If The Doors had continued with Jim past '71

[Vincent Vega]

Say Jim lived and returned to the US in the fall of 1971 (as he had indicated in letters to friends), do you think The Doors would've continued to have been a popular band in the '70s or would they have faded into "has been" status as the decade wore on? I also wonder, just how popular were they in 1971 itself, when LA Woman came out? Were they still one of the most popular bands around?

I just can't imagine The Doors braving the tide of bands like Aerosmith, the rise of Led Zeppelin, the popularity of virtuoso guitar playing (Taylor, Brian May, etc). They might've found some weird kinship with Queen in that both bands liked theatricality, but IMO if they'd continued with Jim I just see them becoming a niche act, in the way that The Grateful remained very popular, just with a group of hardcore fans. Does anyone else see it differently?

Could The Doors have pulled it off and remained in the top tier of bands in the 70s?

[batman007]

I truly think so. Look at the following they have way after Jim died. I became a fan in the mid 90's. They would of definitely needed to add something new to their style of music though.

[MEXzilla]

Well I think the doors is Jim Morrison so without him it would have failed. Heck I feel the band was bringing him down.

[Careful with that axe]

Magic Eight ball says,"My sources say no". The band might have completely disbanded while Jim was soul searching. He was doing a lot of reevaluating after his ordeal. He seemed to be planning on staying in Paris and possibly setting up another home-base in NYC so his bandmates would be thousands of miles away. The world saw Jim as the band but the band might have not been patient with Jim or his new direction if using more spoken word.

[DieselDaisy]

These hypothetical threads are pointless. In truth nobody knows. If you listen to Jim's poetry album and the two post-Jim Doors records, it may give you an indication but we still do not know.

[Crash Diet]

These hypothetical threads are pointless. In truth nobody knows. If you listen to Jim's poetry album and the two post-Jim Doors records, it may give you an indication but we still do not know.

[dalsh327]

As far as the band, I think it would've ended by the mid 70s, I think he would've been doing something multimedia-related. He was still into filmmaking. It's a given he went to Paris because he couldn't be extradited and locked up in redneck prison. He had good lawyers that would've gotten him out of it, but they probably wanted to make an example out of him, possibly send him to Vietnam.

I'm sure he got threats by law enforcement about what they were going to do when they locked him up.

Maybe write screenplays and plays like Sam Shepard, direct some films produced by his former classmate Coppola. He already had friends making Hollywood (and French) films, so he had no problem rounding a crew up. Would he have been a Spielberg, Lucas or a DePalma - maybe? Jagger and Lennon had already made films, Ringo had made a few. It wouldn't have been weird if he starred in a movie, Tim Buckley and Roy Harper also acted.

Edited June 5, 2013 by dalsh327

[Johnny Drama]

Can anyone make me like Morrison Hotel?

[bran]

i think the band was going to eventually end one way or another.

[Val22]

The band has done things after Jim died and has done concerts with other singers, but no one could have taken Jim's place.

The songs were mostly his poetry, but Ray M was the brains of the band. Even Jim has said it. I think for all the great songs The Doors had they were really a 60's and 70's band and I don't think they're type of music would have gone on. The songs are still amazing today, but unless Morrison changed his way of writing and the melodies, I don't think this band could have made it through the 80's when the music changed to harder rock and the hair metal bands/ party music.

The Doors will always will be one of the greatest bands to come out of the 60's and early 70's, but I don't think they would have lasted when the music style changed.

[Estranged Reality]

I think Jim would have broken away for a few years, gotten back with them, had a few ill-fated '80s/'90s records trying to 'fit in' with the sounds of the time (arena rock and hair metal Doors would have been interesting to say the least), probably broken up again, had a long few years of bandmember solo records, then the inevitable cashgrab tour. Jim as an older man would have been interesting but they would never have stayed on top of the world the way they were at their peak, just look at any other band of their ilk. Woulda been great to see live though.

[Dan H.]

He would've faded into irrelevancy.

[T.wa.T]

By the time the eighties came around the Doors would have been long gone from being influenced by anything being done by hair metal bands, lol, could you imagine Ray and Robbie wearing lipstick with bleached blonde hair? Or Jim doing splits and spins like Diamond Dave, lmao. The doors were their own thing not a fad.

