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short career, his lyrics and poems would allude to the cinema, and when he finally got around to making films himself, they were heavily self-referential.
    Having lost his student deferment, Morrison was now a prime candidate for military service, so to escape the draft he moved to Venice, an early cradle of hippiedom on the ocean-front south of Santa Monica. From June 1964 to August 1965 he shared an apartment with another student from his film course, all the time increasing his use of alcohol and drugs. LSD was still legal at the time, and Morrison made the most of it, by his own admission swallowing acid ‘like candy’.Having already stretched his mind through books, he now wanted to expand it even further, by pummelling it with drugs. It was during this period that he wrote most of the songs which would appear on the first two Doors LPs, songs inspired by Huxley, Blake, Céline and the other writers he had studied in school.
    â€˜I was hearing in my head a whole concert situation, with a band and an audience. Those first five or six songs I wrote, I was just really taking notes at this fantastic rock concert that was going on inside my head . . . and once I’d written these songs, I just had to sing them. The music came first, and then I’d make up some words to hang on the melody, and because that was the only way I could remember it, and most of the time I’d end up with just the words and forget the tune. I’d been going to school or college constantly for fifteen years, it was a beautiful, hot summer and I just started hearing songs.’
    Morrison had recently met Chicago-born Ray Manzarek, a fellow film student and prodigious classical pianist who played in a blues band called Rick and the Ravens with his brothers in a bar in Santa Monica at weekends. Like many Americans of his age, ever since he’d witnessed the British invasion, Manzarek had wanted to be a rock star: ‘We saw the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and thought – wait a minute, these guys are art students like us. Are you kiddin’? These people are front page news! People are going crazyover them! Girls are throwing themselves at them. They’re making records; they’re making money. We want this too!’
    Manzarek’s band were billed to support Sonny and Cher at a graduation hop, and Manzarek asked Morrison to step in and replace their guitarist, so that they could make up the six musicians required in the contract. Unable to play an instrument, Jim made his debut performance standing at the back of the stage with his back to the audience, an unplugged guitar over his shoulder. Looking as mean and moody as he could, Morrison was Stuart Sutcliffe incarnate. He had at last found an actor to play the lead role in his movie.
    While Morrison loved rock and roll – ‘It opened up a whole new world that I wasn’t aware of – a free, exciting, strange, tense landscape’ – and was particularly interested in the blues, he had never entertained the idea of becoming a singer. It took the hot summer of 1965 and a lot of acid to convince him that music could become a vehicle for his poetry. Morrison was also becoming more aware of himself physically, realising he was turning into a seriously attractive twenty-one-year-old. He’d initially been hurt by the film school’s rejection, but as his self-confidence grew, the idea of becoming a rock singer became increasingly plausible. He could be a film maker some other time.
    Then came another fateful meeting with Ray Manzarek. ‘[It was] a beautiful California summer day,the middle of August, and who should come walking down the beach but Jim Morrison. I said, “Hey man, I thought you were going to New York,” and he said, “Well, I was, but I decided to stay here. I’ve been at a friend’s house, up on his rooftop, writing songs.” ’
    Morrison then started singing ‘Moonlight Drive’,