James Douglas "Jim" Morrison (December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971) was an American musician, singer, and poet, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the rock band
The DoorsThe Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger...
. Following The Doors' explosive rise to fame in 1967, Morrison developed a severe alcohol and drug dependency which culminated in his untimely death in Paris in 1971
at age 27The 27 Club—also occasionally known as the Forever 27 Club, Club 27 or the Curse of 27—is the title for a group of popular musicians who all died at the age of 27...
, due to a suspected heroin overdose. However, the events surrounding his death continue to be the subject of controversy, as no autopsy was performed on his body after death, and the exact cause of his death is disputed by many to this day.
Morrison was well-known for often improvising
spoken wordSpoken word is a form of poetry that often uses alliterated prose or verse and occasionally uses metered verse to express social commentary. Traditionally it is in the first person, is from the poet’s point of view and is themed in current events....
poetry passages while the band played live. Due to his wild personality and performances, he is regarded by some people as one of the most iconic, charismatic and pioneering frontmen in rock music history. Morrison was ranked number 47 on Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Greatest Singers of All Time", and number 22 on
Classic Rock Magazine'sClassic Rock is a British magazine dedicated to the radio format of classic rock, published by Future Publishing, who are also responsible for its "sister" publication Metal Hammer. Although firmly focusing on key bands from the 1960s through early 1990s, it also includes articles and reviews of...
"50 Greatest Singers In Rock".
Early years
James Douglas Morrison was born in
Melbourne, FloridaMelbourne is a city in Brevard County, Florida, United States. As of 2009, the population estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau is 78,323. The municipal area is the second largest by size and by population in the county. Melbourne is a principal city of the Palm Bay – Melbourne – Titusville, Florida...
, to future
Rear AdmiralRear admiral is a naval commissioned officer rank above that of a commodore and captain, and below that of a vice admiral. The uniformed services of the United States are unique in having two grades of rear admirals.- Rear admiral :...
George Stephen MorrisonGeorge Stephen Morrison was a Rear Admiral and naval aviator in the United States Navy. Morrison was commander of the U.S. naval forces in the Gulf of Tonkin during the Gulf of Tonkin Incident of August 1964...
and Clara Morrison. Morrison had a sister, Anne Robin, who was born in 1947 in
Albuquerque, New MexicoAlbuquerque is the largest city in the state of New Mexico, United States. It is the county seat of Bernalillo County and is situated in the central part of the state, straddling the Rio Grande. The city population was 545,852 as of the 2010 Census and ranks as the 32nd-largest city in the U.S. As...
; and a brother, Andrew Lee Morrison, who was born in 1948 in
Los Altos, CaliforniaLos Altos is a city at the southern end of the San Francisco Peninsula, in the San Francisco Bay Area. The city is in Santa Clara County, California, United States. The population was 28,976 according to the 2010 census....
. He was of Irish and Scottish descent. Morrison reportedly had an I.Q. of 149.
In 1947, Morrison, then four years old, allegedly witnessed a car accident in the
desertA desert is a landscape or region that receives an extremely low amount of precipitation, less than enough to support growth of most plants. Most deserts have an average annual precipitation of less than...
, in which a family of
Native AmericansNative Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
were injured and possibly killed. He referred to this incident in a spoken word performance on the song "Dawn's Highway" from the album
An American PrayerAn American Prayer is the last studio album by The Doors. In 1978, seven years after lead singer Jim Morrison died and five years after the remaining members of the band broke up, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore reunited and recorded backing tracks over Morrison's poetry...
, and again in the songs "
Peace Frog"Peace Frog" is a song by The Doors which appears on the album Morrison Hotel. It was released on vinyl in February 1970 by Elektra/Asylum Records and produced by Paul Rothchild...
" and "Ghost Song."
Morrison believed this incident to be the most formative event of his life, and made repeated references to it in the imagery in his songs, poems, and interviews. His family does not recall this incident happening in the way he told it. According to the Morrison biography
No One Here Gets Out AliveNo One Here Gets Out Alive was the first biography of Jim Morrison, lead singer and lyricist of the L.A. rock band The Doors, written after his death by journalist Jerry Hopkins, with later "insider" information added by Danny Sugerman. The book is largely credited with revitalizing the popularity...
, Morrison's family did drive past a car accident on an
Indian reservationAn American Indian reservation is an area of land managed by a Native American tribe under the United States Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs...
when he was a child, and he was very upset by it. The book The Doors, written by the remaining members of The Doors, explains how different Morrison's account of the incident was from the account of his father. This book quotes his father as saying, "We went by several Indians. It did make an impression on him [the young James]. He always thought about that crying Indian." This is contrasted sharply with Morrison's tale of "Indians scattered all over the highway, bleeding to death." In the same book, his sister is quoted as saying, "He enjoyed telling that story and exaggerating it. He said he saw a dead Indian by the side of the road, and I don't even know if that's true."
With his father in the
United States NavyThe United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
, Morrison's family moved often. He spent part of his childhood in San Diego. While his father was stationed at NAS Kingsville, he attended Flato Elementary in Kingsville, Texas. In 1958 Morrison attended
Alameda High SchoolAlameda High School is a public coeducational high school serving grades 9-12. It is located in Alameda, California and is part of the Alameda Unified School District.- History :...
in
Alameda, CaliforniaAlameda is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. It is located on Alameda Island and Bay Farm Island, and is adjacent to Oakland in the San Francisco Bay. The Bay Farm Island portion of the city is adjacent to the Oakland International Airport. At the 2010 census, the city had a...
. He graduated from George Washington High School (now
George Washington Middle SchoolGeorge Washington Middle School is located at 1005 Mount Vernon Avenue in the city of Alexandria, Virginia. It first opened in 1935 as a merger of two prior high schools named Alexandria and George Mason...
) in
Alexandria, VirginiaAlexandria is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of 2009, the city had a total population of 139,966. Located along the Western bank of the Potomac River, Alexandria is approximately six miles south of downtown Washington, D.C.Like the rest of northern Virginia, as well as...
in June 1961. His father was also stationed at
Mayport Naval Air StationNaval Station Mayport is a major United States Navy base in Jacksonville, Florida. It contains a military airfield with one asphalt paved runway measuring 8,001 x 200 ft. ....
in
Jacksonville, FloridaJacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...
.
Morrison was inspired by the writings of philosophers and poets. He was influenced by
Friedrich NietzscheFriedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
, whose views on aesthetics, morality, and the
Apollonian and DionysianThe Apollonian and Dionysian is a philosophical and literary concept, or dichotomy, based on certain features of ancient Greek mythology. Several Western philosophical and literary figures have invoked this dichotomy in critical and creative works....
duality would appear in his conversation, poetry and songs. He read
PlutarchPlutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
’s "
Lives of the Noble GreeksPlutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, commonly called Parallel Lives or Plutarch's Lives, is a series of biographies of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings, written in the late 1st century...
". He also read the works of the French Symbolist poet
Arthur RimbaudJean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
, whose style would later influence the form of Morrison’s short prose poems. He was also influenced by
Jack KerouacJean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
,
Allen GinsbergIrwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
,
Lawrence FerlinghettiLawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...
,
Charles BaudelaireCharles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
,
MolièreJean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
and
Franz KafkaFranz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
.
Honoré de BalzacHonoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....
and
Jean CocteauJean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
also interested Morrison, along with most of the French
existentialistExistentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
philosophers. His senior-year English teacher said that, "Jim read as much and probably more than any student in class, but everything he read was so offbeat I had another teacher, who was going to the
Library of CongressThe Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
, check to see if the books Jim was reporting on actually existed. I suspected he was making them up, as they were English books on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
demonologyDemonology is the systematic study of demons or beliefs about demons. It is the branch of theology relating to superhuman beings who are not gods. It deals both with benevolent beings that have no circle of worshippers or so limited a circle as to be below the rank of gods, and with malevolent...
. I’d never heard of them, but they existed, and I’m convinced from the paper he wrote that he read them, and the Library of Congress would’ve been the only source."
Morrison went to live with his paternal grandparents in
Clearwater, FloridaClearwater is a city located in Pinellas County, Florida, US, nearly due west of Tampa and northwest of St. Petersburg. In the west of Clearwater lies the Gulf of Mexico and in the east lies Tampa Bay. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 108,787. It is the county seat of...
, where he attended classes at St. Petersburg Junior College. In 1962, he transferred to
Florida State UniversityThe Florida State University is a space-grant and sea-grant public university located in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. It is a comprehensive doctoral research university with medical programs and significant research activity as determined by the Carnegie Foundation...
