Finding Jim Morrison
by David Caldwell
JULY 1, 2010 TAGS:
Cimitiere du Pere-Lachaise is not just any old graveyard. It sprawls over 99 rolling, wooded acres on the eastern edge of Paris and contains the remains of hundreds of famous people, among them Moliere, Chopin, Oscar Wilde and Gertrude Stein. The cemetery is so famous that it even has a website, www.pere-lechaise.com, that offers a virtual tour, with photo galleries.
While my girlfriend spent a cloudy, stifling Wednesday looking at art in the Louvre, I decided to stroll through Cimitiere du Pere-Lachaise instead. I was in search of one tomb in particular, the only tomb that really mattered to any self-respecting Baby Boomer American with a car-radio button set to the local classic-rock FM station.
I was visiting the cemetery to pay my respects to Jim Morrison, the man who does not exactly belong there.
I was one month from my 12th birthday when Morrison, the charismatic, hard-living former lead singer of The Doors, died in Paris on July 3, 1971. He was only 27. No official autopsy was performed, but Morrison, who was said to abuse drugs and alcohol, probably died of wretched excess, much like other musicians of that era, Elvis Presley the best-known of all.
Too young to appreciate The Doors during their heyday, I became more interested in Morrison and the group while listening to an all-night Doors tribute on an Ithaca, N.Y., radio station in 1978, when I was staying at my parents’ house. I thought Val Kilmer all but channeled Morrison’s spirit when he played Morrison in a 1991 movie, The Doors, directed by Oliver Stone (and co-starring Meg Ryan as Morrison’s long-suffering girlfriend, Pam).
Morrison’s life was nothing like mine. He was the son of a man who became an admiral in the U.S. Navy, so Jim moved around a lot as a boy. He drifted from college to college and wrote poetry and directed films before writing music and singing. From what I can tell, he was edgy, creative, cool, rich, defiant and sexy -- all to the max. Glamorous people like him don’t live long.
Three years ago, I took my two sons to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in Cleveland. The entire top floor was a Doors exhibit. We spent a while there. My older son, Ben, then 12, found Morrison’s death certificate and said, “I didn’t know he was so young.” Closer to Ben’s age than mine. The guy who sang those songs on the radio was a very young man.
Cimitiere du Pere-Lachaise is an active cemetery, with funeral corteges of cars clickity-clacking on cobblestone roadways to gravesites for solemn burials. But Morrison attracted a new clientele of mourners, or at least a new way of mourning, to the cemetery. Many of those who have come to visit Morrison have been more interested in celebrating his life, loudly.
Morrison’s grave was unmarked, at first. Two years later, a shield was placed over it, which was stolen. In 1981, on the 10th anniversary of his death, a bust of Morrison was placed atop a new tombstone. The bust was defaced, then stolen. Crypts near Morrison’s grave were defaced with arrows pointing the way to where he lies. Then the arrows pointed in two directions.
I’d read that the grave was a gathering place for Morrison fans. He is one of those celebrities who become more famous in death, because they seem to represent the better aspects of their times. Morrison was poetic and brazen, like the good side of the ’60s, a long-haired daredevil seizing the moment – and damning the consequences.
Since I was a fan, and since I was in Paris, I had to make my own pilgrimage. So I took a 10-euro cab ride from our Le Marais hotel to the cemetery. I brought a camera and a Michelin guide book. Three hours would be plenty of time to find Morrison’s grave, pay my respects and hustle to our rendezvous in Montmartre.
The cab dropped me off at the main stone gate on Boulevard de Menilmontant. I looked at the map in the guide book and got my bearings. I would loop on a path that cut to a circle, then I would swing right on a longer path to Morrison’s grave, No. 27 on the guidebook map. Easy. I figured I could find the grave when I was in the vicinity simply by listening for loud voices.
The cemetery is beautiful and haunting at the same time. It is like a village of the dead, with ornate, weather-beaten crypts, some large enough to hold entire families. Many had been there for centuries, but I passed new graves on the way up the hill, including a pristine marble crypt that held the remains of a 3-year-old girl. A photo on the tombstone showed her smiling.
