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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Dec 28, 2004 12:12:52 GMT
The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never anymore the dead.
The verses in it say and say:
"The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay."
So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can't help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come.
What is it men are shrinking from?
It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie.In A Disused Graveyard by Robert Frost. Post any photos or links that might be of interest to any fan wanting to know a little more about the early days of Jim's grave before the current headstone. Here are a couple old and not so old.....    home.flash.net/~motodata/scanthis/morrisonland/grave.htmlwww.planetneil.com/paris/jim.htmlcrabsody.topcities.com/glenn/doors/lizardking.htm
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Dec 28, 2004 12:19:30 GMT
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Dec 28, 2004 12:37:02 GMT
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Dec 30, 2004 12:23:11 GMT
Cemetery staff want to show rock star the door  Top draw: Jim Morrison's grave at the Pere Lachaise cemetery The fifth most popular attraction in Paris celebrates its 200th anniversary this month rather regretting the pulling power of its better-known residents - and fed up with the behaviour of their fans. The Père Lachaise cemetery, the vast, Gothic and often tumbledown final resting place for nearly 1 million souls, drew more than 2 million visitors last year, behind only Notre Dame, the Eiffel tower, the Louvre and the Pompidou centre on the city's must-see list. The tombs of some of its denizens - Chopin, Edith Piaf, Molière, Bizet, Oscar Wilde - are redoubtable tourist magnets, but for the cemetery's 100 staff it means extra work to keep the cemetery clean and clear of litter, graffiti and at times unorthodox tributes. All are eclipsed by the necropolis's biggest draw, however: the gravestone of Jim Morrison. Christian Charlet, who is responsible for the cemetery and its 70,000 tombs, would happily do without the Doors frontman, who passed out in his bath (and into legend) in Paris in July 1971. "We'd like to kick him out, because we don't want him, he causes too many problems," Mr Charlet told Reuters news agency. "If we could get rid of him, we'd do it straight away." Unlike many of the tombs, Morrison's is on a perpetual lease. Père Lachaise has had to hire a security guard to watch over the singer's last resting place. Fans still queue to take a picture, mutter a few words or lay something - a flower, a note, a candle, a cigarette butt - on his tomb. Before the guard's appointment, they would converge to smoke pot and (it is whispered) have sex. A couple of years ago, things got so bad that relatives of some unfamous Frenchmen buried nearby got up a petition to ask for the body to be exhumed and sent home. "People come here not to worship the dead, but think they can do what they want, as if it was a rave party," said Mr Charlet. Père Lachaise's current popularity is in contrast to its early days, when the cemetery - which opened in May 1804 - was given the cold shoulder by Parisians accustomed to their dead being tossed into common graves. An 1817 advertising campaign, and the transfer to the site of Abelard, Heloise, Molière and La Fontaine, made little difference, and it was not until Balzac featured the cemetery in his 1835 novel, Le Père Goriot, that it became fashionable to buy a plot. The cemetery, a vast park in north-east Paris, spread over 44 hectares (109 acres) and boasting 6,000 trees, also holds the remains of Proust, Balzac and Simone Signoret. The most-visited (and vandalised) grave after Morrison's is that of Wilde. The author's towering memorial features a very obviously male angel. Soon after Wilde was buried in 1900, a former headkeeper, out of deference to local feeling, castrated the sculpture and for years used the testicles as a paperweight. Despite a plaque reading "Respect the memory of Oscar Wilde and do not deface this tomb", the vandalism continues: a tradition has arisen of planting purple lipstick kisses on Wilde's tombstone. Advertiser links Allbrandsnew.co.uk for - Buy a new Car Allbrandsnew.co.uk offers you the consumer new pre reg... allbrandsnew.co.uk Buy a Second-Hand Car Click here to apply online for a car credit. At Yes Car... yescarcredit.net Buy and Sell Cars on Ebay.co.uk You'll find a fabulous range of new and used cars, bikes and... ebay.co.uk Cemetery stonemasons say that marker-pen graffiti can be cleaned off, and scratched messages rubbed down with sandpaper, but lipstick contains fats which sink into the stone and cannot be removed. Even some non-celebrities' gravestones attract attention: the statue of Victor Noir, a dashing young journalist killed in 1870, has become a fertility symbol, its crotch rubbed to a brassy shine by women seeking to increase their chance of conceiving. Jon Henley in Paris, Tuesday May 4, 2004 The Guardian UK Just in case anyone gets worried by this. Jim's grave has been the feature of rumours for years now. His parents renewed the lease in pertuity (forever) and set up a legal team to look after the grave and its legal matters. They have been responsible for helping clean up the 'Morrison' mess and provided equipment for keeping the area tidy.
Jim is in no way going anywhere so don't believe the silly rumours...   |
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Post by darkstar on Jan 1, 2005 17:10:15 GMT
MORRISON
BONEYARD: STRANGE DAYS by Scott Johnson January 19, 1998
(Newsweek)
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.
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Post by ensenada on Jan 1, 2005 19:20:04 GMT
good info. has anyone heard anymore about those silly barriers? its wierd to think that once the grave stone was a simple block of concrete, with words etched in! and its a shame that bust wasnt a more permanent feature that couldnt be so easily robbed.
i wonder who has that bust now? imagine how much that would go for on ebay? what a shame...