(FSU) in
TallahasseeTallahassee is the capital of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat and only incorporated municipality in Leon County, and is the 128th largest city in the United States. Tallahassee became the capital of Florida, then the Florida Territory, in 1824. In 2010, the population recorded by...
, where he appeared in a school recruitment film. While attending FSU, Morrison was arrested for a prank, following a home
footballAmerican football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
game.
In January 1964 Morrison moved to Los Angeles to attend the
University of California, Los AngelesThe University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
(UCLA). He enrolled in
Jack HirschmanJack Hirschman is an American poet and social activist who has written more than 50 volumes of poetry and essays.-Biography:...
's class on
Antonin ArtaudAntoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...
in the Comparative Literature program within the UCLA English Department. Artaud's brand of surrealist theatre had a profound impact on Morrison's dark poetic sensibility of cinematic theatricality.
Morrison completed his undergraduate degree at UCLA's film school within the Theater Arts department of the College of Fine Arts in 1965. In an early display of rebellion, he refused to attend the graduation ceremony, instead having his degree diploma mailed to him. He made several short films while attending UCLA. First Love, the first of these films, made with Morrison's classmate and roommate Max Schwartz, was released to the public when it appeared in a documentary about the film Obscura. During these years, while living in
Venice BeachVenice is a beachfront district on the Westside of Los Angeles, California, United States. It is known for its canals, beaches and circus-like Ocean Front Walk, a two-and-a-half mile pedestrian-only promenade that features performers, fortune-tellers, artists, and vendors...
, he became friends with writers at the
Los Angeles Free PressThe Los Angeles Free Press , also called “the Freep”, was among the most widely distributed underground newspapers of the 1960s. It is often cited as the first such newspaper...
. Morrison was an advocate of the underground newspaper until his death in 1971. He later conducted a lengthy and in-depth interview with Bob Chorush and Andy Kent, both working for the Free Press at the time (January 1971), and was planning on visiting the headquarters of the busy newspaper shortly before leaving for Paris.
The Doors
In the Summer of 1965, after graduating from the UCLA, Morrison led a
bohemianBohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
lifestyle in Venice Beach. Living on the rooftop of a building inhabited by his old UCLA cinematography friend Dennis Jakobs, he wrote the lyrics of many of the early songs the Doors would later perform live and record on albums, the most notable being "
Moonlight Drive"Moonlight Drive" was one of the seminal tracks on The Doors' second album, Strange Days. Although it was only a B-side , it is a favorite in The Doors canon...
" and "
Hello, I Love You"Hello, I Love You" is a song by The Doors from their 1968 album Waiting for the Sun. It was released as a single that same year, reaching number one in the United States and selling over a million copies in the U.S. alone. In Canada, it hit number one as well...
". According to Jakobs, he lived on canned beans and LSD daily for several months. Morrison and fellow UCLA student
Ray ManzarekRaymond Daniel Manzarek, Jr., better known as Ray Manzarek , is an American musician, singer, producer, film director, writer, co-founder and keyboardist of The Doors from 1965 to 1973, Nite City from 1977–1978 and Manzarek-Krieger since 2001.Manzarek is listed #4 on Digital Dreamdoor's "100...
were the first two members of The Doors, forming the group during that same Summer of 1965. They had previously met months earlier as fellow cinematography students. The now-legendary story claims that Manzarek was lying on the beach at Venice one day, accidentally encountered Morrison, he was impressed with Morrison's poetic lyrics, claiming that they were "rock group" material. Thereafter, drummer
John DensmoreJohn Paul Densmore is an American musician and songwriter. He is best known as the drummer of the rock group The Doors.-Early life and The Doors:Born in Los Angeles, Densmore attended Santa Monica City College and Cal...
and guitarist
Robby KriegerRobert Alan "Robby" Krieger is an American rock guitarist and songwriter. He was the guitarist in The Doors, and wrote some of the band's best known songs, including "Light My Fire," "Love Me Two Times," "Touch Me," and "Love Her Madly."...
joined. Krieger auditioned at Densmore's recommendation and was then added to the lineup. All three musicians shared a common interest in the
Maharishi Mahesh YogiMaharishi Mahesh Yogi , born Mahesh Prasad Varma , developed the Transcendental Meditation technique and was the leader and guru of the TM movement, characterised as a new religious movement and also as non-religious...
's meditation practices at the time, attending scheduled classes, but Morrison was not involved in this series of classes, claiming later that he "did not meditate".
The Doors took their name from the title of
Aldous HuxleyAldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
's book
The Doors of PerceptionThe Doors of Perception is a 1954 book by Aldous Huxley detailing his experiences when taking mescaline. The book takes the form of Huxley’s recollection of a mescaline trip which took place over the course of an afternoon, and takes its title from William Blake's poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell...
(a reference to the "unlocking" of "doors of perception" through
psychedelic drugA psychedelic substance is a psychoactive drug whose primary action is to alter cognition and perception. Psychedelics are part of a wider class of psychoactive drugs known as hallucinogens, a class that also includes related substances such as dissociatives and deliriants...
use). Huxley's own title was a quotation from
William BlakeWilliam Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
's
The Marriage of Heaven and HellThe Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a book by the English poet and printmaker William Blake. It is a series of texts written in imitation of biblical prophecy but expressing Blake's own intensely personal Romantic and revolutionary beliefs. Like his other books, it was published as printed sheets...
, in which Blake wrote: "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."
Although Morrison was known as the lyricist of the group, Krieger also made significant lyrical contributions, writing or co-writing some of the group's biggest hits, including "
Light My Fire"Light My Fire" is a song by The Doors which was recorded in August 1966 and released the first week of January 1967 on the Doors' debut album. Released as a single in April, it spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and one week on the Cash Box Top 100, nearly a year after...
", "
Love Me Two Times"Love Me Two Times" is a song by The Doors. It was written by the band and first appeared on the 1967 album Strange Days. It was released as the second single from that album, and reached #25 on the charts in the US....
", "
Love Her Madly"Love Her Madly" is a song by The Doors, which was released in March 1971. Composed by guitarist Robby Krieger, it served as the lead single from L.A. Woman, their final album with frontman Jim Morrison. Session musician and Elvis Presly TCB Band touring member Jerry Scheff, played bass guitar on...
" and "
Touch Me"Touch Me" is a song by The Doors from their album The Soft Parade. Written by Robby Krieger, its riff was influenced by The Four Seasons' "C'mon Marianne." It is notable for its extensive usage of brass and string instruments to accent Jim Morrison's vocals...
". On the other hand, Morrison, who didn't write songs using an instrument, would come up with melodies for his own lyrics, with the other band members contributing chords and rhythm. He didn't play any instrument live (except for maracas on a few occasions) or in the studio, however he did play the piano on "
Orange County SuiteThe Lost Paris Tapes is the title given to a recorded collection of unedited poems and songs by rock musician and poet Jim Morrison of The Doors...
".
In June 1966, Morrison and The Doors were the opening act at the
Whisky a Go GoThe Whisky a Go Go is a nightclub in West Hollywood, California, United States. It is located at 8901 Sunset Boulevard, on the Sunset Strip.-History:...
on the last week of the residency of
Van MorrisonVan Morrison, OBE is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician. His live performances at their best are regarded as transcendental and inspired; while some of his recordings, such as the studio albums Astral Weeks and Moondance, and the live album It's Too Late to Stop Now, are widely...
's band
ThemThem were a Northern Irish band formed in Belfast in April 1964, most prominently known for the garage rock standard "Gloria" and launching singer Van Morrison's musical career...
. Van's influence on Jim's developing stage performance was later noted by John Densmore in his book Riders On The Storm: "Jim Morrison learned quickly from his near-namesake's stagecraft, his apparent recklessness, his air of subdued menace, the way he would improvise poetry to a rock beat, even his habit of crouching down by the bass drum during instrumental breaks." On the final night, the two Morrisons and their two bands jammed together on "Gloria".
The Doors achieved national recognition after signing with
Elektra RecordsElektra Records is an American record label owned by Warner Music Group. In 2004, it was consolidated into WMG's Atlantic Records Group. After five years of dormancy, the label was revived by Atlantic in 2009....
in 1967. The single "
Light My Fire"Light My Fire" is a song by The Doors which was recorded in August 1966 and released the first week of January 1967 on the Doors' debut album. Released as a single in April, it spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and one week on the Cash Box Top 100, nearly a year after...
" spent three weeks at number one on the
Billboard Hot 100The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...
chart in July/August 1967. Later, The Doors appeared on
The Ed Sullivan ShowThe Ed Sullivan Show is an American TV variety show that originally ran on CBS from Sunday June 20, 1948 to Sunday June 6, 1971, and was hosted by New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan....
, a popular Sunday night variety series that had introduced
The BeatlesThe Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
and
Elvis PresleyElvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
to the United States.
