Jim Morrison has been called many things: a rock god, a great American poet, a sex symbol, a rebel, an alcoholic, a junkie, a revolutionary and more. But it turns out that the iconic Doors‘ frontman may also have been the music industry’s very own Nostradamus.
Rolling Stone has just pulled one of their old interviews with The Lizard King out of the vault. And in it, he basically predicts the rise of EDM.
Speaking in 1969, the year of Woodstock and the moon landing, the philosophical singer was pondering the future of music in a series of chats with then-RS reporter Jerry Hopkins.
“A lot of people like Mozart were prodigies; they were writing brilliant works at very young ages,” Morrison mused at the time. “That’s probably what’s going to happen: some brilliant kid will come along and be popular. I can see a lone artist with a lot of tapes and electrical … like an extension of the Moog synthesiser — a keyboard with the complexity and richness of a whole orchestra, y’know? There’s somebody out there, working in a basement, just inventing a whole new musical form.”
Of this strange, undiscovered electrical music, and the “lone prodigies” who would be responsible for its genesis, the frontman added: “We’ll hear about it in a couple years. Whoever it is, though, I’d like him to be really popular, to play at large concerts, not just be on records — at Carnegie Hall, to play at dances…”
C’mon now, just how fucking insane is that?! Not just the fact that Mr. Mojo Risin is poetic and eloquent enough to make a genre of music that often gets associated with this –
– sound downright beautiful, but the fact that he said this nearly a decade before the first murmurings of a fully synthesised dance track had showed any sign of emerging (hello, disco), and when Norman Cook (a.k.a. Fatboy Slim) was six freakin’ years old.
While Skrillex – who went on to collaborate in 2012 with the then-three living members of The Doors on the song Breakin’ a Sweat – which included a vocal sample from Morrison – wouldn’t be born for another 19 years.
And if you’d like to have your mind blown even more: this wasn’t even the last time that Morrison would go all Professor Trelawney on our asses during his brief sojourn to this mortal realm.
The iconic singer eerily predicted his own death in 1970, prognosticating that he’d become the third member of the so-called “27 club”. As Vh1 reports, following the deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin – both of whom died at the age of 27 – Morrison was out drinking with his friends and said: “You’re looking at number three.”
A year later he was found dead in a bathtub, at the age of 27.
Listen: Skrillex & The Doors – Breakin’ A Sweat
