The Day The Music Died

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

"I see myself as a huge fiery comet, a shooting star. Everyone stops, points up and gasps, "Oh look at that!" Then - whoosh, and I'm gone... and they'll never see anything like it ever again... and they won't be able to forget me - ever."- Jim Morrison



"I have just returned from Paris, where I attended the funeral of Jim Morrison. Jim was buried in a simple ceremony, with only a few friends present.
The initial news of his death and funeral was kept quiet be- cause those of us who knew him intimately and loved him as a person wanted to avoid all the circus-like atmosphere that surrounded the deaths of such other rock personalities as Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.
I can say that Jim died peacefully of natural causes. He had been in Paris since March with his wife, Pam. He had seen a doctor in Paris about a respiratory problem and had complained of this problem on Saturday, the day of his death.
I hope that Jim is remembered not only as a rock singer and poet, but as a warm human being. He was the most warm, most human, most understanding person I've ever known. That wasn't always the Jim Morrison people read about, but it was the Jim Morrison I knew and his close friends will remember."Statement of Bill Siddons July 9, 1971:


JIM MORRISON, LEAD SINGER OF THE DOORS, DIES
New York Times 1971Jim Morrison, the 25-year-old lead singer of The Doors rock group, died last Saturday in Paris, his public relations firm said today. His death was attributed to natural causes, but details were withheld pending the return of Mr. Morrison's agent from France. Funeral services were held in Paris today.
In his black leather jacket and skin-tight vinyl pants, Jim Morrison personified rock music's image of superstar as sullen, mystical, sexual poet.
The Doors, a quartet founded in 1964 in and near the film school at the University of California at Los Angeles, became by 1967 one of the most popular groups in the country, attracting the attention of serious critics who discussed their music's origins and meanings, as well as screaming, hysterical teenagers who sometimes had to be peeled off the performers by the stage hands at the group's frenzied concerts.
Their performances were invariably treated by reviewers as events of theater, for the Doors helped to take the electronically amplified rock music that bloomed on the West Coast out of the sound studio and into the concert hall.
Their music was loud and distinctive, but perhaps the most attention was paid to the lyrics, written by Mr. Morrison, which were filled with suggestive and frequently perverse meanings abetted by Mr. Morrison's grunts, sneers and moans on stage.
"Think of us," Mr. Morrison once said "as erotic politicians." One critic echoed others when he called Mr. Morrison's presentations "lewd, lascivious, indecent and profane." Indeed, in one of his most famous episodes, he was arrested and later found guilty of indecent exposure at a rock concert in Miami in March of 1969.
It was this concert, which shocked even some of his teenage fans, that led to a giant Rally for Decency in the Orange Bowl later that month, attended by 30,000 persons. Mr. Morrison was also forcibly removed from a New Haven stage in 1967 after he allegedly exposed himself.
Mr. Morrison's first two hits were Light My Fire and People Are Strange. One of his important works was The End, an 11-minute extended popsong that ended with a vision of violent death.



A friend came up to me on Thursday 8th July and said maybe I should read Sounds.......When I saw it I was dismissive as rock stars 'died' all the time....only when I heard Radio One play 'Riders On The Storm' as a tribute to the fallen star on the Saturday did I realise it was true.
I was 15 years old and had just began to think of the Doors as my favourite band.......I knew very little about them then except the lead singer was fucking dead....I was rather pissed off! Over the years I have had time to think about that reaction and I still find it entirely understandable....I wanted to have a long and enjoyable 'relationship' with the Lizard King and listen to all the albums that would come after the incredible LA Woman and see the guys on stage at the City Hall up the road in Newcastle but it was snatched away.....I saw hundreds of bands as I grew older and had a blast at all the gigs but I did for all the rest of my life until the present really regret that i never saw The Doors and Jim in particular. I never shed a tear for the guy until July 4th 2002 when I visited the grave on my own in the early morning after recovering from the hangover that was the 3rd.....Very odd behaviour for someone who would call themselves a very big Doors fan......
I have subscribed to this or that nutty theory that Jim was in Australia or working in a chip shop in Oldham (just made that up ) and seen plenty of insane ones I never signed up to.....I have sat and defended the band against my schoolfriends, my workmates, my best friends and even my wife! I have read everything in English about the band and listened to all the music that is available and I love it now as I did when I was a teenager.....but something is always missing.....I was never part of a Doors audience and never experienced what even the worst of the band live could offer...
Jim Morrison is now part of our dreams and we remember him in vastly different ways but considering he was there for such a short period of time he made an impact that has echoed down the decades into the psyche of each subsequent generation....even those who hate him and pour scorn must admit that to do that they have to know who he was......Jim is remembered when so many are forgot.....
Some religions claim that nobody truly dies if ONE person remembers thier name. Jim Morrison is lucky as he is remebered by millions....
Would I rather have had it that he had lived and played Newcastle City Hall making a couple more albums before drifting into obscurity as so many 70s acts did........?
I have often wondered just that......33 years later I cannot really give an honest answer!

Much has been written about Jim what follows is a selection...feel free to add anything you think relevant!

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Jim's death certificate

Nearly twenty-five years ago, in the middle of a season in which rock & roll was seeking to define itself as the binding force of a new youth community, the Doors became the house band for an American apocalypse that wasn't even yet upon us. Indeed, the Los Angeles- based quartet's stunning and rousing debut LP, "The Doors" flew in the face of rock's emerging positivist ethos and in effect helped form the basis for a schism that still persists in popular music. While groups like The Beatles or the many bands emerging from the Bay Area were earnestly touting a fusion of music, drugs and idealism that they hoped would reform and redeem a troubled age, the Doors had fashioned an album that looked at prospects of hedonism and violence, of revolt and chaos, and embraced those prospects unflinchingly.
Clearly, the Doors, and in particular the group's thin, darkly handsome lead singer, Jim Morrison, understood a truth about their age that many other pop artists did not: namely, that these were dangerous times, and dangerous not only because youth culture was under fire for breaking away from established conventions and aspirations. On some level, Morrison realized that the danger was also internal- that the "love generation" was hardly without its own dark impulses. In fact, Morrison seemed to understand that any generation so intent on giving itself permission to go as far as it could was also giving itself a license for destruction, and he seemed to gain both delight and affirmation from that understanding.
Consequently, in those moments in the Doors' experimental, Oedipal miniopera "The End", when Morrison sang about wanting to kill his father and fuck his mother, he managed to take a somewhat silly notion of outrage and make it sound convincing, even somehow justified.
Now, a generation later- at a time when, at home, anti-drug and anti- obscenity sentiment has reached a fever pitch and when, abroad, the Doors' music is once again among the favored choices of young Americans fighting in a war- Jim Morrison seems more heroic to many pop fans then ever before. A film like Oliver Stone's "The Doors" can even make it seem that the band, in a dark way, has won its argument with cultural history. But back in the late 1960s, it seemed rather different. To many observers, it appeared that the group had pretty much shot its vision on it's first album. By the Doors' second LP, "Strange Days", the music had lost much of its edginess- the sense of rapacity, of persistent momentum, that had made the previous album seem so undeniable- and in contrast to the atmosphere of aggression and dread that Morrison's earlier lyrics had made palpable, the new songs tended too often to melodrama (Strange Days), or to flat-out pretension (Horse Latitudes). It was as if a musical vision that only a few months earlier had seemed shockingly original and urgent had turned merely morbid, even parodic.
In addition, Morrison himself was already deeply immersed in the pattern of drug and alcohol abuse and public misbehavior that would eventually prove so ruinous to him, his band, his friends and his family. Some of this behavior, of course, was simply expected of the new breed of rock hero: In the context of the late 1960s and it's generational schisms, pop stars often made a point of flaunting their drug use or of flouting mainstream or authoritarian morality. Sometimes this impudence was merely showy or naive, though on certain other occasions- such as the December 1967 incident in which Morrison was arrested after publicly castigating police officers for their backstage brutality at a new Haven concert- these gestures of defiance helped embolden the rock audience's emerging political sensibility. More often than not Morrison's unruliness wasn't so much a display of counter-cultural bravado as it was a sign of the singer's own raging hubris and out-of-control dissipation.
In other words, something far darker than artistic or political ambition fueled Jim Morrison's appetite for disruption, and in March 1969, at an infamous concert in Miami, this sad truth came across with disastrous results. The Doors had been scheduled to perform at 10:00 p.m. but had been delayed for nearly an hour due to a dispute with the show's promoters. By the time the group arrived onstage, Morrison was already inebriated, and he continued to hold up the performance while he solicited the audience for more to drink. A quarter-hour later, after the music had started, Morrison halted songs midway and wandered about the stage, berating the audience to commit revolution and to love him. At one point, he pulled on the front of his weather-worn leather pants and threatened to produce his penis for the crowd's perusal. Oddly enough, though more than twenty years have passed, and more than 10,000 people, including band members and police officers onstage, witnessed Morrison's performance, it has never been clearly determined whether Morrison actually succeeded in exposing himself that night. Finally, toward the end of the show, Morrison hounded audience members into swarming onstage with him, and the concert ended in an easy version of the chaos that the singer had long professed to aspire to.
At the time, the event seemed more embarrassing than outrageous, but within days the Miami Herald and some politically minded city and legal officials had inflated the pitiable debacle into a serious affront to Miami and the nation's moral welfare; in addition, Morrison himself was sized up as the foul embodiment of youth's supreme indecency. The Doors nationwide concert schedule ground to an immediate halt, and in effect the band's touring days were finished. Interestingly, amid all the hoopla that would follow- the public debate, the shameful trial for obscenity- almost nobody saw Morrison's gesture for what it truly was: the act of a man who had lost faith in his art and his relation to the world around him. On that fateful evening in Miami, Jim Morrison no longer knew what his audience wanted from him, or what he wanted from himself for that matter, and so he offered his most obvious totem of love and pride, as if it were the true source of his worth. The Doors lead singer, who only two years before had been one of rock's smartest, scariest and sexiest heroes, was now a heart-rending alcoholic and clownish jerk. He needed help; he did not merit cheap veneration, and he certainly did not deserve the horrid, moralistic brand of jail-house punishment that the state of Florida hoped to impose on him.
Of course, Morrison never received, or at least never accepted the help that might have saved him. By 1970 the Doors were a show- business enterprise with contracts and debts, and these obligations had been severely deepened by Morrison's Miami antics. As a result, the band would produce five albums over the next two years, including two of the group's most satisfying studio efforts, "Morrison Hotel" and "L.A. Woman", surprisingly authoritative, blues-steeped works that showed Morrison settling into a new, lusty and dark-humored vocal style and lyrical sensibility. But if Morrison had finally grown comfortable with the idea of rock & roll for it's own sake, he also realized that he no longer had much of consequence to say in that medium.
In March 1971, Morrison took a leave of absence from the Doors, and with his common-law wife, Pamela Courson, moved to Paris, ostensibly to distance himself from the physical and spiritual rigors of rock & roll and to regenerate his vocation as a modern poet. Perhaps in time he might have come to a compassionate understanding of what he and his generation had experienced in the last few years, as the idealism of the 1960s had finally given way to a deflating sense of fear and futility. Certainly there were glimmers in Morrison's last few interviews that he had begun to acquire some valuable insight about the reasons for and sources of his, and his culture's, bouts of excess. As it turned out, Morrison simply continued to drink in a desolating way, and according to some witnesses, he sometimes lapsed into depression over his inability to reinvoke his poetic muse, taking instead to writing suicide notes.
Finally, at five in the morning on July 4th, 1971, Pamela Courson found Morrison slumped in the bathtub of their Paris flat, a sweet, still grin on his face. At first, Courson thought he was playing a game with her. On this dark morning, though, Morrison was playing no game. His skin was cold to his wife's touch. Jim Morrison had died of heart failure at the age of twenty-seven, smiling into the face of a slow- coming abyss that, long before, he had decided was the most beautiful and comforting certainty of his life.
THE LEGACY OF JIM MORRISON & THE DOORS
by Mikal Gilmore 1991

