Alexandria's rich history as a place that shaped the nation and where George and Martha Washington and Robert E. Lee once lived is well known. But some might not know that much about the history of rock 'n roll in Alexandria, a place some of the groundbreaking giants of the genre have called home.
You know the day destroys the night
Night divides the day
Tried to run
Tried to hide
Break on through to the other side
Break on through to the other side
— LYRICS TO “BREAK ON THROUGH,” BY JIM MORRISON
Jim Morrison & The Doors
The lyrics from “Break on Through,” the opening track to The Doors debut album, were written by Jim Morrison, the group’s lead singer who lived in Alexandria as a teenager, from 1959 to 1961. The rock band released that first single in 1967 and would go on to see more than 100 million of their records sold worldwide.
James Douglas Morrison and his family made their home in Alexandria’s Jefferson Park neighborhood, on Woodland Terrace. He attended George Washington High School (now a middle school, at 1005 Mount Vernon Ave.) for part of his sophomore year and all of his junior and senior years. The family, his mom Clara and dad Steve, and his younger siblings Andrew and Anne, moved to Alexandria because of Steve's career as a rear admiral in the Navy.
A mural at St. Elmo’s Coffee Pub features Jim Morrison of The Doors, who graduated from high school in Alexandria.
Andrew Morrison has said that his brother Jim was an avid reader, collecting more than 1,000 books in his basement bedroom with many of them later donated to a local library.
Morrison’s senior year English teacher noted that “Jim read as much and probably more than any student in class, but everything he read was so offbeat I had another teacher (who was going to the Library of Congress) check to see if the books Jim was reporting on actually existed,” according to the book “No One Gets Out of Here Alive,” by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman.
The teacher went on to say, “I suspected he was making them up, as they were English books on 16th- and 17th-century demonology. I’d never heard of them, but they existed, and I'm convinced from the paper he wrote that he read them, and the Library of Congress would've been the only source.”
Courtesy City of Alexandria.
Morrison’s yearbook photo from George Washington High School in Alexandria.
Just a few years after high school (where Morrison, ever the rebel, skipped the graduation ceremony), he met his fellow band members while living in Los Angeles where he attended UCLA’s film school. It was reportedly Morrison who came up with the band’s name, taking it from author Aldous Huxley’s “The Doors of Perception.”
Six years after graduating high school, with the band’s “Light My Fire“ number one on the Billboard chart, Morrison returned to Alexandria to perform. The Doors played Aug. 18, 1967, before an audience of about 4,000 at the Alexandria Roller Rink Arena, 805 N. Saint Asaph St. (now the site of a Sheraton Suites). By all accounts, he delivered a raucous performance.
Despite his dramatic presence on stage, his bandmate, drummer John Densmore, one of two band members (the other is guitarist Robby Krieger) who are still alive, recalled earlier this year on Hawaii Public Radio/“All Things Considered,“ that Morrison was really somewhat shy and more of a poet.
Morrison’s sister Anne, who now lives in California, told CBS in a recent interview that her brother considered himself first and foremost a writer. A book of his poems and more, “The Collected Works of Jim Morrison: Poetry, Journals, Transcripts and Lyrics,“ was published this year as well as a six-hour audio book with narration provided by Anne and Jim Morrison's nephews.
This is also the year The Doors’ “L.A. Woman“ will mark its 50th anniversary and a box-set edition is expected to be released in December. The original album was released in April 1971, the final studio album Morrison made with the band before he died at age 27 on July 3, 1971 of heart failure in Paris, where he is buried. Morrison, along with the rest of The Doors, was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
A mural at St. Elmo’s Coffee Pub in Alexandria’s Del Ray neighborhood pays tribute to the famous singer. To read more about Morrison’s time in Alexandria, read author Mark Opsasnick’s “The Lizard King Was Here: The Life and Times of Jim Morrison in Alexandria, Virginia.“
The Mamas & The Papas
An image of The Mamas & the Papas founder John Phillips is featured at St. Elmo’s Coffee Pub in Alexandria.
Another image you’ll see in a mural at St. Elmo’s is that of John Phillips. The leader of the 1960s folk rock group, The Mamas & the Papas, was also a George Washington High School alum, Class of 1953. Standing at least 6’4“ tall, Phillips was one of the taller members of the high school basketball team.
