JANUARY 28, 1968 – The Doors singer Jim Morrison and New York Times journalist Robert Gover (author of “The $100 Misunderstanding”) visited the Pussycat a’ Go-Go on a trip to Las Vegas, where Morrison pretended to smoke a cigarette like a joint. One of the security guards at the club wasn’t having any of it and told him to take it outside. Morrison reportedly told the guard, “Why don’t you jump up my ass?” and was met with a billyclub to the head. The pair were then beaten by guards and arrested (after midnight, it was now the 29th) for public drunkenness and disturbing the peace. Morrison, who was also charged with vagrancy and failure to possess sufficient identification, began taunting the cops in the parking lot of the club and at the police station. The pair were strip-searched, doused with a boric acid powder and thrown into a cell. Morrison continued to yell profanities at the cops until one of the officers said that he would see Morrison “in private” when he clocked out. Fortunately, Gover’s girlfriend was able to post bail for the duo before that meeting took place.Gover later wrote an article entitled “A Hell of a Way to Peddle Poems” detailing the event. Gover sums it up by calling it a classic example of the way Jim attracted trouble: “His charisma was such that your ordinary upholder of the established order could be infuriated merely by the sight of Morrison strolling down the street – innocent to all outward appearances but… well there was that invisible something about him that silently suggested revolution, disorder, chaos.”
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