After nearly an hour wandering through the area, I figured out Morrison’s grave was not at point No. 27 or even near it. I passed two men, one carrying a camera. “Jim Morrison?” I asked. The man with the camera smiled. He began clicking through the photos he had taken to a map of the cemetery that was not like mine. “Number three-zero,” he said in broken English.
Three-zero? Where was that? He pointed to his camera. Morrison’s grave was much closer to the entrance of the cemetery. My map was wrong, and there were no arrows pointing to Morrison. I found my way back to the circle. I was running out of time. I was about to start all over when I heard a young man bellow to a middle-aged woman, “Hey! Where’s Jim Morrison?”
She told the man she had just been there, then pointed down a smaller side path. I followed the young man and his companion, both of whom had backpacks. Maybe they were carrying something to put on his grave. About 50 feet down the path, I walked past a uniformed guard, stonily staring ahead. I did not see the men in backpacks. Lost again! So I turned around.
The guard was standing in front of a set of barricades, the kind you see at a parade, that had been put up around a cluster of tightly packed graves. There was also yellow police tape. In front of the barricades were perhaps a half-dozen people, most of them in their 20s, including the two men with backpacks. The people wore jeans and running shoes.
Here was Jim Morrison’s grave, forlornly squeezed between graves on each side and fronted by a larger crypt that made his resting place impossible to see from the path. There was a gray marble headstone, with a plaque: James Douglas Morrison, 1943-1971, ΚΑΤΑ ΤΟΝ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΑ ΕΑΥΤΟΥ. Loosely translated from Greek: “True to his own spirit.” Indeed!
One bunch of flowers had been thrown over the barricade onto the grave. A cardboard collage, with photos of Morrison and some of his song lyrics, was propped next to the tombstone. Scribbled in permanent felt-tip pen on the marble were “Mr Mojo Risin” (an anagram of Jim Morrison) and “Jim loves Pam.” I took a couple of photos. Other posed next to his grave.
But that was it. No one hollered or sang Doors songs. People were reverent. It started raining, and I had to go. But it had been worth it. I felt as if I’d won a scavenger hunt; I’d had to work to find his grave, and it was nothing like I’d thought it would be. Thirty-nine years later, Jim lay alone, as if on display at a somber tourist attraction. There was nothing glamorous to it at all.
David Caldwell, a freelance writer based in Maplewood, N.J., contributes regularly to Obit.
While my girlfriend spent a cloudy, stifling Wednesday looking at art in the Louvre, I decided to stroll through Cimitiere du Pere-Lachaise instead. I was in search of one tomb in particular, the only tomb that really mattered to any self-respecting Baby Boomer American with a car-radio button set to the local classic-rock FM station. I was visiting the cemetery to pay my respects to Jim Morrison, the man who does not exactly belong there.
I was one month from my 12th birthday when Morrison, the charismatic, hard-living former lead singer of The Doors, died in Paris on July 3, 1971. He was only 27. No official autopsy was performed, but Morrison, who was said to abuse drugs and alcohol, probably died of wretched excess, much like other musicians of that era, Elvis Presley the best-known of all.
Too young to appreciate The Doors during their heyday, I became more interested in Morrison and the group while listening to an all-night Doors tribute on an Ithaca, N.Y., radio station in 1978, when I was staying at my parents’ house. I thought Val Kilmer all but channeled Morrison’s spirit when he played Morrison in a 1991 movie, The Doors, directed by Oliver Stone (and co-starring Meg Ryan as Morrison’s long-suffering girlfriend, Pam).
Morrison’s life was nothing like mine. He was the son of a man who became an admiral in the U.S. Navy, so Jim moved around a lot as a boy. He drifted from college to college and wrote poetry and directed films before writing music and singing. From what I can tell, he was edgy, creative, cool, rich, defiant and sexy -- all to the max. Glamorous people like him don’t live long.
Three years ago, I took my two sons to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in Cleveland. The entire top floor was a Doors exhibit. We spent a while there. My older son, Ben, then 12, found Morrison’s death certificate and said, “I didn’t know he was so young.” Closer to Ben’s age than mine. The guy who sang those songs on the radio was a very young man.