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Jim Morrison was probably one of the most truly intellectual of the sixties rock casualties. Jim was lead singer of the Doors, known for the profundity of the songs they sang, songs composed mostly by Morrison himself. For Morrison not only had an exciting stage presence and a voice so strong it could make itself heard without a mike during a riot; he was also a gifted poet, a man of words, as he described himself and one of the most creative talents of the great rock decade.
James Douglas Morrison was born in Florida on December 8th, 1943. His father, a high ranking naval officer, brought his children up strictly and Jim's later revolt would often express extreme hostility to his family and the traditional values it stood for. The Morrison's moved to Virginia in the late fifties and Jim was sent to high school in Washington D.C.
Jim demonstrated his rebelliousness in quiet ways at first, refusing to join in the activities that were expected of 'good' American teenagers of that period: sports, clubs, etc. He went to college in Florida for a time, then moved to California in 1964 to study film-making at UCLA. His fascination with films would never leave him for it was tied up with another of his enduring preoccupations- death. As he once said "The attraction of the cinema lies in the fear of death. Movies create a kind of false eternity." During his subsequent career as a rock star, Jim made several short films of a surrealist sort which resembled the poetic imagery of his poems and songs. One was called Hiway; another, The Unknown Soldier, illustrated one of his anti-war songs, while yet another, Feast Of Friends, was a freeform documentary of the life of a pop group on the road.
While he was still at UCLA, Jim became friendly with Ray Manzarek, a fellow student who was paying his way through college by singing in a jazz group on weekends. Though Morrison had already started writing song-poems, he had never thought of singing them himself, let alone of becoming a professional rock singer. But the idea took shape under the influence of Manzarek. Morrison and Manzarek had both drifted inevitably into the mid-sixties beach culture of the California coast where acid was the favored stimulant. Manzarek remembered the first time Jim recited Moonlight Drive to him, and how in the euphoria of the moment it seemed there was no reason why they should not get a group together and 'make a million dollars'. By 1965, Jim and Ray had formed their group, calling themselves the Doors with Jim as lead singer-composer, Ray Manzarek as organist, Robbie Krieger as guitarist and John Densmore as drummer.
The new group was immediately recognized as being one of the most original and dynamic in the States, largely because of the quality of Morrison's songs and his impact as a performer. They were snapped up by Jac Holzman of Elektra after he saw them at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go in L.A. and their first album The Doors was one of the best-selling of the era. The single that came from it, Light My Fire, became, as Lester Bangs has said, 'the anthem of a generation'. After it reached number one in the summer of 1967, the Doors' concert fee shot up from $750 a night to $7000 for two.
At first Jim Morrison was rather withdrawn on stage, but as his audiences grew larger and he allowed his pent-up emotions to surface, his manner grew wild and uninhibited. His performances eventually became a form of rock theatre, his singing punctuated by screams and harangues to the public. One of his early tricks was to throw lighters into the audience during Light My Fire; for three years audiences would light thousands of matches during subsequent performances. Another trick was the use of pauses during performances- sometimes between songs, sometimes between lines, sometimes between syllables. Morrison claimed that these silences could draw out the hostility and bring the group (or himself) and the audience closer together.
The contents and the delivery of Jim Morrison songs were perfectly representative of the spirit of their times- they were anti-social, despairing, charged with sex and violence, full of hatred for restrictions and hope for a new order of things where the young at least would run their lives in the way they chose.
Inevitably, Morrison and The Doors became a focus for attack and victimization by the conventional forces of society. Nothing illustrates better how wide was the gap between them in the mid-sixties than a television company's attempt to censor one line of Light My Fire which the Doors were due to perform live on the Ed Sullivan Show. The line objected to was inoffensive, but Morrison agreed to sing an alternative- and did so in rehearsal- but characteristically he reverted to the original when the show went out later. Doors' performances were frequently cancelled at the last minute through the efforts of local do-gooders and audiences were regularly clubbed by policemen during concerts. Jim Morrison was himself arrested while actually giving a performance, once in New Haven, Connecticut in 1967, for verbally attacking the police and 'incitement to riot', and a second time in Miami in 1969 for supposedly exposing himself on stage. This was too much for Morrison, within whom the forces of destruction had already been long at work. A heavy user of LSD and an alcoholic who could get drunk at any time of the day or night on whatever happened to be handy, Morrison seemed hell-bent on killing himself young. He once described his drinking as 'not suicide, but slow capitulation'. What he was capitulating to was his own need to block out the sense of frustration, despair and growing paranoia.
Jim went to Paris with his wife Pamela. His relationship with Pamela was enigmatic. In spite of the inevitable groupies and the fact that he sometimes treated her in a humiliating, domineering way, she managed to stay with him for some years, and he had dedicated the song Queen Of The Highway to her. But Paris was not the answer. After several months of heavy drinking and bouts of depression, he died suddenly in the summer of 1971, while taking a hot bath in the middle of the night. His death was attributed to heart failure and he was buried at Pere Lachaise cemetery, but there was no autopsy; the exact cause of death can never be established. There are some who even claim that he did not die at all, as always happens in the aftermath of shock when someone young and famous dies. The mystery has been heightened since the only reliable witness, Pamela, herself died of a heroin overdose in 1974. Jim Morrison, high priest of open, all-out war between the generations, died before he could become a member of the older generation.
Those Who Died Young by Marianne Sinclair 1979

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

In his 1967 Elecktra Records publicity bio, Jim Morrison wrote, "I've always been attracted to ideas that were about revolt against authority. I like ideas about the breaking away or over- throwing of established order. I am interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos- especially activity that seems to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom..."
In the same bio, Morrison said that his favorite color was turquoise, that what he looked for in a girl were "hair, eyes, voice, walk" and that all his family members were dead. But, they really weren't. Morrison was creating his own myth.
It was a myth that he perpetuated with his near-mystic, highly sensual stage presence. He once dubbed himself "The King of Orgasmic Rock," with some justification. He was both pretty and handsome, slim yet charged with strength and energy, and capable of projecting a sense of danger- of the demonic. It was a combination along with his talent for writing poetic lyrics, that seemed to appeal to males and females alike, for all kinds of reasons, tapping a range of fantasies.
Morrison liked to relate how, as a child, he was driving with his parents across the desert when they came upon an overturned truck and some dead Indians in the road. At that point, claimed Morrison, he became possessed by the spirit of one of the Indians. Thus, he often wore a concho belt, along with his leather pants, and let loose with ritualistic-type dance movements on stage.
Of one thing there was no doubt; Morrison was possessed by personal demons. Those demons, and his artistic search, led to his drug use and, finally, to raging alcoholism. As a result of his excesses, Morrison got into brawls, was arrested, showed up late for concerts and passed out on stage in Amsterdam. He also changed physically; less than three years after he'd shot to the top, the hell-child with the lean, brooding good looks was fat and full-bearded.
Those who knew him would later surmise that Morrison the poet was struggling to break free of the mythic rock star figure he'd created.
The son of a Navy rear admiral, Morrison was born James Douglas Morrison on December 8th, 1943, in Melbourne, Florida.
A voracious reader, Morrison, whom many have described as "brilliant" and "a genius," spent two years at a junior college in St. Petersburg, Fla. He then made his way to UCLA, where he studied film, wrote poetry, ingested lots of drugs, and after graduation, took to living on the beach at Venice.
It was there that Morrison bumped into a fellow film school graduate, Ray Manzarek. "I hadn't seen Jim all summer. He'd lost about thirty pounds. I remember thinking how incredibly handsome he looked," recalled Manzarek. But what really startled Manzarek was when Morrison sang for him the lyrics to a song he'd written called "Moonlight Drive."
Manzarek and Morrison formed a group, bringing in guitarist Robby Drieger and drummer John Densmore, both of whom Manzarek had met at a meditation center. Morrison came up with the group's name, which comes from a William Blake passage.
From the beginning, the college-educated Doors stood out as a group of innovation and eerie magnetism with their mix of music, poetry, theatre and daring. The Doors' hits, including "Light My Fire," "People Are Strange," Touch Me" and "Riders On The Storm," remain benchmarks of the era. So does Morrison's behavior.
One night at the Whisky, the entire club, including the go-go girls, came to a shocked stand-still during his improvised rendition of the song "The End." An Oedipal journey, it climaxes with a young man's screaming threat to kill his father and rape his mother. But rape wasn't the word that Morrison used. The Doors were fired from the club that very night after the enraged Whiskey owner screamed at Morrison for being "one foul- mouthed son-of-a-bitch."
It was Morrison's behavior at the now-infamous Miami concert in March 1969, that symbolized his downfall. After taunting the crowd with obscenities, he threatened to expose himself. Morrison, who wasn't wearing underwear, went on to tug at his pants. Days later, in the heat of a conservative political movement sweeping the city, he was arrested on charges including indecent exposure.
Miami marked a turning point for the Doors, internally. It didn't help that Miami had been the first stop on a 21-day tour, and that after Morrison's arrest the other 20 cities cancelled . Though they went on to record additional albums, and enjoy success on the charts, the symbiosis was waning. After recording the group's "L.A.Woman," a burned-out Morrison headed to Paris to concentrate on his poetry.
To hear the three surviving Doors tell it, he would eventually have returned to the fold, especially after the startlingly good reviews for "L.A.Woman."
We'll never know. Morrison was just 27 when he died on July 3, 1971, reportedly of a heart attack, which he suffered in the bathtub.
He's buried in Pere La Chaise Cemetery, along with Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, Balzac, Chopin and other notables.
But Morrison and the Doors live on. Their music has been featured on at least ten movie soundtracks in the past decade. Their songs are also re-recorded by contemporary artists. The Doors' record sales in this country alone today exceed 1 million copies annually. New repackagings are constantly in the works, as are new videos.
Plus Morrison's poetry, first printed in the 1970's, is enjoying new attention. There are even efforts underway, by Morrison associates and devotees, to get his poetry included in college curriculums.
by Pat H. Broeske Los Angeles Times Calendar
January 7, 1990

