Jim Morrison was the charismatic singer and songwriter for the 1960 rock group the Doors until his death in a Paris bathtub at age 27. Jim Morrison was born on December 8, 1943, in Melbourne, Florida. Jim Morrison was an American rock singer and songwriter. He studied film at UCLA, where he met the members of what would become the Doors. Known for his drinking and drug use and outrageous stage behavior. Elektra Records signed the Doors in 1966, and in January 1967 the band released its self-titled debut album. The Doors' first single, "Break on Through (To the Other Side)," achieved only modest success and it was their second single, "Light My Fire," which catapulted the band to the forefront of the rock and roll world, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart in June. The Doors, and Morrison especially, became infamous later that year when they performed the song live on The Ed Sullivan Show. Because of its obvious drug reference, Morrison had agreed not to sing the lyric "girl we couldn't get much higher" on the air, but when the cameras rolled he went ahead and sang it anyway – cementing his status as rock and roll's new rebel hero. "Light My Fire" remains The Doors' most popular song, featuring prominently on virtually every major list of the greatest rock songs ever recorded.
Morrison spent nearly the entirety of his adult life with a woman named Pamela Courson, and although he briefly married a music journalist named Patricia Kennealy in a Celtic Pagan ceremony in 1970, he left everything to Courson in his will and she was deemed his common law wife after his death. Throughout his relationships to Courson and Kennealy, however, Morrison remained an infamous womanizer. His drug use, violent temper and infidelity all culminated in disaster in New Haven, Connecticut on the night of December 9, 1967. Morrison was high, drunk and carrying on with a young woman backstage before a show when he was confronted by police and sprayed with mace. He then stormed onstage and delivered a profanity-laced tirade that sparked a riot and led to his arrest on obscenity charges.
In an attempt to get his life back in order, Morrison took time off from The Doors in the spring of 1971 and moved to Paris with Courson. However, he continued to be plagued by drugs and depression. On July 3, 1971, Courson found Morrison dead in the bathtub of their apartment, apparently of heart failure. Since the French officials found no evidence of foul play, no autopsy was performed, which has in turn led to endless speculation and conspiracy theorizing about his death. In 2007, a Paris club owner named Sam Bernett published a book claiming that Morrison died of a heroin overdose at his nightclub and was later carried back to his apartment and placed in the bathtub to cover up the real reason for his death. Jim Morrison was buried at the famous Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, and his grave has since become one of the city's top tourist destinations. He was only 27 years old at the time of his death.
Jim Morrison remains one of the most legendary and mysterious rock and roll stars of all time. He was a gifted lyricist whose poetic odes to rebellion, set to the music of The Doors, inspired a generation of disaffected youth who found in his words an eloquent articulation of their own hopes and frustrations. His tragic early death at the hands of drugs and depression likely deprived the world of much more in the way of beautiful music and poetry. Morrison's goal as a lyricist and singer was to open the minds of those who listened to his words, to encourage them to leave behind the familiar in search of the new. As Morrison put it, paraphrasing Aldous Huxley who was himself paraphrasing William Blake, "There are things known, and there are things unknown, and in between are The Doors."
