Was Jim Morrison a good frontman?
There’s always a certain archetype when someone thinks of the traditional rock and roll frontman. Everyone approaches the stage in a different way, but for every artist like Paul McCartney, who can make an audience go nuts from behind an instrument, there’s someone like Robert Plant who just has to stand there and sing to hold the audience in the palm of his hand. While Jim Morrison may have helped invent the idea of what that kind of frontman was supposed to be, how good was he, really?
Because if you look at the appeal behind The Doors, it’s not like Morrison was that prolific as a musician. Sure, he had a lot of musical intuition, but the fact that he didn’t know how to play one chord or keep a steady drumbeat didn’t exactly bode well for him holding up his end of the bargain in the group.
For all the hits the group had, he didn’t have the greatest range out of any singer in the world, either. Despite being able to scream occasionally, much of his singing style seemed focused around his lower register, which tended to sound closer to a strange impression of Dracula whenever he sang.
But there’s more than just musical ability that goes into being the perfect frontman. It’s about being the complete package whenever someone touches the stage, and when looking at how he held the audience in his grasp every single night, let’s see how Morrison stacks up compared to the other rock giants that came after him.
So, what makes Jim Morrison a great frontman?
Rock and roll has never run short of people willing to hog the spotlight whenever possible. From the moment Elvis Presley started shaking his ass, people were already looking to be wowed by any rock and roller who could give them a little bit more than just a good tune like the Bing Crosbys of the world. Even if Morrison wasn’t the most dynamic vocalist of his time, though, his approach to the stage is still one of the most captivating moves that any rockstar had ever attempted.
Looking through the footage from The Doors’ finest shows, Morrison kept the audience on edge before opening his mouth. There had already been a certain dark mystique around their music before he sang, but when he began singing songs like ‘People Are Strange’ or ‘Light My Fire’, people were more than willing to go the musical rabbit hole for whatever wild trip he wanted to take them on.
And despite being unable to play an instrument, there’s no greater indication of his importance than looking at the final Doors albums. As much as they meant well, projects like Other Voices and Full Circle ended up feeling incredibly hollow thanks to Morrison’s absence, especially when they substitute their dark subject matter for song titles like ‘I’m Horny I’m Stoned’. Morrison claimed to be more of a poet than a singer, but without his bizarre technique, no one else seemed to care anymore.
But what did Morrison contribute musically?
It’s hard to justify songwriting credits when you don’t know how to write music. There are certainly royalties spread out for lyrics, but Morrison would never claim to write some lavish progressive movement to compete with King Crimson or anything. His focus was always on poetry, but by getting the right lyric, every one of the group’s classic melodies fell into place around it.
While it might not have been anyone’s first choice for songwriting method, The Doors would write their songs based on what Morrison was singing to them. Since he could never remember his poetry, he would think of a melody to fit the words, leading to the rest of the band filling in the rest of the music around him. Even when the group came in with the foundation of a song, Morrison would twist it around to make it even darker, like transforming their version of ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’ into ‘Riders on the Storm’.
Morrison may have seemed like he had the easiest job in the world as the drunken sex symbol behind The Doors, but it was never his intention to pull a fast one on his audience. Everything that he sang happened for a reason, and considering how visceral and dangerous they felt live, ‘The Lizard King’ wasn’t just a great frontman but also one of the precursors to the dangers that would come once the punk movement rolled in.