James Douglas Morrison (December 8, 1943—July 3, 1971) was an American singer, poet, songwriter, writer, and film director. He is best known as the lead singer and lyricist of The Doors, and is widely considered to be one of the most charismatic frontmen in rock music history. He was also the author of several books of poetry, and the director of a documentary and short film.
jim morrison
Morrison was born in Melbourne, Florida
In 1947, Morrison, then four years old, purportedly witnessed a car accident in the desert, where a family of Native Americans were injured and possibly killed. He referred to this incident in a spoken word performance on the song “Dawn’s Highway” from the album An American Prayer, and again in the songs “Peace Frog” and “Ghost Song.”
Indians scattered on dawn’s highway bleeding
Ghosts crowd the young child’s fragile eggshell mind
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Morrison believed the incident to be the most formative event in his life and made repeated references to it in the imagery in his songs, poems and interviews. Interestingly, his family does not recall this incident happening in the way he told it. According to the Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive, Morrison’s family did drive past a car accident on an Indian reservation when he was a child, and he was very upset by it. However, the book The Doors written by the remaining members of The Doors, explains how different Morrison’s account of the incident was than the account of his father. This book quotes his father as saying, “We went by several Indians. It did make an impression on him [the young James]. He always thought about that crying Indian.” This is contrasted sharply with Morrison’s tale of “Indians scattered all over the highway, bleeding to death.” In the same book, his sister is quoted as saying, “He enjoyed telling that story and exaggerating it. He said he saw a dead Indian by the side of the road, and I don’t even know if that’s true.”
In 1965, after graduating from UCLA, Morrison led a Bohemian lifestyle in Venice Beach. Once Morrison graduated from UCLA, he broke off most of his family contact. 
By the time Morrison’s music ascended the top of the charts in 1967, he had not been in communication with his family for more than a year and falsely claimed that his parents and siblings were dead (or claiming, as it has been widely misreported, that he was an only child). This misinformation was published as part of the materials distributed with The Doors’ self-titled debut album. In a letter to the Florida Probation and Parole Commission District Office dated October 2, 1970, Morrison’s father acknowledged the breakdown in family communications, the result of an argument over his assessment of his son’s musical talents. He said he could not blame his son for being reluctant to initiate contact, and that he was proud of him nonetheless
Morrison is known as the lyricist for the group, he wrote some of the group’s biggest hits, including “Light My Fire,” “Love Me Two Times,” “Love Her Madly” and “Touch Me.”
By the release of their second album, Strange Days, The Doors had become one of the most popular rock bands in the United States. Their blend of blues and rock tinged with psychedelia included a number of original songs and distinctive cover versions, such as the memorable rendition of “Alabama Song“,
By 1969, the formerly svelte singer gained weight, grew a beard, and began dressing more casually – abandoning the leather pants and concho belts for slacks, jeans and T-shirts.
During a 1969 concert at The Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami, Morrison attempted to spark a riot in the audience. He failed, but a warrant for his arrest was issued by the Dade County Police department three days later for indecent exposure. Consequently, many of The Doors’ scheduled concerts were canceled. In the years following the incident, Morrison has been exonerated. In 2007 Florida Governor Charlie Crist suggested the possibility of a posthumous pardon for Morrison.
Following The Soft Parade, The Doors released the Morrison Hotel LP. After a lengthy break, the group reconvened in October 1970 to record their last LP with Morrison, L.A. Woman. Shortly after the recording sessions for the album began, producer Paul A. Rothchild — who had overseen all their previous recordings — left the project. Engineer Bruce Botnick took over as producer.
Women in his life : Morrison met his long-term companion, Pamela Courson,
well before he gained any fame or fortune, and she encouraged him to develop his poetry. At times, Courson used the surname “Morrison,” with his apparent consent or at least lack of concern.
Courson and Morrison’s relationship was a stormy one, however, with frequent loud arguments, and periods of separation.
In 1970, Morrison participated in a Celtic Pagan handfasting ceremony with rock critic and science fiction/fantasy author Patricia Kennealy. Before witnesses, one of them a Presbyterian minister, the couple signed a document declaring themselves wedded; however, none of the necessary paperwork for a legal marriage was filed with the state. Kennealy discussed her experiences with Morrison in her autobiography Strange Days: My Life With and Without Jim Morrison, and in an interview reported in the book Rock Wives.
Morrison also regularly had sex with fans, and had numerous short flings with women who were celebrities in their own right, including Nico, the singer associated with The Velvet Underground
Morrison moved to Paris in March 1971, taking up residence in an apartment. Once in Paris, Morrison grew a beard. By all accounts Morrison became depressed while in Paris, and was planning to return to the US; however, he admired the city’s architecture and would go for long walks through the city.
It was in Paris that Morrison made his last studio recording, with two American street musicians — a session dismissed by Manzarek as “drunken gibberish.” The session included a version of a song-in-progress, “Orange County Suite,” which can be heard on the bootleg Lost Paris Tapes.
Morrison died on July 3, 1971, aged 27. In the official account of his death, he was found in a Paris apartment bathtub by Courson. Pursuant to French law, no autopsy was performed because the medical examiner claimed to have found no evidence of foul play. The absence of an official autopsy has left many questions regarding Morrison’s cause of death.
In a July 2007 newspaper interview, a self-described close friend of Morrison’s, Sam Bernett, resurrected an old rumor and announced that Morrison actually died of a heroin overdose in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus nightclub, on the Left Bank in Paris. Bernett claims that Morrison came to the club to buy heroin for Courson, then did some himself and died in the bathroom.
Morrison is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in eastern Paris, one of the city’s most visited tourist attractions.
Morrison remains one of the most popular and influential singers/writers in rock history, as The Doors’ catalog has become a staple of classic rock radio stations. To this day, he is widely regarded as the prototypical rock star: surly, sexy, scandalous and mysterious. The leather trousers he was fond of wearing both on stage and off have since become stereotyped as rock star apparel.
, the vocalist of Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver, as well as Scott Stapp of Creed, claim Morrison to be their biggest influence and inspiration. Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver have both covered “Roadhouse Blues” by the Doors. Weiland also filled in for Morrison to perform “Break On Through” with the rest of the Doors. Stapp filled in for Morrison for “Light my fire”, “Riders on the Storm” and “Roadhouse Blues”
The book The Doors by the remaining Doors quotes Morrison’s close friend Frank Lisciandro as saying that too many people took a remark of Morrison’s that he was interested in revolt, disorder, and chaos “to mean that he was an anarchist, a revolutionary, or worse a nihilist. Hardly anyone noticed that Jim was restating Rimbaud and the surreal poets
