Rolling Stone Magazine
Issue 958 -- September 30, 2004
50th Anniversary of Rock THE PHOTOGRAPHS
This special issue features "The Photographs": The Fifty Greatest Portraits & the Stories Behind Them
The magazine cover is a collage of well-known rock photos. The Joel Brodsky "young lion" photo of Jim is among those on the cover.
page 87
"Jim Morrison" Photographed by Joel Brodsky New York, 1967
"It was a pure accident," says Doors guitarist Robby
Krieger of this 1967 photo. The Doors had just finished recording their
second album, Strange Days, when they showed up at Joel Brodsky's
Twenty-seventh Street studio in Manhattan. Two hours later, Brodsky
snapped the last in a long series of pictures: a shirtless shot of Jim
Morrison that became a poster and, eventually, the cover of a 1985 greatest-hits
package. Morrison was beyond loose in front of the camera. "He had
about a quart of booze in him, drinking different things from different
bottles," Brodsky says.
"It was hard to get Jim to care about how he looked," remembers Krieger. "You never knew what kind of mood he'd be in. But on that day, he whipped his shirt off, and that was a surprise. He seemed like a model."
Brodsky says he didn't need to ask Morrison to spread his arms in a Christlike pose: "He was a natural. It also could've been his way of keeping his balance ... In the next frame on the contact sheet he is tipping over at a forty-five-degree angle."
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