Ed SullivanEdward Vincent "Ed" Sullivan was an American entertainment writer and television host, best known as the presenter of the TV variety show The Ed Sullivan Show. The show was broadcast from 1948 to 1971 , which made it one of the longest-running variety shows in U.S...
requested two songs from The Doors for the show, "
People Are Strange"People Are Strange" is a single released by The Doors in September 1967 from their second album Strange Days which was also released in September 1967. The single peaked at the #12 position of the U.S. Hot 100 chart and made it to the top ten in the Cash Box charts...
", and "Light My Fire". Sullivan's censors insisted that The Doors change the lyrics of the song "Light My Fire" from "Girl we couldn't get much higher" to "Girl we couldn't get much better" for the television viewers; this was reportedly due to what was perceived as a reference to drugs in the original lyrics. After giving assurances of compliance to Sullivan, Morrison then proceeded to sing the song with the original lyrics anyway. When Morrison was later asked why he defied Sullivan's instructions to change the lyrics to the song, he flatly said that he simply forgot to make the change. This so infuriated Sullivan that he refused to shake hands with Morrison, or any other member of the band, after their performance and had a show producer tell the band that they will never do The Ed Sullivan Show again. Morrison reportedly said to the producer, in a defiant tone, "Hey man. We just did the Sullivan Show!"
In 1967, Morrison and The Doors produced a promotional film for "
Break on Through (To the Other Side)"Break on Through " is a song by The Doors from their debut album, The Doors. It was the first single released by the band and was unsuccessful compared to later hits, reaching only #126 in the United States...
", which was their first single release. The video featured the four members of the group playing the song on a darkened set with alternating views and close-ups of the performers while Morrison lip-synched the lyrics. Morrison and The Doors continued to make music videos, including "
The Unknown Soldier"The Unknown Soldier" was the first single from The Doors' 1968 album Waiting for the Sun, and was also the subject of one of the band's few music videos.-Lyrics:...
", "
Moonlight Drive"Moonlight Drive" was one of the seminal tracks on The Doors' second album, Strange Days. Although it was only a B-side , it is a favorite in The Doors canon...
", and "
People Are Strange"People Are Strange" is a single released by The Doors in September 1967 from their second album Strange Days which was also released in September 1967. The single peaked at the #12 position of the U.S. Hot 100 chart and made it to the top ten in the Cash Box charts...
".
By the release of their second album,
Strange DaysStrange Days is the second album released by American rock band The Doors. The album was a commercial success, earning a gold record and reaching No. 3 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. Despite this, the album's producer, Paul Rothchild, considered it a commercial failure, even if it was an...
, The Doors had become one of the most popular rock bands in the United States. Their blend of
bluesBlues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
and dark rock tinged with
psychedeliaThe term psychedelic is derived from the Greek words ψυχή and δηλοῦν , translating to "soul-manifesting". A psychedelic experience is characterized by the striking perception of aspects of one's mind previously unknown, or by the creative exuberance of the mind liberated from its ostensibly...
included a number of original songs and distinctive cover versions, such as their rendition of "
Alabama SongThe "Alabama Song" was originally published in Bertolt Brecht's Hauspostille . It was set to music by Kurt Weill for the 1927 "Songspiel" Mahagonny and used again in Weill's and Brecht's 1930 opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny...
", from
Bertolt BrechtBertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
and
Kurt WeillKurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...
's
operaOpera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
,
Rise and Fall of the City of MahagonnyRise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is a political-satirical opera composed by Kurt Weill to a German libretto by Bertolt Brecht. It was first performed in Leipzig on 9 March 1930.-Composition history:...
. The band also performed a number of extended concept works, including the songs "
The End"The End" is a song by The Doors. Originally written by Jim Morrison as a song about breaking up with girlfriend Mary Werbelow, it evolved through months of performances at Los Angeles' Whisky a Go Go into a nearly 12-minute opus on their self-titled album. The band would perform the song to close...
", "
When the Music's Over"When the Music's Over" is a song by American rock band The Doors, featured on their 1967 album Strange Days. The song, at almost eleven minutes long, is their third longest recorded song, behind "The End", at 11:42, and "Celebration of the Lizard", at 17:01...
", and "
Celebration of the Lizard"Celebration of the Lizard" is an epic performance piece written by Jim Morrison, frontman of The Doors. Composed as a series of poems, they include musical sections, spoken verse, and passages of allegorical storytelling.-Poems:*Lions in the Street...
".
In 1967, photographer Joel Brodsky took a series of black-and-white photos of Morrison, in a photo shoot known as "The Young Lion" photo session. These photographs are considered among the most iconic images of Jim Morrison and are frequently used as covers for compilation albums, books, and other memorabilia of The Doors and Morrison.
In 1968, The Doors released their third studio album,
Waiting for the SunWaiting for the Sun is the third studio album by the American rock band The Doors. It was released in 1968 and became the band's first and only number one album and spawned their second US number one single, "Hello, I Love You". It also became the band's first hit album in the UK, where it peaked...
. Their fourth album,
The Soft ParadeThe Soft Parade is the fourth studio album by The Doors, released in 1969.The album met with some controversy among fans and critics due to its inclusion of brass and string instrument arrangements, as opposed to the more stripped-down sound of their earlier recordings...
, was released in 1969. It was the first album where the individual band members were given credit on the inner sleeve for the songs they had written. Previously, each song on their albums had been credited simply to "The Doors."
Around this time, Morrison — who had long been a heavy drinker — started showing up for recording sessions visibly inebriated. He was also frequently late for live performances. As a result, the band would play instrumental music or force Manzarek to take on the singing duties to subdue the impatient audience.
By 1969, the formerly svelte singer had gained weight, grown a beard, and had begun dressing more casually — abandoning the leather pants and concho belts for slacks, jeans and T-shirts.
During a March 1, 1969 concert at the Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami, Morrison attempted to spark a riot in the audience. He failed, but a
warrantAn arrest warrant is a warrant issued by and on behalf of the state, which authorizes the arrest and detention of an individual.-Canada:Arrest warrants are issued by a judge or justice of the peace under the Criminal Code of Canada....
for his arrest was issued by the
Dade County Police departmentThe Miami-Dade Police Department , formerly known as the Metro-Dade County Police Department , Dade County Public Safety Department and the Dade County Sheriff's Office is a Limited Service County Police Department serving Miami-Dade County, Florida's unincorporated areas, although they have...
three days later for
indecent exposureIndecent exposure is the deliberate exposure in public or in view of the general public by a person of a portion or portions of his or her body, in circumstances where the exposure is contrary to local moral or other standards of appropriate behavior. Indecent exposure laws vary in different...
. Consequently, many of The Doors' scheduled concerts were canceled. In 2007
Florida Governor Charlie CristCharles Joseph "Charlie" Crist, Jr. is an American politician who was the 44th Governor of Florida. Prior to his election as governor, Crist previously served as Florida State Senator, Education Commissioner, and Attorney General...
suggested the possibility of a posthumous
pardonClemency means the forgiveness of a crime or the cancellation of the penalty associated with it. It is a general concept that encompasses several related procedures: pardoning, commutation, remission and reprieves...
for Morrison, which was announced as successful on December 9, 2010. Drummer
John DensmoreJohn Paul Densmore is an American musician and songwriter. He is best known as the drummer of the rock group The Doors.-Early life and The Doors:Born in Los Angeles, Densmore attended Santa Monica City College and Cal...
denied Morrison ever exposed himself on stage that night.
Following
The Soft ParadeThe Soft Parade is the fourth studio album by The Doors, released in 1969.The album met with some controversy among fans and critics due to its inclusion of brass and string instrument arrangements, as opposed to the more stripped-down sound of their earlier recordings...
, The Doors released
Morrison HotelMorrison Hotel is The Doors' fifth album. It was released in 1970. After their experimental work The Soft Parade was not as well received as anticipated, the group went back to basics and back to their roots...
. After a lengthy break the group reconvened in October 1970 to record what would become their final album with Morrison, entitled
L.A. WomanThe band embarked on a tour to promote the album, although it would only comprise two dates. The first was held in Dallas, Texas on December 11 and reportedly went well. The second performance took place at The Warehouse in New Orleans, Louisiana, on December 12, 1970, where Morrison apparently had...
. Shortly after the recording sessions for the album began, producer
Paul A. RothchildPaul A. Rothchild was a prominent American record producer of the late 1960s and 1970s.-Early years:Born in Brooklyn, New York, Rothchild grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey and graduated from Teaneck High School in 1953....