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

London lay flickering like a tiny jewel in the soft summer fog. The humid twilight rushed in, blotting out the death of the sun. A violent squall was forming over the Channel. Sheets of water, lividly lit by blue and white lightning, brushed and then drenched the Dover cliffs.
And across the Channel lay Paris. A man on the run all his life, Morrison now fled L.A. at the completion of the last album, L.A. Woman, and entered Paris alone, tired, and afraid.
Flashback: Madison Square Garden's Felt Forum. The house lights dimmed, The Doors were announced, and a peculiar tension built in the air; an excitement pulsed and moved from the shadowed corners, lacing the room with an emotional current. "Hello," said Jim. And they began to play.
He was a reviled figure: hated by the press; never taken seriously by critics who felt themselves lost amid his cinematic imagery. He had dressed himself in funereal leather, dropped his pants, shouted obscenities, and was guilty only of believing a myth he had created. And after all, that's something almost all rock stars are guilty of.
"Five to one, baby, one in five," he sang. Grabbing the mike in a whiplike motion, he began to stamp around the stage, approaching the audience, "No one here gets out alive/You get yours baby/I'll get mine/Gonna make it baby, if we try." He exhorted them, clawing with fingers and voice: "The old get old and the young get stronger/ May take all week and it may take longer/They got the guns but we got the numbers/Gonna win, yeah, we're takin' over!"
Yet of all the self-created myths in the rock world, Morrison could be forgiven for believing his, precisely because his image, and with it, the success and power of the Doors, depended on his being a myth. For as long as he lived, Morrison was less the rock star and more the Lizard King, intoning: "Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin." He was the misunderstood poet living within the constrictive confines of the rock medium. Critics judged the Doors solely on their (the critics') limited musical terms (they were an American band who neither played the blues nor accepted the West Coast Sound that the Rolling Stones revered); friends listened to what the Doors were saying, because to deny them that courtesy was to negate the purpose of the band entirely.
When Morrison sang "No one here gets out alive," he wasn't talking about the theatre, he meant life itself. That was his rationale for the revolution, one of the topics that obsessed him and that runs throughout most of his songs: no one's getting out alive, so we might as well do what we can to change it and ourselves: "I'll tell you this, no eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn!"
Morrison was a man who knew people. He wrote about what they were really like, and much of it wasn't pretty or pleasant; "people are strange." Yet he wrote with an impossible kind of romanticism that was supremely gentle: "You're lost little girl/ you're lost little girl/You're lost, tell me who are you?"
Listening to Strange Days is like watching Fellini's Satyricon. Morrison's words are so cinematic that each song begins to form pictures in the mind. More than any other American songwriter he had this quality. Like the film, Strange Days builds it's story line through the images and characters in a series of vignettes. And the whole becomes more and more visible the deeper one gets int the film and/or the album. Because Strange Days has been set up that way.
"Love Me Two Times" follows "You're Lost Little Girl" as if sex were the only solution the personna of the song could think of to help the girl, but of course that isn't the answer: "Love me two times, girl/one for tomorrow, one just for today/Love me two times/I'm going away."
"Unhappy Girl" serves as a prelude to the second part of the album, which deals with the effects of drugs on people. The beginning physical nightmare of the drug in "Horse Latitudes" gives way to the euphoric feeling of "Moonlight Drive."
Especially fascinating is Morrison's "Celebration Of The Lizard." It first made its appearance in print on the inside cover of "Waiting For The Sun" album and there is described as "lyrics to a theatre composition by the Doors." It seemed then, in that form, to be rather pompous and a little much, even for Morrison. Yet when heard on stage it became an incredibly moving statement. Up there, in the glaring spotlight that breathed life into Morrison, he imbued the presentation with such powerful vitality that it became impossible to ignore the seriousness of what was happening: "He fled the town/He went down South and crossed the border/Left the chaos and disorder/Back there over his shoulder." Again that imagery of violent movement and destruction that obsessed Morrison.
Yet, it's the imagery itself, and not necessarily the words, that's central to Morrison's lyrics. Long before the story line of Easy Rider was born in the minds of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, Morrison and the Doors were taking us on nightmarishly real trips through America. Forever restless, obsessed by motion, change, death, and highways, Morrison moved from town to rural village to jumbling city, always following the snake high- ways, describing the old and new guard American.
This is never more apparent than on the Morrison Hotel album. It's the least interesting Doors set in a melodic sense, but then traveling down the highways crammed into car or cycle for those endless dustladen miles cannot be described in soft flowing notes. The music that accompanies the lyrics must, of necessity, be hard-bitten and sparing; grabbing onto a riff and repeating it, to achieve the effect of motion: "Keep your eyes on the road/Your hands upon the wheel/...Roll all night long." And right off the group begins that chunky, rolling backing, peculiar to this album, that creates the traveling effect.
Night turns into early morning and the racing car, continually chasing the dawn over the lengthening hills, slows and sits by the side of the snake highway. Only the crickets and the frogs are heard over the sighing of the wind. Dawn arrives: "At first flash of Eden/ We race down to the sea/Standing there on Freedom's shore/ Waiting for the sun......This is the strangest life I've ever known."
Again it's that special sort of lyric that Morrison uses over and over that seems, on the outside, to deal with one person- usually a girl- while he's actually speaking to his audience en masse. I've told you what's wrong with this country and with us, Morrison is saying, now I'm waitng for you to realize that I want you to tell me what's wrong so that we can change together. That, more than anything else, is what Morrison wanted. He wanted change desperately, but he wanted all of us to join to- gether to do it. He felt (and probably quite rightly so) that it was the only way to achieve change.
Paris sits wet and steaming under a summer downpour. Deep, gray clouds laced with violet roll the skies, and despite the heat, it's a time for shivering; a time to shut the windows; a time to close the doors. The rain hurls itself with hysterical strength at the dripping trees and the unyielding pavement. Planes taxi out onto the tarmac at Orly, trucks lumber slowly along the snake highways, lovers huddle in semi-sheltered doorways to escape the full fury of the storm as thunder crashes seconds after the lightning flickers.
And somewhere, in a hospital, a bloody orderly pulls a sheet over the face of Jim Morrison, Caucasian, ages 27, American- the Lizard King, the Changeling, the poet, the man- deceased.
JIM MORRISON : RIDING OUT THE FINAL STORM
by Eric Van Lustbader Circus Magazine September 1971

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Jim Morrison blazed across his generation like a heat-seeking missile pointed straight at the sun. In the few short years he held our attention, he created a counterculture awareness of the dark edge at the abyss of human emotions. Morrison was bone and viscera: a no-moon midnight. With a fascination for the sinister, and an uncontrollable need to defy all expectations, he made himself into a renegade icon of his tumultuous generation.
Morrison's lyrics were filled with dark and contradictory images. His words paint a picture of an individual obsessed with death, pain, blood and suffering. Words that evoke pleasant or comforting portraits- innocent animals, beautiful young women or mothers and children, for example- are deliberately marred in any number of ways. In "Soft Parade" for example, Morrison writes: "When all else fails, we can whip the horses' eyes and make them sleep and cry."
A grotesque event which occured in Morrison's early boyhood affected his inner vision and haunted him his entire life. On a driving vacation with his family, Morrison witnessed the aftermath of a highway accident that left "Indians scattered all over the highway, bleeding to death". He called the experience his first taste of fear. He said, "the souls of those dead Indians- maybe one or two of them- were just running around freaking out, and just landed in my soul, and I was like a sponge, ready to sit there and absorb it..."
The memory of those unfortunate victims never left him, often returning in the vast quantities of blood spattered across his writing. On the Morrison Hotel LP, a work entitled "Peace Frog" very distinctly refers to this event. "Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding. Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind." The tormented victim of this song is nearly saved from his nightmare, only to be left behind: "Just about the break of day, she came, and then she drove away, sunlight in her hair." The lyrics of "Peace Frog" continue through images of blood in the streets and "she" returns again. Again she leaves him behind, suffering herself this time, "Blood screams her brain as they chop off her fingers," He ends with an ominous fear bred in the deepest parts of his memory, "Blood on the rise, it's following me.
Death on the road returns in another song. This one, too, recalls the family outing. "There's a killer on the road," drones the second verse of "Riders on the Storm," from the album L.A. Woman. "Take a long holiday...If you give this man a ride, sweet family will die."
Water as well as blood is a constant theme throughout Morrison's work. Morrison's lyrics also reveal a man isolated, a loner in a generation that adored him. In "Cars Hiss by my Window" he laments loneliness even in company. "I need a brand new friend who doesn't bother me" he wrote in "Hyacinth House." "I need someone who doesn't need me." In this piece the solitude is mixed with paranoia. "I think that somebody's near. I'm sure that someone is following me."
However it's in "The End" that Morrison elevates self-created loneliness to a fine art. These lyrics address his "only friend" and sound a death knell to their world. Consider these words: "The end of our elaborate plans. The end of everything that stands...I'll never look into your eyes again."
Love, too was a subject of much personal debate for Morrison. He wrote of love as a comfort, yet simultaneously felt it represented the death of the individual. In "Crystal Ship" love is a capricious passion. There is a surprising gentleness to the words of "Blue Sunday." It's unique in that it is one of the few love songs in which he does not set up a beautiful image and defile it with the sub- sequent lyrics.
Often, his lyrics were a free-flowing stream of consciousness. Printed on the page, devoid of their music, these words are a psychologist's wet dream. Picking out the crowning achievement is nearly impossible. The suicidal ramblings of "The End," come close, but they pale in comparison to the playful, be-bopping horror of "The Soft Parade." Morrison described the process as hearing a theme in his head, and fitting words to it as quickly as possible- until they came simultaneously. The images are disjointed, like flashing pictures in an opium dream. These tortured pictures add up to a sum greater than the parts. The total may be horrific or not, depending on the listener's perspective.
It was Morrison's belief that the life force of The Doors was working as a performance band in the rehearsal hall and in clubs. Large, arena- style concerts were alienating to him- too large to develop a rapport with the audience and feed from their experience. It was in the small club concerts and rehearsal halls that much of his better work was produced. A record contract- a sign of success to others- disturbed Morrison's creativity. Recording had, he believed, killed some of their music. Pieces that he felt were alive and continuing to evolve in performance became stagnant once put on record. "The End" and "When the Music's Over" were two such recordings. He later called the recordings "static and ritualized."
Along with their hypnotic arrangements, The Doors were among the first to bring a revival to the sheer theatrics of music in concert. Live, Morrison achieved his greatest success as both singer and poet. He encouraged audiences to move around. Their energy then spurred him on to even greater work. Along with their repertoire of songs, The Doors frequently offered long musical interludes which accompanied recitations of Morrison's poetry. These readings include thrashing about the stage and speaking in demonic voices. Brief, dramatic vignettes, such as the now-famous mock execution of Morrison before a firing squad during "The Unknown Soldier", peppered their public work. He combined music, drama and literature, drawing on personal experience for content.
The Doors were attracted to the exploration of evil. During the course of a Doors concert, the strange posturing and sounds that they created were alarming and disorienting. Frequently, Morrison crossed the lines of acceptability, walking a tightrope over obscenity. Sexuality was his most powerful tool, and he wore it proudly, flaunting it for all to see. These performances affected Morrison most of all. His romance with live concerts ultimately became a significant part of his down- fall. He pushed the public, testing the intellect and tolerance of the audience, as well as the ever-present police.
Unfortunately, his antics and remarks, intended to assault the senses of his listeners, got away from him. People began to attend Doors concerts not to see the band, but to see Morrison do something- anything- out of line. Police watched for a chance to pull him from the stage. Techies and band members looked on at his work nervously. No one, not even those closest to him, could tell what he might do.
A vicious cycle began. Audiences came to see him be outrageous, and outrage is what he gave them. He tried to slap the public back into seeing The Doors as a great rock band and an important intellectual entity, but his efforts backfired. Morrison had turned himself into a sideshow. His presentations to the public, laced with anger, created more furor and fueled the problem. Ultimately, his high-handed badgering got him busted for an obscenity rap in Florida. This incident aborted an entire tour for the Doors, as city after city banned them from their stages.
Morrison represented the limitless power of youth, the revolution in each new adult. He thrust his power and sexuality at the world with a vengeance. He died before he could experience (and we could see him experience) the calming of time. Morrison's passage was a flash of lightening on the horizon, quick as an instant, but forever changing what it touched.
He remains locked in time, with other tragic haunted lives, a frozen icon depicting the vigor of a young rebellion. The image that he left behind will captivate the dark rebels of new generations for a long time, even while his contemporaries soften and age. You can count Morrison's public years on one hand, but his effect on us is immeasurable. As to his work, it is solid and unique- twenty years later.
HARBINGER OF CRUELTY by Brett Keogh
Masters Of Rock The Life & Times Of Jim Morrison
Vol. 1 No.3 1990

