27: Jim Morrison (8 page)

Jim Morrison's Miami court case lasted – with occasional breaks – for almost two months. On 30 October 1970, he was found guilty of vulgar and indecent exposure and vulgar and indecent language.
⁶⁸
He was found not guilty of gross and lascivious behaviour and drunkenness – absurdly, as this was all he was actually guilty of. He was sentenced to six months hard labour in jail and given a $500 fine. He was, however, allowed out on bail to appeal.

Midway through the trial, Jimi Hendrix had died, aged twenty-seven, on 18 September 1970. This sent Jim Morrison into a fit of depression that was only exacerbated when Janis Joplin, who was the same age, also passed away, on 4 October. ‘You're drinking with number three,' Jim would inform friends.

Back in Los Angeles, The Doors immediately began work on their next album,
LA Woman
. The title track contained the phrase ‘Mr Mojo Risin', an anagram of Jim Morrison. Paul Rothchild was no longer at the helm as producer: he had complained he thought some of their new material sounded like ‘cocktail jazz'. But there was a larger, more complex reason for Rothchild pulling out of this job: he had been producing
Pearl
, the Janis Joplin album that would be released posthumously, and felt so stunned from her death that he wasn't up to a return to the studio.
⁶⁹
Bruce Botnick, their longstanding engineer, said he would help The Doors co-produce the record, which they decided to make at their rehearsal space.

One evening Michelangelo Antonioni, the celebrated Italian film director who had made the epochal
Blow-Up
, came to see them. He was finishing
Zabriskie Point
and was searching for music for it. One of the tunes The Doors were readying for
LA Woman
was ‘L'America', and it was felt this might be appropriate.
⁷⁰
‘The apostrophe after L is short for Latin America,' John Densmore remembered Jim explaining the song to the film director, ‘or Central America, or Mexico, for that matter. Anywhere south of the border.'

‘During his monologue,' Densmore wrote in his book
Riders on the Storm
, ‘I remember thinking how brilliant Jim was. God, I loved his mind. How did he continually come up with such original stuff? He still seemed creative and vibrant back then, even though he was on a downward spiral with his drinking.'
⁷¹

Even though by then 16-track tape was available,
LA Woman
was recorded on 8-track. ‘Our last record turned out like our first album: raw and simple,' decided John Densmore. ‘It was as if we had come full circle. Once again we were a garage band, which is where rock 'n' roll started. We even dropped the individual writer credits, just like on our first three albums: all songs written by The Doors.'
⁷²

One day while they were recording, John Densmore noticed that Jim was limping as he walked into the rehearsal room after a brief adjournment to buy beers. Robby Krieger told him that while staying at the Chateau Marmont Jim had had a fall. He had tried to swing into his room off the rain gutter, slipped, and fallen on his back onto the roof of a cottage. ‘God, he never used to get hurt. I thought he was indestructible,' said Densmore.
⁷³

The no longer indestructible Jim Morrison professed a desire to play a tour of small halls in Australia. However, The Doors would only play four more concerts again, ever: a pair in California – in Bakersfield and San Diego one weekend – and one each in Houston and New Orleans.

Although the show in Houston was apparently outstanding, when The Doors played New Orleans, on 12 December 1970, Jim Morrison's performance revealed a man shockingly at war with himself. At the end of the song ‘Soul Kitchen', from their first album, Jim delivered bad jokes for some minutes: ‘What did the blind man say as he passed the fish store? “Hi, girls.”'

Midway through the set he slammed the microphone stand into the stage floor, over and over and over, in the manner he had learned from his namesake Van Morrison, until the wood beneath was destroyed. Sitting down on the drum riser, he then refused to perform for the remainder of the show.

‘He was just plain boring. It was pathetic – an artist on the skids,' thought John Densmore.
⁷⁴
‘Jim wasn't even drunk, but his energy was fading. Later Ray remarked that during the set he saw all of Jim's psychic energy go out the top of his head. I didn't quite see that, but it did seem that Jim's life-force was gone.'
⁷⁵
After Jim and Bill Siddons had gone into their hotel, the other three Doors conversed outside the building. ‘It's finished,' declared Ray.

The garage-band feel of
LA Woman
paid off. ‘Love Her Madly' reached number 4 on the singles charts. Meanwhile, ‘Riders on the Storm' enjoyed heavy FM airplay – released as a single it got to number 14. ‘LA Woman' itself, which was released in late April 1971, only reached number 9 in the USA, but ultimately sold 2 million copies. (Its sales, of course, were boosted three months later, by the death of Jim Morrison, unexpected except by all those who knew him.)

Some days before the album came out, Jim Morrison had left for Paris, on 15 April. Two months earlier Pamela Courson had already arrived in the French capital. They took an apartment at 17 rue Beautreillis in the Marais section of the city, a beautiful location. He enjoyed his reflective life in the city, and seems to have written a 71number of poems, many of which were not discovered until over a decade and a half later. He is believed to have been working on a pair of screenplays. In April and May he and Pamela drove through parts of France, Spain and Morocco, later visiting Corsica for ten days.

But he was still drinking, thwarted by himself when he tried unsuccessfully to go cold turkey. Soon, however, he was living a similar life in Paris as the one he led in Los Angeles, he and Pamela each forming new sets of friends – in Jim Morrison's case, a bunch of drinking buddies with whom to hang out in undesirable
boîtes
. By the end of June, however, he was falling into depression.

