In one of the many letters John Densmore wrote to the Post-Jim Morrison (this one written 12 years after his death), in Los Angeles in 1983, he writes the following:

“ . . . . . As the typical flower child, your aggression made me uncomfortable too. Was I the sensitive male the poet Robert Bly warns about who brought forth my feminine consciousness in the sixties but failed to expedite those new values with positive male energy? I think the seventies were a result of this. In the early eighties we saw aggression become popular again and the Doors’ resurgence began. We were new wave and punk before our time. These musicians have been gobbled up into different bands and fed to the great god of merchandising. What’s left of the genuine revolutionary punk bands has eroded into narcissism, and they are dying out, as you died taking the dark male energy of Dionysus, Greek god of wine, too literally. The positive side of your dark nature was to eradicate the bullshit.

Reflecting on this today, I realize that you know that Western man’s quest for a better job, a house, and car was a subsitute for his real quest: something sacred. That’s why you weren’t interested in material things. You also knowe that the church was dead, that its symbols and rituals no longer had meaning for us, so you challenged the proselytizing of money-hungry preachers and lonely “sinners” in “PETTITIONING THE LORD WITH PRAYER.” (“You cannot petition the Lord with prayer.”)

Now I’m going to preach to you for a second.

What you missed was that the need for the sacred must be transformed to an inner cathedral. Our songs contacted the Dionysian side of spiritual life through music, but “the God of Wine cheers and warms men’s hearts; it also makes them drunk,” according to Edith Hamilton’s book on mythology, a book I know you were aware of. I’ll refresh your memory some more. She goes on:

The Greeks were a people who saw facts very clearly. They could not shut their eyes to the ugly and degrading side of wine drinking and see only the delightful side. They knew Dionysus was man’s benefactor and he was man’s destroyer.

The momentary sense of exultant power wine-drinking can give was only a sign to show that they had within them more than they knew; they cou8ld themselves become divine.

Maybe you are a god! Down here you are a media god. Back in the sixties I thought if our songs lasted ten years, the would be something. Well, we’re going on twenty and there’s no end in sight.

I wish we’d learned a little more about each other. Then maybe we would have been closer and ultimately wouldn’t have traveled down such different paths. Or would we have? I’m trying to find out, even now. You certainly have made a mark. You’ve influenced me a lot, I’ve even been reading a little Nietzsche! A quote of his comes to mind, “A man’s ancestors have paid the price of what he is.”

You definitely are in me. And so I want to say thank you. And good-bye.

Taken from John Densmore’s Book, Riders on the Storm, pp. 295-296