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

MORRISON BONEYARD: STRANGE DAYS

On weekends and most weekday afternoons in Paris's
Pere Lachaise cemetery, a small group of mostly
elderly people gather around the grave of French painter Ingres. Bearing documents and photos, the group researches the history of the cemetery in an effort to save hundreds of tombs endangered by years of neglect. Madame Colinette, one of the Pere Lachaise's most passionate devotees and the unofficial leader of the group, points out the sparkling new white and gold headstone of the Marquise de Coislin, Louis XV's lover. She leans against it and smiles an affectionate proprietary smile. This is one that Madame Colinette (now called "Coislinette" around the cemetery) was able to save. Others are of such historical signficance that no one will touch them. Others are....problems.
Madame Colinette has been around Pere Lachaise for so long that she actually remembers rocker Jim Morrison's funeral in 1971. It was summer, and she was passing through the sixth division of the cemetery. There were only a few people in attendance. She'd never heard of this American man. She moved on.
Only later, when the pilgrims began to come, did she realize what she had seen.
More than any other grave in the cemetery, this one
holding the remains of the lead singer from the 60's rock
group The Doors, is a public attraction, and sometimes
a public disgrace. For decades, now, it has been
the subject of debate, diatribes, cult-like
ceremonies and police surveillance. Rumors constantly
circulate that it will be removed, that Jim will rise from
the dead to fly (in a tightly sealed box, one
presumes) back to the United States.
Of the more than 1.7 million vistors to the
cemetery each year, more than a third come to see Morrison specifically; this creates a lot of extra tourist revenues for the city of Paris as well as alot of problems for the cemetery. Between 1989 and 1992 the tomb became the site of an extremely heavy drug trade, the cemetery was forced to post three guards. Vistors were asked to move on after only five minutes. In 1991, a rioting crowd threw bottles over the walls, started fires and smashed a car into the cemetery gate chanting, "break on through" and "light my fire." To break up the demo, riot police used tear gas. Now, when you visit the grave there are two guards posted round the clock, and if you raise your head you might hear the whir of two survillance cameras constantly taking pictures.
Rest in peace? Not quite. And yet those most closely
involved with the tomb insist that there are no plans to
move Morrison. The Morrison family lawyer, Christopher
J. Mesnooh, claims the rumors of exhumation, "have
no basis in fact." If the family were planning to
dig him up, Mesnooh points out, they would not have
bought the cemetery a high pressure cleaning machine to water-blast the graffiti.
Because Morrison's grave was purchased a'perpetuite - for eternity - the only people who may interfere with it are family members. In a somewhat lawyer-like fashion, the cemetery has adopted the position that they cannnot even comment on the future of the grave because they have no juridical power over it. "The question doesn't even come up," says Natalie Delapraye, a spokeswoman at the graveyard, "and even if we wanted to, we couldn't do
anything about his or any of the sites here. We just don't have the power." But such tact about the departed Door is not so apparent around the small offices of the local administration building. "He creates too many security problems, we have no desire to see him stay," said one clerk.
The Morrison lawyer, Mesnooh, is unfazed by such hostility. "All the problems are going to diminish," he adds, "the dignity is going to grow." Nor is Jim's the only grave to draw passionate cultists. As spokeswoman Delapraye puts it, "Oscar Wilde
had his scandalous hours in the cemetery as well."
Nevertheless, she admits that if a guard strays from the site even for an hour, there will almost certainly be some sort of graffiti upon his return.Madame
Colinette, the self-appointed savior of the dead,
understands all of this, of course. She spread a collection of documents on the flat stone of an unmarked tomb, using it as a makeshift desk. Jim "was a sacred monster" she says, poring over pictures of a bust that was sculpted by a Yugoslavian fan several years ago. "They have to let him stay where he is." The others in the group begin to nod their heads, and then as a few autumn leaves whip across the tops of the old stones, the voices start up again. One man disagrees. Another raises his cane in protest. The question of Jim's
remains just won't die.

by Scott Johnson January 19, 1998. Newsweek

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

"By Sunday morning (July 4, 1971) there were rumors all over Paris that Jim Morrison had died sometime over the weekend, but when reporters called Pam's flat, they reported being told that Morrison was 'not dead but very tired and resting in a hospital.' The current
talk soon reached Clive Selwood, general manager of Elektra Records' London office. When Elektra U.K. phoned their Paris branch, they discovered the French office of the label didn't even know Morrison
was in the city. Calls to the police and the American Embassy revealed that no one named Morrison had shown up at the city morgue."

"Bill Siddons tells what happened next. 'It was 4:30am Monday, July 5. I got a call from Clive Selwood in London, saying. I don't want to upset you, but I've gotten calls from three different writers asking
me to confirm that Jim Morrison is dead.' Now, we'd had scares before. Jim's death had been rumored several times over the years, but Clive respected the writers who called, so I was anxious. I sat upright in my bed real fast. I called Jim and Pam's apartment in
Paris, and got no answer. In the meantime, my wife had woken up and said, 'Jim's dead.' She felt it. Since I couldn't reach Pam, though, I went back to bed."

"When Siddons got up around 8am he tried the apartment again and this time Pam answered and claimed the rumor wasn't true. 'She sounded
upset, so I pressed her a bit,' Siddons continued. 'You see, she preceived the other three Doors as enemies who were keeping Jim from doing what he really wanted to do and she considered me a part of
that circle....I said, 'Look, I'm calling as a friend, not as a
business representative. I don't want to do anything but help you. If there's anything happening, I want to know so I can help. Tell me, please, the truth - is Jim alive or dead?' She started to cry, so I
told her I was taking the next plane to Paris.'

"Break On Through The Life and Death Of Jim Morrison" by James Riordan and Jerry Prochnicky talking to Clive Selwood about the death of Jim Morrison

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

JIM MORRISON RETROPOP SCENE:
MEMORIES OF JIM

We all make our deals with the devil. I suppose Jim Morrison must have realized that he made his. Listen to Jac Holzman, the president of Electra Records, the company that helped create the great fireworks display that Jim became.

"Superstardom is a speed trip," Jac said, paraphrasing something he once read by Michael Lydon. "The flash is incredible, but it kills you in the end.”

We were talking on the telephone a couple of days after the announcement of Jim's death and Jac was remembering how quiet Jim really used to be, storing up his anger only to let it out in quick and unexpected public detonations. He remembered the first time he saw Jim singing with the Doors in the Whiskey au Go Go, one of the worst of L.A.'s schlock joints. It was only a short time after the Doors had gotten their release from Columbia and Jac could understand why.

"They were not very good,” he said, "But there was something there that made me keep coming back."

He signed them up and put them in a studio with producer Paul Rothchild. It was the summer of 1966 and they completed their album in 10 days but Jac didn't release it until the following January. By the summer of 1967, the album was selling a quarter of a million copies a month. It was a success that came long past the point of anti-climax for Jim.

I remember Nico, that tall, blonde legendary goddess of beauty, telling me how Jim used to bite his hands until they bled in the dressing room after a show. She and Jim ran together for a while. There were few rock stars who didn’t get to bed with Nico.

The first time I saw Jim perform was in Steve Paul’s scene, the old cellar club on W. 46th Street. It was back in 1966 and I was with Brian Jones. Jim went through his gimmick of opening his mouth to the microphone as if he were about to swallow it and then not singing but closing his mouth again and both Brian and I got up and walked out.

Before long, Light My Fire hit the top of the pop charts and Village Voice columnist Howard Smith was pegging Jim as the nation's new male sex symbol. Meanwhile, that idiot purveyor of vapid criticism, Albert Goldman, was writing long pompous treatises about how the Doors were the new rock Messiahs. I've never known Albert Goldman to be right.

It was soon afterwards that Jim and the Doors were telling reporters to "think of us as erotic politicians," I couldn't quite figure out what they were running for but it was easy to spot their constituency. The teenyboppers kept telling me that while the Beatles had been optimists, the Doors were pessimists. Meanwhile, Jim was quickly getting burnt out.

I didn’t meet him until after he had outgrown all that baloney. It was at Michael McClure's house in San Francisco, where Jim used to go to take lessons in what he really wanted to be, a poet. I remember playing Nashville Skyline for him. He said it was Dylan’s most "sensual" album, but then Jim was always hung up on sensuality. When Mike talked about writing a science-fiction screenplay, Jim said, "Yeah, let's make it pornographic science­-fiction."

We got drunk that night, sitting at Mike’s round, wooden kitchen table with Jim chomping on a cigar and doing imitations as if he were somebody's Uncle Charlie. It was the first time I had seen him with a beard and somehow he reminded me of Charlton Heston. I could visualize him acting heroic roles in great cinemascopic epics.

We went out to Chinatown the next afternoon, to one of those restaurants with Formica top tables, and we had a rip-roaring meal, with Jim playing Uncle Charlie again. Jim and Mike talked about Artaud. Jim was one of the most veracious readers I've ever met, but that’s the way it is with people who are as serious about their writing as Jim was.

Actually, Jim and Mike did get to finish a film script they were working on together, an adaptation of Mike’s novel, The Adept. They also were kicking around an idea for an original movie musical.

In addition to his book of poetry, The Lords, and his collection of short prose fragments, The New Creatures, Jim also printed a private edition of poetry, American Prayer, for dis­tribution among his friends. He was working on a partially completed manuscript when he died.

All the friends I've talked to now say they knew intuitively that Jim was dead as soon as they got the final phone call. But the sadness for me is that I really expected him to go on to greater things.

"I didn't expect Jim to live very long," Mike now says, "not at the intensity at which he lived. He was on a very self-destructive level. But I don't think of it now as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. I think of it as Jack Kerouac, Charles Olson and Jim Morrison.”

Jim had already broken with the Doors when he went to Paris to chase after Pamela

Jim kept telling
the other members of the band
that he wanted to quit

Courson, the one woman he always went back to out of the countless he knew. He hadn't been getting along with the rest of the Doors for a couple of years and they had been looking for a new lead singer for some time.

In the old days, at the height of the Doors’ success, Jim had constantly kept telling the others that he wanted to quit and they’d take it out oh him onstage, some­times dropping notes and intimidating his phrasing.

To most of his friends, he was always a tragic figure. His audience refused to let him mature. When he tried to read his poetry onstage, the crowd would ask for Light My Fire.

They wouldn't let him stop being the Lizard King. He wanted to be con­sidered a poet and a writer and someone serious and the audience kept screaming at him, “Whip it out! Whip it out!" Finally in Miami, he was accused of doing just that.

The last time I saw him, at the Isle of Wight festival almost a year ago, he was still on trial for exposing himself. We got drunk passing a bottle back and forth backstage and he talked about listening to the testimony at the defendant's table.

"At first I thought I was guilty," he said, "but now I'm beginning to think I wasn't."

