Gary James' Interview With The Doors' Road Manager
Vince Treanor



Vince Treanor, the man who served as The Door's road manager, has finally taken pen to paper and written his memoirs of his time with the group. Titled Behind The Doors: The Story Of A Legendary Bands's Road Manager, you can order the book by going to the website www.behind-the-doors.com. We spoke to Vince Treanor about a time, a place, and a group that can never be replicated.

Q - I always say to truly understand the 1960s, you had to have been alive then.

A - (laughs) Oh, yeah. That was a crazy time.

Q - Has someone who wasn't alive then and has read your book, ever gotten back to you with any feedback?

A - Well, I think as you have pointed out, there are people who are going to be reading the book in their 70s and 80s that lived in that time. There will be people who are their children who perhaps heard stories of that time first hand. The grandchildren of course would have no real inkling unless they somehow pursued stories, biographies, and so on, of Rock groups, stories of groups and their recordings and their passage through that particular era. The Doors themselves were separate and distant from that time. They were unique. I hear a lot of old music and there seems to be a trademark of it. There's always a Be-Bop choir in the back. There's always a chorus to the main themes, and so on. It always seems to be an A-B-C setup. The Doors didn't do that. They were telling stories. Jim called it poetry, but I would say they eventually became lyrics, and people tried to fathom the meaning. But their music was so much different than anything that was going on, and the lyrics, the strange, weird, almost tone poem type lyrics that Jim said, made people think, made people wonder, "What the dickens is he talking about?" Because they were obscure, they could lend it to almost anything they wanted to think about. There was no fixed imagery. There was no purpose. "Crystal Ship", I asked him, "What is this 'Crystal Ship'?" And he said, "Oh, it's one of these little things you see at the beach, where the glass blowers make these little glass ships. You take 'em home and set 'em on a shelf and when the light breaks through it makes little rainbows." I don't know if he was fooling around or that's the truth of the original image with "The Crystal Ship". He also filled it with a thousand girls and a million ways to spend your time. So, it's hard to judge with Jim what he might be saying. It's a strange thing and yet at other times the music was pretty straight forward. It was tone poem.

Q - Jim did not write "Light My Fire". Robby Krieger wrote it. That was probably their breakthrough song.

A - Yes, it was.

Q - When I interviewed Robby Krieger, I never asked him what "Light My Fire" was all about, because it could probably mean anything.

A - That's right.

Q - Maybe when he wrote it, he didn't know what it meant, and if he did know, he wouldn't give it up. And I can appreciate that.

A - He spoke of strange things. When you're in a mire, the funeral pyre. He was clever with words, and the rhyming and the meter of it all, but yet you can with most songs lend any meaning you want to, what was going on there. The hot flame of the funeral pyre, it died in a mire. What is that? What are you stuck in that's so bad? Who knows? But, that's through a lot of the stuff that they wrote. Take "The End" and "When The Music's Over", both of those have immense possibilities for interpretations. Of course there's a demonstration for putting in words of the Oedipal Complex, the mother he didn't like and the father he wanted to kill. And yet in the imagery of that song there is a basis in fact for what he's saying. It's not just the Oedipus Complex showing through. There is a justification for his work, his walk on down the hall.

Q - Jim, in the eyes of many of his fans, being the frontman, was The Doors. But Jim said at one point, on stage somewhere; pointed to Ray Manzarek, "See that guy. He is The Doors." Ray's keyboard playing was a big part of The Doors' sound, wasn't it? You would agree with that, wouldn't you?

A - No. In my background I come from Classic music. When I first heard "Light My Fire" I wasn't that much interested in the words as I was in the fascinating arrangement of the instruments, the guitar, the piano bass, which I didn't like. It was a piano bass at the time. The organ was obvious, although it may have been electronic, and the drums. When I generated the organ backing, the little loop that I put together, they played almost the perfect orchestration that The Doors had. But, they used a real bass and two guitars instead of the single keyboard, which of course was a Lowrey, and allowed Ray to use his dexterous fingers. Remember, Ray was a pianist in the beginning and adapted his playing style, shall we say, to the organ. If it was not for the four instruments involved in the group, the sound would not have been there. The blending of the instruments, the tossing of the melody back and forth, the tossing of the harmony, the repetitive bass, that odd style that Ray had to use only three, four, maybe five notes in the bass that formed a rhythmic counterpoint to John's drums. It all went together. You take one of those out and it wasn't The Doors. It proved that when they changed their format in 1971 in the Fall, and then '72 and '73 when they went on the U.S. and European tours and the second U.S. tour that failed because they failed to play Doors' music. The people didn't want to hear Ray, Rob and Johnny, regardless of who they were, playing Chicago Blues. They wanted to hear them playing Doors' music.

