Lost Jim Morrison Interview Sheds A Lot of Light on Many Things

"What's wrong with being fat? That's what I want to know." - Jim Morrison

Full disclosure, I'm a big fan of the Doors and Jim Morrison. When I was a freshman at Oklahoma Baptist University I was ordered by the R.A. on my dorm floor to stop playing my "The Soft Parade" album because some of the other guys on the hall were getting freaked out by hearing Jim Morrison screaming, "You CANNOT petition the Lord in Prayer!!!" at 1 o'clock in the morning. So, I've paid my dues to be a Doors fan.

This is an seldom heard interview Jim did with Howard Smith of the village voice in 1969. In it, Jim talks about a lot of things that are very, very interesting from a 2013 perspective. I will discuss these point by point after you watch the video, below...

Here are the things I found really interesting:

1.) Jim Morrison sounds like a super-cool guy

Although a Doors fan, I always had the idea that Morrison himself might have been kind of aloof or too self-serious. I think I based that on all the hippie mumbo-jumbo about riding the snake and dead Indian's spirits entering his body.

But, in this interview, doesn't Jim sound like the kind of bro you'd really enjoy hanging out with? "I dunno, maybe we should order out for sandwiches". Apparently, when he wasn't lizard-kinging it up, Jim Morrison was funny, intelligent and a really good story-teller. And here I was thinking he had just pretended to read all that Blake and Huxley.

2.) 185 lbs was considered really fat in 1969

Jim is defending being fat by talking about how he got up to a whopping 185 pounds while at UCLA. Wow, 185! Eat a salad, lard-ass. Today, 185 is considered a good weight for a 9 year old.

As an above average Doors fan, I know that Jim Morrison was about 5'11. I also know that toward the end of his life he put on more weight and weighed maybe 190 or 200 pounds. He was only 27 when he died so, who knows, if he'd lived into the age of super-sized fries and tub-sized sodas we might have been treated to the sight of a 350 pound, 70 year old Jim Morrison getting oxygen from a tank between verses of "Hello, I Love You".

Anyway, I find it really telling that in 1969 a group of 20-somethings sitting around talking about fatness are using the figure of 185 lbs as their reference point. Somehow in the last 40 years 185 lbs went from being fat to being in pretty damn good shape.