The Ghosts of Jim Morrison, The Phantom of Detroit, and the Fates of Rock 'n' Roll

By RD Francis

IN 1974, Capitol Records issued an unremarkable hard-rock album. Receiving a low-key release and promoted through an underground marketing campaign, the album received limited—sometimes scoffing, sometime favorable—press attention for its eerie similarities to a famed rock ‘n’ roll icon who perished under mysterious circumstances three years earlier. Some audiophiles questioned the recordings as a lost solo album recorded prior to that iconic musician’s death; others believed the icon still alive, in hiding and recording music; others believed the album an elaborate hoax—a prefabricated band created by musicians and producers looking to profit on the celebrity of a deceased rock star. To this day, blogging music journalists dismiss this phantasmal effort as a “comical” concept album: a parody of the then trendy, excessive and bloated rock operas created during the emergence of the progressive-rock epoch of the late Sixties and early Seventies.

This is the ethereal tale of that wizard of Detroit and his epic encounter with the storied Lizard King of Los Angeles. This is a historical journey of the Phantom’s time; a melodious trek through the excitements and the innovations, a musical expedition through the hypes and excesses and the successes and failures of the rock ‘n’ roll music industry and one of its mythical creations: 1974’s Phantom's Divine Comedy: Part 1.

This is the story of the man who replaced Jim Morrison in the Doors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: RD Francis
• Release date: Oct 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370292264

RD Francis

Schooled as an architectural draftsman and radio broadcaster, and after a detour as a sometimes music journalist, roadie, and rock bassist, a move from behind the microphone to the front of the camera led to the current endeavors of R.D Francis as a screenwriter specializing in sci-fi, horror, and comedy. He now offers his rock journalism and fiction works on Smashwords.

Book preview

The Ghosts of Jim Morrison

The Phantom of Detroit

and the

Fates of Rock ‘n’ Roll

The tales of the wizard behind

the mysterious 1974 album

Phantom’s Divine Comedy: Part 1

An investigation and unofficial biography

By R.D Francis

Cover design by R.D Francis

Guitarist-rock silhouette free clip-art by Shokunin

Courtesy of http://www.1001freedownloads.com

Public Domain License

Copyright 2017 R.D Francis

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share your enjoyment of this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy as a gift for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work and dedication of this author.

This book is dedicated to the

forgotten heroes of Detroit,

and all the lost rock stars we never knew.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Prologue

Chapter 1 — Club 27

Chapter 2 — Paris Speculations

Chapter 3 — Mystery and Hype Sells Records

Chapter 4 — Banker, Spy, Ghost, Rancher, and Father

Chapter 5 — Opening the Door to the French Connection

Chapter 6 — Lead Singer Syndrome

Chapter 7 — Other Phantoms Claim for Fame

Chapter 8 — Heavy Metal of the 1970s

Chapter 9 — Lyrical Inspirations of the Phantom

Chapter 10 — Birth and Panic of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Detroit

Chapter 11 — Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels

Chapter 12 — Bob Seger and the Iggy Pop Connection

Chapter 13 — Beatles, Capitol, and Radio Station Hoaxes

Chapter 14 — Elektra Wants their Artist Back

Chapter 15 — On Needles and Pirates

Chapter 16 — Phantom on the Air and in Concert

Chapter 17 — Kansas City, Here I Come

Chapter 18 — meoP sdrawkcaB (Backwards Poem)

Chapter 19 — Walpurgis: The Divine Comedy

Chapter 20 — Phantoms Lost and Found

Chapter 21 — Slaying the Happy Dragon

Chapter 22 — Spiders Will Dance on the Web

Chapter 23 — Webs Spun by Ted, Ed, and Eddie

Chapter 24 — Phantom, Where Art Thou?

Chapter 25 — If the Walrus is Paul, then the Phantom is . . .

Epilog

About the Author

Connect with Author

Appendix A — Early Heavy Metal — Honorable Mentions

Appendix B — Sixties Psychedelic Rock — Honorable Mentions

Appendix C — Bibliography

Necessity or chance approach not me; and what I will is fate.

