I read an article in Time.com about a book, The End: Jim Morrison, by Sam Bernett. It’s coming out in France. It’s about the untimely demise of Jim Morrison & purportedly clears up what really happened. What do I think about this take on his death? Jim & Pam were both my friends. I was a teenager then and this still remains very sensitive material for me. I was seeing them, in Paris, until days before his death when I returned to LA. Goodbyes (for Jim Morrison) read it here. Immediately after his shocking death I was asked to write about our times there — as a memorial to Jim. My piece details of some of my times with Jim and Pam in Paris. They were good times — but obviously there was much more going on with them than what I was exposed to…
I never believed Jim Morrison died of a routine heart attack. In Paris they both told me (individually) many things. Among other things, Jim told me that he had an ongoing health issue that he’d been seeing a doctor about. He had a sheepish expression when he told me it had to do with his lungs and that he’d been coughing up blood. My final opinion has always been that something like the scenario laid out in this book is what could have happened. And that Pam Courson, whom I had felt cared deeply for Jim and seemingly had wanted only the best for him, unfortunately, may have ended up being the instigator of the whole situation that led to his death. He ALWAYS did what she said: he adored & trusted her so much! I don’t believe she ever planned for that to happen. But she was highly self involved and madly dancing on a precipice: THEIR relationship (i.e. Jim), was not her first concern. For him, new and dangerous things were going on for the first time, SHE told me. Perhaps naively, I thought they loved each other. One thing that Jim told me is that he had countless great plans for the future. Jim should have been strong — and not have gone along with her. WHAT A HORRIBLE TRAGEDY!
P.S. I never talked to Pam again — I chose not to after Jim’s death. As fate would have it I did see her, by coincidence, numerous times (albeit at a distance): she died in LA — in an apartment on N. Sycamore Ave., directly next door to the building where I was living at the time. One night an ambulance awakened me. Only later after reading the morning paper did I realize that the ambulance was carrying the body of Pamela Courson. She was DOA, 3 years after Jim. There was no mystery surrounding her death.
There is more… maybe later.
UPDATE: July 28, 2016. I recently read that Jim fell from the second (or third) story of the Chateau Marmont Hotel on the Sunset Strip. This was late 1970 apparently, not long before he left LA to join Pam in Europe. This certainly may have contributed to the health problems he discussed w/ me. But in Europe, he had become involved in a troublesome new indulgence that definitely could have killed him — and that was solely directed by Pam.