Jim Morrison's Death at 50

Professor Mikey's Old School

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Jim Morrison's Death at 50

The Yahrzeit of the Lizard King

Professor Mikey

Jul 08, 2021

That’s me, chatting with John Densmore, drummer of The Doors. He spent at least one Morrison death anniversary in court where he had dragged surviving bandmates Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger. They wanted to license “Light My Fire” for a TV commercial. Densmore reminded them Jim didn’t want it that way.

Densmore and Morrison. John was listening.

In death as in life, Jim Morrison was the source of controversy and chaos as well as music that haunted the charts. That is why the 50th anniversary of the singer’s last bath in Paris passing as quietly as the scream of a butterfly seemed almost too peaceful. In Père-Lachaise Cemetery, they gathered almost reverently to leave memories via incense and candles.

On other anniversaries the celebrations were part fight and mostly party. Not as loud and unruly as the brawling drunken poet whose antics set a new creature level for self-destruction amidst beauty. The Lizard King weaponized his intellect and talent. Tales of lunacy and debauchery built upon themselves and expanded until the poet himself vomited it all toward the toilet.

Word on the street had it that the Morrison family’s lease on the Jim’s burial site was supposed to expire on July 6, 2001, and France wanted him gone, dug up like a bad seed and transplanted in the mindless USA. That was yet another urban myth marching in the Soft Parade. Jim can stay with his historic homeys forever, the grave has a perpetual lease. Notes one official, “It’s there and it will stay there.”

On the tenth anniversary of his death in 1981, Rolling Stone’s cover featured a Greek godlike portrait of Morrison with the headline “He’s hot, he’s sexy, and he’s dead.”

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Ten more years passed, the stoned immaculate one was remembered again, this time by a thousand blotto fans. A riot went on outside the chained cemetery gates. An insane clown carload of young mourners rammed the entrance with their speeding vehicle. Once inside, they set it ablaze, certain that Morrison might be seen smiling through the smoke.

“I think there’s a whole region of images and feeling inside us that rarely are given outlet in daily life and when they do come out, they can take perv. erse forms. It’s the dark side. The more civilized we get on the surface, the more the other forces make their plea. We appeal to the same human needs as classical tragedy and early Southern blues. Think of it as a seance in an environment that has become hostile to life: cold, restrictive. People feel they’re dying in a bad landscape. People gather together in seance in order to invoke, palliate, and drive away the dead, Through chanting, singing, dancing, and music, they try to cure an illness, to bring harmony back into the world.” —Jim Morrison, explaining The Doors

The four-year career of The Doors is well documented. There are a handful of studio albums and Oliver Stone’s motion picture The Doors (1991), a milder love bead remembrance of the 20th Anniversary, wherein the roadhouse changeling was channeled by Val Kilmer.

Morrison died of unknown causes July 3, 1971. He was already in the ground when his demise was announced on July 5. The first reports maintained the new poster child for the 27 Club had suffered a heart attack, perhaps brought on by endless abuse. There’s also a strong rumor of bad heroin on the streets of beautiful Paris that summer of a half-century ago.

Time passes slowly for James Douglas Morrison. His hold on bad attitude rock lingers strong. The Doors were the first American band to accumulate eight consecutive gold LPs. Latest numbers have them selling 33 million albums in the U.S., 100 million worldwide. Morrison once predicted on American Bandstand that in the future people might pay to watch a DJ playing music on turntables. The Doors logged over 460,000 plays on Spotify last year.

Père-Lachaise opened in 1804. With it’s 5,000 trees on 110 acres, July 5, 2021, was pretty tame. Tourists might have woke up that morning and got themselves a beer but they were respectful at Morrison’s grave.

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As long as they were there, many visited the final resting spaces of Molière, Eugène Delacroix, Jacques-Louis David, Georges Bizet, Frédéric Chopin, Honoré de Balzac, Marcel Proust, Georges Seurat, Oscar Wilde, Sarah Bernhardt, Isadora Duncan, Gertrude Stein, Colette, Edith Piaf, Marcel Marceau, Richard Wright, and many others.

The estimated number of mere mortals buried there runs between 300,000 and one million. Amidst all those coffins is one restless Door, who broke on through to the other side.