We kept making a date for later to talk to each other but each time we'd be interrupted by the general conviviality. When he went onstage, he gave the best performance I've ever seen him give. He screamed only once. The last I saw him was when I was leaving the festival. It was late and there was no food around and we were all starving. I had a package with two cakes in it and I smiled and gave him one. He took it and smiled back and gorged himself with it.

He is buried now in the Pere-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, near the grave, I’m told, of Molière. Superstardom is a speed trip. The flash is incredible, but that's the deal you make. He had quit his heavy drinking the last couple of months. According to his friends, the death certificate says he died of a heart attack brought on by respiratory complications. He died peacefully. When Pamela found him dead in the bathtub, there was a smile on his face. ##

FIFTY-FIVE, JANUARY 1, 2001 by Al Aronowitz

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

TAKE OUT A SUBSCRIPTION TO THE RESURRECTION:
JIM MORRISON

Jim Morrison arrived in Paris in
March 1971. He partly wanted to escape his idenity as a
rock 'n' roll star by regaining his anonymity and by
writing poetry rather than songs. He partly wanted to dry out. At the age of 27 he was a terrible alcoholic
whose celebrated wild behaviour was now more by
accident than design.Paris was a good place to
shake off his celebrity. He dressed down, let his hair
grow wild, put on weight and pounded the streets
unrecognised. But Paris was not a good place to dry out, especially when you have arrived with a head full of
Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Hemingway and
Fitzgerald.
Micheal McClure, a San Francisco poet who became a close friend of Morrison, is one of the few people to see
almost everything he wrote in Paris. "He was mostly
writing poetry," he recalls. "His ambition was to write
for the theatre. I don't think he had any prose
problems. I've seen things of Jim's which I am afraid are
now lost. A major work of his was lost." It
was while living on Rue Beautreillis that he stumbled
into the life of Herve Muller, then a 22 year old
economics student. Very early one morning in May 1971,
Muller was asleep with his girlfrienbd in their
top-floor apartment at 6 place Tristan-Bernard, in the
l'Etoile district, when there came a loud knock at the
door. "It was a friend of mine called Gilles
Yepremian," remembers Muller, "and he said he was with Jim Morrison. It was pretty strange. Morrison was absolutely drunk and had been carried up the six flights of stairs. He had his washed-out fatigue jacket on and
looked like a hippy tourist." He had been discovered by
Yepremian on the pavement of the Rue de Seine after having been ejected from the Rock 'n' Roll Circus, a club
that would later play a significant role in the rumors
surrounding his death. "He just managed to wave his hand and say, "Hi everybody and then he crashed on our bed near the door and went to sleep. I was baffled! I was thinking: this is Jim Morrison and he's asleep at the foot of my bed?" He woke up at eleven o'clock with no recollection of the events that had led him there and decided to take his new-found friends out for a meal at the Bar Alexandre, 53 Avenue George V, where he was
already known to waiters who had learned to tolerate his loud behavior. They took a table outside and Morrison sat looking towards Champs-Elysees.
Herve Muller began taking some of the only photographs of Morrison in Paris. "We had a great time" says Muller, "but then he started to get weird. He was paranoid. It was obvious that he was very lonely and very lost. When he
was drunk, all his problems came out. One moment he
was asking Yvonne to get a woman for him the next he
was crying on her shoulder." After we left he
sat on a bench and wouldn't move. We got him back to
our apartment but at the third floor he started
getting aggressive again. It was as though he was
fighting his own demons. He sat on the stairs and shouted racist remarks. It was because of his behaviour that day that I eventually lost my apartment."
The following weekend, Muller was invited to lunch at
Morrison's apartment. He still has the peice of square
notebook paper on which Morrison wrote his address in
capital letters. "I remember Jim was sober that day and
we sat together in the front room," says Muller. "He
talked about art, eastern European cinema and French
literature. he hardly ever mentioned rock and roll except to
say that he thought the Doors might get together
every couple of years to make an album and that 27 was too old to be a rock star. It was in that room on
another day that I first heard the album LA Woman. Jim
had just received it and was very excited by it.
Rightly so, in my opinion. Jim was trying to get LA out
of his system. He loved Paris because to him it was
this mystical, intellectual city. He liked to walk
alot, just go in the streets and follow his own
curiosity."
His final poems show that he visited Notre-Dame and
started at the guttering rows of candles that brighten
the natural gloom of the towering cathedral and it
seems unlikely that he would have missed the
opportunity to browse in Shakespeare and Company, a
wonderfully eccentric English language book store at 37 Rue De La Bucherie. The cafe Saint-Germain
excited him. He loved the legends of Sarte, Picasso and
Gide that still clug to the brown panelled interior of
Les Deux Magots at 6 Place Saint-Germain Des Pres.
The fact that he had put on a lot of weight and was
wearing cheap clothes meant that he was almost never
recognised in these places. He could have been mistaken for a college senior from middle America. "I think there was a deliberate attempt on his part to destroy that angelic look," says Muller. "I never saw him in leather. Only once at the Rosebud Bar (11 Bis Rue
Felambre) did someone recognize him and that made him nervous and he said, 'Let's go.'"
But it was also in Saint-Germain
that he became reacquainted with the downward pull. He spent nights with Pamela at the Rock N Roll Circus,
located among chic art galleries at 57 Rue De Seine. It
had been the top Parisian rock club of the late
sixties but by 1971 it had lost its reputation and had
become a haven for heroin addicts and pushers.
Today it is the Whisky A Go Go, with a garish pink neon sign on the street outside and fresh faced clients in
duffel coats and Manchester sized deniums who pay a FF90 entrance fee and stay through until 6 a.m. Dance music is played in the vaulted cellars where the walls and ceilings have been coated with sparkling purple
crust. According to one widespread rumor it was in this cellar that Jim Morrison died during the early hours of 3rd July 1971 after sniffing a line of pure heroin while
in an alcoholic haze. His body was then passed
through the rear of the building and into L'Alcazar de
Paris, a saucy nightclub at 62 Rue Mazarine whose
kitchens backed directly on to the Rock N Roll Circus.
From there it was discreetly driven back to 17 Rue
Beautreillis and placed in the bathtub. Muller recently tracked down the doctor who was one of only four people known to have seen the body. He has also spoken to figures from the drug-smuggling underground who have
talked of Chinese heroin arriving in Paris the day
before his death. He showed me a copy of the death
certificate that had taken him three years of tugging at
French red tape to get ahold of. Filed under the name of
Douglas Morrison, he was described as an
'ecrivain. The official version remains that Morrison had a
heart attack while taking a bath. To the fans who
gather at Pere Lachaise, where he is buried in the
presence of five mourners on 7th July, it hardly matters
which is true. The point is that Morrison died of hard
living. He didn't let death intimidate him into living a
life of moderation. That is why his resting
place is the scene of such irreverence. If Jim had no
respect for death why should they? After all, images of
the Virgin Mary and the crucified Jesus, which abound
Pere Lachaise, would be inappropriate on the grave of
the man whose best known song line was "Cancel my
subscription to the resurrection."

by Steve Taylor - The Independent - March 23, 1991

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

"We didn't find out about it until a few days later," says Jean-Max Causse, co-owner and co-founder of the Paris theatre chain called Action (pronounced "ahk-see-own" in French). The police found a ticket stub in Morrison's pocket and traced it to our cinema, the Action LaFayette." Jim saw Raoul Walsh's "Pursued," starring Robert Mitchum, on the afternoon of July 2nd. It was the last movie he ever saw. Jean Max elaborates: "I always liked The Doors music. But the cashier that day didn't recognize our illustrious customer. Morrison went to the movies incognito. We didn't realize who had come through our door until the police asked us to match up the ticket numbers on the stub -- that's how we established that he'd been to an afternoon show and that's how we know exactly which film he saw."
JIM'S LAST PICTURE SHOW by Lisa Nesselson

1971: Doors' singer Jim Morrison found dead
Jim Morrison, the lead singer of American rock group The Doors has died in Paris aged 27.
He was found in a bathtub at his apartment at 17 Rue Beautraillis by his girlfriend, Pamela Courson.

A doctor's report stated the cause of death was heart failure aggravated by heavy drinking.

The rest of the band - keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robbie Krieger and drummer John Densmore - are in the USA working on their latest album LA Woman.

Morrison, also known as the Lizard King, was born in Florida in 1943, the son of a US Navy admiral.

He formed The Doors with Ray Manzarek in 1965 in Los Angeles.

Morrison had come up with the name after reading Aldous Huxley's account of drug experiences, The Doors Of Perception.

The group became the first popular "new wave" band. Their first album, Light My Fire, released by Elektra Records in 1967, was a number one hit in the US, though only just scraped into the British charts.

Their following albums, Strange Days and Waiting For The Sun, provided further American hits and, in Hello I love You, a British number 15.

Arrested for lewd behaviour

But with its ever growing fame, the band lost some of its credibility in the rock underground.

Morrison's behaviour, fuelled by drink and drugs, became more outrageous and in 1969 he was arrested for "indecent exposure, lewd conduct and public intoxication" after a concert in Miami's Dinner Key auditorium.

Though some of the charges were later dropped, the scandal made it hard for the band to perform live for some time.

Morrison used the crisis as a spur to creativity and produced one of the group's most critically acclaimed albums, Morrison Hotel, in 1970.

Over the past year he has made clear he wanted to drop music altogether to become a writer.

He has already published two volumes of poetry, The Lords and The New Creatures, and planned to begin a literary career once his contractual obligations to Elektra were fulfilled.

BBC Website

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The Voice!

"My second-last serious attack on completing "the album", a collection of songs I'd been nurturing and conjuring and loving for six years by that point, came in 1991. I'd built a vocal booth into a closet of my bachelor apartment, a sweaty carpet-and-Styrofoam sound-killing box where I could exercise my lungs without exorcising the neighbors. In retrospect, it might have been one of the riskiest moves I've ever made. Once I'd built it, I had no excuse for not working on my voice, which had proved weak and less than up to the task I had set for the singer of the songs I was writing. I also studied bel canto, the technique of "pure voice" practiced by operatic vocalists, with the occasional assistance of therapists and coaches. I had a voice like Alice Cooper...low, nasal, whiny...I wanted a voice like Jim Morrison...I wanted the voice I knew I had.

Somewhere inside I have that voice. But it may be a long time before I let it out again. As I began to work on my voice, I discovered that the strength I was developing in breath and expression, and the accuracy of pitch and inflection that accompanied it, came with a side effect I wasn't prepared for: an increased vulnerability and sensitivity to the expression of others, and a clarity of emotional vision I had never dreamed possible. After three or four months of serious work, I was producing the belly-deep, rich tone I knew was in me, and developing a degree of pitch control I hadn't had since I was singing completely out of my throat.

"At a certain point I began to realize that the tone I was producing wasn't belly-deep at all...it was crotch-deep."

At a certain point I began to realize the tone I was producing wasn't belly-deep at all...it was crotch-deep. And a lot of things began to fit together. I'd been noticing over the previous weeks that I seemed to be developing a visual acuity that was totally unfamiliar to me. It wasn't that I was seeing more clearly, but rather that I was seeing people more clearly. It manifested primarily in movement and facial expression. I could gaze at a television newscaster or watch a woman wheel a shopping cart past me in a supermarket and almost instantly recognize aspects of the face and movement that weren't part of that individual's "natural" makeup; I could see what was acquired from trauma and injury and what was innately theirs. At first this odd new ability seemed little more than curious. It soon turned frightening when I began not only to sense how numerous and subtle these acquired imperfections were but also how they had been acquired. I couldn't tell exactly what happened, but I always had a clear sense of how and when, and on occasions where I had an opportunity to verify my perceptions I was rarely more than a little off the mark.

