WHEN THE MUSIC’S OVER
Bebe really liked The Doors. More than I did. I had bought their single “Light My Fire,” but hadn’t everybody. It was only the number one song for weeks and they played it on the radio at least three times every hour. So, taking Bebe to their concert for her birthday was a perfect present. After all, she was my best friend, and it wouldn’t hurt to get her a present that I could enjoy too.
It was going to be my first paid concert. Growing up in Berkeley I was a bit spoiled. There were bands giving free concerts every weekend at every park. The idea of actually paying to see a band play was a new one. But I cracked open the piggy bank and bought us tickets for the afternoon show. I figured that would be best, and as 15 year olds, we’d get the least amount of hassle from our parents. My mother lived in constant fear of something bad happening. And she truly believed that bad things only happened at night. As a result, our family lived a sort of reverse vampire existence; only venturing out in the light of day, and always returning to the locked-in safety of home before night. “Be home before dark,” was my mother’s mantra. She believed that perverts never did their nasty deeds in the joyful luminescence of the sun.
We took the city bus to the Berkeley Community Theater. It was attached to the dreaded Berkeley High School, a school that at fourteen, I had feared having to attend worse than the thought of a hundred eternities in hell. Having gone through eight years of Catholic school, I had been thoroughly brainwashed by the nuns who insisted that only very bad kids went to public schools. I was sure attending public school meant certain death. I couldn’t even imagine the doubly horrendous atrocities that would’ve occurred if I were to ever find myself in a public school after dark. I remember crying all night long after taking my high school admittance exams, fearing failure and worrying about my tortuous existence among the evil delinquents that lurked in the shadowy hallways of Berkeley High. But my tears were misdirected. I was accepted into the safe and saintly bosom of Presentation High, a Catholic all-girls school, where I spent the next four years in a different kind of hell, trudging through the slush of female nastiness, peer group pressure, scholastic evisceration and social debilitation.
We walked toward the theater. A long line of people snaked down the street, around the building and up the stairs that led to the theater’s entrance. We stood at the end of the line. There was a buzz, an excitement, an enthusiasm that seemed to grow the closer we got to the entrance. “What was the big deal?” I thought. We were just going to see some band. I’d seen plenty of bands before. How was this any different? A petite girl with flowers intertwined in her long black hair stood in front of us sobbing uncontrollably. I asked if she was okay. She looked at me as if I was from another planet. “I’m going to see Jiiiimm!” she cried. “Oh,” I replied sheepishly, then exchanged mocking looks and giggles with Bebe. I mean, I liked music too, but it didn’t make sense that someone would get so emotional over some singer in a band.
Once inside, we made our way to our seats, right smack dab to the left of center stage toward the front. I was surprised how good they were. I hadn’t gotten them particularly early or paid extra for them. But Bebe thought I had, so I let her think it. The theater was packed and vibrating with an electric energy. I found myself becoming excited. The lights dimmed, and everyone settled down.
I don’t remember if there was an opening act.
It doesn’t matter.
After Jim Morrison stepped onto the stage, nothing else existed, on the planet.
He was unlike any performer I had ever seen.
I’d seen cute guys in bands but, Jim Morrison was… beautiful.
And it wasn’t just the way he looked, it was the way he was. He just stood there. Not trying to rouse us up or entertain us. Just being.
His hair hung softly around his face.
His loose, white, buttonless shirt made him seem safe.
His black leather pants made him seem dangerous.
He took my breath away.
Jim sang, eyes closed, slowly. His raspy voice vibrating someplace deep inside of me. At times, he’d look out, acknowledging us, then as if gently taking our hand, he’d lead us back with him into some other-worldly place of poetry, sensuality and exotic melodies. He leaned sleepily on the microphone stand as he sang, whispering lyrics softly through perfect lips, then… growling, leaping around the stage as if possessed. It was the most hypnotic thing I had ever seen in my life. At fifteen, I knew nothing of sex, but seeing Jim Morrison was sexuality’s first awakening. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to hold onto him and never let go. His whole being had grabbed onto my soul. I was completely under his spell.
He walked off the stage as the band finished playing their last song. The lights came up and the auditorium shook as people stomped the floor, screamed and clapped for an encore. A frenzied mass of hysterical girls ran to the stage. Near the front, I saw the girl with the long black hair. She was screaming too, holding her hands to her head and shaking as the flowers fell from her hair. She wasn’t odd now.
