Posted on 07/17/2007 4:54:23 PM PDT by RDTF
Even on a gray day in Paris last week, there was one place you could find a crowd of tourists from places as varied as Rome, Tokyo and Orlando, Florida — gathered at the Pere Lachaise cemetery, around the graveside of Jim Morrison. Forget Chopin, Oscar Wilde, and the hundreds of other luminaries interred among its chestnut trees, the frontman of The Doors has long been the cemetery's headline draw. Part of the attraction is the almost mystical magnetism he exuded in life; part is the macabre mystery of his demise: How did one of the legends of the rock age die in a Paris bathtub in 1971 at age 27, of what the Paris police report said were "natural causes"?
He did not, according to Sam Bernett, whose French book The End — Jim Morrison has just appeared here. Bernett, then 21, ran the hottest Paris club, the Rock 'n Roll Circus, which (as the name suggests) drew a nightly crowd of stoners. After midnight on July 3, Bernett claims he discovered Morrison's lifeless body in the club's bathroom, having clearly overdosed on heroin. Angelic images of Morrison still grace countless T-shirts ($22 at funeral stores around Pere Lachaise), but Bernett paints an uglier picture. "There was foam coming out of his lips," the former nightclub owner told TIME. A doctor who was in the club that night concluded that Morrison had overdosed, and "said Jim was dead," he says. "I wanted to call the police or rescue people to help. They [Morrison's drug dealers] said no," and instead had the body driven back to the apartment the singer had rented with his girlfriend, Pamela Courson. It was then soaked in the bath tub.
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(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
I was 5 or 6 when he went on Ed Sullivan and performed in his druggy/boozy stupor. I’ll never forget it. He was climbing the scenery. It scared me. [I liked Kookla, Fran, and Ollie.]
Captain Kangaroo never tripped out on live TV.
You live by the drugs you die by the drugs.
This French fella sure takes a lotta words to say “dead junkie”.
Ride the snake.
I absolutely believe the then-21-year-old nightclub owner. That's the way it would go down. The truth will out. The guy was a tormented soul with hypnotic stage talent born in an age just technically able to create instant Western fame. Somehnow, it reminds me of Tombstone. Doc's famous epitaph for Johnny Ringo comes to mind:
"He was just too high-strung."
On the other hand, "Riders on the Storm" was a really good, lasting tune and only Morrison could have delivered it the way he did.
I guess his love became a funeral pyre.
(He was awfully cute, though!)
It sounds plausible to me as well. I read one Doors' biography that claimed Morrison had already been buried before the three other members of the band were even informed of his death.
Nah, why I saw him just the other day, hanging out with Elvis and Osama Bin Laden.
Sprawled out in a bathtub with drug inducted contentment.
While nobody denies that Morrison dabbled in drugs, his real downfall was booze. In a period of less than 5 short years he went from chiseled rock sex symbol to fat, bloated alcoholic. In the later years, he was often too drunk to even perform live. He'd show up late, mumble a few bars incoherently and pass out on stage, urinating himself on more than one occasion.
The Doors should have soldiered on without him. There was some real musical talent amongst the other three members and guitarist Robby Krieger knew how to pen hit songs.
I can believe that. Booze and drugs combined with enlightened hedonism make a lethal lifestyle. He wasn’t the first and won’t be the last.
I heartily agree. In the footage of the live concert, they, or at least some of them, look stoned. But to me they're harmless dope-smokin' working musicians, in the noble tradition of Louis Armstrong. Not drunk, stoned.
Morrison in the footage, on the other hand -- yeah, helium high on one or two or more drugs -- reds, whites, heroin, acid, peyote, maybe, alcohol included. Or maybe even just booze, who knows.
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