He lived on E. Oxford Avenue in Del Ray and after high school, he and his wife, high-school sweetheart Susie Adams, moved to Potomac Avenue in the Belle Haven area south of the City. He became a founding member of The Journeymen, a folk group in which he sang with yet another George Washington High alum, Philip Blondheim (who later changed his name to Scott McKenzie because, reportedly, it was easier to pronounce). Their cover of “500 Miles“ was just one of their hits.
After Scott McKenzie got married, the band began to fall apart and Phillips later founded, with Michelle Phillips, The Mamas & The Papas, releasing their first single, “California Dreamin’“ to great success in 1966. Other hits by the group penned by Phillips included “Monday, Monday“ (which won a Grammy) and “I Saw Her Again.“ In all, the group enjoyed seven top 10 singles.
Coincidentally, another member of The Mamas & The Papas, Cass Elliott, also attended George Washington High School. In school, fellow students knew her as “Cass.“ Her full name was Ellen Naomi Cohen and she later changed her last name to Elliott, reportedly in memory of a friend who had died.
Her family lived in an apartment building on Commonwealth Avenue in Alexandria before moving to Baltimore, where she graduated from high school. Her dad, Philip, ran a lunch wagon business and her mom, Bess, was a nurse.
After the group broke up in 1968, Elliott went on to enjoy a singing career on her own, but passed away at age 32 in her sleep on July 29, 1974 in London, after performing there.
Like Morrison, Phillips was a wordsmith, penning not only hits for The Mamas & the Papas, but also writing “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair),“ sung by McKenzie. The song was written to promote the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, held in Monterey, Calif., which Phillips helped organize. He died at age 65 of heart failure in 2001.
The Mamas & the Papas were inducted into the Rock ’n Roll Hall of Fame as well, in 1998.
Guitarist Mike Stern
Thanks to a reader who brought this to our attention, we also want to mention Mike Stern, 68, an American (multi Grammy-nominated) jazz guitarist who grew up in Alexandria. After playing with Blood, Sweat & Tears in the 1970s, which launched his career, he worked with drummer Billy Cobham, then with trumpeter Miles Davis from 1981 to 1983 and again in 1985. He then began a solo career, releasing more than a dozen albums. Blood, Sweat & Tears' biggest hits include "Spinning Wheel" and "You've Made Me So Very Happy." To learn more about Stern and his career, visit www.mikestern.org.
Dave Grohl: Nirvana and The Foo Fighters
Photo by Magdalena Wosinska.
Dave Grohl
Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters founder Dave Grohl is a legend in these parts, with a reputation for being an all-around nice guy, according to anyone who has bumped into him either during his days growing up in the area (Springfield) or his forays around Northern Virginia including Alexandria.
Grohl’s brushes with Alexandria include his stint as a student at Bishop Ireton High School (he ended up leaving for Annandale High School, but dropped out to go on a concert tour to Europe), sightings at local restaurants and the making of Foo Fighters’ “There Is Nothing Left to Lose” album at a home where he lived in Alexandria on Nicholson Lane, according to Visit Alexandria. (The house is located about a half-mile from Jim Morrison’s old family home.)
Grohl talked about the making of the album in Alexandria with British rock magazine kerrang.com: “It was the most relaxed and simple and perfect recording session I’ve ever been to in my life.”
“It was everything you would want making an album to be. It was springtime in Virginia, all the windows were open, there was beer and BBQs and we would record all night and sleep until noon, listen to what we’d done the night before, and maybe re-record it.”
“When I listen to that record, I honestly think it’s my favorite Foo Fighters record....It’s such a relaxed, honest, organic and real album. And it was a really good experience for all of us.”
Founded in 1994, the Foo Fighters have racked up 11 Grammys which includes the most wins by any band in the Best Rock Album category. Grohl is a two-time inductee to the Rock ’n Roll Hall of Fame — in 2014 as part of Nirvana and at press time, on Oct. 30 this year, with the Foo Fighters.
