On This Day: Jim Morrison Dies

Jim Morrison had moved to Paris with companion Pamela Courson in March 1971. He was indicted for public lewdness after exposing himself at a concert in Miami, Fl., and according to All Music Guide had been seeking a fresh start.

But Morrison fell deeper into addiction while in Paris, gaining so much weight that many people did not recognize him, reported The Associated Press. His journals included poetry and song lyrics, but also contained repeated scribblings of the phrase “God help me,” Rolling Stone reported.

Morrison had a strict authoritarian upbringing under his father, a U.S. Navy admiral, and rebellion became his hallmark.

“His rampaging id dominated his songs with a lust for violence, sex, alcohol, drugs, self-destruction, anything forbidden for any reason by the authority of conservative middle America,” writes All Music Guide, “and he tried to live out that lifestyle as best he could.”

Throughout his career, a July 1971 issue of Time magazine explained, “His orgiastic performances and his command, ‘Come on, baby, light my fire,’ turned on teeny-boppers by the millions, but his mood was often more apocalyptic.”

Courson gave varying accounts of Morrison’s last day. According to the AP, Morrison fell ill while the two were home the evening of July 2, 1971. A more detailed narrative in Rolling Stone said the couple watched home travel movies and took heroin.

Morrison was later found dead in the bathtub of his apartment. The official cause of death was heart failure, but rumors have long circulated about the circumstances.

Thirty-six years after Morrison’s death, Sam Bernett, the owner of glitterati club Rock and Roll Circus, contends Morrison did not die of a heart attack, but perhaps of a heroin overdose. Bernett published a French-language book recalling his memory of that night. The club owner said Morrison was found unresponsive in a bathroom stall with blood and white foam on his nose. Two drug dealers then took him back to his apartment.

The son of an admiral, James Douglas Morrison moved frequently in his youth, eventually settling in Alexandria, Va., where he graduated from high school. He moved to Florida to attend school at St. Petersburg Junior College and Florida State University, leaving in 1964 to move to the West Coast. He took up film studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. One day at a beach in Venice, Calif., Morrison ran into fellow student Ray Manzarek, who played the organ, drummer John Densmore and guitar player Robbie Krieger. The four decided to form a band called the Doors, inspired by a verse from a poem by William Blake, according to the Web site Notable Biographies. They scored a long-term engagement on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, where the foursome gained exposure to record label scouts.

At the band’s outset, Morrison was a shy frontman, often having his back turned to the audience or gazing at the floor. But All Music Guide writes that he quickly overcame his stage fright, using his microphone and onstage innuendo. The Doors’ performances grew to be characterized by Morrison’s onstage portrayal of sex, and “Morrison’s ever-increasing withdrawal and simultaneous indulgence in hedonistic excess threatened the band’s stability.”

Morrison’s arrest for exposing himself at a March 1969 concert in Miami—and the subsequent two-month trial, which found him guilty—drained the Doors’ finances and morale. They recorded two more albums before Morrison moved to Paris with Courson, where “without the support of his bandmates, Morrison spiraled irrevocably out of control.”

Morrison’s was the third death of a big-name rocker in 10 months. Guitarist and singer Jimi Hendrix died in London Sept. 18, 1970, at the age of 27 from “drug-related complications,” according to The Biography Channel.

Singer and songwriter Janis Joplin died on Oct. 4, 1970, in a Los Angeles motel room after overdosing on heroin by accident, according to her Official Web site. All three singers were 27 years old.

Many of the political, social and cultural movements that began in the 1950s and 1960s, including the Cold War and the civil rights movement, continued into the 1970s and beyond. FindingDulcinea’s Web Guide to U.S. History includes the best links about the decade, including the Watergate scandal and the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

Time magazine has testimony from others who were at the Rock and Roll Circus the evening of Morrison’s death. War photographer Patrick Chauvel said that he was commandeered into loading the rocker’s body into a car. Chauvel said, “The five or six people who knew, who were there that night, agreed to just forget about it.” Pamela Courson, whom Time calls Morrison’s girlfriend, says that she was at home with Morrison that evening, and that he said that he felt ill.

Rolling Stone published another account from Courson about the final night of Morrison’s life. The two of them were watching home movies of their travels, doing heroin and they passed out. Courson came to, to find Morrison gurgling. She slapped him, first to no avail. The Doors frontman went to the bathroom. One of them turned on the bath. Morrison got into the tub and proceeded to vomit chunks of blood. Around 6:30 a.m., Courson called Jean de Breteuil, who, according to the account, was in bed with former pop icon Marianne Faithfull at the time. He came to Courson and Morrison’s apartment within a half hour, where de Breteuil and Courson found the rocker dead in the tub.