A hunt for a rock star’s past
When rock stars die young, they live forever. Weird, right? Buddy. Ritchie. Jimi. Janis. And yes, Jim. OK, OK. Jim Morrison. He’s still in the public consciousness, the snaky, shaky lead singer of the Doors. When Oliver Stone makes a movie about your life, you almost don’t need a Wikipedia page anymore. And so it is with Morrison, whose only-in-thelate-’60s persona and voice have lingered through the decades — through “L.A. Woman,” through his death at 27 in Paris, through the 1991 movie.
The echoes hit close to home, too, where a 34-year-old high school baseball coach and P.E. teacher in Albuquerque is trying to retrace Morrison’s light — and admittedly, fairly nondescript — footsteps when he lived in New Mexico as a kid.
Chris Eaton understands that, to a lot of people, this kind of quest seems odd. But so what? The more he’s discovered about Morrison, the more he’s wanted to know. And if his players at Sandia High School roll their eyes every time their coach cues up “People Are Strange” on their ballpark’s sound system well, welcome to the adult world, boys. People are strange.
“I’ll play some of the music during practice; crank it up on the loudspeaker, and then I’m like: ‘Guys, you know, Jim lived right down the street,’ ” Eaton says with a chuckle. “And they’ll just give me like that weird look. And I’m just like, ‘Google it.’ ”
Eaton has spent enough time working on Morrison’s Albuquerque years — a snippet of time in the 1940s and later in the 1950s — by reaching out to anyone who may have had any interactions with the future rock star. And though he hasn’t exactly found Morrison’s “Rosebud” moment (Google it), he’s presenting his research next year at the Albuquerque Museum. His talk’s title? “The Definitive New Mexico History of Jim Morrison & The Doors.”
So, if by any chance you ran into a kid in the 1950s who looked as if he’d cut a striking figure in a set of leather pants and a concho belt by 1968, please, by all means, give Eaton a call. He’s all ears.
In all seriousness, Eaton is passionate about the project, in part because unraveling the mystery of Morrison is a Himalayan ascent that’s been attempted by many. Like a lot of rockers, Morrison’s background didn’t suggest rebellion: His dad, George, was a high-ranking U.S. Navy officer.
But that’s the thing, for Morrison and all of us. We aren’t our parents.
Eaton says he’s trying to find the spot in Morrison’s youth that may have led him to go his own way. Morrison was in his early teens when his final stint in Albuquerque ended; he wonders if a family’s move from a picture-of-suburbia home on Candelaria Boulevard back to Kirtland Air Force Base fueled a flame of independence.
“These pieces of the puzzle started kind of appearing just the more I learned and researched,” Eaton says. “So, I don’t know. I think it’s pretty interesting and I’m hoping someone hears it, reads this, and has something to offer or knows something. I’ve talked to classmates that went to school with him, but they don’t remember.”
For his part, Eaton remembers his dad — a Doors fan — trying to motivate a young Chris, who didn’t like to “write or do anything.” The solution was to give the kid “No One Here Gets Out Alive,” one of the defining Morrison biographies.
Eaton couldn’t put it down. Soon, the kid who didn’t like writing started a
love affair with the written word that left just enough room for other passions, like baseball and coaching.
Eaton is only 34 and doesn’t have a spouse or kids, so he’s got time to delve deeply into Morrison’s life. He’s connected with another biographer of the rock star and gotten enough support to tell him it’s worth pursuing further. He says the official Doors archivist contacted him to let him know band members would welcome his contributions to an app being put together.
“I think they think there’s something to it,” he says.
Many Mo-philes believe Morrison’s best-known connection with New Mexico — and one that marked him — was a truck crash in Northern New Mexico he came upon as a very young boy in 1947. Some believe the scene gave rise to these lyrics in “Peace Frog”:
Indians scattered on dawn’s highway bleedin’
Ghosts crowd the young child’s fragile eggshell mind Is that the Rosebud moment? Eaton says there’s plenty of evidence the crash happened and that it may have affected Morrison, though he notes many of the victims in wreck were Hispanic, not Native. He also notes there are those who say Morrison never saw it.
Either way, it’s a theory he’s still “trying to get to the bottom of.”
That’s the fun of the research. The kind of fun that only a unique kind of person can have. Maybe that’s why when Eaton’s baseball team is at practice, their coach will pump up the volume on two of his own Doors favorites, “The Changeling” or “Maggie M’Gill.” It doesn’t always have to be about hitting the cutoff man or turning a double play.
Google it.