not only tailor-made – they were made out of kid-glove leather, which is thinner, finer and far more delicate. At first the tailor thought Morrison had made a mistake and so refused to make them, but he quickly realised that the singer didn’t want them any other way. He also asked for them to be cut in the same style as his Levi’s, which were narrower than most leather trousers.
    â€˜They were super; they just fit,’ said Ray Manzarek, who was with Morrison when he went to pick them up. ‘They were like snakeskin. He looked like a snake, man. He looked like a black mamba. He put on those leather pants and from the waist down he had turnedinto a black mamba. That was the beginning of the reign of Jim Morrison the sex symbol, Jim Morrison the sex idol onstage, when he became the black mamba. That was it, man, it was all over. All the women who saw him just absolutely fell in love.’
    His cheeks were already gaunt, his torso was lean, and he had those cheekbones, pectorals and wraparound sunglasses – but it took a top Hollywood hair stylist to give him the Alexander the Great haircut he craved. Now the Young Lion added an American-Indian concha belt, cowboy boots and a black gangster hat (complete with a metal skull-and-crossbones motif), all of which he wore with a complete lack of irony. He also bought a solid-gold microphone which he liked to carry from gig to gig. His clothes, like his lyrics, were full of allusion and metaphor – chic, uncompromising and sexy.
    Today it is commonplace for pop stars to use their music as a vehicle for indulging their ego. The last five decades have seen pop music become an open prison for the maladjusted, a home for so many appalling egos, all signed up by record companies in the hope that some of their warped genius will transmute into dollars. But Morrison was one of the first to seriously abuse the medium.
    Apart from Dionysus, another obsession of Morrison’s was, to quote Mick Farren, who wrote about him in
The Black Leather Jacket
, ‘the kind ofancient fertility religions that ensured their followers’ survival and prosperity by choosing a monarch (usually young, cute, male and virile), who would be sacrificed (usually by young, cute, nubile females) after seven years or some other suitable mystic period. Morrison’s writing makes it clear that this was the role he wanted, if not for his total being, then certainly for his stage persona.’
    In his eyes he was a victim, dressed in black leather. He proposed himself explicitly as his generation’s sacrificial lamb: ‘We are obsessed with heroes who live for us and whom we punish.’ As Farren pointed out, this wasn’t merely a bleak observation: it was Morrison’s job description and career goal. Dressed in his martyr’s garb, he was ready to be lauded, victimised, reviled and immortalised. He would grow to hate this self-conscious beefcake image – it was only studied perversity, after all – but it was all his own creation. By covering himself with this reptile skin, Morrison gave