Q - I heard somewhere that Frank Sinatra thought Jim was copying his singing style and he was going to have a talk with him. I don't believe that talk ever happened. Are you aware of any meetings between Frank Sinatra and Jim Morrison?

A - Not in my time. Now remember, I came in the latter two thirds of their career. They had been playing, if you will, in various venues through the '66 period. Of course with the breaking of "Light My Fire" they became a national group. Ten weeks at the top of the charts was phenomenal at that time. Even some of the best groups didn't stay up there that long. "Light My Fire" caught on. It was just phenomenal. It just hung on and on. You heard it on radios. At that time, Pop music was just AM, but you heard it all over the place. It just hung on. Everybody was singing it. It was an instant trademark of The Doors. Of course it was backed up by "Crystal Ship", which everybody took to mean meth, Crystal meth. Not a little glass bowl made my a glass blower down on the beach. (laughs) The relationship between Jim and every other singer was not an uncopiable phenomenon. Val Kilmer for instance; I've heard him practicing for the movie and I heard Jim's tapes being played back on studio equipment and then I heard Val Kilmer sing through that same equipment. I'll tell you, it was difficult if not impossible to tell the difference. Val evidently had the talent 'cause he came from a theatrical background. He had the talent to do that, whatever it was, shifting his voice or controlling his voice. He had a damn good voice coach, but he did it. In the movie he sings songs that sound just like Jim. It's an amazing thing to hear how absolutely close it was. Now, there are other people, Joe Russo in New Jersey, who also was pretty close to what Jim's sound was. There are other people. There can't be only one Morrison as far as a vocalist is concerned. Jim was not just a singer, he was an actor onstage. It wasn't just the songs he sang. It wasn't just the voice. He sang at Isle Of Wight and it was, I don't know, one of the most unhappy performances of their career. He did nothing but sing. He just hung on the microphone and sang. So, it wasn't just is ability to sing, it was his ability to act out onstage and he flopped around, yes. He was acting out onstage.

Q - Where The Doors ever asked to perform at the original, 1969 Woodstock?

A - I think they were and chose not to go.

Q - Why is that?

A - The Doors were homebodies. Believe it or not, they did not like to go out on the road. They did not like to stay on the road for extended periods of time. Each of them had girlfriends. They had a home life. They were living independently of their parents of course. They were all big boys. The one thing they didn't like was being on the road. It's ironic that you should ask this. I was looking at something about how much did the bands earn who were playing at Woodstock? Some of them who were unknown probably didn't get paid at all. They talked about the (parking) jams and people were hard pressed to get there. I know I was asked to go with Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young and I didn't want any part of it. My brother went and I heard the stories of the nightmare that people endured, people who stayed there for more than one day. The rain, the mud and the impossible facilitates. It was a way, way under estimation of everything. Transporting in and out of there. The size of the roads. Parking spaces. How were they going to keep people out who didn't buy tickets? It was just a mad house. A sea of people. There really was a million people at Isle Of Wight. At Woodstock there was something short of 750,000 estimated people. But The Doors didn't want to go. Their thought was there were too many groups. It was an outdoor thing. Would they have adequate sound? They were very conscious of sound. That was the reason Robbie decided to give up on Ampeg and go to Acoustic amplifiers, which was a new company, relatively untried. They were always worried about outdoor venues and they didn't like big things like that anyway. They couldn't really communicate with the first fifty rows of people. The rest were just a sea of faces. They liked to sense the audience's reaction to what they were doing onstage. In a venue like that, (Woodstock '69) it's a mob. You can't relate to 500,000 people crowded in a God-awful space. It was just a sea of faces.