— who had overseen all of their previous recordings — left the project. Engineer
Bruce BotnickBruce Botnick is an American audio engineer and record producer, best known for his work with The Doors, and with Love. He engineered Love's first two albums, and co-produced their third album, Forever Changes, with the band's singer-songwriter, Arthur Lee.In November 1970, he took over production...
took over as producer.
Poetry & film
Morrison began writing in earnest during his adolescence. At UCLA he studied the related fields of theater, film, and
cinematographyCinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
.
He self-published two separate volumes of his poetry in 1969, entitled The Lords / Notes on Vision and The New Creatures. The Lords consists primarily of brief descriptions of places, people, events and Morrison's thoughts on cinema. The New Creatures verses are more poetic in structure, feel and appearance. These two books were later combined into a single volume titled The Lords and The New Creatures. These were the only writings published during Morrison's lifetime.
Morrison befriended
Beat PoetThe Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
Michael McClureMichael McClure is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955 rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums...
, who wrote the
afterwordAn afterword is a literary device that is often found at the end of a piece of literature. It generally covers the story of how the book came into being, or of how the idea for the book was developed....
for
Danny SugermanDaniel Stephen "Danny" Sugerman was the second manager of the Los Angeles-based rock band The Doors, and wrote several books about Jim Morrison and The Doors, including No One Here Gets Out Alive , and the autobiography Wonderland Avenue...
's biography of Morrison,
No One Here Gets Out AliveNo One Here Gets Out Alive was the first biography of Jim Morrison, lead singer and lyricist of the L.A. rock band The Doors, written after his death by journalist Jerry Hopkins, with later "insider" information added by Danny Sugerman. The book is largely credited with revitalizing the popularity...
. McClure and Morrison reportedly collaborated on a number of unmade film projects, including a film version of McClure's infamous play The Beard, in which Morrison would have played
Billy the KidWilliam H. Bonney William H. Bonney William H. Bonney (born William Henry McCarty, Jr. est. November 23, 1859 – c. July 14, 1881, better known as Billy the Kid but also known as Henry Antrim, was a 19th-century American gunman who participated in the Lincoln County War and became a frontier...
.
After his death, a further two volumes of Morrison's poetry were published. The contents of the books were selected and arranged by Morrison's friend, photographer Frank Lisciandro, and girlfriend
Pamela CoursonPamela Susan Courson was the long-term companion of Jim Morrison, vocalist of The Doors. After the deaths of Morrison and Courson, her parents petitioned an out-of-state court to declare that the couple had a common-law marriage.-Early life and involvement with Morrison:Courson was born in Weed,...
's parents, who owned the rights to his poetry. The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison Volume I is entitled
WildernessWilderness or wildland is a natural environment on Earth that has not been significantly modified by human activity. It may also be defined as: "The most intact, undisturbed wild natural areas left on our planet—those last truly wild places that humans do not control and have not developed with...
, and, upon its release in 1988, became an instant New York Times Bestseller. Volume II,
The American NightAmerican Night is a collection of poetry by Jim Morrison, front-man for the 1960s psychedelic rock group, The Doors, published in 1990 . The title is eponymous with a poem that appears on the album American Prayer, itself a collection of spoken word and musical vignettes released in 1978...
, released in 1990, was also a success.
Morrison recorded his own poetry in a professional sound studio on two separate occasions. The first was in March 1969 in Los Angeles and the second was on December 8, 1970. The latter recording session was attended by Morrison's personal friends and included a variety of sketch pieces. Some of the segments from the 1969 session were issued on the
bootlegA bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. The process of making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging...
album
The Lost Paris TapesThe Lost Paris Tapes is the title given to a recorded collection of unedited poems and songs by rock musician and poet Jim Morrison of The Doors...
and were later used as part of the Doors'
An American PrayerAn American Prayer is the last studio album by The Doors. In 1978, seven years after lead singer Jim Morrison died and five years after the remaining members of the band broke up, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore reunited and recorded backing tracks over Morrison's poetry...
album, released in 1978. The album reached #54 on the music charts. Some poetry recorded from the December 1970 session remains unreleased to this day and is in the possession of the Courson family.
Morrison's best-known but seldom seen cinematic endeavor is
HWY: An American PastoralHWY: An American Pastoral is a film by Jim Morrison and Paul Ferrara and stars Morrison as a hitchhiker. It is a 50-minute experimental film in Direct Cinema style...
, a project he started in 1969. Morrison financed the venture and formed his own production company in order to maintain complete control of the project.
Paul FerraraPaul Ferrara is an American photographer known for his relation with singer Jim Morrison of the band The Doors . He started as The Doors still photographer and his first production was a souvenir book that was sold at concerts. Many of the iconic images of Morrison’s persona were created by...
, Frank Lisciandro and Babe Hill assisted with the project. Morrison played the main character, a hitchhiker turned killer/car thief. Morrison asked his friend, composer/pianist Fred Myrow, to select the soundtrack for the film.
Morrison's family
Morrison's early life was a nomadic existence typical of military families. Jerry Hopkins recorded Morrison's brother, Andy, explaining that his parents had determined never to use
corporal punishmentCorporal punishment is a form of physical punishment that involves the deliberate infliction of pain as retribution for an offence, or for the purpose of disciplining or reforming a wrongdoer, or to deter attitudes or behaviour deemed unacceptable...
on their children. They instead instilled discipline and levied punishment by the military tradition known as "dressing down". This consisted of yelling at and berating the children until they were reduced to tears and acknowledged their failings.
Once Morrison graduated from UCLA, he broke off most contact with his family. By the time Morrison's music ascended to the top of the charts (in 1967) he had not been in communication with his family for more than a year and falsely claimed that his parents and siblings were dead (or claiming, as it has been widely misreported, that he was an only child). This misinformation was published as part of the materials distributed with The Doors'
self-titled debut albumThe Doors is the debut album by the American rock band The Doors, recorded in August 1966 and released in January 1967. It was originally released in significantly different stereo and mono mixes...
.
In a letter to the Florida Probation and Parole Commission District Office dated October 2, 1970, Morrison's father acknowledged the breakdown in family communications as the result of an argument over his assessment of his son's musical talents. He said he could not blame his son for being reluctant to initiate contact and that he was proud of him nonetheless.
George Morrison was not supportive of his son's career choice in music. One day, an acquaintance brought over a record thought to have Jim on the cover. The record was the
Doors self-titled debutThe Doors is the debut album by the American rock band The Doors, recorded in August 1966 and released in January 1967. It was originally released in significantly different stereo and mono mixes...
. The young man played the record for Morrison's father and family. Upon hearing the record, Morrison's father wrote him a letter telling him "to give up any idea of singing or any connection with a music group because of what I consider to be a complete lack of talent in this direction."
Relationships
Morrison met his long-term companion,
Pamela CoursonPamela Susan Courson was the long-term companion of Jim Morrison, vocalist of The Doors. After the deaths of Morrison and Courson, her parents petitioned an out-of-state court to declare that the couple had a common-law marriage.-Early life and involvement with Morrison:Courson was born in Weed,...
, well before he gained any fame or fortune, and she encouraged him to develop his poetry. At times, Courson used the surname "Morrison" with his apparent consent or at least lack of concern. After Courson's death on April 25, 1974, the
probateProbate is the legal process of administering the estate of a deceased person by resolving all claims and distributing the deceased person's property under the valid will. A probate court decides the validity of a testator's will...
court in California decided that she and Morrison had what qualified as a
common-law marriageCommon-law marriage, sometimes called sui juris marriage, informal marriage or marriage by habit and repute, is a form of interpersonal status that is legally recognized in limited jurisdictions as a marriage even though no legally recognized marriage ceremony is performed or civil marriage...
(see below, under "Estate Controversy").
Morrison's and Courson's relationship was a stormy one, with frequent loud arguments and periods of separation. Biographer
Danny SugermanDaniel Stephen "Danny" Sugerman was the second manager of the Los Angeles-based rock band The Doors, and wrote several books about Jim Morrison and The Doors, including No One Here Gets Out Alive , and the autobiography Wonderland Avenue...
surmised that part of their difficulties may have stemmed from a conflict between their respective commitments to an
open relationshipAn open relationship is an interpersonal relationship in which the parties want to be together but agree to a form of a non-monogamous relationship. This means that they agree that a romantic or sexual relationship with another person is accepted, permitted, or tolerated...
and the consequences of living in such a relationship.
In 1970, Morrison participated in a
Celtic PaganCeltic Neopaganism refers to Neopagan movements based on Celtic polytheism.-Types of Celtic Neopaganism:*Neo-druidism, grew out of the Celtic revival in 18th century Romanticism....
handfastingHandfasting is a traditional European ceremony of betrothal or wedding. It usually involved the tying or binding of the right hands of the bride and groom with a cord or ribbon for the duration of the wedding ceremony.-Etymology:...
ceremony with rock critic and science fiction/
fantasyFantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
author
Patricia KennealyPatricia Kennealy-Morrison is an American author and journalist. Her published works include rock criticism, a memoir, and a series of science fiction/fantasy and murder mystery novels...