— John Milton

What is the heart of man? It is a tragic organ that, in seeking fulfillment, destroys itself. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Thy is the common fate of all; Into each life some rain must fall.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Introduction

This book is inspired by and based upon conversations this writer experienced in 1993 with a man who led a nondescript rock group; a man who conceived and composed a 1974 heavy-metal rock opera: Phantom’s Divine Comedy: Part 1.

As result of his allegations regarding well-known musicians and music executives, which he believed responsible for the misfortunes befallen his musical endeavors, this writer opted not to contact those few individuals still alive for rebuttal quotes with their versions of events, then have to deal with attempts to stop the publication or to discredit this tome in advance.

The purpose of this book is not to slander or discredit the career accomplishments or tarnish a fan’s rock ‘n’ roll memories of their favorite rock ‘n’ roll musicians. This book is a rock ‘n’ roll love letter from one friend to another; a humble attempt by this writer to chronicle a career and a wondrous, inventive time in music; to assure his friend has a permanent voice in the annals of rock ‘n’ roll. I want to give him—and other forgotten rockers, of which there are many; this tome only scratches the surface—the voice he never had; to tell the story he never told—be it his truth, fallacy, or fabrication in the eyes of you, the reader.

While the legend of the Phantom birthed in the pre-Internet years of 1974, the myth of the Phantom we know today is a byproduct of the post-1990s Internet. When the Phantom’s analog endeavors seen a legitimate compact disc reissue in 1993, the tales of the wizard proliferated as the Internet expanded its reach through its blogs and message boards, its media sharing, social networking, and vanity web sites. The music aficionados and connoisseurs behind those sites exhumed the tales of the wizard for a new century of music lovers.

In one of the post-Divine Comedy songs by the Phantom, he laments for a wraith-like queen of air to deliver his musical salvation. The Phantom, himself a mysterious specter to fans of lost and forgotten rock ‘n’ roll oddities, is the king of air—a rock ‘n’ roll sovereign whose ethereal existence survives in a technological cloud consumed with misinformation and half-truths perpetually cut-and-pasted to the point where the vapors and obscurities suspended in the web’s numerous file servers become fact.

The time to clear the fog from Merlin’s orb—to shine the Phantom’s crystal ball—has come. As Paul the Apostle opined in Ephesus in A.D 56, in 1 Corinthians 13:12 of the King James Version of the Holy Bible: For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

It is time for the world to know the Phantom.

It is unfortunate the Phantom is regarded by most music critics as an untalented hack; one so desperate for the empty, soulless pursuits of fame and wealth that he decided to simply mimic—poorly, since he was void of any musical aptitude or creativity—the talents of a venerated rock icon. The reality—for those who did not have the pleasure of knowing the Phantom, as this writer—is the Phantom presented himself as a soft spoken, yet clever, intelligent and literate individual knowledgeable in music—both rock and classical—as well as classic literature and film. A conversation with the man was an intellectually rewarding experience. You could not ask for a more enriching friendship from another human being. I hope that as you read this writer’s words, you hear my friend’s voice and experience him in your heart.

Since the Phantom’s rebirth, growth, and continued existence thrives on the Internet, this writer made an editorial decision to rely solely on the information, the misinformation and lack of information, the truths and half-truths, and the twisted tales exhumed on the Internet about my friend and his time—your wizard, and mine. Thanks for reading, for remembering and keeping his career alive. He knows, he sees. Your fandom overwhelms him. He thanks you. It is a sincere hope that through this tome you will come to know him better. Long live the Phantom and long live rock ‘n’ roll. — R.D Francis

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Prologue

IN 1974, Capitol Records issued an unremarkable hard-rock album. Receiving a low-key release and promoted through an underground marketing campaign, the album received limited—sometimes scoffing, sometime favorable—press attention for its eerie similarities to a famed rock ‘n’ roll icon who perished under mysterious circumstances three years earlier. Some audiophiles questioned the recordings as a lost solo album recorded prior to that iconic musician’s death; others believed the icon still alive, in hiding and recording music; others believed the album an elaborate hoax—a prefabricated band created by musicians and producers looking to profit on the celebrity of a deceased rock star. To this day, blogging music journalists dismiss this phantasmal effort as a comical concept album: a parody of the then trendy, excessive and bloated rock operas created during the emergence of the progressive-rock epoch of the late Sixties and early Seventies.

