Take It As It Comes...
Before people start asking, I thought I'd address the subject myself.
I see where someone has written a book claiming that Jim collapsed in a Paris nightclub of a heroin overdose and was brought back to his apartment in the rue Beautreillis and dumped in the bathtub, either dead or dying.
This jibes with rumors and stories told over the years by individuals such as Alain Ronay, who hung out with Jim in Paris and had known him since UCLA, and singer Marianne Faithfull, who was sharing heroin scores and a French count called Jean de Breteuil with Pamela Courson, and who has spoken of this in her own book.
As I wrote in my memoir "Strange Days", I never bought into the official partyline desperately trumpeted by Doors management that Jim died of a heart attack, and have always believed there was a lot more to it than that, and a lot nastier. When I heard about Courson's heroin use in Paris, and her various inconsistent lies about how Jim had died, I instantly accepted that she had been the true and blameful cause of Jim's death.
Whether or not she deliberately pushed the heroin on him at the apartment, or if he took it mistakenly thinking it was coke, or if he did in fact snort up at the club, doesn't ultimately matter. Courson, a well-known heroin abuser, is still the proximate cause of Jim's death, because if she hadn't been there and the count hadn't been there, Jim wouldn't have done the smack. He wasn't into it before he went to Paris, and needless to say he never would have been given it at my house. Jim and Marianne got caught up in the vile undertow of being in the presence of addicts and junkies; Marianne survived, barely. My beloved did not.
I consider this now-public information a complete vindication of the position I have maintained all these years as to the cause and nature of Jim's death, and the person responsible for it. It doesn't bring him back, but at least, painful and distressing as I and others who loved Jim may find it, the truth is finally out there.
And in the face of those who have called me a liar and worse for 36 years, I have to say I find it deeply gratifying to have been proved right. I just wish it didn't also hurt so incredibly much.
I see where someone has written a book claiming that Jim collapsed in a Paris nightclub of a heroin overdose and was brought back to his apartment in the rue Beautreillis and dumped in the bathtub, either dead or dying.
This jibes with rumors and stories told over the years by individuals such as Alain Ronay, who hung out with Jim in Paris and had known him since UCLA, and singer Marianne Faithfull, who was sharing heroin scores and a French count called Jean de Breteuil with Pamela Courson, and who has spoken of this in her own book.
As I wrote in my memoir "Strange Days", I never bought into the official partyline desperately trumpeted by Doors management that Jim died of a heart attack, and have always believed there was a lot more to it than that, and a lot nastier. When I heard about Courson's heroin use in Paris, and her various inconsistent lies about how Jim had died, I instantly accepted that she had been the true and blameful cause of Jim's death.
Whether or not she deliberately pushed the heroin on him at the apartment, or if he took it mistakenly thinking it was coke, or if he did in fact snort up at the club, doesn't ultimately matter. Courson, a well-known heroin abuser, is still the proximate cause of Jim's death, because if she hadn't been there and the count hadn't been there, Jim wouldn't have done the smack. He wasn't into it before he went to Paris, and needless to say he never would have been given it at my house. Jim and Marianne got caught up in the vile undertow of being in the presence of addicts and junkies; Marianne survived, barely. My beloved did not.
I consider this now-public information a complete vindication of the position I have maintained all these years as to the cause and nature of Jim's death, and the person responsible for it. It doesn't bring him back, but at least, painful and distressing as I and others who loved Jim may find it, the truth is finally out there.
And in the face of those who have called me a liar and worse for 36 years, I have to say I find it deeply gratifying to have been proved right. I just wish it didn't also hurt so incredibly much.
posted by Patricia Kennealy Morrison | 2:53 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home