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Death of a Rock Star

Jim Morrison was the wildest man in rock history
By David Cocksedge

THE TELEPHONE rang just after 7.30 am on a sunny morning in Paris on 3 July 1971. A woman's voice was on the line, speaking very softly. “Jim is unconscious, and he's bleeding”, she said between sobs. “Can you call an ambulance for me? You know I can't speak French. Oh, please hurry…I think he may be dying.”

The anguished call to Frenchman Alain Ronay was made by Pamela Courson, the lover of rock singer Jim Morrison of ‘The Doors', a California-based band with a huge following worldwide. Her call was one of the first hints of a tragedy that has remained one of rock music's most tantalizing mysteries for over thirty years.

No one still alive can say with complete confidence what took place in the fourth-floor apartment that Pamela shared with Morrison at 17 Rue Beautrellis. Morrison apparently died in the bathtub there at the age of 27. Only two people were fully party to the tragedy: Pamela herself and an aristocratic French drug dealer named Jean de Breteuil with whom she had been two-timing Morrison for years. Both died soon after.

But it is safe to state that in the frenzied hours following Morrison's demise, an improvised, cynical and remarkably skillful cover-up enabled a sordid and potentially scandalous heroin overdose (with obvious criminal implications) to be officially declared a common heart attack

Some have gone so far as to accuse Pamela Courson of killing Jim Morrison, either deliberately or accidentally. Her behavior was certainly deeply bizarre - that telephone call pleading for the swift dispatch of an ambulance was made when she knew that her boyfriend was already dead.

Morrison was the greatest American rock star of his era. While his musical contemporaries embraced the gentle hippie ethos of peace and love, he seemed to be on a one-man suicide mission to shock the country out of its social and sexual conformity. As lead singer of The Doors, his mesmeric stage shows – complete with throbbing war-dance rhythms and simulated couplings with the microphone stand - were expressly designed to outrage and provoke. But though he was locked into a crazy tailspin of alcoholism and drug abuse, a Big Dipper ride to self-destruction, Morrison was no dumb rock singer. He was an extremely intelligent man, versed in the works of Kerouac, Huxley, Rimbaud, Bauldaire and William Blake.

Rock journalist Jerry Hopkins wrote: “He was a singer, philosopher, poet, delinquent, brilliant and obsessive. Worshipped by his fans, hated by the establishment, hounded by the media, Morrison stood for all the unpredictable and forbidden excitement that youth dreamed of. He was a mythmaker who was both hailed as a poet of the counter culture and reviled as a corrupter of youth. Jim Morrison was a reckless genius.”

Millions of fans worldwide could forgive Morrison anything, so haunting was his voice and so passionate and poetic his songs. Doors albums have sold over 50 million copies and rising to this day. At first Morrison played the part of the wild rock star to the hilt until he became bored by the mindless adoration of his followers and friends. He felt that essentially he was a poet and wished to be taken more seriously.

James Douglas Morrison came from a resolutely respectable background: his father Stephen commanded an aircraft carrier in the US Navy and rose to the rank of admiral during the Vietnam conflict. Jim was born in Melbourne , Florida on 8 December 1943 near what is now Cape Canaveral , and formed few lasting friendships as his family constantly moved from one military base to another. Like many Americans, Jim Morrison resented the USA 's involvement in Vietnam , and broke off all contact with his deeply conservative parents when he became a rock superstar. His younger brother Andy was the only member of his family that he spoke to from 1967 onwards.

It was whilst studying film-making at the University if California in Los Angeles (UCLA) that he met fellow student Ray Manzarek who helped him form the rock group The Doors. The name came from Aldous Huxley's novel, ‘The Doors of Perception' which proposed using hallucinogenic drugs like LSD to expand the human mind and consciousness. By this time, Morrison was heavily into cocaine and mescaline as he wrote his poetry. One of his classmates was Francis Ford Coppola, who would in 1979 feature the doors hit ‘The End' in his Vietnam-era movie ‘Apocalypse Now'. Morrison's doom-laden lyrics and the music's pulsing beat fuse in well with Coppola's visual images of an Asian country in the grip of war.