I understood.
I wanted to cry too, weep uncontrollably because of some all-consuming longing I was feeling yet didn’t understand. The lights dimmed again and the band returned to the stage.
Then Jim.
He stood. Motionless. Silent. The band began to play what would become my soul’s sacred anthem. “When The Music’s Over.” I desperately wanted to be in front of the stage like those other girls, close to Jim, letting him see me, drinking him in. But I couldn’t move. “We want the world and we want it… now? Now! NOoow!” I left my body. The world could’ve ended right then. It wouldn’t have mattered.
The song ended and Jim left the stage. Everyone screamed for more, another encore, but none came. Girls tried to climb onto the stage, girls had fallen limply into lumps of sobbing flesh. Then there was me. I sat in my seat paralyzed. Frozen. Staring. It wasn’t over, it couldn’t be over. I wasn’t finished. My world had cracked open and it all was new now. I needed more.
Bebe nudged me. “Let’s go,” she said. What?! Was she crazy? Was she immune to the spell that had been cast over us all? She wanted to leave? How could we go home now after what we had just witnessed? I didn’t even know who I was anymore.
The lights came up and people slowly started to file out of the room. I felt awful. It couldn’t be over. How could I just hop back on the 72M bus, back to my parents’ house, back to acting like everything was the same?
Outside, the scattered sun assaulted me, trying to snap me out of my reverie, bring me back to what used to serve as reality. This is the end? I refused to accept it. It couldn’t end like this. I had to have more. I grabbed Bebe’s arm and dragged her along as I ran to the side of the theater, to the back door. A large, no-nonsense-looking security guard stood there. A group of concert-goers had gathered in front of him. We all stood wishful, just waiting for something to happen.
Bebe started to complain. She had no idea why we were standing there. I looked at her incredulously. We weren’t on the same wavelength anymore. I moved toward the others who knew. We waited.
The stage door opened and a thin man in suit talked to the security guard. He pointed to the group of people I was standing near. The guard waved his hand and the group proceeded to enter the theater. I followed. Once inside, I turned to look back and caught a glimpse of a confused Bebe standing outside as the door slammed shut. I hesitated for a second, thinking I should go back to retrieve her, then turned away.
I crossed the threshold and gloriously stepped into the backstage world. Survival mechanism took over. I bee-lined over to the people I had entered with and joined in as they talked about the show. I looked around. No one was coming after me. No one knew I didn’t belong there. Only then did I notice that standing among us was the Doors organ player, Ray Manzarek. My new group were friends of his. I stood with the ‘friends of Manzarek’ all the while continuing to scan the room. Then I saw Him.
Jim Morrison was standing off to the side. All alone.
He was leaning against the side a doorway. He looked melancholy and detached.
Without a word, I abandoned my new friends and moved toward Jim as if pulled by some invisible force. I stood right in front of him and he smiled. Part of me left my body again and hovered somewhere overhead. I had no idea what to say. I just stood there in my teenaged gawkiness, then blurted out, “Can I shake your hand?” A pretty lame request, but at fifteen, it was all I knew to do. He smiled and said yes, straightening himself up to free his right hand. He took my hand in his and we shook. He laughed. His hand was warm and soft. What now, I thought?
“Uh, can I have your autograph?”
“Sure,” he said.
I fumbled through my purse and pulled out a pen and my homework notepad. I flipped through the notepad looking for an empty page. I looked up at him again. He smiled and seemed amused by my awkwardness. I found a blank page and handed it to him. As he took it, he asked my name. I didn’t understand why he wanted to know my name. It confused me. I had never asked anyone for an autograph before. “Bernadette,” I said. He wrote my name on the paper, and then over it, he wrote Jim. No best wishes, no thanks, no insincere greeting. Just our names touching, his on mine, connected forever in my homework notepad.
“Are you coming to the show tonight?” Jim asked. What show? I didn’t remember there was another show that evening. I was confused by his question, his tone, and confused by what I was feeling. I didn’t know what to say to him. My mother’s voice played in my head, “Be home before dark.” I blurted out “No,” and instantly regretted it. Why did I say that? Was he inviting me? “Was Jim Morrison asking me out?” What about Bebe waiting outside for me? It was too much. I couldn’t handle any more. I told Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the Doors, that I had to go. He said bye and I backed away from him. I’d gone as far as I could with him. I was ready to go home.
