Beatles. - Love Becomes a Funeral Pyre

S panning the entire history of the Doors, this book will long remain the definitive biography of a band that forever changed popular music. But its not the story you think you know.

Yes, Jim Morrison died in Paris in 1971but not in a bathtub. The other Doors were saddened and shocked but had already fired him anyway. It wasnt Jim who wrote the hits; it was guitarist Robby Krieger. It wasnt Jim who saw a bright, acid-flared future for the band but keyboardist Ray Manzarek.

And so, the band that started out as the American Rolling Stones, noted for their wildly unpredictable performances, their jazzy vibe, and the crazed monologues of their front man, ended as badly as did the sixties: abruptly, bloodily, cripplingly.

Along with evoking the cultural milieu of Los Angeles in the sixties, in Love Becomes a Funeral Pyre bestselling writer Mick Wall captures the true spirit of that tarnished age with a brilliantly penetrating and contemporary investigation into the real story of the Doors.

Text copyright Mick Wall, 2014

First published by the Orion Publishing Group, London, 2014

All rights reserved

This edition published in 2015 by Chicago Review Press Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

ISBN 978-1-61373-408-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wall, Mick.

Love becomes a funeral pyre : a biography of The Doors /Mick Wall.

pages cm

First published by The Orion Publishing Group, London, 2014.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61373-408-7 (cloth)

1. Doors (Musical group) 2. Rock musiciansUnited StatesBiography.

I. Title.

ML421.D66W35 2015

782.421660922dc23

[B]

2015007614

Interior design: PerfecType, Nashville, TN

Mary Werbelow quotes Copyright St. Petersburg Times, 2005

Printed in the United States of America

5 4 3 2 1

For Peter N. Lewis, the only real
shaman I ever knew

Index

I would like to extend my utmost thanks to the following people, absolutely without whom this book would not be possible. Yuval Taylor, Ellen Hornor, and everyone at Chicago Review Press, Robert Kirby, Malcolm Edwards, Jane Sturrock, Linda Wall, Vanessa Lampert, Joe Daly, Neil Cross, Holly Thompson, Anna Valentine, Emma Smith, Mark Handsley, Susan Howe, Kate Wright-Morris, Jessica Purdue, Dave Everley, Rebecca Gray, Gail Paten, Richard King, Mick Houghton, Craig Fraser, Lynnette Lawrence, Dee Hembury-Eaton, Krystyna Kujawinska, Isadora Attab, Marianne Ihlen, Anna Hayward, Jac Holzman, Bruce Botnick, Bill Siddons, Danny Fields, Dennis Jakob, R. Merlin, Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, Pamela Des Barres, Eve Babitz, Judy Huddleston, Vincent Treanor III, Jerry Hopkins, Sam Bernett, Patrick Chauvel, Evert Wilbrink, John Haeny, Jerry Scheff, Jess Roden, Howard Werth, Jeff Kitts, Richie Unterberger, Ian Clark, Steve Morant and the all the boys of the SNC, and last, but hardly least, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore, who always deserved better, and Jim Morrison, who always gave his best.

Self-interest exists, attachment based on personal gain exists, complacency exists. But not love. Love has to be reinvented

A RTHUR R IMBAUD , A Season in Hell

This is the end

Jim, alone, not in a bathtub but on the toilet, head down, trousers around his knees, found just like his hero, Elvis, would be six years later, arms dangling lifelessly by his sides, brains fried. Gone before theyd even broken down the door to get him. Overdosed on heroin. China white. The kind Paris was awash with that summer. Jim, alone, as always, surrounded by people.

Hed been predicting his own death for months, of course. Janis had gone the previous October, Jimi just two weeks before that. Youre drinking with the next one, Jim would only half-jokingly tell friends. Except that Jim didnt really have any friends. Certainly not Pamela, with her hell-red hair and her smack and her new boyfriend, the Count or Ray, with his touch-the-brave-sunlight trip to the public and his needy please-Jim-just-forme shit to your face or John, that asshole, always with the long hard looks and the judgmental eyes even far-out Robby, his mind blown by the acid and the permanent midnight, all mumbled passive-aggressive bullshit. Robby the secret businessman

Where were they now, hey? Now that Jim didnt need them anymore? Or said he didnt, anyway. Standing up suddenly on the dance floor at the Rock and Roll Circus, loudly declaiming his crappy, drunken poetry while all around the models and gangsters, the dealers and pop stars, the street trash blown in by the Paris summer wind sat writhing in the shadows, laughing behind their hands, waiting for fat old Jim Morrison to shut the fuck up and sit back down again. Or fall over. Again. Whichever.

Poor old Jim, alone in Paris, surrounded by all the people he thought hed left behind in sun-shitty L.A. Same eager faces happy to hang out, listen to his bullshit, then see him home safely when he was too shit-faced to do it himself. Crazy, fat man Jim, best friend to all the waiters at Caf de Flore hovering over him like flies, as he guzzled his brandy, his whiskey, his beer, and his endless wine. Big-bearded Jim, out of breath climbing the steps to the Sacr-Coeur, out of luck lounging in his borrowed apartment waiting for fucked-up Pam to come home from the Counts, then sick of waiting, grabbing a taxi to Rue de Seine, staggering toward the red neon sign of the Rock and Roll Circus, waving hi to the blonde cloakroom girl, who always gave him the same smile even as her eyes swooped past him toward whatever was coming next down the street behind him. Tiptoeing down the narrow steps into the darkened basement of the club, the DJ in the glassed-off booth alwaysalways, man!playing the Stones, ever since the night Keith walked in with his knife and his entourage, gave him the gypsy eye, and let him know it was all cool, baby.

Worst thing about the Circus, man, having to walk past the Counts private room on your way down into the club the one with the floor cushions and incense and pot smoke and the same old hippie in robes, strumming the sitar the chicks all droopy-eyed and creamed on smack and Tuinals and cheap fizz. Jim couldnt make that scene, man. The only time he went in there was with Pam or to score for Pam. Jim preferred to grab a table or stretch out on one of the couches in one of the vaulted corners of the club, looking for his new friend Sky Eyes, half Apache, half US Army deserter. Sky Eyes had been out there, man, Vietnam, man. Killed a cop as a kid and was given the choice: jail forever or five years in Nam. Sky chose the army and he did good, man. Part of the elite force. Killing gooks for fun. Then with less than two years to gothe old switcheroo! Hed skied it to Amsterdam. But why, man? It wasnt my war, man, was all Sky Eyes said.

The first time Jim saw Sky Eyes he was dancing barefoot at the Circus, his shirt off, some chicks red lipstick daubed across his face like war paint, long dirty hair hanging down to his waist. Man, what a beautiful sight! Hey, man! Jim told him. Im going to write a song about you! Jim with his bags of notebooks and pens, his postcards and newspapers and his pockets full of francs, not here for the sights or the poetry or any of that horse-shit. Here like all the other American draft dodgers and dropouts because there was no extradition treaty between France and the United States, so if the shit went down in Miami he wouldnt have to go home to jail if he didnt want to, and Jim really, really didnt want to, man. Fuck that shit. Jim had watched that day at the bail house in Miami as one black after another got sent down for shit that made what Jim did look like kindergarten stuff. Jim knew he was doomed, man. But that didnt mean he was gonna kneel and pray for it in some roach-infested shitbox in Miami, man.