Free Mr Mojo by Dylan Jones

that he was so drunk he’d kill himself, so I told him no and hid the keys. The worst situation in the world for him was to be out of control, to be in the thrall of other people. He hated that.’
    Morrison snarled and shouted and an argument broke out. Unable to win, he crawled to bed. The next day, still drunk, still drinking, Morrison again begged for his car, which again Fields denied him, eventually agreeing to drive Jim downtown to his own car.
    â€˜Whilst we were gone,’ said Fields, ‘the group had been to the Castle looking for him, because he was due at a rehearsal. When we came back we found all the chairs on the table – this was their way of expressing anger. They were all scared of him, all very, very afraid of him. They loved him, but they hated him as muchas they loved him. They knew that he was everything. Before they’d gone they’d written on the back of a still from the
Chelsea Girls
movie which was hanging up in the lobby: “Jim, you’d better get back, your ass is mud.”
    â€˜A little while later, after he’d sobered up, I put his keys back in the ignition, telling him they were there all the time. He hated me from that moment on. He thought I was being sneaky and treacherous, and I was, but I was also being protective. I didn’t care if he got killed, but the record company would have lost their biggest star and I would have lost my job.
    â€˜And that one very intense night we spent together, taking all those drugs and talking all night long, it was so incredible. It was a very intense experience, probably the most intense I’ve ever had. I can’t remember what was said, because we were on acid, but you know, it was deep. You’d think that some kind of bond would remain after that, so at least you acknowledge that there had been some kind of intimacy, even if it’s embarrassing for you to recall, but he never did. It’s like if you slept with someone once, as much as you don’t want to say anything about it, or nudge or wink or whatever, something is always there. Not that we slept together . . . but it was so close.’
    Nico later dyed her hair because she’d heard that Morrison liked redheads: ‘I was so in love with him that I made my hair red after a while. I wanted to please his taste. It was silly, wasn’t it? Like a teenager.’
    As Danny Fields said, ‘It wasn’t a gratifying experience working for Morrison, it was always kinda frustrating. He never really did what I wanted, but I was naive too – it was my first job as a legitimate publicist and people don’t do what you want them to do. He had his own idea of how he wanted his image projected, and he was right. He was the custodian of his own creation. I flattered myself that I could manipulate it, but he was a much better manipulator than anyone.
    â€˜I wanted him to do a photo session with Nico, but he refused to do it. He’d never say no, but he’d never turn up. Nico would be waiting at the location and Morrison was always nowhere to be seen. He didn’t want to pose with a woman, and I don’t blame him – his instincts were right. Posing with a woman would have diffused his image, and he wanted to remain aloof.’
    Fields had other plans for the group, figuring that they should broaden their popularity by exploiting the teen market, a huge portion of which was buying the Doors’ records anyway. He wanted to introduce Morrison – whom he saw as the archetypal new-wave teen icon – to Gloria Stavers, the editor of
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magazine. Fields flew from New York to Los Angeles with the express purpose of getting Morrison to place a call to her.
    Stavers was a powerful woman at the time, controlling the hearts and minds of nearly every fourteen-year-old girl in America, and she asked for and received a great deal of deference from the music industry. Morrison, though, was hardly the kind of fawning pop star