When I got outside Bebe was still standing there looking lost. She battered me with a million questions about what had happened but I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t explain. I couldn’t talk. I wanted to hold it all inside and savor every detail. The entire bus ride home, she complained about me leaving her outside. I could hear her faintly in the distance but my head was still filled with the music, the sound of his voice, my hand was still warm from his touch. I held it to my face. Jim Morrison had touched me and there was no forgetting that.
For months after the Doors concert, I spent my nights sitting in the living room next to my mother’s stereo console, listening to “The Doors,” burning incense, staring into strobe candles and thinking about Jim. I spent my days in school alternately staring at the autograph, then out the window while I replayed my Jim Morrison encounter. I fantasized about what might’ve happened if I’d stayed for the night concert.
It was in Mrs. Sherrill’s fifth period French class where for the first time, I allowed the autograph to be passed around. All the girls were impressed that I actually met him, talked to him and touched him. Mrs. Sherrill was unaware of the Morrison mania going on behind her as she scribbled French phrases on the blackboard. I stared at the autograph again. His name was written on top of mine. It had to mean something. It was sexual. I stared out the window and imagined kissing him. Why didn’t I kiss Jim Morrison instead of just shaking his hand? I had never kissed any boy but he could’ve been the first. I sighed with longing for lost opportunity.
When I came back from my daydream, I looked down at the autograph and shrieked. With the pen in my hand, I had unconsciously doodled all over Jim’s autograph. How could I do such a stupid thing! Now, there was my name, his name over it, and a bunch of loopy squiggles all over the paper.
My first time in Paris, I went to Pere LaChaise cemetery to see Jim Morrison’s grave. It was raining, but still the gravesite was surrounded by distraught youths. They had never met him, never touched him, they weren’t even alive when that concert at Berkeley Community Theater took place. I approached his grave and the magic and sadness welled up in me. I knelt down near his tombstone. The memories rushed in; how he had smiled at me, how he’d asked my name, the autograph. Then, with that same hand that he shook, that had felt warm for days afterwards, I reached down and touched his grave.
“The days are bright and filled with pain
Enclose me in your gentle rain
The time you ran was too insane
We'll meet again, we'll meet again”
Bebe really liked The Doors. More than I did. I had bought their single “Light My Fire,” but hadn’t everybody. It was only the number one song for weeks and they played it on the radio at least three times every hour. So, taking Bebe to their concert for her birthday was a perfect present. After all, she was my best friend, and it wouldn’t hurt to get her a present that I could enjoy too.
It was going to be my first paid concert. Growing up in Berkeley I was a bit spoiled. There were bands giving free concerts every weekend at every park. The idea of actually paying to see a band play was a new one. But I cracked open the piggy bank and bought us tickets for the afternoon show. I figured that would be best, and as 15 year olds, we’d get the least amount of hassle from our parents. My mother lived in constant fear of something bad happening. And she truly believed that bad things only happened at night. As a result, our family lived a sort of reverse vampire existence; only venturing out in the light of day, and always returning to the locked-in safety of home before night. “Be home before dark,” was my mother’s mantra. She believed that perverts never did their nasty deeds in the joyful luminescence of the sun.
We took the city bus to the Berkeley Community Theater. It was attached to the dreaded Berkeley High School, a school that at fourteen, I had feared having to attend worse than the thought of a hundred eternities in hell. Having gone through eight years of Catholic school, I had been thoroughly brainwashed by the nuns who insisted that only very bad kids went to public schools. I was sure attending public school meant certain death. I couldn’t even imagine the doubly horrendous atrocities that would’ve occurred if I were to ever find myself in a public school after dark. I remember crying all night long after taking my high school admittance exams, fearing failure and worrying about my tortuous existence among the evil delinquents that lurked in the shadowy hallways of Berkeley High. But my tears were misdirected. I was accepted into the safe and saintly bosom of Presentation High, a Catholic all-girls school, where I spent the next four years in a different kind of hell, trudging through the slush of female nastiness, peer group pressure, scholastic evisceration and social debilitation.