. Before witnesses, one of them a Presbyterian minister, the couple signed a document declaring themselves wedded, but none of the necessary paperwork for a legal marriage was filed with the state. Kennealy discussed her experiences with Morrison in her autobiography Strange Days: My Life With and Without Jim Morrison in an interview reported in the book Rock Wives.
Morrison also regularly had sex with fans ("groupies") and had numerous short flings with women who were celebrities, including
NicoNico was a German singer, lyricist, composer, musician, fashion model, and actress, who initially rose to fame as a Warhol Superstar in the 1960s...
, the singer associated with
The Velvet UndergroundThe Velvet Underground was an American rock band formed in New York City. First active from 1964 to 1973, their best-known members were Lou Reed and John Cale, who both went on to find success as solo artists. Although experiencing little commercial success while together, the band is often cited...
, a
one night standOne Night Stand is an HBO stand-up series that first aired on February 15, 1989. The half-hour series aired weekly and featured stand-up comedy specials from some of the top performing comedians. The series originally comprised 55 specials over the course of its four years on HBO...
with singer
Grace SlickGrace Slick is an American singer and songwriter, who was one of the lead singers of the rock groups The Great Society, Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, and Starship, and was a solo artist, for nearly three decades, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s...
of
Jefferson AirplaneJefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....
, an on-again-off-again relationship with
16 Magazine16 Magazine was a fan magazine based out of New York City. It was the first magazine marketed to adolescents that focused exclusively on celebrities...
s
Gloria StaversGloria Stavers was the editor in chief of 16 Magazine. Her personality gave this teen celebrity magazine its stamp for many years....
as well as an alleged alcohol-fueled encounter with
Janis JoplinJanis Lyn Joplin was an American singer, songwriter, painter, dancer and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist with her backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band...
. However rock musician and rock star expert,
Alice CooperAlice Cooper is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades...
, declared on his syndicated radio show that Jim was scrupulously true to Pamela on tour, eschewing all sexual encounters. Linda Ashcroft, in her book, "Wild Child: My Life With Jim Morrison" details her life with Morrison as well. Judy Huddleston also recalls her relationship with Morrison in "This is The End...My Only Friend: Living and Dying with Jim Morrison". At the time of his death there were reportedly as many as twenty
paternityIn law, paternity is the legal acknowledgment of the parental relationship between a man and a child usually based on several factors.At common law, a child born to the wife during a marriage is the husband's child under the "presumption of legitimacy", and the husband is assigned complete rights,...
actions pending against him, although no claims were made against his estate by any of the putative paternity claimants.
Death
Morrison flew with Pam to Paris in March 1971. They took up residence in the city in a rented apartment on the rue Beautreillis (on the Right Bank), and went for long walks throughout the city, admiring the city's architecture. During this time, Morrison shaved his beard and lost some of the weight he had gained in the previous months. His last studio recording was with two American street musicians — a session dismissed by Manzarek as "drunken gibberish". The session included a version of a song-in-progress, "Orange County Suite", which can be heard on the bootleg
The Lost Paris TapesThe Lost Paris Tapes is the title given to a recorded collection of unedited poems and songs by rock musician and poet Jim Morrison of The Doors...
.
Morrison died on July 3, 1971
at age 27The 27 Club—also occasionally known as the Forever 27 Club, Club 27 or the Curse of 27—is the title for a group of popular musicians who all died at the age of 27...
. In the official account of his death, he was found in a Paris apartment bathtub by Courson. Pursuant to French law, no
autopsyAn autopsy—also known as a post-mortem examination, necropsy , autopsia cadaverum, or obduction—is a highly specialized surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse to determine the cause and manner of death and to evaluate any disease or injury that may be present...
was performed because the
medical examinerA medical examiner is a medically qualified government officer whose duty is to investigate deaths and injuries that occur under unusual or suspicious circumstances, to perform post-mortem examinations, and in some jurisdictions to initiate inquests....
stated that there was no evidence of
foul playCrime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
. The absence of an official autopsy has left many questions regarding Morrison's cause of death.
In Wonderland Avenue,
Danny SugermanDaniel Stephen "Danny" Sugerman was the second manager of the Los Angeles-based rock band The Doors, and wrote several books about Jim Morrison and The Doors, including No One Here Gets Out Alive , and the autobiography Wonderland Avenue...
discussed his encounter with Courson after she returned to the United States. According to Sugerman's account, Courson stated that Morrison had died of a heroin
overdoseThe term drug overdose describes the ingestion or application of a drug or other substance in quantities greater than are recommended or generally practiced...
, having
insufflatedInsufflation is the practice of inhaling a substance. Insufflation has limited medical use, but is a common route of administration with many respiratory drugs used to treat conditions in the lungs and paranasal sinus .The technique is common for many recreational drugs and is also used for some...
what he believed to be
cocaineCocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
. Sugerman added that Courson had given him numerous contradictory versions of Morrison's death, saying at times that she had killed Morrison, or that his death was her fault. Courson's story of Morrison's unintentional ingestion of heroin, followed by his accidental overdose, is supported by the confession of Alain Ronay, who has written that Morrison died of a hemorrhage after snorting Courson's heroin, and that Courson nodded off instead of phoning for medical help, leaving Morrison bleeding to death.
Ronay confessed in an article in
Paris MatchParis Match is a French weekly magazine. It covers major national and international news along with celebrity lifestyle features. It was founded in 1949 by the industrialist Jean Prouvost....
that he then helped cover up the circumstances of Morrison's death. In the epilogue of No One Here Gets Out Alive, Hopkins and Sugerman write that Ronay and
Agnès VardaAgnès Varda is a French film director and professor at the European Graduate School. Her movies, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary — with a distinct experimental style....
say Courson lied to the police who responded to the death scene, and later in her deposition, telling them Morrison never took drugs.
In the epilogue to No One Here Gets Out Alive, Hopkins says that 20 years after Morrison's death, Ronay and Varda broke silence and gave this account: They arrived at the house shortly after Morrison's death and Courson said that she and Morrison had taken heroin after a night of drinking. Morrison had been coughing badly, had gone to take a bath, and vomited blood. Courson said that he appeared to recover and that she then went to sleep. When she awoke sometime later Morrison was unresponsive, and so she called for medical assistance.
Courson died of a heroin overdose three years later. Like Morrison, she was also 27 years old at the time of her death. Contrary to initial reports circulating in 1974, she was not buried with Morrison, but rather her cremated ashes were interred in a wall at Fairhaven Memorial Park in
Santa Ana, CaliforniaSanta Ana is the county seat and second most populous city in Orange County, California, and with a population of 324,528 at the 2010 census, Santa Ana is the 57th-most populous city in the United States....
, with the plaque bearing the name "Pamela Susan Morrison".
In the epilogue of No One Here Gets Out Alive, Hopkins and Sugerman also claim that Morrison had
asthmaAsthma is the common chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and bronchospasm. Symptoms include wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath...
and was suffering from a
respiratoryThe respiratory system is the anatomical system of an organism that introduces respiratory gases to the interior and performs gas exchange. In humans and other mammals, the anatomical features of the respiratory system include airways, lungs, and the respiratory muscles...
condition involving a chronic cough and vomiting blood on the night of his death. This theory is partially supported in The Doors (written by the remaining members of the band) in which they claim Morrison had been coughing up blood for nearly two months in Paris. None of the members of
The DoorsThe Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger...
were in Paris with Morrison in the months prior to his death.
According to an outside individual who alleges that she witnessed Morrison's funeral at
Père Lachaise CemeteryPère Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris, France , though there are larger cemeteries in the city's suburbs.Père Lachaise is in the 20th arrondissement, and is reputed to be the world's most-visited cemetery, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to the...
(a woman by the name of Madame Colinette who was at the cemetery that day mourning the recent loss of her husband) the ceremony was "pitiful", with several of the attendants muttering a few words, throwing flowers over the casket, then leaving quickly and hastily within minutes as if their lives depended upon it. Those who attended included Alain Ronay, Agnes Varda, Bill Siddons (manager), Courson, and Robin Wertle (Morrison's Canadian private secretary at the time for a few months).