Q - There was this guy named Albert Goldman who wrote biographies on Elvis and John Lennon. He was going to write a book on Jim Morrison. He ran up against a brick wall because no one close to Jim would talk to him. Did he try to make contact with you?

A - No, he didn't. That's the first time I've heard that name. I had a guy who wanted to make a true history of Jim Morrison. He was going to make a movie and it would be all narrated by clips of people that he interviewed, as you are doing now. Then I found out what one of his sources was, his main source, who was a compulsive liar. I called him and said, "I'm withdrawing my permission to use my name, anything I've said. I will not allow this. I'm not going to be associated with the kind of information you've been getting from this guy that I know personally." He spent three months living in my house in Los Angeles. If he told me it was three o'clock I would take a magnifying glass and inspect the clock's face just to make sure. He could not tell the truth about anything. This guy was saying he had Robby's guitar, and he was playing it in the truck and he and his friend were driving The Doors' equipment from one place to another. That's bullshit. Nobody ever drove The Doors equipment from anywhere to anywhere unless it was me or I was sitting in the cab with a spare driver. That had to happen a couple of times because of fatigue. Playing Robby's guitar? No way. Robby carried his guitar with him at all times. We never shipped it. We always carried it, even as carry-on baggage on the plane. To say such a thing is just a blatant lie. There was much more. He told me in 2021 that he had hobnobbed with Jim while he was out, staying at my place. I knew damn well he wasn't. I knew what he did every minute of the day he was with me and he didn't have time to go hobnobbing with Jim. He had no car and virtually no money. When you have people like that associated with somebody who's going to make a production about Jim, the Lord God of Rock 'n' Roll, no, I didn't want to contribute my name or my validation of anything that they're doing. I've got the same thing right now. There's some guy on eBay selling Jim Morrison's silver microphone. No way. Jim Morrison never had a silver microphone. Never. Not ever.

Q - I would've thought the fellow handling Jim Morrison's estate would've shut that right down.

A - Well, he didn't. It's on eBay right now. He's got a document that says "Vince Treanor bought this microphone in 1968." What he didn't say is if it was a silver mic that The Doors used, The Doors being Ray or around John's drums. Then, it was stolen property because in 2003 a kid broke into my storage cabinet and stole not only all my equipment, let's make this on record, I owned the sound system for The Doors except the amplifiers. All the microphones and everything else I bought and they used it because I used it for other sound things when I went out and did various sound for other groups, Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young, Fanny, Joni Mitchell. I didn't want to use The Doors' microphones because they're very personal. You got that thing right in your face and you don't want somebody else using it. It's like drinking from somebody else's glass. So, Jim had a gold mic. He never used a silver EV 676 mic. Never. He used a gold EV 676. And I had two of 'em.

Q - I interviewed Paul Williams, the founder of Crawdaddy magazine. He flew from one coast of the U.S. to the other coast, talking to Jim. I asked him if Jim's personality was a put-on. His answer was, "That's an act in a way, yes. I don't know if a put-on is the right emphasis on it. But Jim was definitely playing the part of Jim Morrison, which I think he was one of the pioneers in a sense at that particular way of being a Rock 'n' Roll star where you kind of take an attitude and live in a Stanislavski kind of way. Just throw it around the stage, throw it around the room when you're in a room." From your vantage point, was Jim Morrison putting on an act? He wasn't that way offstage, was he?

A - No.

Q - Even Ray Manzarek didn't like the way Jim was portrayed in Oliver Stone's movie. Ray asked, "Where was the poet?"