We walked toward the theater. A long line of people snaked down the street, around the building and up the stairs that led to the theater’s entrance. We stood at the end of the line. There was a buzz, an excitement, an enthusiasm that seemed to grow the closer we got to the entrance. “What was the big deal?” I thought. We were just going to see some band. I’d seen plenty of bands before. How was this any different? A petite girl with flowers intertwined in her long black hair stood in front of us sobbing uncontrollably. I asked if she was okay. She looked at me as if I was from another planet. “I’m going to see Jiiiimm!” she cried. “Oh,” I replied sheepishly, then exchanged mocking looks and giggles with Bebe. I mean, I liked music too, but it didn’t make sense that someone would get so emotional over some singer in a band.
Once inside, we made our way to our seats, right smack dab to the left of center stage toward the front. I was surprised how good they were. I hadn’t gotten them particularly early or paid extra for them. But Bebe thought I had, so I let her think it. The theater was packed and vibrating with an electric energy. I found myself becoming excited. The lights dimmed, and everyone settled down.
I don’t remember if there was an opening act.
It doesn’t matter.
After Jim Morrison stepped onto the stage, nothing else existed, on the planet.
He was unlike any performer I had ever seen.
I’d seen cute guys in bands but, Jim Morrison was… beautiful.
And it wasn’t just the way he looked, it was the way he was. He just stood there. Not trying to rouse us up or entertain us. Just being.
His hair hung softly around his face.
His loose, white, buttonless shirt made him seem safe.
His black leather pants made him seem dangerous.
He took my breath away.
Jim sang, eyes closed, slowly. His raspy voice vibrating someplace deep inside of me. At times, he’d look out, acknowledging us, then as if gently taking our hand, he’d lead us back with him into some other-worldly place of poetry, sensuality and exotic melodies. He leaned sleepily on the microphone stand as he sang, whispering lyrics softly through perfect lips, then… growling, leaping around the stage as if possessed. It was the most hypnotic thing I had ever seen in my life. At fifteen, I knew nothing of sex, but seeing Jim Morrison was sexuality’s first awakening. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to hold onto him and never let go. His whole being had grabbed onto my soul. I was completely under his spell.
He walked off the stage as the band finished playing their last song. The lights came up and the auditorium shook as people stomped the floor, screamed and clapped for an encore. A frenzied mass of hysterical girls ran to the stage. Near the front, I saw the girl with the long black hair. She was screaming too, holding her hands to her head and shaking as the flowers fell from her hair. She wasn’t odd now.
I understood.
I wanted to cry too, weep uncontrollably because of some all-consuming longing I was feeling yet didn’t understand. The lights dimmed again and the band returned to the stage.
Then Jim.
He stood. Motionless. Silent. The band began to play what would become my soul’s sacred anthem. “When The Music’s Over.” I desperately wanted to be in front of the stage like those other girls, close to Jim, letting him see me, drinking him in. But I couldn’t move. “We want the world and we want it… now? Now! NOoow!” I left my body. The world could’ve ended right then. It wouldn’t have mattered.
The song ended and Jim left the stage. Everyone screamed for more, another encore, but none came. Girls tried to climb onto the stage, girls had fallen limply into lumps of sobbing flesh. Then there was me. I sat in my seat paralyzed. Frozen. Staring. It wasn’t over, it couldn’t be over. I wasn’t finished. My world had cracked open and it all was new now. I needed more.
Bebe nudged me. “Let’s go,” she said. What?! Was she crazy? Was she immune to the spell that had been cast over us all? She wanted to leave? How could we go home now after what we had just witnessed? I didn’t even know who I was anymore.
The lights came up and people slowly started to file out of the room. I felt awful. It couldn’t be over. How could I just hop back on the 72M bus, back to my parents’ house, back to acting like everything was the same?
Outside, the scattered sun assaulted me, trying to snap me out of my reverie, bring me back to what used to serve as reality. This is the end? I refused to accept it. It couldn’t end like this. I had to have more. I grabbed Bebe’s arm and dragged her along as I ran to the side of the theater, to the back door. A large, no-nonsense-looking security guard stood there. A group of concert-goers had gathered in front of him. We all stood wishful, just waiting for something to happen.
Bebe started to complain. She had no idea why we were standing there. I looked at her incredulously. We weren’t on the same wavelength anymore. I moved toward the others who knew. We waited.
The stage door opened and a thin man in suit talked to the security guard. He pointed to the group of people I was standing near. The guard waved his hand and the group proceeded to enter the theater. I followed. Once inside, I turned to look back and caught a glimpse of a confused Bebe standing outside as the door slammed shut. I hesitated for a second, thinking I should go back to retrieve her, then turned away.