One of the band's ‘roadies' was a young aspiring actor named Harrison Ford, who was a gifted carpenter also charged with buying cannabis for band members when they were touring. Drummer John Densmore and guitar player Robbie Kreiger were the other two members of California 's most charismatic rock band. (Manzarek played keyboards on an electronic organ). The serious, sensitive Densmore always had a problem with Morrison, whose wild excesses both enraged and frightened him.

The Doors were still starting out when Morrison first met Pamela Courson on Sunset Strip in the spring of 1966. She was a petite, alluring 19-year-old redhead who gave the impression of someone needing protection. In reality, she had a steely will and a profoundly disturbed psyche. She had worked as a go-go dancer, was a regular groupie at Hollywood orgies, and kept a loaded automatic pistol in her handbag. She quickly related to Morrison as they talked of astrology and hallucinogenic drugs. Thereafter, she set about dominating his life. She called herself Mrs Morrison, wore a wedding ring and burned through his money as if he owned a bank with limitless funds.

In fact, he never married her and was prodigiously unfaithful. But he always went back to her, calling her his ‘cosmic mate'. The relationship was marred by epic fights, and at least once a week Pamela would explode in fury, open the bedroom window of their shared apartment and dump Morrison's clothes into the street below. She resented his constant casual affairs, and he disapproved of her use of heroin and her relationship with Count Jean de Breteuil.

Pamela tolerated Morrison's one-night stands, but she was insanely jealous of rock journalist Patricia Kenneally with whom Jim bonded on a spiritual as well as physical level. Kenneally was a modern witch, and she and Jim were secretly married in an ancient Wicca service on 21 June 1970, not long before Morrison died. The Wicca religion predates Christianity by centuries in worship of the sacred ‘Earth Mother'. (Before this Ms Kenneally had aborted their child). Soon after, Pamela spotted Patricia at a reception and flew at her in a jealous rage, clawing her face. Others delegates watched in amazement as the two women fought like cats, ploughing into a buffet table, sending plates of food and bottles of drink crashing to the floor.

Partly through giving up food in favor of drugs, Morrison lost weight and his lean features were irresistible to many women. In 1967 he posed for publicity pictures taken by Gloria Stavers of ‘16' magazine which showed him as a tousle-haired, bare-chested Adonis with love beads around his neck. This iconic image has adorned countless student bedsides ever since. Later on, when his face was covered in a thick beard and he grew fat, executives at Elektra (The Doors record company) joked that he had actually looked that beautiful for only about twenty minutes.

Morrison's other conquests included waitresses, groupies, journalists friends' wives, the rock star Grace Slick and the German singer Nico, who was part of the bizarre entourage of pop artist Andy Warhol.

As Jim's earnings soared, Pamela spent his money freely, acquiring fast cars (often wrecked) and expensive clothes. She also opened a chic but ultimately unsuccessful fashion boutique that ate up 250,000 dollars of Morrison's cash. Her lover, however, was genuinely uninterested in wealth and all the trappings of rock stardom. He just needed enough money for alcohol and hard drugs and simple rented accommodation in which to write his poetry.

In February 1969, Morrison and Pamela had a violent row as they prepared to fly to a Doors concert in Miami . Some believe it related to Morrison's homosexual contacts, which Pamela blamed for the venereal disease that he had given her. Whatever the truth, Morrison was deeply disturbed by the row and the ensuing show became notorious. By the time Jim took the stage he was slack-faced and staggering with booze. He sang as if he was under water, slurring his lyrics badly. When he tried an impromptu striptease, unzipping his leather trousers, he was hustled away. However, his antics caused a sensation and Morrison found himself facing criminal charges of indecent exposure. After a protracted trial, Jim was looking at eight months in jail. The conservative Nixon Administration viewed him as a dangerous rebel, and it was rumored that the FBI had been ordered to investigate him closely.

The Doors performed for the last time in public at the Isle of Wight open-air rock concert in Britain in August 1970. Before his passport could be confiscated, Morrison fled to Paris , where Pamela had already departed with her drug dealer boyfriend. Jean de Breteuil revealed that he had sold singer Janis Joplin the drug dose that killed her in October 1970. As an illegal alien in America , the count faced a long jail term if the FBI linked him to Joplin 's death. He begged Pamela Courson to accompany him to Paris , which she did. Morrison was devastated by her temporary desertion.