On 2 July 1971 Jim Morrison went with Pamela Courson to a cinema to watch
Pursued
, a film starring Robert Mitchum, one of his favourite actors. Pamela Courson claimed he came back with her to their apartment from the movie and went to bed. Waking in the night from chest pains, he got up to soak in the bath tub. It was 5 a.m. when Pamela woke and found him still lying in the bath. A heart attack was what had killed Jim Morrison, it was widely circulated.

Later a story emerged that Pamela Courson had been using heroin – Paris was always a prime source for the drug. Jim Morrison, she said, had found her stash, and did some himself, which was what killed him. She told this version to Danny Sugerman, later denying to him that there was any truth in the story whatsoever. And there was another version that went the rounds: that Jim Morrison had snorted heroin in a Paris nightclub and overdosed. He had then been taken to his apartment where an attempt was made to revive him by placing the singer in a cold bath.

In conditions of great secrecy, James Douglas Morrison was buried on 8 July, 1971 at the Père Lachaise cemetery, the prestigious central Paris graveyard for artists. There was only a handful of onlookers.

Amburn, Ellis. Pearl:
The Obsessions and Passions of Janis Joplin: a Biography
(New York: Warner Books, Inc.) 1992

Davis, Stephen.
Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend
(New York: Gotham Books) 2004

Densmore, John.
Riders on the Storm: My Life with Jim Morrison and the Doors
(New York: Delacorte Press) 1990

Didion, Joan.
The White Album: Essays
(New York: Farrah, Straus and Giroux) 1990

Gilmore, Mikhal.
Stories Done: Writings on the 1960s and its Discontents
(New York: Free Press) 2008

Holzman, Jak and Daws, Gavin.
Follow the Music: The Life and High Times of Elektra Records in the Great Years of American Pop Culture
(California: FirstMedia Books) 2000

Hopkins, Jerry. ‘Jim Morrison' in Wenner, Jan; Levy, Joe (eds.)
The Rolling Stone Interviews
. (New York: Back Bay Books) 2007

Hopkins, Jerry and Sugarman, Danny.
No One Gets Out of Here Alive
(New York: Warner Books) 1995

Horowitz, Michael. ‘The Morrison Mirage' in
Crawdaddy!
April 1969, Issue No. 21

Manzarek, Ray.
Light My Fire: My Life with The Doors
(New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons) 1998

Riordan, James and Prochinky Jerry.
Break on Through: The Life and Death of Jim Morrison
(New York: William Morrow & Co) 1991

Smith, Howard.
The Village Voice
. December 14 1967,Vol. XIII, No. 9

The Doors International Chronological History. June 2013.

The Doors International Chronological History. June 2013.

The Doors International Chronological History. June 2013.

1
[Riordan
231]

2
[
Rolling Stone
, 30 August 2001]

3
[Gilmore
253]

4
[Riordan
51]

5
[Riordan
236]

6
[Davis 9]

7
[Davis
9]

8
[Davis
52]

9
[Riordan
197]

10
[Riordan 191]

11
[Riordan 53]

12
[Riordan 191]

13
[Riordan 62]

14
[Manzarek 73-74]

15
[Manzarek 75]

16
[Manzarek 77]

17
[Manzarek 80]

18
[Manzarek 87]

19
[Manzarek 55]

20
[Manzarek 90–91]

21
[Manzarek 94]

22
[Manzarek 131]

23
[Riordan 69]

24
[Manzarek 153]

25
[Riordan 84]

26
[Manzarek 143]

27
[Riordan 88–89]

28
[Manzarek 183]

29
[Riordan 85]

30
[
http://www.doorshistory.com/doors1966.html
]

31
[Manzarek 190]

32
[Holzman 162–163]

33
[Densmore 81]

34
[Holzman 81]

35
[Densmore 81]

36
[Densmore 82]

37
[Amburn
135]

38
[Hopkins/Sugarman 166]

39
[Densmore 134]

40
[Densmore 95]

41
[Hopkins 496]

42
[Densmore 108]

43
[Amburn
137]

44
[ibid]

45
[
http://www.doorshistory.com/doors1967.html
]

46
[Densmore 119]

47
[Didion 131]

48
[Smith,
Howard,
The Village Voice
, December 1967]

49
[Horowitz, Michael ‘The Morrison Mirage' in
Crawdaddy!
, April 1969]

50
[Densmore 148]

51
[
http://www.doorshistory.com/doors1968.html
]

52
[Manzarek 284]

53
[Densmore 163]

54
[Densmore 162]

55
[Riordan, 234]

56
[Densmore 163]

57
[Manzarek 287]

58
[Manzarek 302]

59
[Manzarek 308]

60
[Riordan 291]

61
[Manzarek 315]

62
[Densmore 218]

63
[Manzarek 319]

64
[Densmore 226]

65
[Densmore 230]

66
[Manzarek 354]

67
[Manzarek 340

68
[Densmore 247]

69
[Densmore 251–2]

70
[Densmore 254]

71
[ibid]

72
[Densmore 256]

73
[Densmore 258]

74
[Densmore 261]

75
[ibid]