I would suspect that retired Navy Admirals are already in line to not have financial worries. Also, count me in as someone who thinks Morrison was a good frontman for a band when he could stand up, but an over rated artist.
Looking at military pay charts, when he retired he was making $3,000 a month. His retirement pay would be less than that so he would be retiring with considerably less than $30,000 a year in 1975. I don’t know what cost of living increases would have done over the years. I didn’t see any post-retirement jobs listed.
Now an active O-8 is making $17,500 a month gross. On top of that they get other allowances and good housing. You don’t get housing and allowances in retirement and you get paid considerably less. It’s a decent retirement but certainly not above financial worries.
Looking at his career it’s easy to focus in on the Gulf of Tonkin but he was also a Pearl Harbor vet.
I see. I’ll concede that certainly isn’t rich, even in 1975.
My experience in this is that I had an uncle who retired out of the Marines as a Major, and I never saw him work at all (struggle for money) once he retired.
It’s easy to google what your uncle retired with. You can look up the pay chart for the year you think he retired as an O-4 and guess how many years of service. Anyone who joined before 1986 got 50% of base pay at 20 years and 2.5% per year over 20. Admiral Morrison retired making $36,000 a year base pay. He served for 37 years so his retirement was 92% of his base salary. What I’m not willing to do is look up the what the COLA was each year to calculate what he was making by the time he passed away.
The big change in military pay came during the Reagan era. Salaries started to become livable. Not great but livable. I enlisted during the Bush senior administration and I heard the horror stories. You still don’t stay in to get rich. Flag officers have about as much responsibility as a CEO of a major company. Given the amount of responsibility they have, the salary cap of around $210,000 today for flag officers doesn’t seem much. Many are able to get high paying jobs after retirement. Admiral Morrison may have had a job after retirement. I didn’t see mention of it. But he did retire a couple years after he inherited Jim’s estate.
I think that’s about as far as this hijack can go.
I was never really all that interested in how much he got paid. My brother retired at 50 as a firefighter and I don’t care to know what he gets paid. My grandfather retired out of the Chicago FD, and likewise.
About 8 years ago, the director even got Jim’s brother, Andy (first time I’ve seen or heard him) to cooperate, but … I’m not sure what happened, and their official Facebook page died down or something, and I’d check every 6 months, and nothing, and then see this. It’s from 2021, but I wonder what’s holding it up.
Morrison was an interesting lyricist but IMHO not a really talented one. Or perhaps he was just rather lazy?
A lot of his lyrics don’t really quite flow, rhyme or scan all that well.
Probably why I can only think of a few notable covers of Doors songs. As a vocalist he could pull it off; few others could. Exene Cervenka of X writes equally unwieldy lyrics that lend themselves to just her vocal style. Ray Manzarek was an excellent choice to produce them.
I am fond of this cover of the very basic song Indian Summer by Opal/Mazzy Star (the transition period after Kendra Smith left Opal and Hope Sandoval took over lead vocals). But then Hope Sandoval’s lovely voice can carry most anything in that cadence:
The Feelies regularly covered Take It As It Comes, but a little more as an excuse for a guitar rave-up (though listening again, I guess Glenn Mercer has a bit of a Morrisony voice):
I hope there’s some great archival footage… Interviews (even short clips); something we haven’t heard before.
Do many younger people like the Doors? I’ve heard a lot of younger folk playing a lot of music from my youth - but don’t recall the Doors being popular among them. Haven’t been looking, but don’t recall hearing of Doors tribute bands (tho I’m sure they exist somewhere.)
Add me to the folk who wonder why anyone would continue to be interested in Jim Morrison. The Doors have a couple of iconic songs, but that’s about all.
I discovered them in middle school, 1994, and pretty soon, they were very popular in my school.
Great interview here of Jim Morrison
I’m holding out for the Country Joe and the Fish docuflick.
My daughter is 23 and went through a short period when she liked the Doors a lot. As rock gets pushed further and further into the background it seems to be getting less. For those young people who prefer rock (they still exist) or at least are open to a wider range of music past current Top 40, they all seem to find The Doors some time in their mid teens.
My experience has been the opposite; I know several teens who are into 60s rock, and none of them seem particularly interested in the Doors.