In the first version of No One Here Gets Out Alive published in 1980, Sugerman and Hopkins gave some credence to the rumor that Morrison may not have died at all, calling the fake death theory “not as far-fetched as it might seem”. This theory led to considerable distress for Morrison's loved ones over the years, notably when fans would
stalkStalking is a term commonly used to refer to unwanted and obsessive attention by an individual or group to another person. Stalking behaviors are related to harassment and intimidation and may include following the victim in person and/or monitoring them via the internet...
them, searching for evidence of Morrison's whereabouts. In 1995 a new epilogue was added to Sugerman's and Hopkins's book, giving new facts about Morrison's death and discounting the fake death theory, saying “As time passed, some of Jim and Pamela [Courson]'s friends began to talk about what they knew, and although everything they said pointed irrefutably to Jim's demise, there remained and probably always will be those who refuse to believe that Jim is dead and those who will not allow him to rest in peace.”
In a July 2007 newspaper interview, a self-described close friend of Morrison's, Sam Bernett, resurrected an old rumor and announced that Morrison actually died of a heroin overdose in the Rock 'n' Roll Circus nightclub, on the Left Bank in Paris. Bernett claims that Morrison came to the club to buy heroin for Courson then did some himself and died in the bathroom. Bernett alleges that Morrison was then moved back to his rue Beautreillis apartment and dumped in the bathtub by the same two drug dealers from whom Morrison had purchased the heroin. Bernett says those who saw Morrison that night were sworn to secrecy in order to prevent a scandal for the famous club, and that some of the witnesses immediately left the country. There have been many other
conspiracy theoriesA conspiracy theory explains an event as being the result of an alleged plot by a covert group or organization or, more broadly, the idea that important political, social or economic events are the products of secret plots that are largely unknown to the general public.-Usage:The term "conspiracy...
surrounding Morrison's death but are less supported by witnesses than are the accounts of Ronay and Courson.
Grave site
Morrison is buried in
Père Lachaise CemeteryPère Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris, France , though there are larger cemeteries in the city's suburbs.Père Lachaise is in the 20th arrondissement, and is reputed to be the world's most-visited cemetery, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to the...
in Paris, one of the city's most visited tourist attractions. The grave had no official marker until French officials placed a shield over it, which was stolen in 1973. In 1981, Croatian sculptor Mladen Mikulin placed a bust of Morrison and a new gravestone with Morrison's name at the grave to commemorate the 10th anniversary of his death; the bust was defaced through the years by cemetery vandals and later stolen in 1988. In the 1990s Morrison's father,
George Stephen MorrisonGeorge Stephen Morrison was a Rear Admiral and naval aviator in the United States Navy. Morrison was commander of the U.S. naval forces in the Gulf of Tonkin during the Gulf of Tonkin Incident of August 1964...
, placed a flat stone on the grave. The stone bears the
GreekGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
inscription: ΚΑΤΑ ΤΟΝ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΑ ΕΑΥΤΟΥ, literally meaning "according to his own daemon" and usually interpreted as "true to his own spirit". Mikulin later made two more Morrison portraits in bronze but is awaiting the license to place a new sculpture on the tomb.
Estate controversy
In his last
willA will or testament is a legal declaration by which a person, the testator, names one or more persons to manage his/her estate and provides for the transfer of his/her property at death...
, notarized in Los Angeles County on February 12, 1969, Morrison (who described himself as "an unmarried person")
bequeathedA bequest is the act of giving property by will. Strictly, "bequest" is used of personal property, and "devise" of real property. In legal terminology, "bequeath" is a verb form meaning "to make a bequest."...
his entire estate to Courson, also naming her co-executor with his attorney, Max Fink; she thus inherited everything upon Morrison’s death in 1971.
When Courson died in 1974, a battle ensued between Morrison’s and Courson’s parents over who had legal claim to Morrison’s estate. Since Morrison left a will, the question was effectively moot. Upon his death, his property became Courson’s, and on her death her property passed to her next heirs-at-law, her parents. Morrison's parents contested the will under which Courson and now her parents had inherited their son’s property.
To bolster their position, Courson’s parents presented a document they claimed she had acquired in
ColoradoColorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
, an application for a declaration that she and Morrison had contracted a
common-law marriageCommon-law marriage, sometimes called sui juris marriage, informal marriage or marriage by habit and repute, is a form of interpersonal status that is legally recognized in limited jurisdictions as a marriage even though no legally recognized marriage ceremony is performed or civil marriage...
under the law of that state. The ability to contract a common-law marriage was abolished in California in 1896. California's
conflict of lawsConflict of laws is a set of procedural rules that determines which legal system and which jurisdiction's applies to a given dispute...
rule provided for recognition of common-law marriages when lawfully contracted in foreign jurisdictions — and Colorado was one of the eleven United States jurisdictions that still recognized common-law marriage.
Artistic influences
As a naval family the Morrisons relocated frequently. Consequently Morrison's early education was routinely disrupted as he moved from school to school. Nonetheless was drawn to the study of
literatureLiterature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
,
poetryPoetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
,
religionReligion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
,
philosophyPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and
psychologyPsychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, among other fields.
Biographers have consistently pointed to a number of writers and philosophers who influenced Morrison's thinking and, perhaps, his behavior. While still in his teens Morrison discovered the work of philosopher
Friedrich NietzscheFriedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
. He was also drawn to the poetry of
William BlakeWilliam Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
,
Charles BaudelaireCharles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
and
Arthur RimbaudJean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
.
Beat GenerationThe Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
writers such as
Jack KerouacJean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
also had a strong influence on Morrison's outlook and manner of expression; Morrison was eager to experience the life described in Kerouac's
On the RoadOn the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, written in April 1951, and published by Viking Press in 1957. It is a largely autobiographical work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. It is often considered a defining work of...
. He was similarly drawn to the work of French writer
Louis-Ferdinand CélineLouis-Ferdinand Céline was the pen name of French writer and physician Louis-Ferdinand Destouches . Céline was chosen after his grandmother's first name. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, developing a new style of writing that modernized both French and...
. Céline's book, Voyage au Bout de la Nuit (
Journey to the End of the NightJourney to the End of Night is the first novel of Louis-Ferdinand Céline. This semi-autobiographical work describes antihero Ferdinand Bardamu....
) and Blake's
Auguries of InnocenceAuguries of Innocence is a poem from one of William Blake's notebooks now known as The Pickering Manuscript. It is assumed to have been written in 1803, but was not published until 1863 in the companion volume to Alexander Gilchrist's biography of William Blake. The poem contains a series of...
both echo through one of Morrison's early songs, "End of the Night". Morrison later met and befriended Michael McClure, a well known beat poet. McClure had enjoyed Morrison's lyrics but was even more impressed by his poetry and encouraged him to further develop his craft.
Morrison's vision of performance was colored by the works of twentieth century French playwright
Antonin ArtaudAntoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...
(author of Theater and its Double) and by
Julian BeckJulian Beck was an American actor, director, poet, and painter.-Early life:Beck was born in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan in New York City, the son of Mabel Lucille , a teacher, and Irving Beck, a businessman. He briefly attended Yale University, but dropped out to pursue writing and...
's Living Theater.
Other works relating to
religionReligion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
,
mysticismMysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
, ancient
mythThe term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
and
symbolA symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...
ism were of lasting interest, particularly
Joseph CampbellJoseph John Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience...
's
The Hero with a Thousand FacesThe Hero with a Thousand Faces is a non-fiction book, and seminal work of comparative mythology by Joseph Campbell...
.
James FrazerSir James George Frazer , was a Scottish social anthropologist influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion...
's
The Golden BoughThe Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer . It first was published in two volumes in 1890; the third edition, published 1906–15, comprised twelve volumes...
also became a source of inspiration and is reflected in the title and lyrics of the song "Not to Touch the Earth".
Morrison was particularly attracted to the myths and religions of Native American cultures. While he was still in school, his family moved to
New MexicoNew Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
where he got to see some of the places and artifacts important to the American Southwest indigenous cultures. These interests appear to be the source of many references to creatures and places such as lizards, snakes,
desertsDéserts is a piece by Edgard Varèse for brass , percussion , piano, and tape. Percussion instruments are exploited for their resonant potential, rather than used solely as accompaniment...
and "ancient lakes" that appear in his songs and poetry. His interpretation of the practices of a Native American "shaman" were worked into parts of Morrison's stage routine, notably in his interpretation of the
Ghost DanceThe Ghost Dance was a new religious movement which was incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems. The traditional ritual used in the Ghost Dance, the circle dance, has been used by many Native Americans since prehistoric times...
, and a song on his later poetry album, The Ghost Song.
