Pop Music: Swimming to the Moon

"I'm interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that has no meaning. It seems to me to be the road to freedom." Thus 23-year-old Jim Morrison states the philosophy behind The Doors, the rock group for which he is the chief songwriter and singer. Not surprisingly. The Doors are based in Los Angeles, where they find their peculiar mysticism perversely congenial. "This city is looking for a ritual to join its fragments," says Morrison. The Doors are looking for such a ritual too—in Morrison's words, "a sort of electric wedding."

The search takes them not only past such...

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