For a man who smoked too much pot and ate one too many take-aways, the memory of Jim Morrison lives on in one of the most absurd conspiracy cults of the millennium. We ask "Why Bother?" Let's clear up one myth right away. The Doors were not the greatest thing since sex - far from it. An over rated group of pot-heads who insisted on foisting unbearably sub-cabaret soup music on us, all rolled up in preposterous spiritual bollocks. They had their moments? Dusty Springfield had hers too, so that's not much to go on is it? "The Lizard King" - he wore lizard-skin kegs, like, wow - has had even more conspiracy stories circle around him than his fat cousin Elvis - surprisingly inconsistent for a man who gave the world much, much less. At the time of his death, nobody wanted to open his coffin thus paving the way for fantasy upon fantasy. Add to this the Doors' management's deliberate three-day news boycott and you have the beginning of a beautiful mythos. Why did the Doors' members claim his Parisian grave was too short? Could it have been somebody else buried six feet under? If someone was going to bury a JM lookalike, surely they would have gone to the lengths of getting the height slightly accurate. Many would have us think that it wasn't actually a "someone" that faked his death, but JM himself. You see one day after a few tokes, JM had confessed that he would love to change his career, stage his own death and come back as an accountant. He liked the idea of a suit and tie apparently. Nine to Five over sex, drugs and more sex? Jim was having us on I think. The alternative version was that he was going to "die" and resurface in Africa under the name "Mojo Risin'" (note the clever anagram!). Hiding out in Africa may be easy enough, but with using the name Mr. M. Risin' may just draw unwanted attention to yourself. Reports such as that of Thomas Lyttle in Jim Keith's "Secret & Suppressed" (Feral House, 1993) claim that one James Douglas Morrison is working for many covert organisations the world over, alleging that he is Mojo himself, dropping out to join the secret services due to his love of James Bond. Lyttle has borne witness to a multitude of documents purporting to be communications between JDM and the CIA, CNN and NBC. He has found "systematic destruction" of JDM documents in all major intelligence laboratories. JM's true father was indeed a US Admiral with many secrets tucked away in his head. Little Jim would 'obviously' want to follow in his daddy's footsteps, wouldn't he? He snakes into M's office, lizard-skin and all, quick martini and a wee toke, and a sly flick of his mane for Moneypenny's benefit. It all fits. Or did the US Government simply think that JM was the man who knew too much and have him cunningly disposed of? One of the more (possibly most) absurd accusations is that Jim Morrison did not actually exist at all. He was in fact a variety of different actors all playing different JM roles, subverting America's youth with his 'wild' ideas and then keeling over at 27. "See what rock 'n' roll does to you kids?". This, of course, was all part of a fiendish CIA experiment similar to M-KULTRA, with people such as Iggy Pop ( I kid you not) and Jagger's personal friend Richard Tanguay all playing Jim at one point or another. The Jims would all meet up regularly to look for windows in their filos and see when the next free Jim-time would be. Plausible. What's to say there aren't several versions of your closest friends all skulking around trying to fuck with your head? And what's to say that an Interpol version of your own good self isn't mooching around being an asshole when you're safely tucked up in bed? Let's take a different, more radical stance. Let's assume Jim Morrison is actually dead. Returning to the notion that he had detailed plans of US Navy strategies and hidden headquarters, we can automatically derive from that the existence of one or more assassination plots. (The similarities with the "multiple Oswalds" are already spookily apparent...). Apparently the Americans were not the only ones with their sights targeted on JM's head. His move to Paris was regarded as a serious threat by the Parisian secret services, to the extent that they might have actually signed his death warrant. JM's widely reported dablings in the occult have also raised their fare share of possible assassinators. Some claim that while JM soaked in his bath picking his toe-jam, witches in New York were sticking pins in a little JM voodoo doll. He had gone too far - the other-world secrets were revealed to him and he could not be allowed to live. The idea is lent credence by claims that JM was using near-fatal doses of Tarantula venom to take his soul to another plane. Such venom is scientifically acknowledged to stimulate the cerebral-spinal nervous system, altering the brain's functions in ways more powerful than an infinite supply of LSD. Jim was "accessing shapes " that some of us cannot begin to even imagine. This goes hand-in-hand with his reputed craving for blood - using it as a drink as part of a bizarre Tantric spell-casting ritual. Morrison always claimed that he had the shaman in him from an early age. Another theory suspects that as Jim messed around in things above his stature, the shaman simply left him, leaving a cold and lifeless corpse. Maybe, of course, Jim actually did leave this world and is floating around up there with Crowley and the rest of them, having a good laugh at our expense. Maybe he just went to the crossroads, got himself a beer and got hit by a juggernaut. The driver, an agent of the alien counter-revolutionaries from Sirius, felt that reporting such an accident would only draw attention to his presence on Earth and instead buried Jim in his back garden. Every theory has its merits, but all surely are a thousand times more interesting than the life of JM himself. An egotistical self-promoted "rock star", playing cod nonsense with his mates, claiming to be nothing short of the next messiah - he had it coming. We need more of this though - for every dead rock star there will be a hundred conspiracy theories. Fans the world over will leave behind their dull hero-worship and invent fantasies beyond the realms of imagination. If it stops them playing "Morrison Cafe" over and over again, then I'm all for it. Jim Morrison - may he never rest in peace. [stuart b]