Jim Morrison's vocal influences included
Elvis PresleyElvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
and
Frank SinatraFrancis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
, which is evident in his own baritone
crooningCrooner is an American epithet given to male singers of pop standards, mostly from the Great American Songbook, either backed by a full orchestra, a big band or by a piano. Originally it was an ironic term denoting an emphatically sentimental, often emotional singing style made possible by the use...
style used in several of
The DoorsThe Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger...
songs. It is mentioned within the pages of "No One Here Gets Out Alive" by Danny Sugerman, that Morrison as a teenager was such a fan of Presley's music that he demanded people be quiet when Elvis was on the radio. The Frank Sinatra influence is mentioned in the pages of "The Doors, The Illustrated History" also by Sugerman, where Frank Sinatra is listed on Morrison's Band Bio as being his favorite singer. Reference to this can also be found in a
Rolling Stone article about Jim Morrison, regarding the Top 100 rock singers of all time.
Legacy
Morrison was, and continues to remain, one of the most popular and influential singer-songwriters in rock history.
The DoorsThe Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger...
' catalog has become a unequivocal staple of
classic rockClassic rock is a radio format which developed from the album-oriented rock format in the early 1980s. In the United States, the classic rock format features music ranging generally from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, primarily focusing on the hard rock genre that peaked in popularity in the...
radio stations. To this day Morrison is widely regarded as the prototypical rock-star: surly, sexy, scandalous and mysterious. The leather pants he was fond of wearing both onstage and off have since become stereotyped as rock-star apparel. In 2011, a
Rolling StoneRolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
readers' pick placed Jim Morrison in fifth place of the magazine's "Best Lead Singers of All Time".
Iggy and the Stooges are said to have formed after lead singer
Iggy PopIggy Pop is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Though considered an innovator of punk rock, Pop's music has encompassed a number of styles over the years, including pop, metal, jazz and blues...
was inspired by Morrison while attending a Doors concert in
Ann Arbor, MichiganAnn Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County. The 2010 census places the population at 113,934, making it the sixth largest city in Michigan. The Ann Arbor Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 344,791 as of 2010...
. One of Pop's most popular songs, "
The Passenger"The Passenger" is a song by Iggy Pop and Ricky Gardiner, recorded and released by Iggy Pop on the Lust for Life album in 1977. It was also released as the B-side of the album's only single, "Success"...
", is said to be based on one of Morrison's poems. After Morrison's death, Pop was considered as a replacement lead singer for The Doors; the surviving Doors gave him some of Morrison's belongings and hired him as a vocalist for a series of shows.
Wallace FowlieWallace Fowlie was an American writer and professor of literature. He was the James B. Duke Professor of French Literature at Duke University from 1964. Known for his translations of the poet Arthur Rimbaud and his critical studies of French poetry and drama, he also wrote about rock-poet Jim...
, professor emeritus of
French literatureFrench literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...
at
Duke UniversityDuke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
, wrote Rimbaud and Jim Morrison, subtitled "The Rebel as Poet – A Memoir". In this he recounts his surprise at receiving a fan letter from Morrison who, in 1968, thanked him for his latest translation of
Arthur RimbaudJean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
's verse into English. "I don't read French easily", he wrote, "...your book travels around with me." Fowlie went on to give lectures on numerous campuses comparing the lives, philosophies and poetry of Morrison and Rimbaud.
Eddie VedderEddie Vedder is an American musician and singer-songwriter who is best known for being the lead singer and one of three guitarists of the alternative rock band Pearl Jam. He is widely considered a cultural icon of alternative rock.He is also involved in soundtrack work and contributes to albums...
, lead singer of the band
Pearl JamPearl Jam is an American rock band that formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1990. Since its inception, the band's line-up has included Eddie Vedder , Jeff Ament , Stone Gossard , and Mike McCready...
,
Layne StaleyLayne Thomas Staley was an American musician who served as the lead singer and co-lyricist of the rock group Alice in Chains, which was formed in Seattle, Washington in 1987 by Staley and guitarist Jerry Cantrell. Alice in Chains rose to international fame as part of the grunge movement of the...
, the late vocalist of
Alice in ChainsAlice in Chains is an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1987 by guitarist and songwriter Jerry Cantrell and original lead vocalist Layne Staley. The initial lineup was rounded out by drummer Sean Kinney, and bassist Mike Starr...
,
Scott WeilandScott Weiland is an American musician, lyricist, and vocalist, most notable for his work with Grammy Award-winning rock band Stone Temple Pilots. Weiland is also known for his five-year career with supergroup Velvet Revolver as well as his own solo career...
, the vocalist of
Stone Temple PilotsStone Temple Pilots is an American rock band from San Diego, California that consists of Scott Weiland , brothers Robert DeLeo and Dean DeLeo , and Eric Kretz ....
and
Velvet RevolverVelvet Revolver is an American hard rock supergroup consisting of former Guns N' Roses members Slash, Duff McKagan, and Matt Sorum, alongside Dave Kushner formerly of punk band Wasted Youth. Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland was Velvet Revolver's lead singer from their formation until...
,
Julian CasablancasJulian Fernando Casablancas is an American singer-songwriter and musician of The Strokes. Casablancas pursued a solo career during The Strokes' hiatus, releasing the album Phrazes for the Young on November 3, 2009....
of
The StrokesThe Strokes are an American indie rock band formed in 1999 in New York City. Consisting of Julian Casablancas , Nick Valensi , Albert Hammond, Jr. , Nikolai Fraiture and Fabrizio Moretti ....
,
James LaBrieKevin James LaBrie is a Canadian vocalist who is best known as the lead singer of the American progressive metal band Dream Theater.-Early life:...
of
Dream TheaterDream Theater is an American progressive metal band formed in 1985 under the name Majesty by John Petrucci, John Myung, and Mike Portnoy while they attended Berklee College of Music in Massachusetts. They subsequently dropped out of their studies to further concentrate on the band that would...
, as well as
Scott StappScott Alan Stapp is an American musician and singer-songwriter best known as the lead vocalist and lyricist of the rock band Creed, of which he is a founding member. His debut solo album, The Great Divide, was released in 2005. A second album, Between Lust and Love, is currently in production...
of
CreedCreed is an American rock band formed in 1995 in Tallahassee, Florida. Becoming popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the band has released three consecutive multi-platinum albums, one of which has been certified diamond, and has sold over 28 million records in the United States, with an...
, have all claimed Morrison to be their biggest influence and inspiration.
Stone Temple PilotsStone Temple Pilots is an American rock band from San Diego, California that consists of Scott Weiland , brothers Robert DeLeo and Dean DeLeo , and Eric Kretz ....
and
Velvet RevolverVelvet Revolver is an American hard rock supergroup consisting of former Guns N' Roses members Slash, Duff McKagan, and Matt Sorum, alongside Dave Kushner formerly of punk band Wasted Youth. Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland was Velvet Revolver's lead singer from their formation until...
have both covered "
Roadhouse Blues"Roadhouse Blues" is a blues-rock song written and recorded by the American rock band The Doors. The song, which appeared on the B-side of "You Make Me Real", was first released as a single from the album Morrison Hotel in March 1970 and peaked at #50 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100...
" by The Doors. Weiland also filled in for Morrison to perform "
Break On Through (To The Other Side)"Break on Through " is a song by The Doors from their debut album, The Doors. It was the first single released by the band and was unsuccessful compared to later hits, reaching only #126 in the United States...
" with the rest of The Doors. Stapp filled in for Morrison for "
Light My Fire"Light My Fire" is a song by The Doors which was recorded in August 1966 and released the first week of January 1967 on the Doors' debut album. Released as a single in April, it spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and one week on the Cash Box Top 100, nearly a year after...
", "
Riders on the Storm"Riders on the Storm" is a song by The Doors from their 1971 album, L.A. Woman. It reached number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, number 22 on the UK singles charts and number 7 in the Netherlands.-Overview:...
" and "Roadhouse Blues" on
VH1 StorytellersStorytellers is a television music series produced by the VH1 network.In each episode artists perform in front of a live audience, and tell stories about their music, writing experiences and memories, somewhat similar to MTV Unplugged...
. Creed performed their version of "Roadhouse Blues" with Robbie Krieger for the
1999 Woodstock FestivalWoodstock 1999, also called Woodstock 99, performed July 22–25, 1999, was the second large-scale music festival that attempted to emulate the original Woodstock Festival of 1969. Like the previous Woodstock festivals it was performed in upstate New York, this time in Rome, New York, around 200...
.
The book The Doors by the remaining Doors quotes Morrison's close friend Frank Lisciandro as saying that too many people took a remark of Morrison's that he was interested in revolt, disorder, and chaos “to mean that he was an
anarchistAnarchy , has more than one colloquial definition. In the United States, the term "anarchy" typically is meant to refer to a society which lacks publicly recognized government or violently enforced political authority...
