In the strange, wondrous year that was 1967, in the middle of a season in which rock & roll was seeking to define itself as the unifying force of a new youth community, Jim Morrison of the Doors proclaimed to anybody willing to listen, "Can you picture what will be?/So limitless and free..../And all the children are insane...." You heard that assertion — midway through the "The End," the long, startling track that closed the band's debut album — and either you took those words as confirmation of your worst fears, or you were emboldened by their promise. If you were worried about where youth culture was headed, "all the children are insane" likely came across as a threat. But if you were one of those children that Morrison was singing about at that time (me, I was sixteen in those days), then you were hearing a voice that recognized and embraced you — that gave implicit support to your "insanity." In effect, the Doors were asserting themselves as the archetypal band for an American apocalypse that we didn't even know was creeping up on us.

Thirty years have passed since Jim Morrison died in Paris on July 3rd, 1971, at age twenty-seven, the apparent victim of heart failure and of personal and artistic disappointments that manifested themselves in severe and sustained alcoholism. Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin died a few months before Morrison — both also only twenty-seven. Despite the fact that Hendrix and Joplin died of drug overdoses — and were well-known for their indulgences — their deaths nonetheless came as seismic shocks to the rock & roll world. By contrast, Morrison's sad end did not come with such mind-stopping unexpectedness. He had long been viewed as a man who had devoured his own dreams of excess with such a rapacious appetite that there probably wasn't much growth, experience or time left to him. And yet here we are again, trying to assess Morrison's life and loss, and his enduring legacy. Was he a visionary, as many of his devotees and comrades have claimed, or was he "a drunken clown in a leather suit," as one of his detractors contended? Could his death have been avoided? Or were all his excesses in fact the logical end of his unflinching and intoxicated vision? The truth is, we can't solve these questions — just as we apparently can't resist them. But the real question isn't so much whether we can find the virtue in Jim Morrison's art despite the waste of his life. Rather, the question finally is: Can we separate the two? And if not, what do we make of that?

It's unlikely that anybody who knew James Douglas Morrison in his earlier years might have predicted that he would be a titanic rock & roll star, for good or ill. He was born in the middle of World War II, in Melbourne, Florida, on December 8th, 1943, to Steve and Clara Morrison. His father was a career U.S. Navy officer and eventually rose to the rank of admiral. Consequently, the family moved many times and over great distances — from Florida to Washington, D.C., from New Mexico to California, then to Virginia — during Jim's childhood. His father tried to bring a military-style sense of discipline to the home life, and Jim resented these attempts. He began acting out a rebellion against his father's authoritarian bearing — and that dynamic became one of the driving patterns of his life. In any event, Morrison was unusually intelligent — he scored in the "genius" range in his school IQ tests — and he was a voracious reader. In the sixth grade he wrote his first poem, "The Pony Express," and in high school he wrote the words to "Horse Latitudes" (which would eventually appear on the Doors' second album). "I always wanted to write," he told Jerry Hopkins in a 1969 Rolling Stone interview, "but I always figured it would be no good unless somehow the hand just took the pen and started moving without me really having anything to do with it."

There is also much that isn't known about Morrison's childhood and family life. His parents have never commented extensively on his early years. Apparently, Morrison's parents disapproved when, in 1963, he announced that he wanted to attend UCLA film school. When Morrison decided to make the move anyway, he did so without his family's knowledge and support. Reportedly, his father disowned Jim at that point. In the Doors' early publicity statements and interviews, Morrison claimed that his parents had been killed in a horrific automobile accident (Morrison had in fact witnessed a fatal car accident as a child while traveling with his family in New Mexico, and the incident left a lasting impression on his imagination). Later, he told Jerry Hopkins, "I just didn't want to involve them." When Morrison's mother showed up without warning at a 1967 Washington, D.C., show, he wouldn't see her, and never spoke with her again.

Whatever the reasons for the rupture with his family, the estrangement has never been explained or documented. This is simply one of those key areas in Jim Morrison's biography that, even after all these years and research, remains a fundamental mystery. Still, Morrison clearly fixated on certain impressions and experiences of childhood in his work. Many passages in his lyrics and poetry make reference to abandoned houses and destinies either found or lost on the seas. His most infamous commentary about family appeared in "The End": "The killer awoke before dawn/He put his boots on..../And then he walked on down the hall/And he came to a door/And he looked inside/Father?/Yes, son/I want to kill you/Mother, I want..." Morrison himself later said that he intended the passage as a metaphor for bidding goodbye to childhood and creating your own lot in life. That's hardly an uninteresting or an improbable reading — especially given how many young people shared a similar sense in the 1960s — though the recitation also seems to depict both a lethal rage and psychic damage that possibly even Morrison himself didn't want to explore much once they had been given voice.