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 DID JIM MORRISON REALLY DIE IN THE BATHTUB? Sam Bernett says NO! SEE THE ABC NEWS VIDEO INTERVIEW It’s been 36 years since Jim Morrison left this mortal plain, but the rumors and conspiracies persist to this day. The official story goes like this: On the last night of Jim Morrison's life, the rocker went to a movie in Paris, listened to records, fell ill and died of heart failure in his bathtub at the age of 27. But now a man named Sam Bennett, a former Paris nightclub manager is telling a different story. In a new book, “The End: Jim Morrison”, he claims that Morrison died in a toilet stall of his club after what he believes was a heroin overdose. In his July release he writes of his shock on finding Morrison's body: "The flamboyant singer of 'The Doors,' the beautiful California boy, had become an inert lump crumpled in the toilet of a nightclub." Bennett suggests two drug dealers may have brought Morrison's body back to his apartment, and dropped it into the bathtub, a last attempt to revive him. Morrison's girlfriend, Pam Courson, who died three years later of an overdose, told police an entirely different story. Courson said the couple went to the movies and out for dinner that night, listened to records and fell asleep. According to her testimony in police records, Morrison awoke in the night feeling ill and took a hot bath. Courson said she found him dead in the tub. An official at the Paris prosecutor's office said it was very unlikely the case on Morrison's death would be reopened or that anybody could be prosecuted in the affair, because the statute of limitations — the time limit on legal proceedings — had run out. Stephen Davis, the author of "Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend," says he would not rewrite history because of the new book. Based on his reporting, he believes Morrison did overdose at the club, but that it was shortly before his death — not the same night — and that he survived the experience. "It just seems likely that if he died in the toilet of a nightclub, it would have come out before now," Davis said. Morrison had come to Paris in March 1971 at a troubled time in his life. At a 1969 concert in Florida, he was accused of exposing his genitals to the audience. He was convicted of indecent exposure and profanity, and the episode led to promoters canceling concerts and earned the band a stream of negative publicity. Morrison left for Paris with his appeal pending. There, he lived in a Right Bank apartment with Courson, and he wandered the streets, sightseeing and toting around a plastic bag containing his writings. In Paris, he gained so much weight as to become almost unrecognizable, and his health suffered. He also partied. spending "practically every night", according to Bennett, at the Rock and Roll Circus, the hip Left Bank nightclub where stars like Roman Polanski and Marianne Faithfull were regulars. Morrison was buried in Pere Lachaise cemetery, in a small ceremony without fanfare, on July 7, 1971. No autopsy was ever performed. __ EXCERPTS FROM AP ARTICLE Associated Press Writer Verena von Derschau in Paris contributed to this report. TIME Magazine Friday, Nov. 24, 1967 "SWIMMING TO THE MOON" "I'm interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that has no meaning. It seems to me to be the road to freedom." Thus 23-year-old Jim Morrison states the philosophy behind The Doors, the rock group for which he is the chief songwriter and singer. Not surprisingly. The Doors are based in Los Angeles, where they find their peculiar mysticism perversely congenial. "This city is looking for a ritual to join its fragments," says Morrison. The Doors are looking for such a ritual too—in Morrison's words, "a sort of electric wedding." The search takes them not only past such familiar landmarks of the youthful odyssey as alienation and sex, but into symbolic realms of the unconscious—eerie night worlds filled with throbbing rhythms, shivery metallic tones, unsettling images. Swim to the moon, they sing, and "penetrate the evening that the city sleeps to hide." Preaching passion of both the metaphysical and physical order, The Doors have a style at once more plaintive and dramatic than the droning, hypnotic waves of sound poured out by other West Coast groups such as the Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead. They startle and bemuse with a uniquely mournful and moody tone that shades Morrison's dusky voice seamlessly into a dark-textured background: the haunting organ, piano and bass of Ray Manzarek, 24; the sinuous guitar of Robby Krieger, 21; the nimble drums of John Densmore, 22. When The Doors finally bring off their electric wedding, it may well take the form of a small-scale musical play. The prototype is The End, their enigmatic, 11½-minute string of visions apparently revolving around an Oedipus situation, in which Morrison portrays several roles—some behind a red mask. Last week, opening an engagement at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium, they introduced The Unknown Soldier, an antiwar philippic with martial music, shouted commands, the loading click of a rifle and shots mixed in with instrumental passages. The Doors ultimately envision music with "the structure of poetic drama." Such a forbidding structure could cramp their financial fortunes, which at the moment are wide open: both of their albums, The Doors and Strange Days, are among the top five on the sales charts; Light My Fire has been one of the smash singles of the year. But they don't seem worried, since the more complex forms come closer to fulfilling their apocalyptic imagination. Says Morrison: "We hide ourselves in the music to reveal ourselves." YIN YANG!