A - There wasn't any poet. Let's begin with that. That was a fallacy propagated by the sycophants sucking on Jim's wallet and standing in his shadow. First off, Jim was acting onstage. There was not a persona. When he was first onstage he turned his back to the audience. He would sing facing the group so that he didn't have to see all those people. After all, he wasn't a professional singer. This is his first experience. He wasn't a trained singer, which was what made his voice so special. This kid walked out of a closet and started singing like the Golden Boy. As far as his intention to be a sex symbol, it was the furthest thing from the truth. Yes, onstage he was acting out these weird lyrics, these weird scenes in a gold mine, so to speak. Any imagery you can think of. That was Jim onstage. Offstage and sober he was quiet. He was very interesting to talk to, challenging to talk to because he would guide the conversation in whatever direction he wanted, and challenge you to back up your propositions. He would question. He would poke. He would probe. A Morrison interview actually wound up him questioning you, rather than you questioning him. But he also had his opinions. He had his feelings. He had his ideas. He had his thought on his life, on life around him, what was going on. That of course was a horrible time in the history of the United States in that we invaded Vietnam and there was a war gong on and American boys were being killed by the dozens for some unless project that politicians had decided upon, and for no good reason. For no end. For no virtue. So, he voiced those opinions. He voiced those thoughts in interviews, and if you were talking to him, he would talk about it. What do you feel about?, and so on. Was he projecting something? Was he trying to make a sex image onstage? Absolutely not. He hated that. It was one of the things he said, or used to as an excuse for misbehaving, bad behavior, or no behavior at all. He did not want to portray a sex symbol. He didn't want to be an Elvis Presley. He wanted to just be Jim Morrison, singing, bringing the message of "Break On Through", be yourself, don't be limited by convention, think for yourself. That type of environment is what he wanted to create. Not anarchy, but be individuals. Don't be sheep. That was the philosophy he tried to project. As far as a wild child, no. In the beginning, at the end of 1968, it was the end of en era. December, 1968 was an end of an era. It had a red flag flying. At the turn of the year there was a tall, white pole standing, and from the top was a red flag flying. And the flag was brought, clipped onto the Harriets and brought to the peak in Amsterdam. Yeah, that was the turning point.

Q - You were at the Miami concert.

A - You bet your life. I was at every concert.

Q - In an article titled "Did Morrison Expose Himself? It Looks Like It", by Bill Cosford of the Knight-Ridder News Service, he said if there were seats, he would have been sitting in the fifth row. He writes, "Morrison unzipped the leather pants, exposed himself for a few seconds, then leaped or was pushed into the crowd a few feet from where we stood." Days later, according to Bill Cosford, Morrison was charged with indecent exposure and giving a lewd performance. So Vince, did Jim Morrison expose himself that night, or did he not?

A - Well first off, you heard the story from a liar. And the second thing is from 150 photographs that were presented in the court, despite what this loud mouth, publicity seeking son-of-a-bitch said, not one of 'em showed Jim exposing himself. That's number one, okay? Number two; When Jim said, "Let's get naked. Let's see a little skin," and one of the crowd followed that, this ass hole didn't mention that he was surrounded by naked people. Basically 70% to 80% of the crowd started removing clothing. Jim did not. He already had removed his shirt as a result of having champagne poured on him by a kid who jumped up onstage with a bottle. He took a drink of it, handed it to Jim, who took a drink, handed it back to the kid who then poured the bottle over Jim's head and down onto his clothing. As you know, or may not know, champagne is sticky. Whether it was cold or not is irrelevant. It was hotter than Hell in that building and Jim took his shirt off. Then he proceeded to go on with this dialogue, "Let's see a little skin, let's get naked." I was standing to John's left as I always was, right behind the amplifiers. I stepped on the platform. Ray waved to me. "Vince, Vince. Don't let him take his pants down." So, I stepped up on the drum platform and went past John's hi-hat, out onto the stage. I walked up behind Jim, put my fingers in his belt loops and lifted, and you'll notice in the so-called tapes of that performance, his voice went up an octave or two at that point. But no, he didn't unzip his fly and take his weenie out, because if he did a cop was standing immediately to his left, immediately. The cop could not help but see him, okay? That would have been grounds for arrest. He also had previously taken that same cop's hat and tossed it into the sea of people in there. I can give you a rough count, we actually counted 13,400 odd people by click counters on the doors before the promoter kicked my band boys off there. We had four boys on the four doors and each one of them had a counter. They clicked off each person who came through the door. The hall was supposed to have 8,000 people. No seats were in there when we got there. No seats were put in. It was a big row in which the promoter threatened to keep our equipment or make it vanish, and it was brand new. We had just finished the PA for that. So, Bill Siddons (Doors' manager) had to cave in and say, "Okay. We'll go on," 'cause they had the equipment for some reason and they had a bunch of bully boys around, ready to destroy it if anything went wrong. But no, Jim never pulled his penis out of his pants. Not once. Not twice. Not anytime. As I said, all the evidence that was talked about and shown to the jurors and anybody else who cared to have a peak, there was not one piece of evidence. He was acquitted of exposing himself. That was a charge that was totally dropped. Anybody who says anything different is a liar, a publicity seeking liar. And I'll say so to his face.