, a revolutionary, or, worse yet, a
nihilistNihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
. Hardly anyone noticed that Jim was restating Rimbaud and the
SurrealSurrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
poets.”
Rock band
Bon JoviBon Jovi is an American rock band from Sayreville, New Jersey. Formed in 1983, Bon Jovi consists of lead singer and namesake Jon Bon Jovi , guitarist Richie Sambora, keyboardist David Bryan, drummer Tico Torres, as well as current bassist Hugh McDonald...
featured Morrison's grave in their "I'll Sleep While I'm Dead" video clip.
WWE Superstar John Hennigan wrestles under the name, John Morrison, which is modeled after Jim Morrison in which the two share a strong resemblance of each others facial and hair features.
By Jim Morrison
- The Lords and the New Creatures (1969). 1985 edition: ISBN 0-7119-0552-5
- An American Prayer (1970) privately printed by Western Lithographers. (Unauthorized edition also published in 1983, Zeppelin Publishing Company, ISBN 0-915628-46-5. The authenticity of the unauthorized edition has been disputed.)
- Wilderness: The Lost Writings Of Jim Morrison (1988). 1990 edition: ISBN 0-14-011910-8
- The American Night: The Writings of Jim Morrison (1990). 1991 edition: ISBN 0-670-83772-5
About Jim Morrison
- Dylan Jones, Jim Morrison: Dark Star, (1990) ISBN 0-7475-0951-4
- Linda Ashcroft, Wild Child: Life with Jim Morrison, (1997) ISBN 1-56025-249-9
- Lester Bangs
Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs was an American music journalist, author and musician. He wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines, and was known for his leading influence in rock 'n' roll criticism....
, "Jim Morrison: Bozo Dionysus a Decade Later" in Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader, John Morthland, ed. Anchor Press (2003) ISBN 0-375-71367-0
- Stephen Davis
Stephen Davis is an American music journalist and historian.Davis was born in New York City and attended Boston University. He began his career writing for the Boston Phoenix in 1970...
, Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend, (2004) ISBN 1-59240-064-7
- John Densmore
John Paul Densmore is an American musician and songwriter. He is best known as the drummer of the rock group The Doors.-Early life and The Doors:Born in Los Angeles, Densmore attended Santa Monica City College and Cal...
, Riders on the Storm: My Life With Jim Morrison and the Doors (1991) ISBN 0-385-30447-1
- Dave DiMartino, Moonlight Drive (1995) ISBN 1-886894-21-3
- Wallace Fowlie, Rimbaud and Jim Morrison (1994) ISBN 0-8223-1442-8
- Jerry Hopkins, The Lizard King: The Essential Jim Morrison (1995) ISBN 0-684-81866-3
- Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman
Daniel Stephen "Danny" Sugerman was the second manager of the Los Angeles-based rock band The Doors, and wrote several books about Jim Morrison and The Doors, including No One Here Gets Out Alive , and the autobiography Wonderland Avenue...
, No One Here Gets Out AliveNo One Here Gets Out Alive was the first biography of Jim Morrison, lead singer and lyricist of the L.A. rock band The Doors, written after his death by journalist Jerry Hopkins, with later "insider" information added by Danny Sugerman. The book is largely credited with revitalizing the popularity...
(1980) ISBN 0-85965-138-X
- Patricia Kennealy
Patricia Kennealy-Morrison is an American author and journalist. Her published works include rock criticism, a memoir, and a series of science fiction/fantasy and murder mystery novels...
, Strange Days: My Life With and Without Jim Morrison (1992) ISBN 0-525-93419-7
- Frank Lisciandro, Morrison — A Feast of Friends (1991) ISBN 0-446-39276-6, Morrison — Un festin entre amis (1996) (French)
- Frank Lisciandro, Jim Morrison — An Hour For Magic (A Photojournal) (1982) ISBN 0-85965-246-7, James Douglas Morrison (2005) (French)
- Ray Manzarek
Raymond Daniel Manzarek, Jr., better known as Ray Manzarek , is an American musician, singer, producer, film director, writer, co-founder and keyboardist of The Doors from 1965 to 1973, Nite City from 1977–1978 and Manzarek-Krieger since 2001.Manzarek is listed #4 on Digital Dreamdoor's "100...
, Light My Fire (1998) ISBN 0-446-60228-0L. First by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman (1981)
- Peter Jan Margry, The Pilgrimage to Jim Morrison's Grave at Père Lachaise Cemetery: The Social Construction of Sacred Space. In idem (ed.), Shrines and Pilgrimage in the Modern World. New Itineraries into the Sacred. Amsterdam University Press
Amsterdam University Press is a university press that was founded in 1992 by the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It is based on the Anglo-Saxon university press model and operates on a not-for-profit basis...
, 2008, p. 145–173.
- Thanasis Michos, The Poetry of James Douglas Morrison (2001) ISBN 960-7748-23-9 (Greek)
- Mark Opsasnick, The Lizard King Was Here: The Life and Times of Jim Morrison in Alexandria, Virginia (2006) ISBN 1-4257-1330-0
- James Riordan & Jerry Prochnicky, Break on through : The Life and Death of Jim Morrison (1991) ISBN 0-688-11915-8
- Adriana Rubio, Jim Morrison: Ceremony...Exploring the Shaman Possession (2005) ISBN
- The Doors
The Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger...
(remaining members Ray ManzarekRaymond Daniel Manzarek, Jr., better known as Ray Manzarek , is an American musician, singer, producer, film director, writer, co-founder and keyboardist of The Doors from 1965 to 1973, Nite City from 1977–1978 and Manzarek-Krieger since 2001.Manzarek is listed #4 on Digital Dreamdoor's "100...
, Robby KriegerRobert Alan "Robby" Krieger is an American rock guitarist and songwriter. He was the guitarist in The Doors, and wrote some of the band's best known songs, including "Light My Fire," "Love Me Two Times," "Touch Me," and "Love Her Madly."...
, John DensmoreJohn Paul Densmore is an American musician and songwriter. He is best known as the drummer of the rock group The Doors.-Early life and The Doors:Born in Los Angeles, Densmore attended Santa Monica City College and Cal...
) with Ben Fong-Torres, The Doors (2006) ISBN 1-4013-0303-X
Documentaries featuring Jim Morrison
- The Doors Are Open (1968)
- Live in Europe (1968)
- Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1968)
- Feast of Friends (1969)
- The Doors: A Tribute to Jim Morrison (1981)
- The Doors: Dance on Fire (1985)
- The Soft Parade, a Retrospective (1991)
- Final 24
Final 24 is a Canadian documentary series which airs on the Discovery Channel and Global Television Network. The series explores the last 24 hours of the life of a person, usually a celebrity...
: Jim Morrison (2007), The Biography Channel
- The Doors: No One Here Gets Out Alive (2009)
- When You're Strange
When You're Strange is a 2009 documentary about the life of The Doors. It is written and directed by Tom DiCillo and for the first time makes material from Jim Morrison's 1969 film fragment HWY: An American Pastoral publicly available....
(2009)
Films about Jim Morrison
- The Doors
The Doors is a 1991 biopic about the 1960s-1970s rock band of the same name which emphasizes the life of its lead singer, Jim Morrison. It was directed by Oliver Stone, and stars Val Kilmer as Morrison, Meg Ryan as Pamela Courson , Kyle MacLachlan as Ray Manzarek, Frank Whaley as Robby Krieger,...
(1991), A fiction film by director Oliver StoneWilliam Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Stone became well known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, for which he had previously participated as an infantry soldier. His work frequently focuses on...
, starring Val KilmerVal Edward Kilmer is an American actor. Originally a stage actor, Kilmer became popular in the mid-1980s after a string of appearances in comedy films, starting with Top Secret! , then the cult classic Real Genius , as well as blockbuster action films, including a supporting role in Top Gun and a...
as Morrison and with cameos by Krieger and Densmore. Kilmer's performance was praised by some critics. Ray ManzarekRaymond Daniel Manzarek, Jr., better known as Ray Manzarek , is an American musician, singer, producer, film director, writer, co-founder and keyboardist of The Doors from 1965 to 1973, Nite City from 1977–1978 and Manzarek-Krieger since 2001.Manzarek is listed #4 on Digital Dreamdoor's "100...
, The Door's keyboardist, harshly criticized Stone's portrayal of Morrison, and noted that numerous events depicted in the movie were pure fiction. David CrosbyDavid Van Cortlandt Crosby is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. In addition to his solo career, he was a founding member of three bands: The Byrds, Crosby, Stills & Nash , and CPR...
on an album by CPR wrote and recorded a song about the movie with the lyric: "And I have seen that movie -- and it wasn’t like that -- he was mad and lonely -- and blind as a bat.".
External links