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Jan 1, 2005 19:25:11 GMT
good info. has anyone heard anymore about those silly barriers? its wierd to think that once the grave stone was a simple block of concrete, with words etched in! and its a shame that bust wasnt a more permanent feature that couldnt be so easily robbed. i wonder who has that bust now? imagine how much that would go for on ebay? what a shame... The first marker was just a circle of sea shells on the soil....there are photos of the grave taken on the 10th July 1971.....I have them in my files somewhere ...... The fence will sadly be with us in July Rick....... |
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Post by stuart on Jan 1, 2005 21:50:10 GMT
Who took the pics on July 10th? was it Herve Muller or PKM?.
Does PKM not say something in her book about flying to paris about the time when jim's death was announcned, she went right to pere lachaise to his grave.
im sure it's something like that in her book so she says.
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Jan 1, 2005 21:53:58 GMT
Who took the pics on July 10th? was it Herve Muller or PKM?. Does PKM not say something in her book about flying to paris about the time when jim's death was announcned, she went right to pere lachaise to his grave. im sure it's something like that in her book so she says. The pixs I have in my files were taken by a fan.....I can't racall the name or the site where I got them but they were not PKs or HMs.... |
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Post by thebadcowboy on Jan 3, 2005 23:44:26 GMT
surely yuh wont let it stop you though........! The fence will sadly be with us in July Rick....... |
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Post by stuart on Jan 4, 2005 20:42:03 GMT
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Jan 19, 2005 16:23:05 GMT
JIM'S FUNERAL PARIS THE END
Jim was buried in his plot on July,7,1971-
4 meters deep at 8.30am in the most inexpensive
coffin the mortician had to offer.
Pamela Courson paid only 366 French Francs
for the "cercueilchene verne"
A veneered coffin,and 878 Francs in total for the entire burial.
A French Franc in 1971 was about five to a dollar.
" 5 to 1" One wonders where her sense of propriety was let alone her money.
According to Madame Colinette,who witnessed the burial, the funeral "was disgraceful"
Madame Colinette has stated that the procedure of putting Jim in the ground took about ten minutes.
No priest or minister was present,no prayers were said. Agnes Varda said a few words.
Everyone left in a hurry and never returned,the whole scene was piteous and miserable Madame has stated. The interview with Madame Colinette can be seen in the GermanTV film entitled- "Jim Morrison Quiet Days in Paris"
After Jim was buried nothing was left but a little hill of mud.
A few days later someone laid some shells around it. They were stolen as was the black shield the cemetery officials erected in August 1971 saying- in white lettering "Douglas Morrison James" 1943 1971
Excerpt from
"Paris Guide for Doors Fans "
RainerModdemann
TheDoors Quarterly Magazine 1999
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Feb 10, 2005 12:02:59 GMT
Who took the pics on July 10th? was it Herve Muller or PKM?. Does PKM not say something in her book about flying to paris about the time when jim's death was announcned, she went right to pere lachaise to his grave. im sure it's something like that in her book so she says.  This is the photo of Jims grave supposedly taken 10th July 1971. I have no clue as to the validity of that as I never saw the place other than in photos for 31 years. |
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Post by thebadcowboy on Feb 10, 2005 15:38:06 GMT
i doubt that the last picture there was taken on july 10 71... that would have only been a couple of days after he was put in the ground...
i dont reckon the concrete kerbing would have been put down that soon after..........!
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Feb 10, 2005 15:54:41 GMT
As I say I dunno mate!
This pic was on a site from around 2000...long gone I saved a coupla pages and this was on one.
I have seen the pix of the shells but can't remember if the kerb was there.
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Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Feb 10, 2005 17:30:40 GMT
Thats the shell photo I have and I've been looking for it for bloody ages without success ....cheers dude!....
So that pic from the 10th could not have been correct...
musta been later in the decade.
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Post by jochen on Feb 10, 2005 18:05:24 GMT
Thats the shell photo I have and I've been looking for it for bloody ages without success ....cheers dude!.... So that pic from the 10th could not have been correct... musta been later in the decade. No problem... I guess the shell photo is one of the very first pictures of Jims grave, probably it shows how it looked like right after his burial. The second picture is most probably from PK(M). I would say it shows the grave right after Jims death was officially published in the news and when some fans went there for the first time to lay down their presents. I am not quite sure if this is from Gilles... |
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Post by alabamaangel on Feb 19, 2006 19:20:07 GMT
i doubt that the last picture there was taken on july 10 71... that would have only been a couple of days after he was put in the ground... i dont reckon the concrete kerbing would have been put down that soon after..........!
I think normally you have to wait a about a year before putting a headstone on as the earth has to settle, and often sinks. |
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Post by eressie on Feb 19, 2006 19:24:21 GMT
I read somewhere the concrete kerbing was put there after some guys tried to dig up his body.
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Post by ensenada on Feb 25, 2006 14:25:09 GMT
i think its pretty disgusting that they rush buried him and gave him a shit little stone...infact it didnt even say anything did it? why couldnt pam, ronay etc etc waited and asked relatives and friends to come over for the funeral and spent a wee bit more money on it....i still find it very strange.
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