What I wasn't noticing, incidentally, was anything positive about what I was sensing. For example, if the right side of a man's face had been twisted ever so slightly into a sly expression of rage, I could see how he'd been repeatedly belittled or ridiculed at age six or seven, and also get a sense of how that facial adaptation was reflected in his current life. But as hard as I looked, I could not see how that adaptation was anywhere near fair compensation for what had happened to them.

It didn't take long to see how this had occurred, and to realize that this ability, not drugs was what killed Jim Morrison. The male voice resonates at a fairly low frequency, a frequency low enough to produce physical effects. Rock singers have traditionally had high voices, or sing primarily in higher registers, but Morrison was one of few natural baritones who leveraged his real tone in his music. And throughout the history of rock and roll, vocalists who do that provoke profound sexual/physical responses. Morrison's voice was arguably no more capable, skilled or expressive than Roger Daltrey's, Robert Plant's, Ian Gillan's or any of the rock vocal giants of his era, but Morrison stands out above them all as a sex symbol. Fats Domino's voice was abominable, technically speaking, but his tone on "Blueberry Hill" is far more sexually evocative than virtually anything Elvis recorded in his heyday. And the tradition continues through the decades. Barry White is perhaps the most vivid example of a sex symbol whose appeal comes from the sheer physicality of a natural low tone.

It's also curious to note how often bass and baritone voices in popular music are matched to gross body size or significant behavior problems. Morrison's iconic image is of a lean, intense young man, but he died with a pot belly that had been growing in size for a couple of years.

A new take on soul music


Eventually I stopped singing. But it was months before I began to "see straight" again. I was working hard on putting my life together at the time and I didn't feel good about leaving behind what I thought was a valuable ability, but the fact was that I couldn't deal with what my voice was doing to me. It's an intensely lonely feeling to look at someone and see vivid details of their life struggle etched in their faces and movements that you know they can't see in you. I had to adopt coping mechanisms to deal with this situation, and caught myself frequently making broad statements about the human condition to diffuse the sense of pain and loneliness I was feeling, statements that seemed well out context in many of the situations in which those observations and feelings emerged. And I knew from the footage I'd seen of Morrison that he had the same quirk, at least early in his career. I also knew enough about his background to see how this response emerged in both of us from essentially the same types of formative experiences. There were many other coincidences I began to notice between what was occurring in my own life and what I'd seen in the lives of famous pop basses and baritones. I knew I was dealing with - perhaps playing with - an ability I didn't know how to handle. But I wasn't releasing brilliant songs, making piles of money and seeing women throw themselves at my feet. I was able to back away from developing that ability.

"I was able to back away from the ability to exploit my voice as a sexual stimulator. Morrison couldn't. And that's what killed him."

Morrison couldn't. And that's what killed him...I became thoroughly convinced of it. His chemical excesses and bizarre behavior are the stuff of legend. But tales of his exploits aren't the least bit glamorous to me when I realize what made his way of life so extreme. I'm just as convinced that at least part of Barry White's difficulty with obesity can be traced to the consequences of exercising his natural vocal tone. The stereotype of the operatic baritone or basso profundo is the large man of powerful personal presence and "enormous appetite for life", usually expressed in gluttony, drug abuse, or excessive behavior. And all stereotypes have at least some basis in recognizable patterns. So I find nothing at all illogical about assuming that the exercise of the voice at low frequencies causes distinct changes in neural structure and response sufficient to account for a Jim Morrison or a Barry White. Tibetan monks have practiced low-frequency chants for years to elicit specific types of internal experiences that would seem to correspond with my own observations.

Jim Morrison saw himself as a poet who used music as the vehicle to express his poetic vision. While critics have not been kind to the poet Morrison, the fact that he saw himself this way indicates that he was very likely even more sensitive than most men with comparable voices. He didn't have the sense of family or personal faith of a great gospel baritone, and didn't have a way of expressing sadness and solitude in an adaptive way; Johnny Cash may be the best example of a popular baritone whose vocal trembling and hesitancy dilutes the physical power of his voice and allows him to use it relatively safely for a lifetime. If Morrison had been able to adopt a similar way of affecting his voice to temper its power somewhat, he might have been less affected by the effects his voice must have had on him, and it's likely that he wouldn't have been nearly as idolized as he was or as tortured by what the use of his voice brought into his range of sensation, and he might have lived to a ripe old age as a "minor poet" and one-time rock singer with a couple of small hits.

Back to the shadows again...

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The Voice 2

There's no clear cause for Morrison's demise...we can explore what led to his heart failure which stemmed from his drinking and drugging and eating which stemmed from his excessive lifestyle which stemmed from his profession which stemmed from generational power imbalances in his heyday which stemmed from philosophical vacuums in the postwar western world which stemmed from the imperialism which allowed for the creation of star systems in entertainment...there are so many levels that one can't truly get to the bottom of the situation. We can only see the dynamic at work, explore it at whatever depth we dare, watch how it develops, and see what makes sense to us. Yeah, Jim Morrison died of heart failure. Probably wouldn't have happened if he didn't drink so much. Yeah, he drank a ton. Probably wouldn't have happened if he wasn't behaving so excessively that he felt the need to flee his own country. Yeah, he behaved excessively. Probably wouldn't have happened if...and on it goes.

"Whatever gift Morrison may have left behind with his voice, I sincerely doubt That Voice was a gift for him."

What we learn here is that drinking is associated with early death if the body is vulnerable, and that realization opens up a new level where we see how isolation and cultural pressure lead to excessive behavior and consumption of poisonous substances. What I am saying here is that most people's current understanding of Morrison's fate stops with that level of the dynamic. It just wasn't enough for me...it didn't explain enough of the picture to satisfy me, to allow me to accept that this happened for a reason and that the reason had significant personal meaning to me. If it was enough to satisfy me, I probably could have continued to develop my voice and found enough reward for my efforts to compensate for the side effects. But that wasn't the case.

And as it turned out, I didn't really know what killed Jim Morrison. All I really had was an understanding of the dynamic surrounding his death at a more subtle level than most others understood. What I do know is that Jim Morrison is dead, and that there is a rich symmetry of events and circumstances which lead up to that event which I understand at a fairly deep level. I understand enough of the situation to know that while I don't have the full picture, I do have enough of it that I don't have to ask more questions about it...at least, not this month. And whatever gift Morrison may have left behind with his voice, I sincerely doubt That Voice was a gift for him."

I Know What Really Killed Jim Morrison
by Cub Lea from CubLea.Net 2002

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

JIM MORRISON IS ALIVE AND WELL ALL OVER THE PLACE

The telephone operator asked, "Will you accept a collect call from Jim Morrison?" I wasn't sure what to say. As far as I knew Jim had been dead for years, yet this was the third such call in a couple of months. Finally, I shrugged and said what the hell, why not? It was an interesting conversation, but it wasn't Jim. At least not the Jim I remembered.
As the coauthor of Jim's biography, No One Here Gets
Out Alive, I've grown used to phone calls and letters
from fans wanting to know if Jim is really dead. Some
of the more interesting communications are from
those who answer the question themselves with a
resounding, if unconvincing, no. In fact, many people claim they are Jim Morrison. Living one's life vicariously
through that of a stranger is one thing; instant
reincarnation is another.
What seems amazing is just how
many people are willing to believe such claims.
Whenever the three surviving Doors performed after Jim's demise in Paris in 1971, their concerts would take on the feeling of a seance. Many in the audience
honestly believed Jim would appear any minute and grab the microphone. Sometimes, Ray Manzarek would fuel the fire by calling out to Jim or announce that he knew Morrison was in the hall somewhere. And remember that single by "the Phantom?" Surely, that was Jim Morrison, said the devotee.
I suppose I'm as responsible for this sort of thing
as anyone. After all, the final chapter of our book,
which deals with the circumstances of Morrison's death,
is rather ambiguous. However, I take no credit for
any of the reincarnated Lizard Kings I have met of
heard from in recent years.
The first one I encountered was a beaut. He surfaced in San Francisco shortly after Jim's reported death and began cashing checks in Morrison's name. He wasn't writing bad checks, mind you; it was his money he was spending. It was just that he dressed as Jim did in his leather period, and that he told everyone he was indeed the singer.
Our conversations were unsettling. He told me he wanted to go to Paris and dig up Jim's grave to prove he wasn't there. "But you have to have permission from twelve Catholic cardinals to do that," he said. A visit to his home was more jarring. There, one end of a large room had been converted into a Morrison shrine - posters, fresh flowers, religious icons, the works. Meanwhile, there were at least two other Jim Morrison's alive and well in Louisiana. I don't know why so many seem to have settled, or arisen from there. Perhaps it's because the Doors' final performance as a quartet was in New Orleans, a concert at which Jim tried to beat the stage to death. The first of these "Morrisons" wrote and published a book called The Bank Of America Of Louisiana. It begins with the words, "This is the story of the reappearance on earth of a dead Hollywood rock star as superhippie, disguised as a mild-minded Louisiana banker." The 200 pages
of prose that followed were described accurately by
one of the few book reviewers who paid it any
attention as "either prenatal or post-Quaalude."
Nonetheless, several thousand copies of the book were sold, largely by mail. Another southern fried Jim
Morrison was reportedly seen by "Donny" of Baton Rouge, who recently wrote me about an incident he says happened in 1978. A good friend of his, Larry, had high hopes of suceeding as a rock musician in those days, Donny said. But he abandoned them after meeting a man who lived in a mansion with a bunch of small, naked children. "I remember Larry telling of one whole wall of a room with nothing but shelves of books all across it," Donny wrote. "Everyone of the books was about Satan or had something to do with him. He also told me of a large chair that looked like a throne on which this man sat and watched over his nude children running around. Now, this will really freak you out. Larry
stumbled onto some letters from major rock bands and
artists, such as Led Zeppelin, Rush and others. Larry
became frightened and decided to get the hell out of
there, and fast! Today, Larry is one of the best
Christians I know of. After his experience at that mansion, he decided he wanted nothing to do with becoming a rock and roll star. I guess you probably have guessed who this kinky, weird old man is - Jim Morrison, The Lizard King In All His Glory!"
A somewhat less likely but more bizarre Jim
Morrison was introduced to me by someone claiming to be his "cosmic mate." "This is to let you know," she
wrote, "that Jim Morrison is living, incognito, with his
cosmic mate, Rhea, and four-year-old son, Jesse Blue
James, in Staten Island. His intital rising was in May
1979. Jim has evolved into a state of pure energy and
can materialize and demateralize. Jim and I are the
first human examples of cosmic mate neutralization ( a
mental and physical process.) We are part of a Divine
Plan and are under Divine Direction. Jim and I can
communicate telepathically/electromagnetically. You are the first, Jerry, to hear from us. We'll get in touch with
you again, soon, and give you a way to reach us (if
you want to.) I. Rhea, am writing this letter under
Jim's direction. I am his Ambassadress-Wife." You might give me a call, Rhea. I'm in the telephone book. But please, don't call collect

by Jerry Hopkins Rolling Stone September 17,1981

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Jim Morrison remembered in Paris

