Bill Siddons was the original manager of the Los Angeles based rock band The Doors. After the death of The Doors' lead singer Jim Morrison he managed the remaining three members for 2 records. He was the one person in the United States Pamela Courson contacted from Paris after Jim Morrison had died. He arranged the funeral and burial with Pamela, but never saw Jim's body due to the closed casket and his aversion to seeing his friend dead. “We buried Jim correctly,” says Siddons, “and that perhaps was my greatest achievement: making sure we kept it quiet until it was done the right way. Nothing to hide, but we knew what was going to happen because we’d just been through it with Jimi and Janis.”
Siddons began his career with The Doors as a teenage roadie, road manager, and eventually was tapped as the salaried manager of the band. He and the band parted ways when he suggested moving to a standard 15% commission arrangement. His character appears in the Oliver Stone movie on The Doors.
Post-Doors, Bill Siddons continued his career as a manager in the music industry. He managed such groups as Crosby, Stills & Nash, Poco, and, in more recent times, was a co-founder of Core Entertainment, a professional management firm representing Alice in Chains, another band which dealt with the death of its frontman, and others.
He also dated Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme. Cause it's a small world, after all.
Quote about first meeting Jim Morrison:
A First Encounter
Bill Siddons meets Jim Morrison
I graduated from high school in 1965 and then went to Cal State Long Beach. After Rich started helping with the Doors equipment, he started telling me about them, but I wasn't very interested. I didn't know who the Doors were, 'cause they hadn't had a hit yet. When he offered me a trip to San Francisco, I said 'OK, I'll go.'
We ended up sitting in the audience at this show at the Avalon Ballroom (May 12, 1967), watching this maniac. What I remember is Jim on stage. I wasn't affected one way or the other by meeting him, but when I saw him on stage I was more emotionally gripped and moved and disturbed than I had ever been at any similar type of thing.
I remember thinking, WHAT? What is he saying? What is he doing? I don't get it. And then he said something about 'Awkward instant/And the first animal is jettisoned/Legs furiously pumping/Their stiff green gallop' and I went, 'This guy is completely out of his mind,' But I was moved by it, I could feel it. It was the first time poetry had been a movie to me, the images were so strong that they came to mind in a photo form. I could see the horses jumping off the boat. I could see them drowning.
So what was my first impression of Jim? He scared me to death.
