Five artists who hated Jim Morrison and The Doors

While The Doors might have been written into musical history, if it was up to their peers, they might have been missed out. Perhaps the ultimate example of the drug-fuelled hedonism of the 1960s music world or the tripping, hippie culture of Los Angeles at the time, Jim Morrison fancied himself the messiah of the scene. Other musicians, however, thought he was a cliché at best and an utterly terrible person at worst.

The Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek once said Morrison “embodied hippie counterculture rebellion”. As the Lizard King, the frontman became the face of the decade’s hypersexual, free love, creative energy that merged music, poetry, sex and spirituality into one wild package. Maybe more so than any other act, The Doors represented the seedy and seductive spirit of the era with a frontman that the girls wanted to be with and the boys wanted to be.

Other musicians, however, weren’t so sure. While Morrison has been heralded as an icon for his lyricism and crazy live performances, his personality wasn’t so reviled. Instead, it’s well documented that the musician had a lot of enemies and a character that seemed to make that list long with each passing month. Despite the 1960s supposedly being a period of peace and love, The Doors were hated by a fair few other artists, mostly down to Morrison’s behaviour.

While some of it came down to differing tastes, there are plenty of tales of other bands feuding with The Doors for my personal reasons. Morrison’s drug-fuelled antics regularly seemed to dip into violence or abuse, mistreatment of his partners or a total disregard for how seriously other musicians took their craft. It’s not exactly the kind of attitude that lends itself to friendship-making. Instead, these artists, in particular, had some choice words to say about the band and their difficult leader.