'Paris is a haunted place. In the Café de Flore, it’s Jean-Paul Sartre, groping myopically past the tables. At the Ritz Hotel, it’s Scott and Zelda, tripping on the entrance stairs. And that bang you hear at the Closerie des Lilas is Hemingway forgetting to duck again. But the strangest ghost of all is Jim Morrison.
Poet, poser, protagonist for the Sixties Generation — remember them? — Jim Morrison died in Paris 30 years ago on July 3, at 17 rue Beautreillis near Bastille (note to residents of the building: perhaps you should consider taking your holidays at the beginning of July this year). Gone but definitely not forgotten. Ten years ago, on the 20th anniversary of his death, riots broke out in front of the Père Lachaise cemetery, when police turned thousands of fans/mourners/groupies away. In the ensuing mêlée, the cemetery’s main gates were set on fire by the fans in a vein attempt to gain entry. This time round, anxious city authorities are expecting hoards of devotees at the Père Lachaise (note to readers: avoid interment early July if possible).
While there are still many who believe Morrison’s cult status has more to do with living fast, dying young and just managing to leave a good-looking if slightly bloated corpse, the nay-sayers are definitely in the minority. In the film, “Almost Famous,” rock critic Lester Bangs (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) loudly derides Morrison as a drunk and phony. In reality Bangs praised him in his unreadable book, “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung,” for displaying a hip, knowing irony. That irony was a factor in Francis Coppola’s choice of Morrison’s wired epic, “The End,” to both open and close his own wired epic, “Apocalypse Now.” It’s somehow fitting that the new, extended version of the film goes into general release on the cusp of Morrison’s anniversary.
Naturally, record companies have gotten into the act, with Warner Music France releasing a compilation of his 37 greatest hits, “The Best Of The Doors,” featuring several previously unreleased numbers. This will be followed on June 25 by a very rare live album with unreleased material called “Live In America” which will launch a new Doors label: Bright Midnight Records (Rhino/Warner). There will be a concert July 3, “A Feast Of Friends: A Tribute to Jim Morrison and The Doors,” at the Elysée-Montmartre (72 bd Rochechouart, 18e, M° Anvers, tel: [phone]). And anyone interested in involved testimony should consult Gilles Yepremian at www.angelfire.com/de/doors4ly/index.html.
To get into the season of mourning and remembrance myself, I decided to revisit Jim’s grave before the barricades go up. The first time I made the pilgrimage, 20 years ago, you didn’t need a map. Painted arrows and graffiti led straight to a shell-shocked zone within the cemetery. Mourners would sit around Jim’s tomb gazing at his bust which was missing a nose, just like a real statue of a Greek god. They would sip alcohol, smoking illegal substances and smash up a neighboring tomb.
When I dropped by 10 years ago, just after the riot, I found an entirely different ambience, with access to Jim and his neighbors roped off and two nervous guards standing by to enforce the no fly zone.
On this occasion I forgot where Jim was, and had to resort to following a couple of hippies. It turned out they were lost too. (I should have known. The last time I followed a couple of hippies, about two decades ago, we all got busted). With the aid of a map from a kiosk (10F the hippies didn’t put in) we finally found him. The rope was gone, the tomb could again be approached, but there was still a guard. On Jim’s grave were the following unburnt offerings: one unsmoked Chesterfield cigarette. One unsmoked Camel Light. One unsmoked non-filter Pall Mall (obviously from a hard-core fan). A dozen yellow roses (dead). One stone (Jim was into the kabala). One pot of purple geraniums (wimpy French traditionalist). I leant over and brushed his tombstone with my hands. It was bone dry. Not a single tear.'

No end to the end…by Wallace Merrit
Paris Voice (the Magazine for English Speaking Parisians) June 2001!

PARIS, France -- Thousands of fans have gathered at Doors singer Jim Morrison's Paris grave to mark the 30th anniversary of his death.

On alert for the trouble that has marred previous anniversaries, French security guards hovered as aging hippies, teenage fans and bemused-looking tourists took photos and laid wreaths at his modest plot in Pere Lachaise cemetery.

But with alcohol and music now banned, the mood was more that of an ordinary family funeral than a late 1960s "happening."

Unruly behaviour in 1991 on the 20th anniversary of the iconic American singer's death saw police disperse visitors with teargas. Five years later the cemetery was closed early.

There was no official figure for the numbers of fans who turned up at Pere Lachaise, but a police officer told the Associated Press that thousands of fans had made the pilgrimage.

Paris city officials had said they expected between 10,000 to 20,000 fans to turn up.

"Jim Morrison is a giant hero of modern times, a true rebel," Patrice Conus, 42, of Lausanne in Switzerland, told Reuters.

"But this is a cemetery after all, people have got a right to their rest," added Conus of Pere Lachaise's roll-call of famous residents, from Oscar Wilde and Edith Piaf to Moliere, Bizet and Chopin.

'His energy still with us'
Earlier, former Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek visited the grave to pay his own personal tribute to the band's frontman.

Manzarek clasped his hands in prayer in front of the grave, and remained silent for several minutes. He then chatted with other fans before leaving.

Manzarek told The Associated Press he felt Morrison's presence, even 30 years after his death.

"Jim is always with me," Manzarek said. "The ancient Egyptians believed that every time you say a man's name, he's still alive.

"Every day, somewhere in the world, a Doors song is played," he said. "The energy of Jim Morrison is still with us, in the ether."

The collection of flowers, scrawled messages and lipstick stains on the graveside every day attest to Morrison's continued drawing power 30 years after being found dead in the bath at his Paris apartment, aged 27.

Speculation had recently emerged that the lease on Morrison's cemetery plot was to expire, forcing the transfer of his remains to the United States. Cemetery officials have denied this, saying he has a permanent place.

"It is totally unfounded," said Henri Beaulieu, assistant director with Paris' Central Cemetery Service, quoted by the Associated Press. "Jim Morrison isn't moving." About 1.5 million people visit the cemetery every year to see the famous graves.
CNN July 3rd 2001

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Death Disclosed: Jim Morrison, twenty-seven, rock superstar, The lead singer of The Doors. Though his manager fueled suspicion by keeping Morrison's death a secret for six days - until after his burial last week - there was no evidence of a drug connection as in last year's deaths of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, nor was Morrison's fifth-a-day booze habit officially a factor; police listed a heart attack as the cause after Morrison was found dead in the bathtub of his apartment in Paris, where he had been living as a writer in recent months. His trademarks in the rock culture included his arcane, keenly suggestive lyrics, sung in a throaty baritone, by turns sullen and frenzied. But with his skintight pants and lascivious style, the Florida-born admiral's son was best known as an erotic male performer in the line of succession that runs from Elvis Presley to Mick Jagger; Morrison once overdid it to the extent of being found guilty of indecent exposure at a rock concert in Miami. Morrison leaves his wife, Pamela his parents, a brother, and a sister.
NEWSWEEK - July 1971

"I've had a good time these last three or four years. I've met a lot of interesting people and seen things in a short space of time that I probably would not have run into in twenty years of living. I can't say I regret it. If I had it to do over, I think I would have gone for the quiet, undemonstrative artist, plodding away in his own garden."
Jim Morrison

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

JIM MORRISON DIES

Jim Morrison, the 25-year-old lead singer of The Doors rock group, died last Saturday in Paris, his public relations firm said today. His death was attributed to natural causes, but details were withheld pending the return of Mr. Morrison's agent from France. Funeral services were held in Paris today.

In his black leather jacket and skin-tight vinyl pants, Jim Morrison personified rock music's image of superstar as sullen, mystical sexual poet.

The Doors, a quartet founded in 1964 in and near the film school at the University of California at Los Angeles, became by 1967 one of the most popular groups in the country, attracting the attention of serious critics who discussed their music's origins and meanings, as well as screaming, hysterical teenagers who sometimes had to be peeled off the performers by the stage hands at the group's frenzied concerts.

Their performances were invariably treated by reviewers as events of theater, for the Doors helped to take the electronically amplified rock music that bloomed on the West Coast out of the sound studio and into the concert hall.

Their music was loud and distinctive, but perhaps the most attention was paid to the lyrics, written by Mr. Morrison, which were filled with suggestive and frequently perverse meanings abetted by Mr. Morrison's grunts, sneers and moans on stage.

"Think of us," Mr. Morrison once said "as erotic politicians." One critic echoed others when he called Mr. Morrison's presentations "lewd, lascivious, indecent and profane." Indeed, in one of his most famous episodes, he was arrested and later found guilty of indecent exposure at a rock concert in Miami in March of 1969.

It was this concert, which shocked even some of his teenage fans, that led to a giant Rally for Decency in the Orange Bowl later that month, attended by 30,000 persons. Mr. Morrison was also forcibly removed from a New Haven stage in 1967 after he allegedly exposed himself.

Mr. Morrison's first two hits were Light My Fire and People Are Strange. One of his important works was The End, an 11-minute extended popsong that ended with a vision of violent death.
New York Times 1971

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Jim Morrison's Perpetual Flame
By ETER MIKELLBANK

he question, freshly sprayed across an unmarked tomb in scarlet paint, begs an answer. Across the cemetery, a thousand tombs away, a crudely painted arrow like an ugly gash points in reply: "JIM." The arrow and name deface a massive turn-of-the-century sepulcher, their crimson scrawl the only color amid damp, cluttered rows of black and gray tombs, grayer cobblestone paths, winding among steep hills.

More than 24 years ago, on a long Fourth of July weekend, when most Americans were packing holiday picnics, James Douglas Morrison, son of a U.S. Navy admiral and former Clearwater resident, packed it in. Allegedly struck down by a heart attack while writing poetry in Paris, Morrison had blazed brightly, briefly, as lead singer/lyricist of The Doors, psychedelic rockers whose Light My Fire was the anthem for the late '60s soundtrack.

On his good nights, the angelic-looking performer could be spellbinding. On his bad nights, he got busted.

And in the afterlife, he's one of Paris' most popular tourist attractions: simply, the most notorious celebrity resident in notorious Pere Lachaise Cemetery.

How popular can a dead rock star be more than a quarter-century after his final performance? Well, only Napoleon at Invalides and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath the Arc de Triomphe outdraw him, Paris tourist officials admit privately.

And therein lies a tale ... People Are Strange

From the beginning, Morrison's life, career, writings and recordings were an inseparable, onrushing mass sounding loudly of falling breaks, impending metal crunch and lyrical sirens such as "There's a killer on the road/His brain is squirming like a toad ... "

Depending on your viewpoint and musical tastes, his death was either the tragedy of Icarus or a flight on Buddy Holly Airways. At best, it accorded him charter membership in rock's "Stupid Club." In memoriaum, however, Morrison has blossomed into pop culture's Lord Byron, a romantic poet tragically lost. In death, his larger-than-life stature has become that of a still-slender Elvis. Valentino in a T-shirt. A perennially overdosed James Dean swerving that last highway bend.

In lingered bereavement, for many, his hasty retirement from earthly bounds remains a Hugh Grant betrayal, and though a Morrison-penned line such as "Well, I woke up this morning/and got myself a beer ... " may not instantly sound like a line from Keats or Shelley, it does articulate a certain sentiment among the still-adoring legions making pilgrimage to St. Jim's shrine. Hello, I Love You

Smack in the Right Bank, Pere Lachaise is Paris' largest green space. Decreed the city's Eastern Cemetery by Napoleon in 1804, its 104 acres overflow with remarkable funerary sculptures and dead celebrities. Its paths and sidepaths, its guide notes, " ... form a truly phantasmagoric maze. Mystic enclosures within earshot of the sounds of the city, Pere Lachaise lives on its history, its secrets and its legends (necrophilia, vampirism, prostitution, black masses).