Q - Did the police sit around after the show, drinking beer and talking to Jim backstage and no one brought up to Jim anything about this incident?

A - They did go up to the dressing room. Two cops went up there. The one onstage and another one who was near by. I'm not sure where. I mean, we had our hands full at that point. The stage started to collapse. The amplifiers started to tip over. John and Ray fled for their very lives, although nothing happened. The stage was divided into four platforms, the front, right and left, and rear right and left. John' drum riser was sitting on all four of those. When the rear stage platform started to go down, his drum platform of course started to go down with it, tilting him backwards and towards his right. He got off there and made for the hills. There was a big commotion about the amps are gonna go 'cause the thing was tipping down in the forward inner corner. That destroyed the center of the stage. That section was actually breaking. The leg was giving way. The amps were tipping forward. Our fear was they would fall on Ray or anybody nearby with the weight we had there, they would have been killed. Now, one person says the whole stage collapsed. It did not. I forget who. Some ass hole on YouTube. He said the whole stage went down. It did not. Just one segment of it and it never completely collapsed. But Ray and John left in great haste. And of course when Jim was pushed off the stage by the promoter, that was the end of the show. Robby walked off stage first, and then John. His stand started to go. I think one of his cymbal stands went over. But he fled. Ray saw that happening and he felt it. It was quite a bump when that thing collapsed. One section was grinding against the other one as it went down. Yeah, that was a panicking five minutes. We knew the one cop. Bill Siddons offered him a hundred dollars to replace his cap, which Jim had tossed out. And they guy said, "Don't bother. It's all in good fun. I was young once." And he took it as a joke and he didn't accept the money.

Q - That was nice.

A - Yeah. That was very nice of him. He was a guy in his late forties, early fifties. He wasn't any spring chicken. A little bit wide around the waist. He said, "I was young once." He understood. And Jim said he was sorry. Jim apologized.

Q - When rumors were flying around that Jim died, who in The Doors said to Bill Siddons, "Bill, why don't you go over to Paris and see what's going on?" And why didn't they send you?

A - Well, nobody said to Bill, "Why don't you go over and see what's going on?". None of The Doors. Nobody knew. I was downstairs in the office when all of this happened. We got a phone call from Europe. Bill was in the office. It was around 9:30, maybe 10:00 o'clock in the morning. Kathy (Lisciandro) answered the phone. It was from England, from the Granada offices in England, and they said, "What's this rumor about Jim dying?" And Bill replied, "Yeah. What's this rumor?" "There's this rumor going around that Jim has died in Paris." Bill immediately began to check. Sure enough, after making an appropriate number of calls, the word came back, "Yes, Jim is dead." So, Bill ordered Kathy to get him the first flight to Paris, which she did. He arrived just in time for the funeral. As for sending me over there, number one, I'm the Road Manager and we weren't on the road. Number two, Bill was adamant that he would never share power, information, influence, or anything else with me. Ever. I was Road Manager basically in name when we were on the road. Bill told people that I was just an exalted equipment handler. So much for what he thought about me. So, it was no surprise. Kathy was the one who told me. She called me up, upstairs, and said, "We've just received word that Jim is dead. Bill is going over to Paris to find out." That's how I found out. I was probably the second person, after Kathy and Bill, I was probably the next person in line to find out. Then of course Kathy called The Doors, each one of the remaining people. I think Paul Rothchild was probably informed. At the time they were doing their own recording. So, more than likely she called Bruce Botnick (The Doors recording engineer). But yeah. the word slowly spread. It was kept quiet initially to within an inner circle, so to speak, initially because the manner of death was unknown. Of course, eventually it was blamed on a heart attack, but there never was an autopsy. The police left Jim sitting in the tub, packed in ice, for four days. Finally they put him in a box and fed him to the worm. Whether he was embalmed or not, who knows? There's very little known about those four days except that Bill arrived there just in time for the funeral. So, he never saw Jim's body. He talked with Pam (Courson, Jim's girlfriend) of course. She was on heroin and probably didn't know what was going on.

