The Lizard King: The Essential Jim Morrison

Jerry Hopkins

tet 2014 · Plexus Publishing

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Jim Morrison, lead singer of the Doors, has achieved a bizarre cult status since his death in 1971. Morrison was one of the most popular and controversial figures to emerge during the sixties; described as an 'erotic politician', poet, shaman, Dionysian drunk, his style and influence have grown steadily in the twenty years since his death, so that the real man has gradually disappeared behind the legend. Now, in The Lizard King: The Essential Jim Morrison, Morrison's biographer Jerry Hopkins, co-author of No One Here Gets Out Alive, reassesses Jim's life and provides fresh insights into him as a human being rather than the myth that he has become. But this reassessment is only part of this remarkable book. At its heart is a series of interviews with Jim Morrison by journalists including Hopkins himself, Ben Fong-Torres, John Tobler, Bob Chorush, Salli Stevenson, Richard Goldstein and the late John Carpenter, Morrison shows himself to have been articulate, intelligent and witty. Published uncut, these interviews provide a unique insight into a man who consciously created his own myth, then lived to regret it. Stripping bare the facts from the fantasies of Jim's death in Paris in 1971, and taking a long hard look at what has happened since to the people who he left behind, The Lizard King: The Essential Jim Morrison brings sharply into focus the broken dreams and unreachable ideals of one of the sixties' most enduring icons.

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Jerry Hopkins was born Elisha Gerald Hopkins in Camden, New Jersey on November 9, 1935. He received a bachelor's degree from Washington and Lee University and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. He wrote for The Twin-City Sentinel in Winston-Salem, The Village Voice in New York, and The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. In the early 1960s he was a writer-producer for PM East, a television talk show hosted by Mike Wallace, and a talent booker for the syndicated Steve Allen Show. In 1966, Hopkins and a partner opened Headquarters, a shop that sold drug paraphernalia in Los Angeles. He was also writing freelance articles for various publications when he responded to a 1967 ad in an early issue of Rolling Stone asking for submissions of music reviews. He became a music writer for Rolling Stone magazine and became the magazine's London correspondent in 1972. He wrote for Rolling Stone for about 20 years. He wrote several biographies of musicians including Elvis: A Biography, No One Here Gets Out Alive with Danny Sugerman, and Behind Closed Doors. He also wrote books and articles about exotic food, sex, travel, hula, and Hawaiian musical instruments. His memoir, The Ultimate Fish, was published in 2014 and focuses on his relationship with a transgender prostitute. He died of heart failure on June 3, 2018 at the age of 82.