MYSTERIES are part of the rock ‘n’ roll dynamic. First, it was the vagueness of Robert Johnson’s deal with the devil at the crossroads. Then it was the alleged assassination plots regarding Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison by the American government to preserve American values. The rock ‘n’ roll murder mysteries continued with the conspiracies regarding the deaths of the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones and, eventually, Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain—all became members of the superstitious recruitment drive by rock ‘n’ roll’s dark forces: The 27 Club.

Then there are the membership mysteries of bands such as the Masked Marauders, Lord Sitar, and Klaatu—coined by managers and the rock press as supergroups.

One of the more obscure, unsolved rock ‘n’ roll mysteries is the identity of the musician(s) responsible for the Doors-influenced, Morrisonesque qualities of the 1974 Capitol release of Phantom’s Divine Comedy: Part 1. As with the phantoms of the literary and film worlds, darkness and secrecy shrouds this ghostly, analog deity.

Is the Phantom a former Bank of America employee, an American counterspy, or a disillusioned recording artist on the roster of Elektra, Columbia, or Capitol Records? Is the Phantom a celebrated musician gone incognito, bestowing his deceased idol the sincerest form of flattery—through imitation? Is the Phantom a forgotten rock musician devoured by the greed of an industry nourishing itself on naive musicians blinded by the rock ‘n’ roll dream? Is the Phantom a prefabricated marketing creation of a rock band born from the culmination of promotional hype and media manipulation practiced by the early-Seventies managerial elite of Tony DeFries, Jerry Brandt, and Kim Fowley?

This is the ethereal tale of that wizard of Detroit and his epic encounter with the storied Lizard King of Los Angeles. This is a historical journey of the Phantom’s time; a melodious trek through the excitements and the innovations, a musical expedition through the hypes and excesses and the successes and failures of the rock ‘n’ roll music industry and one of its mythical creations: 1974’s Phantom's Divine Comedy: Part 1.

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Chapter 1 — Club 27

IN the study of numerology the combination of three sixes (666) is the sign of evil; the number 7 is a sign of luck; the number 13 is notorious for its run of bad luck. As for the number 27, it is a numerical curse associated with the musically gifted rock musician—and the numbers 2 and 7 add up to 9; inverted, the number 9 becomes a 6, which is one-third for the sign of evil: the Mark of the Beast. And those multipliers form a sexual position maligned by horrified white-collared Christian conservatives—a 69 (and the terms rock ‘n’ roll and rock and roll are African-American, blues-music euphemisms for sexual intercourse).

The number 9 appears 49 times in Christian scripture (and the multiples of 4 and 9 add up to the unlucky number of 13). The biblical usage of the number 9 is a symbol of divine completeness and finality. The Christian savior, Jesus Christ, died on the 9th hour of the day, or 3 pm (with the numbers of 9 and 3 adding up to the number 12; the numbers 1 and 2 give way to the number 3—the Christian holy trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; the circle completes). In other spiritual, new age realms, the number 9 is the sign of universal love: karma, a spiritual enlightenment and awareness. In classic literature, Dante Alighieri created nine circles of hell for The Divine Comedy (the influence of this epic poem on the lyrics of the Phantom’s 1974 opus discussed in Chapter 9: Lyrical Inspirations of the Phantom). In music, there are nine semitones in a major 6th interval.

These meanings of and the musical usage of the number 9 were not lost on two of the Sixties most iconic and influential musicians: John Lennon of the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix.

