Under a grey and menacing sky, fans gathered at Paris’s Père Lachaise cemetery on Saturday to pay tribute to 1960s rock singer Jim Morrison on the 50th anniversary of his sudden death.
They came despite the threatened – and eventually real – downpour to lay flowers on the stone grave that has been a place of pilgrimage to the Doors frontman for half a century.
“I come here as often as I can, either for the anniversary or on 8 December for his birthday,” said Imelda Bogaard from Rotterdam, one of the first at the graveside. “The music brings so much happiness – and it also brings everyone together.”
Briton Michael Luke from Darlington, an actor with his own production company, says he was hoping to be first at the grave but decided to step aside to let Imelda be the one to take the honour.
“There’s a really special atmosphere here – and it attracts a certain kind of person – with a flow of weird and wonderful people,” he said. “I think this reflects the interest in the music, which even now, 50 years on, still sells millions of copies.”
On 2 July 1971, Morrison went to the cinema in Paris, returned to his flat after a restaurant dinner to listen to some music and died of a heart attack in the bath. He was just 27.
In recent years, a different story has emerged: an alternative account has Morrison dying in the toilet of a Paris nightclub – of a suspected heroin overdose – and his body being transported back to his apartment by two drug dealers.
Belkacem Bahlouli, editor-in-chief of Rolling Stone France magazine is sceptical about the overdose theory.
“The police inquiry has been closed for decades now, everybody knows the truth except hardcore fans who don’t accept it, but stupid theories are part of the great rock’n’roll history. Everybody knows how Morrison died. Nobody killed him but himself. It was a heart attack, there’s no room for doubts. Coroners, even in France, know their jobs,” he said.
French rock critic Sophie Rosemont is persuaded otherwise. “Obviously it was better to say he died at home than in a club, which to me seems more probable, but everyone wanted to avoid a scandal and respect Jim Morrison’s discretion, so the story given to the police was a little opaque.
“The important thing is that he died, whether it was in a bath or a bar in Paris where he was living.”
As no postmortem examination was carried out on Morrison’s body – it was not required in France at the time – the mystery is likely to endure.
In his short-lived career, Morrison became a worldwide figure not just for his music and provocative performances but also the poetry of his lyrics, his anti-establishment stance and the off-stage excesses.
He arrived in Paris in March 1971 and lived with girlfriend Pamela Courson, a heroin addict, in the now chic Marais area near Bastille. He was overweight and battling his own drug and alcohol addictions, and moved to the French capital to reportedly get clean.
The previous year he had been convicted of indecent exposure and profanity after a concert in Miami during which he was accused of exposing himself to the audience. He was sentenced to six months in prison and was posthumously pardoned.
Courson, who died of an overdose three years after Morrison, also at 27, told police she found him dead in the bath at about 6am on 3 July.
At the time, Sam Bernett was the manager of the Rock’n’Roll Circus, a trendy nightclub on Paris’s Left Bank, frequented by Morrison and other stars including Mick Jagger. In 2007, Bernett, who later became a radio presenter and vice-president of Disneyland Paris, wrote a book claiming the Doors singer had died of a drug overdose in a toilet at the club.
“The flamboyant singer of the Doors, the beautiful California boy, had become an inert lump crumpled in the toilet of a nightclub. For me it’s a very bad memory,” he told AFP. According to Bernett, two dealers who sold Morrison the heroin took him back to his apartment and put him in the bath.
Ana Leorne, a longtime Morrison fan and pop-culture writer, said: “Personally, I don’t think the circumstances of his death matter, especially 50 years later.
“The fact remains that people still keep visiting his tomb – and I think this is to do with the replacement of institutionalised religion by idol culture, especially in the 60s.”
Rosemont, who interviewed many in Morrison’s Paris circle, says his unique personality and talent are reasons he is still worshipped half a century on.
“Jim Morrison was not just a physical adonis, he was a mix of cultivated and erudite on one hand and wild and provocative on the other, with all the rock’n’roll excesses of the time,” she said.
“He also opposed all forms of authority to the point of folly, which was perfectly in tune with society at that time and resonates today.
“The fact that he did so much in such a short time, that he wrote so beautifully then died so suddenly and brutally, a poet in exile like Oscar Wilde, when he had so many things to do gives his life a sort of tragic destiny.”
At Père Lachaise, Morrison lies in final rest with other international luminaries including Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Yves Montand, Molière and Balzac.
On Saturday, one fan was reciting Morrison’s poems while another strummed a guitar.
“I sometimes think to myself, what would Jim make of it all?” said Michael Luke.
“I think he’d be over the moon.”