Cimitiere du Pere-Lachaise is an active cemetery, with funeral corteges of cars clickity-clacking on cobblestone roadways to gravesites for solemn burials. But Morrison attracted a new clientele of mourners, or at least a new way of mourning, to the cemetery. Many of those who have come to visit Morrison have been more interested in celebrating his life, loudly.
Morrison’s grave was unmarked, at first. Two years later, a shield was placed over it, which was stolen. In 1981, on the 10th anniversary of his death, a bust of Morrison was placed atop a new tombstone. The bust was defaced, then stolen. Crypts near Morrison’s grave were defaced with arrows pointing the way to where he lies. Then the arrows pointed in two directions. I’d read that the grave was a gathering place for Morrison fans. He is one of those celebrities who become more famous in death, because they seem to represent the better aspects of their times. Morrison was poetic and brazen, like the good side of the ’60s, a long-haired daredevil seizing the moment – and damning the consequences.
Since I was a fan, and since I was in Paris, I had to make my own pilgrimage. So I took a 10-euro cab ride from our Le Marais hotel to the cemetery. I brought a camera and a Michelin guide book. Three hours would be plenty of time to find Morrison’s grave, pay my respects and hustle to our rendezvous in Montmartre.
The cab dropped me off at the main stone gate on Boulevard de Menilmontant. I looked at the map in the guide book and got my bearings. I would loop on a path that cut to a circle, then I would swing right on a longer path to Morrison’s grave, No. 27 on the guidebook map. Easy. I figured I could find the grave when I was in the vicinity simply by listening for loud voices.
The cemetery is beautiful and haunting at the same time. It is like a village of the dead, with ornate, weather-beaten crypts, some large enough to hold entire families. Many had been there for centuries, but I passed new graves on the way up the hill, including a pristine marble crypt that held the remains of a 3-year-old girl. A photo on the tombstone showed her smiling.
After nearly an hour wandering through the area, I figured out Morrison’s grave was not at point No. 27 or even near it. I passed two men, one carrying a camera. “Jim Morrison?” I asked. The man with the camera smiled. He began clicking through the photos he had taken to a map of the cemetery that was not like mine. “Number three-zero,” he said in broken English.
Three-zero? Where was that? He pointed to his camera. Morrison’s grave was much closer to the entrance of the cemetery. My map was wrong, and there were no arrows pointing to Morrison. I found my way back to the circle. I was running out of time. I was about to start all over when I heard a young man bellow to a middle-aged woman, “Hey! Where’s Jim Morrison?”
She told the man she had just been there, then pointed down a smaller side path. I followed the young man and his companion, both of whom had backpacks. Maybe they were carrying something to put on his grave. About 50 feet down the path, I walked past a uniformed guard, stonily staring ahead. I did not see the men in backpacks. Lost again! So I turned around.
The guard was standing in front of a set of barricades, the kind you see at a parade, that had been put up around a cluster of tightly packed graves. There was also yellow police tape. In front of the barricades were perhaps a half-dozen people, most of them in their 20s, including the two men with backpacks. The people wore jeans and running shoes.
Here was Jim Morrison’s grave, forlornly squeezed between graves on each side and fronted by a larger crypt that made his resting place impossible to see from the path. There was a gray marble headstone, with a plaque: James Douglas Morrison, 1943-1971, ΚΑΤΑ ΤΟΝ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΑ ΕΑΥΤΟΥ. Loosely translated from Greek: “True to his own spirit.” Indeed! One bunch of flowers had been thrown over the barricade onto the grave. A cardboard collage, with photos of Morrison and some of his song lyrics, was propped next to the tombstone. Scribbled in permanent felt-tip pen on the marble were “Mr Mojo Risin” (an anagram of Jim Morrison) and “Jim loves Pam.” I took a couple of photos. Other posed next to his grave.
But that was it. No one hollered or sang Doors songs. People were reverent. It started raining, and I had to go. But it had been worth it. I felt as if I’d won a scavenger hunt; I’d had to work to find his grave, and it was nothing like I’d thought it would be. Thirty-nine years later, Jim lay alone, as if on display at a somber tourist attraction. There was nothing glamorous to it at all.
David Caldwell, a freelance writer based in Maplewood, N.J., contributes regularly to Obit.
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