The Last Days of Jim Morrison

Jim cut down on alcohol when he first arrived in France, but after a month he was back at it, and the heavy, compulsive smoking began to take its toll. When Jim coughed up blood in April, Pamela took him to see a doctor at the American Hospital in Neuilly. A physical exam and a lung X-ray turned up nothing obvious, and Jim was told to get some rest in a warm climate, if possible. He wanted to see Spain and more of Morocco, so he and Pamela left Paris in a rented car on April 10th and headed south into the lush and wet European spring.

Their trip lasted around three weeks. On May 3rd, 1971, Jim and Pamela flew from Marrakesh to Casablanca, and then on to Paris. When they got to their apartment, Zozo and some friends were in temporary residence, so Jim and Pamela checked into l'Hotel, an exclusive small hotel on the rue des Beaux-Arts. L'Hotel was famous for its discretion, and many celebrities felt comfortable there. It was also famous because Oscar Wilde had died in one of its rooms. (His famous last words: "Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.")

Pamela had a huge problem now, because Count de Breteuil was in London and she wanted heroin. Jim told a friend of Zozo's that he didn't want Pamela scoring on the street, and anyway, he supposedly said, "Scoring is a man's job." Around that time, a Paris-Match photographer saw a friend sitting with Jim at the Cafe de Flore and said hello. A few minutes later, the friend came over to his table, explained that Jim Morrison wanted some heroin, and did he know where they could find some?

The upscale, junk-using denizens of Paris usually ended up at the Rock and Roll Circus, very late at night. The Circus was a big discotheque on the rue de Seine, modeled on the American electric ballrooms of the Sixties. The walls were decorated with large murals of English rock stars (and Jimi Hendrix) dressed as clowns. It was often packed with le jet set and French movie stars, and the new Chinese heroin ("China White") was sold openly in the club's dark corners. One prominent notebook entry of Jim's was published by his literary executors after his death: "The Chinese junkies will get you in the end."

One evening early in June, Jim and Alain Ronay — a friend from UCLA who'd arrived in Paris in May — were standing on the top step of the long staircase leading up to Sacre-Coeur, the great white church at the summit of Montmartre in northern Paris. A band of black African musicians was banging away, and Jim stopped to listen a while. Gazing off to the east, Jim asked Ronay about the large green hill he could see, all the way across the city. Ronay explained that it was Pere-Lachaise, Paris' great cemetery. It dated from Napoleon's time and was where honored citizens like Chopin, Balzac and Edith Piaf were buried. Jim insisted they visit immediately, but their taxi took an hour to fight through heavy traffic, and the gates were shut by the time they arrived.

Jim and Ronay returned to the cemetery a few days later. They walked among the impressive monuments of the great artists and the florid nineteenth-century tombs of the stolid bourgeoisie. When Ronay said he found the place a morbid experience, Jim protested that he liked the cemetery's spooky tranquillity in the midst of the city, and that he definitely wanted to be buried in Pere-Lachaise when he died.

Throughout June 1971, Jim Morrison carried a white plastic shopping bag from the Samaritaine department store with him whenever he went out. There were usually one or two spiral notebooks inside, plus a file of Jim's personal photographs, the quarter-inch-tape reel of his 1970 birthday poetry reading, a pack of Marlboro cigarettes, a Bic lighter, two or three ballpoint pens, a photocopy of an interview with Jean-Luc Godard ("Film and Revolution," by Kent Carroll) that had been published in Evergreen Review and an article about the Doors ("Morrison Hotel Revisited") torn from Jazz and Pop. One of the notebooks was titled "Tape Noon." It was filled with death-haunted poems, prayers, obscenities, a version of his poem "American Night" and phrases about the street riots he saw in Paris. One of the final pages bore a single, seemingly desperate line: "Last words, last words — out." Jim Morrison obviously sensed that his time was nearing its end.