Mr Mojo by Dylan Jones Page B

himself a mask, but he knew if he ever took it off, he would be in deep trouble.
    â€˜He was the Lizard King and he could do anything,’ said Farren. ‘That theoretically included the ability to shed his skin at the crucial moment and slip away before they could stretch him out on the altar and reach for the knife. (It’s quite possible that the guilt for this cosmic deceit would have been enough on its own to force him to drink himself to death.)’
    The sartorial symbolism of the leather worked on many different levels: ‘Morrison had clearly given a good deal of thought to the psycho/sex/freako trappings which go with a leather suit,’ said Farren. ‘Without doubt, he had evolved the kind of long, complex, floating theory that’s the delight of the continuously loaded. Anyone who goes around calling himself the Lizard King is virtually compelled to take what might be called the reptile route. The reptile route is a loose cocktail of Jungian phallic symbolism and dinosaur fear – all that Carl Sagan stuff about how we all have this generic memory from the time when dinosaurs not only ruled the earth but all liked to snack on our ancestors, the first cuddly little mammals. This comes out of the cerebral blender as the explanation that, when you dress up in black leather, you’ve given yourself the approximation of a shiny reptile skin. When you confront other humans, they’re filled with an echo of the fear felt by an early cuddly mammal faced with a hungry and carnivorous dinosaur. It’s tortuous even for a pervert.’
    Morrison’s image was so iconic it was even copied by Presley himself. For the King’s 1968 comeback TV special, costume designer Bill Belew fashioned a black leather costume for Elvis, almost entirely based on Morrison’s. It not only resurrected Presley’s career, but also re-established him as a sex symbol.
    Because he carried his life around in a plastic bag (sleeping in a different hotel every night, often keepinghis clothes in the trunk of his car), Morrison had permanent body odour.
    Danny Fields remembered that, ‘He never changed his clothes. Once he had a brand new snakeskin suit, and he walked into the Elektra reception and everyone was amazed to see him in something different. Someone asked him where the snake was, and Jim said “Inside”. He loved that lizard metaphor. He owned nothing, that was part of his make-up. He could always escape, change hotels or leave town, switch girls.’
    He was purposeful about his anonymity, never wanting to be tied down to anyone or anything; feeling that his life was becoming trapped inside a badly scripted movie, the tormented hedonist found it easy to wander from scene to scene with scant regard for reality.
    His perpetual drunkenness also made it easier for him to sleep his way around Hollywood. There are hundreds of Jim Morrison sex stories: tales of impotence, violence, remarkable prowess and appalling degradation. There are also other less sensational stories.
    Pamela Des Barres, the once-notorious rock groupie with whom Morrison had a less-than-torrid affair during 1967, spoke of a quiet man, with an occasional temper. She enjoyed being with the singer, going to parties, walking along the shore, taking drugs (an earlyform of liquid ‘angel dust’ was an occasional favourite), but mostly just necking.
    â€˜In those days you could tell someone you didn’t want to get fucked and they’d respect it. Jim did. We went to third base, but he understood that I didn’t want to go any further. When I first met him he was a sweety – very quiet and very shy offstage. He was very caring. He never talked about his work with the Doors, just about his poetry. He used to carry it around with him all the time. He was so sweet . . . he was like a poet. But a year later I met him in the Whisky and he slapped my face and threw a bottle of beer at a friend of mine.