"The cemetery is also a place of pilgrimage for thousands."

Between 1,000 and 2,000 daily seek out Morrison, who easily wrested away Pere Lachaise's resident black sheep award from previous titleholders Oscar Wilde, Isadora Duncan and the literary tag-team of Gertrude Stein/Alice B. Toklas (buried in a joint plot). And while their reverent visitors wouldn't disturb a languid blade of grass, Morrison's necromantic cult turns the cemetery on its ear.

The small, sun-blind plot Morrison may (or may not) occupy is a bold, hieroglyphic Valhalla; a shrine, drawing the faithful and merely curious alike. Initially, fans remade Section 26 into graffiti Mecca, where waters were awash with LSD, marring, scarring and spray-painting everything in sight with spirited tributes, laments and black-humored encouragement ("Get well soon, JIM") in a dozen languages. Most pledge to keep alive the spirit of "Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll" which earned Morrison his place in their hearts.

And here. In fact, their decorating devotions almost cost Morrison his plot altogether.

For 20 years, worshiping fans also desecrated adjoining tombs, leaving behind an hourly trail of emptied Johnny Walker pints, carvings, flowers and drug paraphernalia. In 1991, after years of complaints, however, cemetery officials and estate attorneys struck terms under which Morrison could rest in peace.

His original tombstone and bust (which had developed a bad case of advanced psychedelia -- day-glo green hair, giant red spots) were removed. The area scrubbed down, security increased, a new graffiti-resistant monument, a massive block of granite-pebbled stone better suited to the inscrutable minutiae of Yosemite National Park (" ... formed nearly 55-million years ago from limey ooze on the bottom of shallow lakes ... ") was set in place with the epitaph: Kata Ton Daimona Eaytok.

Leaning a bouquet of roses beneath the inscription, one fan tells another, "It means "Holding Back the Demons."'

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

Well, it doesn't.

The "Soft Parade," they call themselves.

The vagrant-spirited and young, mostly in their teens, arrive early in their fashion of mourning blacks, leathers, jeans and Black & Decker hairstyles. As the day progresses, however, it becomes evident that Morrison, now starring in his third decade as an ageless idol, is an attraction with cross-generational appeal. Young and old, preteens and Lacoste seniors. School groups. Camera-straps and banana bags abound. Graceland blonds in too-snug Spandex posing for photos beside their grown grandchildren. Hundreds every hour.

"We come because this is something of Paris," explains Lucca, 23, from Bologna, Italy. "Things like the Tower Eiffel, like the Louvre. Also because I like The Doors."

His girlfriend, Antonella, spreading a souvenir map across an adjacent flat tombstone, suggests other celebrity resting places she wishes to visit. "Maria Callas, Daumier, Modigliani, Piaf ... " she calls out.

Beginning to photograph everything in sight, Lucca, ignoring her stream -- "Chopin, Moliere, Proust, Rossini ... " -- discovers that a rain-speckled paper adorning Morrison's stone is another fan's left-behind poem in Italian.

"Balzac ... Colette ... Seurat," Antonella continues.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Silently, three pale blonds amble into the courtyard, nesting atop an adjacent slab. "We want to see his grave," says Dutch punker Andy Speckmann, "because we are his fans. It's difficult to explain. How shall we say it? It makes me sad."

"You ever stop to think," another in the trio, betraying an American accent, asks, "what he would have turned into if he'd lived? Think he would have turned into a fat old drunk or some cheesy rock star like Mick Jagger?"

At the center of Morrison's cult is the mystery of whether he is actually dead -- the still-beguiling disbelief many bring to his gravesite. Given the extraordinary circumstance of his demise -- quick death, quicker burial without public funeral in a foreign land -- the rumors around Jim have been rampant for years. And despite the indignities of an Oliver Stone biopic, they continue to grow.

Tired of performing, the fans whisper, of celebrity, of harassment and arraignments, Morrison staged his own death. Slipping off to run guns in Africa. Drugs in Southeast Asia. More recently, he has been reported recording that much-delayed comeback album. And in truth, many surveying the inauspicious, earth-covered grave come away convinced he's not buried there at all. That the too-small sham grave is only part of his greater and continuing hoax itself.

Studying the inscription, the American muses, "Gee, I was only 4 when Jim died." Noting the carvings and graffiti, the third blond decries the apparent lack of respect paid Morrison, "a prophet," by his fans.

"No, Jim would've liked this," the American counters. "He used to get drunk with friends at graveyards."

Consoled, the trio wedges in between stones, extracting a wine bottle from a backpack. Shunted back a reasonable distance by passing security, they realize they've forgotten a corkscrew. Others arrive laden with twist-cap beer. The damp air fills with the scent of hashish. More arrive loudly, including a Swiss Army knife (with corkscrew), replacing those wandering off from the constant grave watch.

"I've run out of things to see in Paris after a day and a half," says Susan, 21, from San Francisco, clutching a straw hat against a fast-rising wind. "This is something if you're young and American, you have to see.

"It's also like, you know, if you're away from home like it's nice to see something American."

Rain quickly falling heavily through the high cathedral trees shrouding Morrison, several umbrellas pop from backpacks, sheltering two-dozen suddenly huddled strangers. The wine bottle, passed and drained, is pitched ceremoniously upon the grave. Antonella, wet and visibly angry, sails off toward Callas. Reluctantly, Lucca follows after.

Skittering between tombs, his voice draws away in continuing recitation: "To teach the living and tell the dead/c'mon, c'mon/ Now touch me, babe!" This is the End, Beautiful Friend

Morrison clearly danced over the edge to his end. In a way, his death was only self-actualization of his avowed "No One Gets Outta' Here Alive" philosophy and for many, possessing educative degrees in MTV, he embodies the classicism of a Greek hero: He is Icarus, captured before his fall in music videos. Oedipus, in leather pants, with a Greatest Hits package.

Saint Jim, rock's wayward martyr, victim of success, sacrificed to excess, found in a Left Bank bathtub.

He'd undoubtedly be tickled (perhaps he is) knowing he continues tweaking authorities' noses in extremis -- a quarter of a century on -- to an extent that cemetery officials decline all discussion of him. One uniformed gendarme, however, with 20 years' cemetery service, says Morrison's presence breeds drug use and vandalism within Pere Lachaise.

"The fanatics of rock degrade other memorials, and every July 3, thousands overrun the park," he complains, "playing guitars, smoking, drinking and doing drugs in the arm."

Outside the cemetery's ivy-cloaked walls, Brigette Gomez's small flower shop bustles. Morrison, she insists, "is the most popular" and his fans "buy mostly roses, lilies and maps."

"I like the fans," she laughs. "The punks with green hair pointed straight up come in, six or seven together, to buy him flowers and they're very polite. People ask most about Jim. The Americans, English and Italians. Then they ask about where to find Piaf, Chopin and Allen Kardec. The French and the Africans come mostly to visit Kardec, the Father of Spiritualism."

Gomez smiles. Pere Lachaise, she concludes, "has a little bit of everything for all generations." Freelance writer Peter Mikelbank rides the Metro to Pere-Lachaise from his home in Paris. If you go

Cimetiere Pere-Lachaise -- Boulevard de Menilmontant in Paris' 20th arrondisement is open daily from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Nearest Metro stop: Pere-Lachaise. Jim Morrison's tomb is located in the cemetery's Sixth Division, along the pathway called Chemin Lauriston.

Besides Jim, Pere-Lachaise's grounds are home to Oscar Wilde's immense, winged sphinx (Div. 89, Balzac (Div. 48); Colette (Div. 4); Rossini (Div. 4); Chopin (Div. 11); Proust (Div. 85); while Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas share a plot (Div. 94). Isadora Duncan, Max Ernst and Maria Callas (the Columbarium).

Detailed maps from the flower shops beside the cemetery walls (approximately $2).

St. Petersburg Times March 23, 1997

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Jim Morrison's ride on the storm


Morrison (third from left) and The Doors exemplified 60s counter-culture

In the 30 years since his death, Jim Morrison's story has lost none of its fascination - and his reputation is probably greater now than in the heyday of his group The Doors.
The idea of the group came to Morrison, born in Florida in 1943, when he was a student of theatre arts at the University of California in the early 1960s.

He sang a rudimentary composition to a college friend, the keyboardist Ray Manzarek, who was impressed enough to invite him to join the band Rick and the Ravens.

The group rehearsed half a dozen Morrison compositions - alienating two of the musicians, who left - and started a residency in Los Angeles' Sunset Strip under the name The Doors.

Morrison, characteristically, had found the name in Aldous Huxley's account of drug experiences The Doors Of Perception.

Fired

The group's music was an experience, too - it ranged from the catchiness of Light My Fire to the chilling and dramatic The End.



The Doors first toured Europe in 1968

It was the latter song that got the group fired from the Whisky-A-Go-Go club, but they soon clinched a record deal thanks to the goods offices of fellow Californian band Love, who recommended them to Elektra Records.

Their first album, released in 1967, showed off the excellent musicianship of keyboardist Manzarek and guitarist Robbie Krieger, and found Morrison developing his unique vocal persona - half withdrawn, half menacing, wholly unforgettable.

The album's Light My Fire was a number 1 hit in the US, though only grazed the British charts.

Their following albums Strange Days and Waiting For The Sun, provided further American hits and, in Hello I love You, a British number 15.

But commercial success was decidedly double-edged for Morrison.

Intoxication

The band was losing some of its credibility in the rock underground, which may have led the singer to feel obliged to behave more outrageously.

He was drinking and using drugs heavily and in 1969 he was arrested for indecent exposure, lewd conduct and public intoxication after a concert in Miami's Dinner Key auditorium.

Though some of the charges were later dropped, the scandal made it hard for the band to work live for some time.

Morrison used the crisis as a spur to creativity and produced one of the group's best albums, Morrison Hotel, in 1970.

Literary career

But Morrison's mind was elsewhere.

He had already published two volumes of poetry, The Lords and The New Creatures, and planned to begin a literary career once his contractual obligations to Elektra were fulfilled.

His last record with the Doors, LA Woman, was quite possibly their finest, and contained another defining track, the haunting Riders On The Storm.

But Morrison himself was now in a steep physical decline.

Escaping to Paris while the band was still mixing LA Woman, he spoke of dropping music altogether and becoming a writer - but died in his bathtub - officially of a heart attack - on 3 July 1971.

Only his common law wife Pamela Courson (later a suicide) and an anonymous doctor saw the body, leaving the way clear for rock's rumour machine to create the legend that Morrison had faked his own death.

He is buried at Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, where his grave has become a shrine for successive generations of fans.

Eerie

Since Morrison's death his records have never been out of print and his influence has been heard on a great many rock artists, including Britain's Echo and the Bunnymen, Simple Minds and The Stranglers.

Hollywood, too, has found the Doors' eerie music attractive.

The End was memorably used in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, and in 1991 Oliver Stone helped cement the Morrison legend with his film biography The Doors starring Val Kilmer.

The mainstream acceptance which had so disturbed Morrison had arrived, and, so far at least, it has not gone away.
BBC News Tuesday, 3 July, 2001.