I crossed the threshold and gloriously stepped into the backstage world. Survival mechanism took over. I bee-lined over to the people I had entered with and joined in as they talked about the show. I looked around. No one was coming after me. No one knew I didn’t belong there. Only then did I notice that standing among us was the Doors organ player, Ray Manzarek. My new group were friends of his. I stood with the ‘friends of Manzarek’ all the while continuing to scan the room. Then I saw Him.
Jim Morrison was standing off to the side. All alone.
He was leaning against the side a doorway. He looked melancholy and detached.
Without a word, I abandoned my new friends and moved toward Jim as if pulled by some invisible force. I stood right in front of him and he smiled. Part of me left my body again and hovered somewhere overhead. I had no idea what to say. I just stood there in my teenaged gawkiness, then blurted out, “Can I shake your hand?” A pretty lame request, but at fifteen, it was all I knew to do. He smiled and said yes, straightening himself up to free his right hand. He took my hand in his and we shook. He laughed. His hand was warm and soft. What now, I thought?
“Uh, can I have your autograph?”
“Sure,” he said.
I fumbled through my purse and pulled out a pen and my homework notepad. I flipped through the notepad looking for an empty page. I looked up at him again. He smiled and seemed amused by my awkwardness. I found a blank page and handed it to him. As he took it, he asked my name. I didn’t understand why he wanted to know my name. It confused me. I had never asked anyone for an autograph before. “Bernadette,” I said. He wrote my name on the paper, and then over it, he wrote Jim. No best wishes, no thanks, no insincere greeting. Just our names touching, his on mine, connected forever in my homework notepad.
“Are you coming to the show tonight?” Jim asked. What show? I didn’t remember there was another show that evening. I was confused by his question, his tone, and confused by what I was feeling. I didn’t know what to say to him. My mother’s voice played in my head, “Be home before dark.” I blurted out “No,” and instantly regretted it. Why did I say that? Was he inviting me? “Was Jim Morrison asking me out?” What about Bebe waiting outside for me? It was too much. I couldn’t handle any more. I told Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the Doors, that I had to go. He said bye and I backed away from him. I’d gone as far as I could with him. I was ready to go home.
When I got outside Bebe was still standing there looking lost. She battered me with a million questions about what had happened but I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t explain. I couldn’t talk. I wanted to hold it all inside and savor every detail. The entire bus ride home, she complained about me leaving her outside. I could hear her faintly in the distance but my head was still filled with the music, the sound of his voice, my hand was still warm from his touch. I held it to my face. Jim Morrison had touched me and there was no forgetting that.
For months after the Doors concert, I spent my nights sitting in the living room next to my mother’s stereo console, listening to “The Doors,” burning incense, staring into strobe candles and thinking about Jim. I spent my days in school alternately staring at the autograph, then out the window while I replayed my Jim Morrison encounter. I fantasized about what might’ve happened if I’d stayed for the night concert.
It was in Mrs. Sherrill’s fifth period French class where for the first time, I allowed the autograph to be passed around. All the girls were impressed that I actually met him, talked to him and touched him. Mrs. Sherrill was unaware of the Morrison mania going on behind her as she scribbled French phrases on the blackboard. I stared at the autograph again. His name was written on top of mine. It had to mean something. It was sexual. I stared out the window and imagined kissing him. Why didn’t I kiss Jim Morrison instead of just shaking his hand? I had never kissed any boy but he could’ve been the first. I sighed with longing for lost opportunity.
When I came back from my daydream, I looked down at the autograph and shrieked. With the pen in my hand, I had unconsciously doodled all over Jim’s autograph. How could I do such a stupid thing! Now, there was my name, his name over it, and a bunch of loopy squiggles all over the paper.
My first time in Paris, I went to Pere LaChaise cemetery to see Jim Morrison’s grave. It was raining, but still the gravesite was surrounded by distraught youths. They had never met him, never touched him, they weren’t even alive when that concert at Berkeley Community Theater took place. I approached his grave and the magic and sadness welled up in me. I knelt down near his tombstone. The memories rushed in; how he had smiled at me, how he’d asked my name, the autograph. Then, with that same hand that he shook, that had felt warm for days afterwards, I reached down and touched his grave.
“The days are bright and filled with pain
Enclose me in your gentle rain
The time you ran was too insane
We'll meet again, we'll meet again”
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