In addition to the Foo Fighters induction into the Rock ’n Roll Hall of Fame, Grohl is also publishing his autobiography, “Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music” this fall and planned to visit D.C. in October to talk about the book before an audience of ticket-holders at Lincoln Theatre. He said he decided to write the book while in lock-down during the COVID-19 pandemic, his publisher noted in publicity for the book:
“Having entertained the idea for years, and even offered a few questionable opportunities (“It’s a piece of cake! Just do 4 hours of interviews, find someone else to write it, put your face on the cover, and voila!”) I have decided to write these stories just as I have always done, in my own hand. The joy that I have felt from chronicling these tales is not unlike listening back to a song that I’ve recorded and can’t wait to share with the world, or reading a primitive journal entry from a stained notebook, or even hearing my voice bounce between the Kiss posters on my wall as a child.
This certainly doesn’t mean that I’m quitting my day job, but it does give me a place to shed a little light on what it’s like to be a kid from Springfield, Virginia, walking through life while living out the crazy dreams I had as a young musician. From hitting the road with Scream at 18 years old, to my time in Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, jamming with Iggy Pop or playing at the Academy Awards or dancing with AC/DC and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, drumming for Tom Petty or meeting Sir Paul McCartney at Royal Albert Hall, bedtime stories with Joan Jett or a chance meeting with Little Richard, to flying halfway around the world for one epic night with my daughters…the list goes on. I look forward to focusing the lens through which I see these memories a little sharper for you with much excitement.”
There seems to be something about Alexandria that inspires and nourishes the creative spirit. Is there another poet rock musician in our midst? Let’s hope so.
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More Musicians with ‘Note’-able Alexandria Ties
Mary Chapin Carpenter
Born in 1958 in Princeton, N.J., Mary Chapin Carpenter spent part of her life in a four-bedroom home on East Bellefonte Avenue in Del Ray. The popular singer has performed over the years to sold-out shows at The Birchmere in Alexandria. Carpenter’s 1992 album Come On Come On included seven country singles that made the charts and went quadruple platinum in the United States.
Kiely Williams
Kiely Alexis Williams was born in 1986 in Alexandria. Her mother died when Kiely was less than a year old. Kiely is a singer and actress who got her start when her older sister Michelle pulled together the band 3WL and acted as its manager for several years. Kiely was also a founding member of The Cheetah Girls, where she found significant success on the music charts and on the big screen.
Kali Uchis
Karly-Marina Loaiza, now known professionally and Kali Uchis, was born in 1994 in Alexandria. The Grammy-winning singer and songwriter was a member of a jazz band before she graduated from T.C. Williams High School (now Alexandria City High School) in 2012. In addition to her 2021 Grammy for Best Dance Recording, Uchis won Latin Pop Album of the Year at the 2021 Billboard Latin Music Awards.
Stewart Copeland
Stewart Armstrong Copeland was born July 16, 1952 and was ranked the 10th best drummer of all time by Rolling Stone in 2016. While he is best known for his work as drummer of English rock band The Police, fronted by Sting, Copeland has also composed music for films and video games, and has written music for ballet and opera performances. Copeland was the youngest of four children, and his father was a “founding member” of the CIA. Just a few months after he was born, Copeland moved abroad with his family.
Scythian
Danylo (Dan) Fedoryka, his brother, Alexander (Alex), and their roommate Josef (Joey) Crosby put together the band Scythian in the basement of a house on Russell Road near Del Ray. Larissa Fedoryka, who is Dan and Alex’s sister, has also been a member of the high-energy Celtic roots band that frequently hosted house parties in Old Town and Del Ray — and even played on the steps of the Torpedo Factory. Now, the band tours worldwide and hosts the Appaloosa Roots Music Festival every fall. “We can truly say that our band’s heart lies [in Alexandria]. There isn’t a time that I go back to Old Town where I don’t think back with fondness on those early days,” Dan told Alexandria Living Magazine in 2019.
Neko Case
Neko Richelle Case is an American singer-songwriter best known for her work with Canadian rock group the New Pornographers. She was born in 1970 in Alexandria — her father, a military man, was stationed in the area. Her parents divorced with Neko was young and she moved around a lot during her childhood, ultimately considering Tacoma, Washington, her "hometown."
Mike Stern
While better known for his jazz work, Mike (Michael) Stern was born in Boston in 1953 but grew up in the D.C. area, allegedly including time in Alexandria. Stern spent part of his early career playing guitar with the band Blood, Sweat & Tears.
