Yes, Morrison's pants were leather. Yes, Densmore slept with Eve — and other questions answered as the Doors drummer remembers L.A.'s two writer-icons.
famously wrote to open “The White Album,” her kaleidoscopic essay on Los Angeles in the late 1960s and early ’70s that effortlessly flows through topics including Jim Morrison, Sharon Tate, Huey Newton, Didion’s stint in a psych ward, the Manson murders, living in a Franklin Avenue home in “a senseless-murder district” and that time “Roman Polanski accidentally spilled a glass of red wine” on her in Bel-Air.
Most famously, Didion devoted a major scene to her experience watching the Doors in the studio working on “Waiting for the Sun,” their 1968 album featuring classics including “Hello, I Love You” and “The Unknown Soldier.” She describes “sitting on a cold vinyl floor” at Sunset Sound on Sunset Boulevard with Doors members Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek and John Densmore. They’re waiting for Morrison to arrive, and when he does, he’s his predictably provocative self, seemingly performing for Didion.
“It’s pretty synchronistic that you’re calling because I was just writing a little letter to the editor about Eve Babitz,” he says. Babitz, who died on Dec. 17, was celebrated for writing about Los Angeles culture during roughly the same period. But unlike Didion, who was an outsider to the rock and club scene,Wrote Babitz of the Doors singer: “He was so cute that no woman was safe. He was 22, a few months younger than I. He had the freshness and humility of someone who’d been fat all his life, and was now suddenly a morning glory.
To extend Didion’s thought on stories and life, we multiply our lives when our stories collide. Below, Densmore discusses his intersections with both Didion and Babitz. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
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