Jim Morrison once described how he saw the world, all the people and history, as facets on the skin of a snake. Ray Manzarek once described The Doors as a four sided diamond. As history moves along we see The Doors and Jim Morrison as many more facets than the four sides of a diamond and that those facets reveal a deeper and truer picture as more chronicles of The Doors and Morrison are released. Michael Lawrence’s, “Tripping with Jim Morrison and Other Friends”, promises to add color and depth to Jim Morrison.

Lawrence was a UCLA college friend of Morrison’s and shared a passion with him for art, girls and LSD. Lawrence describes “Tripping with Jim Morrison” as “…this memoir expresses best my formative years. It is also a letter to my friendship with my poetic friend Jim,…” and that the art of the 60’s still has resonance today because “great numbers of young people spoke up and created art that remains and gives energy to today's struggles.”

Had Lawrence never met Morrison his autobiography would still have been of interest, his father an actor and his mother a poet and novelist. His childhood was spent in Rome and people such as Humphrey Bogart and Tennessee Williams visited his home. Lawrence has spent his life in artistic creation having articles published in the L.A. Free Press and Castelliana Hilton Magazine. He was also drawn to poetry, writing plays, painting, and sculpture and has been recognized in these disciplines by the likes of Roy Lichtenstein, Ray Bradbury, Andy Warhol, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

“Tripping with Jim Morrison and Other Friends” has been published before (which is why it includes a foreword by Timothy Leary) but Lawrence considers this a new book because this new edition has a lot of new drawings by Lawrence that haven’t been previously released and the text is fully corrected and polished. “Tripping with Jim Morrison and Other Friends” will be released September 5, 2016 from Blackbird Digital Books. If you would like more information on Michael Lawrence’s perspective there is the essay, “On Discovering Language and Tripping with Jim One More Time”, on the Blackbird Digital Books website.

This looks like a book Doors fans can whet their appetites for. I for one am looking forward to “Tripping with Jim Morrison and Other Friends”.

Thanks to Kris Bowers for the tip on this book.

Subscribe to The Doors Examiner and get article’s as they’re published, just click the subscribe button below. Thank you for reading The Doors Examiner!