Patricia Butler - Angels Dance and Angels Die: The Tragic Romance of Pamela and Jim Morrison

S mart, funny, charming, mysterious, private, beautiful, troublesome,irresistible If I took all the adjectives their friends used to describe Jim and Pamela, mixed them together in a hat, and then pulled them out one by one, Id be hard pressed to determine which word had been used to describe which person. In fact, Jim and Pamela seemed so perfectly patterned after each other that what differences they did have somehow only served to highlight their similarities. They were the same person as a man and a woman, Ray Manzarek said of the couple, and the truth of his observation was reinforced for me over and over again the more people I talked to and the more stories I was told.

Their friends told me a lot of stories about Jim and Pamelaas individuals and as a coupleso many stories that I wasnt able to include all of them in this book. There were small anecdotes I found amusing, like this one from January Jensen:

Yeah, one time we were over at Pams apartment on La Cienaga, and it was early in the morningI dont remember how early or what we were doing up that earlybut she decided that we had to go shopping. Both Jim and I had on blackyou know I used to make his clotheswe both had on black goatskin pants. So she took us to this boutique and got us these, what she called white angel shirts. And the two of usJim looked at me and I looked at him, and he said, Its gonna take more than shirts to make angels of us! Which was true!

And there were recollections that evoked more disturbing visions of the effects of Jims chronic alcoholism, like this one from Julia Densmore Negron:

Well, the first time I met him I didnt really meet him. He was lying on the floor under a bench in an airport. Hed passed out. He was drunk, and I dont know if hed fallen or theyd put him there or what, but he was under a bench along a wall in some airport in the midwest. And Billy Siddons or someone had rolled two of those big cigarette urns up in front of him so he couldnt get out if he woke up. And I remember John going, There he is! Theres our big lead singer! And I just thought, oh, god!

I think both of these stories help to illustrate the paradox that has so frustrated many of Jims friends over the years. As Paul Ferrara stated: When he wasnt drunk, he was the gentleman, he was the angel dude. But he had his threshold, and once he passed it, he was obnoxious. Unfortunately, it has been the obnoxious Jim who has drawn most of the attention in the media since The Doors first took the stage, and its the obnoxious Jim who seems to exert his will among fans today, thanks in large part to biographers and moviemakers who see Jims drunken antics as somehow more entertaining or commercially viable than the gentler side of his character better known to his friends. When Cheri Siddons first saw the script of Oliver Stones 1991 movie The Doors, she expressed just such a concern to Stone, telling him that the Jim she knewand she had known Jim quite wellwas not the incessantly dark and dangerous character Stone had drawn, but a loving, compassionate, funny man who, only when he had been drinking, could sometimes become this dark shadow of his true self. Stones response to Cheris concerns was typical: That Jim would make a boring movie, he told her, and I dont want to make a boring movie.

Stone seemed to feel even less obligation to portray Pamela as anything more than a caricature of a mythical rock stars girlfriend. The Doors would have liked to see more of the foursome in the movie and for me to have dropped Pamela completely, Stone told the Orange County Register in 1991. They didnt care much for Pamela. In fact, most of the people I talked to felt that she was pretty much of a nightmare. Stone didnt really need much persuasion to avoid the bother of researching the real woman and her real relationship with that Jim. Instead, he simply tried to make Meg Ryan look as much like Pamela as possible physically (though one Doors insider observed Its probably the only movie in history where the lead actors dont even come close to being as beautiful as the people theyre portraying.), while the characters words and actions seemed to bear little or no resemblance to anything Pamela might have said or done in real life. That was just some other person, thats all, says Julia Negron of the character Meg Ryan plays in The Doors. I just remember the one scene where she walks on the plane in the movie and says, Hi, Pamela Morrison, ornament or something. And I thought, Who is that supposed to be? Anybody I know? I dont think so! Theres no way in the world she would have ever said anything like that! And not with a smile on her face, with that attitude. No way.

But then who wants to be bored by the truth, right?

The most unfortunate thing about this type of license being taken in the media with the lives of real peopleeven in a movie that is not billed as a documentaryis that audiences tend to believe that what theyre seeing on screen or on the printed page, because it is about people who actually lived, must be true. This has been driven home to me time and

Aside from the myth that both Pamela and Jim were drug addicts, a subject I feel Ive addressed adequately in the body of this book, probably the feeling among fans that disturbs me the most is the rage continually expressed against Jims parents, and sometimes Pamelas parents as well. Im so pissed off that those horrible people got all of Jims money! one fan wrote, referring to Jims parents.

Though apparently representative of the opinion of the majority of Morrisons fans, there are a few things wrong with that statement. For one thing, the Morrisons did not get all of Jims money. When Pamela died intestate, her estatewhich included all of Jims estateautomatically went to her parents, a legal action which was contested by the Morrisons. Court papers filed at the conclusion of this dispute in January 1975 stated: It is hereby agreed that the estate of Pamela shall be deemed to consist entirely of the former community property of Pamela and James, and such estate shall be distributed in accordance with the provisions of California Probate Code Section 228, to wit, one-half thereof in equal shares to George and Clara, as the parents of James, and one-half thereof in equal shares to Columbus and Pearl, as the parents of Pamela.

Another problem with that statement, and the many others like it Ive heard or read over the years, is the presumption to judgment against either set of parents. Despite stories told or secrets revealed, no one ever truly knows what goes on within a family unit. Ive done six years of research for this bookwaded through truckloads of paper, talked to hundreds of peoplebut I cannot in any definitive way tell you what transpired between these children and their parents; its all open to interpretation and misinterpretation and subject to the frailties of human memory. But I do know that Jim was in the process of reconciling with his parents when he died, so whatever animosity may or may not have existed between these people, obviously Jim had moved past it. So why cant his fans? Max Fink said something once that I find quite perceptive. If Jim had been brought up differently, he wouldnt have been Jim. He wouldnt have had the same drive, or for that matter the pain that enabled him to touch people in his songs. Think about it.

Another thing that Ive noticed from my interaction with Jims fans is the natural tendency to judge Jim and Pamelas actions, as well as the reactions of those closest to them, by todays standards rather than by the standards of their own era. In the late sixties/early seventies when Jim and Pamela were struggling with their own demons and each others, we had not yet gone through whats been called the Oprah-fication of America. People did not go on national television and air their dirty laundry; personal problems, real or perceived, were kept within the home or within the individual, where they often festered. Alcoholism was seen as a character flaw rather than the disease we know it to be today. Women who worked outside the home were still an exception rather than a rule. So if Jim kept certain traumas from his past or aspects of his adult lifestyle a secret; if Jims bandmates turned a blind eye as his alcoholism escalated; if Pamela was supported by Jims incomenone of these things seem particularly unusual when viewed in the context of the era in which they took place.