Rhino resurrects the Doors’ Live in Boston 1970 By: JEFF TAMARKIN 8/14/2007 2:17:05 PM
They wanted to see his cock. But as shit-faced drunk as he was, Jim Morrison had learned his lesson. There would be no genitalia — or anything that might be construed as such — for Boston. Morrison was eight and a half minutes into “When the Music’s Over,” midway through the first show at the Boston Arena (now Northeastern’s Matthews Arena) on April 10, 1970, when the squealing nubiles made the request. “What do you want?” he inquired of them during a lull in the song. Shrill female shrieking, and a repetitive bass line generated by Ray Manzarek at his keyboard, punctuated the momentary silence as Morrison awaited their reply. “What would you do with it, baby?” he crooned, sparking more hormonal unrest — a collective gasp — and encouraging laughter from the audience. “All right, you tell me what you’d do with it.” But he never let them fill in the blank. “I think I’ll pass” he finally said, remembering he was in the middle of a song. “We want the world and we want it” . . . drum roll . . . “NOOOOOOW!” Jim Morrison was staring down possible jail time when the Doors opened their spring ’70 tour with the two shows now available, in their warts-and-all entirety, on Bright Midnight/Rhino Records’ three-CD The Doors Live in Boston 1970. It had been more than a year since he’d teased Miami with the same peep-show offer, and though no evidence had surfaced to confirm that he took it out, a Miami jury had found him guilty of the misdemeanor charges of indecent exposure and profanity. A judge sentenced Morrison to six months of hard labor and a $500 fine for the exposure charge and tacked on 60 days for profanity, the sentences to run concurrently. With good behavior — not exactly a Jim Morrison hallmark — he would walk after two months, but it was the two years and four months of probation he faced that were most worrisome. Morrison’s conviction was on appeal when he arrived in Boston and drank himself into near-unconsciousness. “Business as usual,” is how the Doors’ former guitarist, Robby Krieger, now describes Morrison’s state that evening. “There was always the possibility of Jim being Mr. Jimbo,” he says over the phone from LA. “You never knew who was going to show up.” Two Jim Morrisons showed up in Boston that night: the slurring, sloshed, out-of-control powder keg who mangled his own vocals, flipping the bird to fans who’d paid as much as $6.50 to hear him, and the madman/wildman shaman of legend, owning the stage with his hyper-charismatic presence, delivering the mesmeric vocal performances that had made him, at 26, rock’s poet laureate. The yin-yang Morrison personality was on full display during the early show. On the first CD, “Roadhouse Moan,” a prelude to “Roadhouse Blues,” resembles a field holler crossed with a New Orleans funeral dirge. Morrison masters teetering on the edge, and the tension created by his demented state is fed brilliantly by Krieger, Manzarek, and drummer John Densmore. The grit has kicked in completely by time they reach the “Alabama Song”/“Back Door Man”/“Five to One” medley. Morrison is gone, groaning, bleating, and howling. Throughout, he straddles between artistic brilliance and utter asshole-ness. “Boston was the best town for rock and roll,” says Krieger, “and I thought that was a great show because Jim was out there but we were able to reel him in. We’d go on to the next song and he’d be right there. Then he might go off a little bit and get into some trouble, but then he’d get back in focus. I don’t know how he did it, but that was part of the excitement.” The second set is a barn burner. Morrison’s skewed timing is akin to that of a jazz singer: he warps the rhythm, following his own cadence but falling into line when he needs to. And the band fire on all cylinders, splitting the show between hits and album tracks. The second “When the Music’s Over” is better than the first set’s, this time minus the come-on, and “Light My Fire” is regal, an extended version incorporating brief snippets of the standards “Fever,” “Summertime,” and “St. James Infirmary.” Other highlights are less familiar Doors tunes like “The Spy,” and “Been Down So Long,” as well as the covers of perennials “Mystery Train” and “Crossroads.” A greater allegiance to the blues, always an element of the Doors’ music, blankets the performance. Krieger’s guitar is nastier, grungier than on the studio recordings; Manzarek is creative in his double-duty task, providing the bass parts with his left hand and his more æthereal keyboard lines with his right; Densmore, one of rock’s most underrated drummers, is crisp and lyrical, putting down a much-needed anchor and always hitting the mark. The Doors, and Morrison, had little more than a year left. Morrison’s death, on July 3, 1971, put a DOA stamp on the band. (The survivors did attempt to continue without him for two more albums.) At the same time, it turbo-charged the Morrison legend. In Boston, Morrison was already buying into the doomsday myth that had been erected around him. “I don’t know what’s gonna happen, man,” he says during the second show, “but I want to have my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames.” Ironic, perhaps, that it did end in a bathroom, Morrison’s bloated, burned-out body found slumped in the bathtub of his Paris apartment. In his new book The End — Jim Morrison, Sam Bernett, who ran the Parisian club the Rock ’n Roll Circus, claims that he found Morrison dead of a heroin overdose in the Circus’s bathroom and that the body was then taken back to Morrison’s apartment and dumped into the bathtub there. Krieger acknowledges, “It could be true. It’s a reasonable scenario. But nobody will ever know.” Today, Krieger and Manzarek play Doors music in Riders on the Storm, a band named after the hit tune from the Doors’ final album with Morrison. (The pair are estranged from Densmore.) They recently recruited a new singer, Brett Scallions, from the band Fuel; Krieger points out that he “doesn’t look anything like Jim.” Phil Chen plays bass and Ty Dennis is on drums. Last month they performed at the 40th-anniversary tribute to the Monterey Pop Festival, an event the original Doors skipped. Among the other acts on the bill was a Doors tribute band. Krieger is pleased that a couple of Doors fans have launched a drive to get Morrison pardoned for the Miami incident — even though he’s been dead for 36 years. It’s reported that Florida governor Charlie Crist is giving the matter serious consideration. After all, the convictions of Enron magnate Ken Lay, which were being appealed, got tossed when he died. “People are finding [in Morrison] what they are finding in Bruce Lee or Elvis Presley or James Dean,” Krieger explains, “a guy that had it all and threw it away, at the age of 27.” And if Jim Morrison were alive today? Krieger has been asked this countless times. “He would be a mystery. But I hope I would still be making music with him.”
 The late JOEL BRODSKY was the photographer who shot the iconic photos of Jim and The Doors. Check out his exhibition online JIM MORRISON & THE DOORS PHOTOS  art/works Theater is located on LA's Theater Row District 6569 Santa Monica Blvd. Hollywood California BUY TICKETS LIMITED SEATING SO BOOK NOW! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