Q - According to Alan Graham, at the same time Jim was in Paris, he had a look-alike, a German guy who was getting kicked out of bars. Did you ever hear anything about that?

A - No. I was mistaken for Jim on many occasions.

Q - You were?

A - Oh, yeah. So, I can tell you that it's possible that anyone could be a stand-in so to speak, or a double. My hair was just about like Jim's. So, in a quick view from the side or the back, I was mistaken for Jim in England.

Q - Elektra Records put out a statement that read: "Today it is still uncertain not only how Jim Morrison died, but if he really died. No one is willing to offer a concrete statement as to whether or not Jim Morrison is truly dead." That was The Doors' record company.

A - The Doors' record company, Elektra? That wasn't The Doors record company. The record company belonged to Joe Holzman, and he sold it to Warner Bros. Music and we had a celebration there in January of 1972 of the transfer of Elektra to Warner control. So, The Doors made a record, you better believe it. It made it possible for him to build a luxurious, as well as ultramodern, at that time, modern technology studio. But it did not belong to, or was under the control of The Doors. In fact, if you'll remember the last recording, "L.A. Woman" was not made in the Elektra Record studio, but across the street in The Doors' office.

Q - When I asked John Densmore if he thought Jim was alive, he said, "I'm not quite sure he's dead." That surprised me.

A - Well, okay. Here's what you want to do. The first thing is to sit down and sort of sense there's a chair under your ass, you know? I'm really sitting in a chair. Now, let's investigate Jim. Jim is a guy who needs money, if nothing else, for his heroin addicted girlfriend, which is what basically bankrupted Jim. He was out of money by the time he died. He had run through all the money he had from royalties, all of the money he had left over from the making of that God-damned, ridiculous Hwy movie and everything else, and spending it on living in this hotel over there in Paris and buying heroin for Pam. So, he was called Bob Greene and Bob said, "Hey, Jim. The well is dry. Your royalties are not covering your expenses. What can I tell you? You've eaten up your advancements. That's it." So, that's number one. So, the big question is, if Jim is alive, how is he eating? Number two; Who is buying him clothing? Number three; Who is paying for his living accommodations? Number four; What work is he doing, if any? Where is he? Does anybody in the world, after fifty-some odd years, going to keep their mouth shut that they know that Jim didn't die? That there was a dummy or rocks or pieces of wood in that coffin. And who was sitting in the bathtub?

Q - We also have that story that Jim died in the bathroom of a nightclub.

A - Bull shit! One of the first guys in the apartment said the police packed his body in the bathtub in ice for four days. The doctor examined him. Every statement, everything that was made in the immediate aftermath of the discovery by Pam supposedly of the body in the tub was that he was there in the bathtub. He told her he was going to take a bath. Now, either she's lying or what? He was her meal ticket.

Q - According to film maker Jeff Finn, on the orders of Jim, his attorney, Max Fink was getting together credit cards to take care of Pam.

A - How was he going to do it? He had no money. As far as royalties, Jim had eaten up everything he had in order to live in that hotel and go out drinking in the bars and provide Pam with her heroin.

Q - Did you hear or read that Jim is now married to a doctor living in Oregon?

A - No. Morrison is buried in Paris, France. Morrison is in a wooden box. That's where Jim is now, okay? That's where Jim is. You've got to sit down and ask yourself, is this credible? Where's the proof? Show me the proof. I want to see the proof. I want to see the body.

Q - I have asked for proof.

A - Well, you don't ask for it. You go get it. The guy who says, "Well, you see the government..." Oh, yeah. Right. or "they", the ubiquitors "they", the they that control the world, the "they" that control all the money in the world, the "they" who want people to starve, I don't know why, the "they" who control the government. Who are "they"? Name them. Names, dates and places. I want to see it. That's the proof I want. Be a skeptic.

Q - I've interviewed people on both sides of this issue.

