Al Aronowitz Dead, Blacklisted Rock Journalist

[RonJonSurfer]

If you never heard of Al Aronowitz, you wouldn't be alone. Al was a unique figure in the history of rock journalism and maybe in rock music itself. He is the guy responsible for setting up the meeting between The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Al was a guy who truly seemed to have met everybody.

Go to this link http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj/column2.html for al's writing on his matchmaking between Bob and The Boys.

Go to http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj/ for Al's website The Blacklisted Journalist. I think anybody who loves rock will be amazed at the articles.

Al lived a couple miles from me in Elizabeth, NJ. He was a beatnik, a journalist and a part of rock history that we can't get back. Here is an interview he did about his relationship with Jim Morrison:(Note AL is American Legend, AA is al Aronowitz)

AL: Tell us about the first time you saw Jim Morrison.

AA: I first saw his act when Brian Jones (of the Rolling Stones) and I went to catch the Doors at Steve Paul's The Scene--a club in midtown Manhattan. Brian hated Jim's performance. I didn't like it either. He kept opening his mouth to the mike without singing. It seemed like Jim was acting too much like a rock star poseur. This was when Light My Fire was catching ablaze. Brian and I left early without bothering to meet and talk to Jim.

AL: You finally got to know Morrison.

AA: I met him at Michael McClure's house in San Francisco. I forget the year, probably late 1960s. Jim acted like a distant relative whom I had never met before but with whom I had just been united. We got along fine.

AL: McClure was a member of the San Francisco poetry Renaissance. Later, he and Jim talked about adapting McClure's play about Billy the Kid (The Beard) for the screen--with Jim in the starring role.

AA: Jim considered himself a poet. That's why he engaged in a relationship with McClure--a well-known Beat poet. Jim admired the Beats and wanted his poetry recognized along with that of McClure and even Allen Ginsberg.

AL: What was your impression of Jim after you got to know him?

AA: I was delighted he was such a nice, funny, and accessible guy--compared to usual rock star aloofness. Although I am not much of a drinker, I got drunk with him a few times. He always had a bottle handy.

AL: You chronicled the careers of them all: Dylan, the Stones...

AA: I've seen money change every one of them I knew except maybe George Harrison.

AL: Did Morrison even mention disliking any rock critics?

AA: The Voice's Robert Christgau. No musician I knew liked him. He was very arrogant.

AL: Did Jim like Rolling Stone?

AA: Don't think so. I came to consider the staff very clubby, like a college Greek fraternity. I never trusted Rolling Stone very much.

AL: Did Jim ever talk about Bill Graham, the late rock promoter? Some books claim that they didn't get along.

AA: Graham was a big bully. He bullied all the other promoters, and he bullied acts and their managers. He used to boast about taking guns away from kids at concerts.

AL: Oliver Stone's movie, The Doors, introduced Morrison to a new generation of fans--and revived the legend. Did Stone contact you?

AA: No. The movie just about put me to sleep. It was trying too hard to emulate an acid trip.

AL: Albert Goldman was working on a Morrison biography. The book was unfinished when Goldman died. One person Goldman interviewed thought he had some strange theory that Jim was an incest victim.

AA: Goldman was a horrible hustler. I didn't like his Republican-like moral tone--the way he presumed to judge Elvis in his Presley biography.

AL: You saw the Doors at one of their last appearances--the Isle of Wight festival in 1971. It was during the Miami trial. Did Jim talk about the trial?

AA: He didn't say much about it. We got drunk together.

AL: Some biographies claim that Jim's taste in women ran to chubby teenage girls.

AA: I never saw him with one--only foxes.

(In preparing for this interview, AL consulted Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman's No One Here Gets Out Alive, New York, Warner Books Edition, 1980, and James Riordan and Jerry Prochnicky's Break on Through, New York, Quill ed., 1991)

[edna]

Thank you, RonJon!!