MortSahlFan — 5 years ago(November 08, 2020 10:43 PM)

Spanning the entire history of the Doors, this book will long remain the definitive biography of a band that forever changed popular music. But it’s not the story you think you know.
Yes, Jim Morrison died in Paris in 1971—but not in a bathtub. The other Doors were saddened and shocked but had already fired him anyway. It wasn’t Jim who wrote the hits; it was guitarist Robby Krieger. It wasn’t Jim who saw a bright, acid-flared future for the band but keyboardist Ray Manzarek.
And so, the band that started out as the “American Rolling Stones,” noted for their wildly unpredictable performances, their jazzy vibe, and the crazed monologues of their front man, ended as badly as did the sixties: abruptly, bloodily, cripplingly.
Along with evoking the cultural milieu of Los Angeles in the sixties, in Love Becomes a Funeral Pyre bestselling writer Mick Wall captures the true spirit of that tarnished age with a brilliantly penetrating and contemporary investigation into the real story of the Doors.
Text copyright Mick Wall, 2014
First published by the Orion Publishing Group, London, 2014
All rights reserved
This edition published in 2015 by Chicago Review Press Incorporated
814 North Franklin Street
Chicago, Illinois 60610
ISBN 978-1-61373-408-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wall, Mick.
Love becomes a funeral pyre : a biography of The Doors / Mick Wall.
pages cm
“First published by The Orion Publishing Group, London, 2014.”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61373-408-7 (cloth)

1. Doors (Musical group) 2. Rock musicians—United States—Biography.
   I. Title.
   ML421.D66W35 2015
   782.42166092’2—dc23
   2015007614
   Interior design: PerfecType, Nashville, TN
   Mary Werbelow quotes Copyright St. Petersburg Times, 2005
   Printed in the United States of America
   5  4  3  2  1
   For Peter N. Lewis, the only real
   shaman I ever knew
   Contents
   Acknowledgments
   PART ONE: Locked
   1 Paris, 1971
   2 Ray of Light
   3 Souls of the Ghosts
   4 Hands upon the Wheel
   5 Give This Man a Ride
   6 Swimming to the Moon
   7 Sexy Motherfucker in Black Pants
   8 Driver, Where You Taking Us?
   PART TWO: Unlocked
   9 Suck My Mama
   10 Young Lions
   11 Winter of Love
   12 Jimbo Rising
   13 Dog Without a Bone
   14 Out on the Perimeter
   15 Hit Me, Babe
   PART THREE: Broken
   16 The Thin Raft
   17 Can You Give Me Sanctuary?
   18 The Witching Hour
   19 Killer on the Road
   20 La Mort Blanche
   21 The Calm Calculus of Reason
   Epilogue: Stoned Immaculate
   Notes and Sources
   Index
   Acknowledgments
   I would like to extend my utmost thanks to the following people, absolutely without whom this book would not be possible. Yuval Taylor, Ellen Hornor, and everyone at Chicago Review Press, Robert Kirby, Malcolm Edwards, Jane Sturrock, Linda Wall, Vanessa Lampert, Joe Daly, Neil Cross, Holly Thompson, Anna Valentine, Emma Smith, Mark Handsley, Susan Howe, Kate Wright-Morris, Jessica Purdue, Dave Everley, Rebecca Gray, Gail Paten, Richard King, Mick Houghton, Craig Fraser, Lynnette Lawrence, Dee Hembury-Eaton, Krystyna Kujawinska, Isadora Attab, Marianne Ihlen, Anna Hayward, Jac Holzman, Bruce Botnick, Bill Siddons, Danny Fields, Dennis Jakob, R. Merlin, Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, Pamela Des Barres, Eve Babitz, Judy Huddleston, Vincent Treanor III, Jerry Hopkins, Sam Bernett, Patrick Chauvel, Evert Wilbrink, John Haeny, Jerry Scheff, Jess Roden, Howard Werth, Jeff Kitts, Richie Unterberger, Ian Clark, Steve Morant and the all the boys of the SNC, and last, but hardly least, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore, who always deserved better, and Jim Morrison, who always gave his best.
   PART ONE
   LOCKED
   Self-interest exists, attachment based on personal gain exists, complacency exists. But not love. Love has to be reinvented …
   ARTHUR RIMBAUD, A Season in Hell
   1
   Paris, 1971
   This is the end …
   Jim, alone, not in a bathtub but on the toilet, head down, trousers around his knees, found just like his hero, Elvis, would be six years later, arms dangling lifelessly by his sides, brains fried. Gone before they’d even broken down the door to get him. Overdosed on heroin. China white. The kind Paris was awash with that summer. Jim, alone, as always, surrounded by people.
   He’d been predicting his own death for months, of course. Janis had gone the previous October, Jimi just two weeks before that. “You’re drinking with the next one,” Jim would only half-jokingly tell friends. Except that Jim didn’t really have any friends. Certainly not Pamela, with her hell-red hair and her smack and her new boyfriend, the Count … or Ray, with his touch-the-brave-sunlight trip to the public and his needy please-Jim-just-forme **** to your face … or John, that asshole, always with the long hard looks and the judgmental eyes … even far-out Robby, his mind blown by the acid and the permanent midnight, all mumbled passive-aggressive bullshit. Robby the secret businessman …
   Where were they now, hey? Now that Jim didn’t need them anymore? Or said he didn’t, anyway. Standing up suddenly on the dance floor at th