They reunited, and Jim was initially creatively revived by the French surroundings, where he was largely unknown. In Paris , he was also reunited with Alain Ronay, an old friend from his UCLA film school days, who showed him around the beautiful European capital city. But soon Jim was back to excessive drinking and snorting coke at sleazy Parisian haunts, whilst Pamela continued using heroin supplied by her French boyfriend. It was a recipe for disaster.

At 1am on 3 July 1971, he and Pamela arrived back at the flat after going to the cinema, followed by a Chinese meal. Morrison was restless. He swigged whiskey from a bottle as she cut lines of heroin on a mirror with his credit card. She and Morrison began snorting the drug using rolled-up bank notes. Things went quiet until around 3am, when neighbors reported that Morrison charged out of the apartment naked and screaming before someone dragged him back inside. Morrison started a lengthy coughing fit and Pamela gave him another line of heroin before they both slept. Around 4.30am, Pam awoke to sounds of Jim gurgling horribly. She was unable to revive him until she hit him hard several times. In obvious pain, Morrison then headed for the bathroom. Pamela turned on the water in the tub, and Jim lowered himself in. An hour later, he was coughing blood.

When Pam returned to the bathroom, the door was locked from the inside, and there was no response from Jim as she tried to break it open. Around 6.30am she called Jean de Breteuil who was in bed in a Paris hotel with singer Marianne Faithfull, to whom he also supplied heroin. According to Faithful, “Jean was a horrible creep; someone who had crawled out from under a stone. Somehow I ended up with him – it was all about drugs and sex.”

That fateful morning, she was stoned on barbiturates when de Breteuil leapt out of bed and told her, “I've go to go, baby. That was Pamela Morrison.” He was at the flat some 20 minutes later, and broke a pane of glass in the bathroom so they could get in.

They found Morrison dead, still in the bathtub. Blood was still drying under his nose and mouth, as if he had violently hemorrhaged. There were two large purple bruises on his chest. The bath water was dark pink as if he had bled until his heart stopped. But Jim looked relaxed for the first time in months, with a slight smile on his lips.

Pamela attempted to climb into the tub, but de Breteuil restrained her. Amid the terror and anguish of the scene, Jean told her that he was leaving town. Janis Joplin was one thing; Jim Morrison was another. He had no intention of being linked to a second rock star death. He told Pamela that he would leave for Morocco with Marianne Faithfull that night. If she could follow him there, where his family had great influence, he could protect her if any legal problems arose.

De Breteuil warned her that police would soon be at the scene and to flush away any remaining illegal drugs. She could tell the medical examiner that Morrison had heart disease. “Call your other friends,” he advised further. “Get them to help you. I must go now. Follow us to Morocco . I am sorry, darling. I love you. Goodbye.” Leaving Pamela with Jim's corpse, Jean raced back to his hotel, dragged Marianne out of bed and started slapping her. “Get packed! We are going to Morocco !” he shouted.

Ms Faithfull recalled, “Jean was scared for his life. Jim Morrison had OD'd and he had provided the smack. Jean saw himself as a dealer to the stars, but he was really just a small-time drug pusher in big trouble.”

Pamela now made the telephone call to Alain Ronay, who alerted the Paris fire department since their rescue squad was renowned as the city's best. Due to heavy traffic, it took him over two hours to get to the apartment at Rue Beautrellis.

When he arrived, the fire rescue squad was already there and had placed Morrison's body on the bed. A police inspector arrived and began to grill Ronay, who told him, “My friend's name was Douglas James Morrison, an American. He was a poet. He was an alcoholic, but no, he didn't use hard drugs.” Morrison was not well known in France , and Ronay had deliberately reversed his first two names to stop the inspector realizing whose death he had on his hands.

