System Mechanic - Clean, repair, protect, and speed up your PC!Jim Morrison, Musician
James Douglas Morrison was born on December 8, 1943, in Melbourne, Florida to a Navy admiral, and he grew up as an army brat, moving around from base to base and rarely forming lasting friendships. His father was a strict disciplinarian. In high school (one of his classmates was Mama Cass), he read Friedrich Nietzsche, William Blake and Jean-Paul Sartre, terrorized his teachers and fellow students, and discovered the joys of alcohol.
After a brief stint at a Florida college, Morrison trekked to UCLA in 1964, where he studied filmmaking with such prestigious classmates as Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. Among the lesser cinematographic lights in attendance was a young hippie named Ray Manzarek.
Neither Manzarek nor Morrison were destined to be known as filmmakers. The two met on a beach one day, where Morrison was scrawling an ode to a fabulous babe in a bikini, under the title, "Hello, I Love You." Manzarek, a keyboardist, thought the poem was catchy, and a collaboration was born. After some false starts, they recruited drummer John Densmore and guitarist Robbie Krieger, and took the name "The Doors," after Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception."
The Doors got off to a slow start, partly due to the fact that Morrison couldn't "sing" per se, in the sense of carrying a tune. With a lot of practice, he soared to the level of... adequate. But then the technical singing performance wasn't the reason for the band's success. Morrison brought two major qualities to enhance the unquestionably excellent musical abilities of his bandmates: Charisma and dark poetry.
Morrison met his soul mate during this period, Pamela Courson, who would give new meaning to the word "long-suffering." The two embarked on a cyclical but long-lasting romance, with elements of codependency, verbal abuse, heavy drug use and rampant philandering.
In 1967, the Doors were signed with Elektra Records and released their first single, "Break on Through." Written by Morrison, the song was a smash hit, drawing critical raves as well as fan adulation. Their second hit, "Light My Fire," written by Krieger, was an even bigger hit later in the year, and their first album went gold. The Doors had arrived.
Success didn't agree with Morrison, or rather it agreed with him a little too much. Drunk with power and drunk on whiskey, Morrison began experimenting more aggressively with manipulating crowds, while his personal life wheeled out of control. Morrison's drinking increased along with the band's success, and Doors concerts were often marred by his drunken incoherence and the damage alcohol was doing to his singing voice. At the same time, however, the Doors successfully began undertaking more ambitious musical projects, such as "The Celebration of the Lizard," a half-hour fusion of music, drama and poetry that left crowds stunned into utter silence by its conclusion.
As "L.A. Woman" burned up the charts, Morrison and Pamela Courson decided it was time for a break. The two decided to take a break with an extended stay in Paris in 1971, where Jim would focus on his poetry and forget about rock-n-roll for a while.
Morrison was found dead in his bathtub on July 3, 1971. The only person to see his "dead body" was Pamela Courson. She called some kind of doctor, who signed a death certificate illegibly and was never heard from again. The cause of death was listed as a heart attack. The funeral was a closed-coffin affair. No one but Courson (who committed suicide a few years later) and the never- identified doctor ever saw the body. The coffin, whether empty or full, was buried in Paris.