[Rdeyahlxp]

Maybe they would have clashed and Jim would have his own set of forgettable backing musicians and bill them as "the Doors", who knows. Or they went the industrial route at some point like Jim said in one of his interviews.

[Val22]

He would've faded into irrelevancy.

Yeah, which would have been sad, but the songs the Doors wrote and recorded were awesome, but dated too. Only Jim knew some of the shit he was writing? His lyrics were really out there sometimes.

[arnold layne]

Jim was on a path towards destruction. There was no other option.

[Guest Len B'stard]

By all accounts Jims whole poet in France sojourn weren't going too good for him and when LA Woman went big he was quite happy about it and wanted to come back so i think he would've and they'd've, for another album or so at least, followed that whole rootsy LA Woman thing.

The problem with this sort of hypothesis as Arnie has sort of pointed out is that...for Jim to live longer he would've had to've not been Jim...if that makes sense. So it's difficult to make these kinds of assessments because you do it from the basis of 'what if Jim had cleaned up' or whatever, y'know, what if he had not been prone to excessive behaviour, thats like saying well if Jim weren't Jim, how would The Doors've gotten on, well they wouldn't've cuz they wouldn't've existed.

[Dr. Who]

Off topic, but I watched Oliver Stone's The Doors and it seems more like a parody of the guy's life than anything else. Jim Morrison was a nut in some ways, but also a highly intelligent, soft spoken, interesting sort of person; The movie turns him into an almost Will Ferrel-esque baffoon.

[Len Cnut]

No one knows enough about Morrison to make any other kind of film. The guy was only famous for a handful of years...and half of that time no one knew where the fuck he was...and the ones that did didn't know what the fuck he was chattin' about half the time And most of the accounts of the time are him off his tits...or by other people that were off their tits at the time.

[dalsh327]

This sounded interesting because it's going into his upbringing and school years.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zmachine/before-the-end-jim-morrison-comes-of-age

The interesting thing is that when Jim said he was having a nervous breakdown, they thought he was just tired from touring but they all seem to think that he may have really had one.

[Val22]

Jim had a lot of problems, so I doubt the Doors would have continued.

I recently saw an interview with Maryanne Faithful (Mick Jagger's babe I the 60's) and she confessed that her then boyfriend who was a drug dealer, sold the drugs that killed Jim. He supposedly committed suicide shortly after Jim's death.

I honestly don't know why she spoke up like 40 years later and not back then. probably as high as her drug dealer boyfriend was. Anyway, what's the point of saying this now?

All of the Doors songs, were poems that Jim wrote and although I still love their songs today, I don't think Jim would have wanted to go on for years and years. He probably would have become a hermit after awhile.

[Dr. Who]

No one knows enough about Morrison to make any other kind of film. The guy was only famous for a handful of years...and half of that time no one knew where the fuck he was...and the ones that did didn't know what the fuck he was chattin' about half the time And most of the accounts of the time are him off his tits...or by other people that were off their tits at the time.

I've read what is considered one of the most authoritative biographies of him though and his history is very well documented. There's not really period of his life where it wasn't known what he was up to. What is clear is that the guy was very bipolar. Very sweet, soft spoken, intellectual, thoughtful and open minded and honest and posessing a sense of integrity...But also prone to alcoholism and violent, disturbing behavior even long before he got famous.

"Then he confessed "I love you!" Tandy sniffed haughtily, "Sure you do".

"Oh, you're so smug," Jim said, taunting her, using the word that always set Tandy off. She bristled. Jim grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back painfully. She choked back a cry and listened in horror as Jim told her he thought what he ought to do was to take a sharp knife and cut her face, leaving a nasty scar, "So no one will look at you but me."

[dalsh327]

Marianne wrote about it in the book years ago but she went more into detail. What's overlooked was John Paul Getty's wife dying of an OD the week after Morrison died and he died weeks later. It's just really weird but you're also talking about young rich people taking a lot of dope. I'm sure Axl knew trust fund junkies hanging around the Strip after being there for 5 years, people who had a lot of money that didn't have a job, but had access to all sorts of shit.