The inspector left, saying a death certificate and burial depended on a medical examiner's report. Alain then helped Pamela to flush all remaining drugs down the toilet and burn Jim's papers. A doctor soon arrived and made an examination of the corpse. He completed his examination in less than five minutes and was shocked when told that Morrison was 27. “I was going to write fifty-seven.” He said. He casually filled out a form and told Ronay to take it to the civil registry where he would get a death certificate. It seemed too easy to be true – and so it proved. A lone woman was on duty that hot, sleepy Saturday. She suspiciously scanned the form and said that the request for a death certificate due to natural causes would be denied. She then called the prefect of police who angrily ordered Ronay back to the apartment, where police arrived soon afterwards. They found Pamela holding her dead boyfriend's hand, talking to him quietly. A quick search revealed nothing and even the fresh ashes in the fire grate on a summer's day went unnoticed. But the police chief was still wary and arranged for a senior medical examiner to come over.

In the meantime, Ronay accompanied Pamela as they were driven to the police station to make a statement. On record, Pamela made no reference to Jim's naked rampage or de Breteuil, and so blundered into several inconsistencies and mistakes. Ronay was scared. It suddenly occurred to him that if Morrison had been murdered, he could be implicated in covering up the crime.

At 6pm, the medical expert, Dr Max Vassille turned up. Pamela and Alain feared an awkward encounter, but were greatly relieved. He was a kindly man, relaxed and smiling, and put Alain's fears to rest. The expert made a quick inspection, and then said that he was happy to accept that Mr. Douglas Morrison had died of a cardiac arrest. He advised them both to take anti-depressants and get some rest.

They were soon back at the police station, where the inspector received them coolly. But at 7.30pm he handed them the death certificate and burial permit. When Pamela was asked for Jim's passport, she said she would take it herself to the American embassy on Monday. Back at the flat, a police mortician left them blocks of ice to protect Jim's body from the summer heat.

Jim Morrison was buried at Pere-La Chaise, the Parisian cemetery of poets and artists. He was in good company - placed among the graves of Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, Balzac, Bizet and Chopin. His body was placed in a cheap wood veneer coffin, and he was buried just after 11 am on Wednesday, 7 July 1971. Pamela saw him lowered into the ground without religious observance, which Jim would have resented anyway. She whispered a few lines from ‘The Severed Garden', one of his poems. There were only four other mourners – Ronay, friend and film-maker Agnes Varda, a female French-Canadian secretary named Robin Wertle, and the Doors manager Bill Siddons, who had just flow to Paris from Los Angeles after hearing rumors of Morrison's demise.

Siddons arrived too late to see the body before the coffin lid was screwed down, inspiring conspiracy theories that Morrison was not dead and had vanished to start a new life in Africa. But it was Siddons who helped break the news, suitably sanitized, to the wider world.

Later that year, Count de Breteuil died in Tangiers after a massive heroin overdose. Pamela, a hopeless junkie herself, died in 1974 in an apparent drug-induced suicide. For years, wild speculation raged that she had murdered Morrison for his money. Some claimed that she had confessed to killing him accidentally, having told him that the massive lines of heroin they were snorting were less potent cocaine. It was well known that Morrison (who had a great fear of needles) never ‘shot up', and never knowingly used heroin.

Anyway, Pamela Courson never got her hands on Jim Morrison's remaining fortune because of complicated legal financial wrangles with the surviving members of the Doors. Some may consider this poetic justice; others merely the final twist in a grim and unhappy story of a gifted poet who became locked into the wild image of a modern rock star. Morrison's gravesite in Paris is still visited daily by hundreds of fans and the music of The Doors is often played, sometimes even in go-go bars here in Thailand.

All his short life, Jim Morrison had been fascinated by death. He often courted it in his poems and songs. He once told Patricia Kenneally, “Why are people so afraid of death? When you die, the pain stops.” As in one of his songs, he took the final journey to the ‘End of the Night.”

(Research: ‘Jim Morrison: Life, Death and Legend' by Stephen Davis, Edbury Press June 2004; ‘No One Here Gets Out Alive' by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman, Plexus London, 1981, ‘Burn down the night' by Craig Streete, 1980).
Sleeve note: In November 1978, Elektra Records released ‘An American Prayer' a haunting work of some of Jim Morrison's poetry set to music by other members of The Doors. It is an unsentimental tribute that he would have appreciated.
“The road of excess leads to the Palace of Wisdom.” (William Blake)

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