A - There will be people crawling out of the woods to tell you stories. He was 27 when he died. He would now be 79 years old, okay? If you took a picture picture of him, you wouldn't see the guy who's onstage. Anybody who looked like that would have plastic surgery. He was already getting fat with his drinking, not only in his face, but around his waist. He had a pot belly last time I saw him. He actually, at 27, had a pot belly. He'd gone from the early publicity pictures of him, he had his shirt open or off and had this very lean body. The body structure was kind of the classic Greek, but very thin. No muscular development. No blazing six pack. No bouncing pecs. The big V taper. He was just an average, fairly decent built guy that never really got into sports. Actually, Ray had a pretty good physique. I don't know where he got it. Maybe because he was Polish. Maybe genes. Jim was just a skinny looking guy, and when he put on weight it was just horrible. His middle blew up like a bloody balloon. You heard the story, Jim's in a limousine and a girl stuck her head in and said, "Jim, you're getting fat." That's when he started to grow his beard.

Q - I believe this enduring interest in Jim comes from the fact that people cannot believe a guy who had everything would deliberately set out to destroy himself.

A - There's all kinds of people who end up going one step too far. Things become irreversible. These are young people who suddenly find themselves with an astounding income and notoriety. People are wanting autographs and wanting sex, wanting marriage and wanting everything you can think of, idolizing them and revering them and setting up all sorts of fan clubs. This has got to go, to a kid who's 19, 20, 21 years old, to their head. They've never been exposed to a thing like that. It's a circus phenomena. The problem is, for people that they talk to, the people who come around them are shallow, empty shadows of human beings who rely on the stature of their hero to give them anything to talk about. There is nothing worse than the experience of meeting a groupie. You've heard of vacuum tubes, right? Well, every groupie's head has a twenty-eight inch vacuum in it. Nothing there. There is nothing there, except who they balled last night, who they're gonna ball tonight, and who they're chasing after tomorrow to ball. That's all they can talk about, which celebrity they slept with. Believe me, I had four years of opportunity to listen to that. I can turn around and look at five books and five more in my computer that I have written about young guys that I met on tour with The Doors who told me their sad story and let me tell you, it's pathetic. It's shocking. I wrote the stories to try and educate the public as to what happens to guys who just step over the line a little bit, and how their lives get ruined or destroyed and some of them survive. They had to of course tell me their story. But then there are others that I know personally who didn't. The average kid does it to himself accidentally. But then you've got a kid who all of a sudden is getting royalties from a record company. He can go out and by a fast car. Every girl in town wants to be his girlfriend. He's famous. He's hit the Top Ten or the Top Fifty. He doesn't care. He's still getting royalties. People are interviewing him. People are taking his picture. "Oh, wow! Look at me!" He's gonna survive that? Yeah. They're immature. They haven't met the world yet.

Q - It believe you told one interviewer that The Doors were not relevant any more. I would say their music has stood the test of time.

A - I said they were not relevant in today's world where men are women, children are taught with pornographic material, a President is a thief, liar, arrogant, hated by most world leaders, commit treason, and had a conference with Putin, of which there is no record except by the Russians, and gave Putin the go-ahead to invade Ukraine, promising the US would not intervene.

Q - Vince, you certainly have given me quite an interview today!

A - Let's let this be the end of the discussion about The Doors. My book is about me. There have been enough books written about The Doors to fill a library. Most of them are nothing but fantasy, like Sugarman's fairy tale and Stone's on-screen imagination. I am so tired of hearing about how wonderful they were, how Ray is the main guy, they couldn't go on without Jim, and all this crap. They did go on without Jim to Amsterdam in the Fall of 1971. As long as they played The Doors' music, the audience loved it. Ray never wrote anything to contribute to their collection of songs. He did a lot of arranging because he had training. He could do it. The only other thing he contributed was a constant stream of how Jim was Dionysian and such a poet. You have no idea about how the crap came to be. I should write another book - The Goings On Behind The Doors, to be published after my death. By the way, it will all be true because Vince Treanor said it was so. No different than all the horse shit published by newspapers and magazine after Jim's death. Remember what P.T. Barnum said, "You can fool most of the people some of the time and a few of the people most of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." Remember that next time you hear about Jim being alive.

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