Jim Morrison was an iconic rock & roll performer who achieved lasting fame as lead singer of the American band The Doors, formed in 1965 in Los Angeles with keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore. Gifted, charismatic and rebellious, he became an influential figure musically and culturally and his death in Paris at the age of 27 gave him an immortal place in rock history.
Born in Florida, the son of a naval officer, he moved around the country with his family and began to read widely at a young age. He graduated from the UCLA Film School in California and began to write poetry and lyrics. In 1965 he met Manzarek and they decided to work together and form a band named for Aldous Huxley's book 'The Doors of Perception'.
Their eponymous debut album and the single 'Light My Fire' were monster hits and the band went on to record six more hit albums before Morrison died. The singer became notorious for his flamboyant concert appearances and he was charged with indecent exposure and profanity. Long a student of writers such as William S. Burroughs, Albert Camus, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, he wrote poetry as well as song lyrics with two volumes, 'Wilderness' published in 1988 and 'The American Night' published in 1990, and a notebook titled 'Paris Journal' found following his death.
Notoriously promiscuous and a heavy drinker, he sustained a relationship with a Californian woman named Pamela Courson with whom he was living in Paris when he died of an apparent heart attack. She also died aged 27 in 1974 of a heroin overdose. Journalist Jerry Hopkins wrote a biography of Morrison titled 'No One Here Gets Out Alive' in 1980. Morrison's grave in Père Lachaise Cemetery is among the most visited sites in Paris along with the grave sites of Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Honoré de Balzac and Frédéric Chopin.