On the Beatles’ ambitious, 1968 double-album opus, The Beatles (aka the White Album) John Lennon, through an innovative use of tape loops and multitracking, created the controversial sound montage of Revolution 9. Many video sharing You Tubians have reversed the song into a backmasked form, pointing out numerous, clearly heard hails to the Prince of Darkness; the one branded with the Mark of the Beast—Satan. (Chapter 18: moeP sdrawkcaB discusses this studio technique, as it relates to the backwards poem held between the cuts on Phantom’s Divine Comedy: Part 1. The Beatles’ influences on the creation of concept albums, rock operas, and heavy-metal music are discussed in Chapter 7: Other Phantoms Claim for Fame and Chapter 8: Heavy Metal of the 1970s.)

As for Hendrix, in the wake of his death (discussed later, in this chapter) an urban legend—based on numerology—grew as result of Hendrix eerily composing If 6 was 9, the oft covered acid-blues classic from the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s 1967 album, Axis: Bold as Love. The interpretations of the intuitive song vary: Many believe Hendrix a highly spiritual, mystically enlightened individual simply conveying his concepts of a universal love that needed to be reached between the hippies and the conservatives in the counterculture wars of the late Sixties. Others believe the song a musical metaphor; a double entendre to the ecstatic sexual position, a sort of self-tantric yoga or quasi 69 with one’s inner self (and an imaginary axis can be drawn through the heads of the numbers—an axis: bold as love).

(The career of Jimi Hendrix, his management in particular, figures into the career trajectory of Detroit’s Phantom; discussed at length in later chapters.)

AS for the Prince of Darkness and his diabolical fascination with rock ‘n’ roll as a spiritual transportational device for his message, the Devil began collecting on his Daniel Websteresque markers long before the birth of rock ‘n’ roll. These same superstitions engulfing popular, romantic, and modern music also connect the number 9 to the classical music greats of Europe, with a highbrow take on the 27 Club known as the Curse of the Ninth.

A mainstream, journalistic folklore not supported by the literate, discerning classical music connoisseurs of symphonies, concertos, and sonatas, the curse claimed numerous composers, including such luminaries as Ludwig van Beethoven, Gustav Mahler, and Franz Schubert—all died after the achievements of composing their 9th symphonies.

For the lowbrow rock ‘n’ rollers, the brackish backwash of the British Invasion delivered the 27 Club into its mainstream pop-culture acceptance.

The Rolling Stones’ guitarist Brian Jones died on July 3, 1969, the result of what many fans of the Dirty Beatles deemed as a mysterious swimming pool drowning at the age of twenty-seven. In fact, just as rock ‘n’ roll conspiracy theorists speculated on the mysterious circumstances of Morrison’s death, many believed the demise of Jones was closer to murder, than an accident. (The critically lambasted, 2006 biographical movie about Jones, Stoned, exploited the circumstances regarding his passing.)

The next pledge in the membership drive for the 27 Club perished in a manner disputed by many: asphyxiation on vomit while sleeping, after an unintentional overdose of sleeping pills. Jimi Hendrix died at the age of twenty-seven—just over a year after Jones—on September 18, 1970. Two weeks later, Janis Joplin, a self-proclaimed experienced drug user, passed away from an accidental heroin overdose on October 4, 1970—at the age of twenty-seven. Morrison perished on July 3 of the following year.

Prior to this death, Jim Morrison made several references that he would be Number 3, referring to himself as the likely third candidate to die—after Hendrix and Joplin—under mysterious circumstances. One of the mysterious circumstances speculated during the early Seventies: political assassination, as the American government feared Hendrix, Joplin, and Morrison served as pied pipers leading the nation’s youth down the wrong path with a free-love philosophy and anti-Vietnam position. This political assassination assumption, along with the anger and speculation as to the real causes of the deaths of Hendrix and Joplin, fueled Morrison’s paranoia that the American government listed him as their third target.

The flower children of the late Sixties knew the American government held an inherent anger against the San Franciscan lifestyle, just as much as the members of the peace-and-love-movement hated the government. To hear it from the free-loving conspiracy theorist, the government murdering their American entertainment idols was a final political solution to obliterate the Summer of Love—all in an effort to keep the kids inline. While Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones was a Summer of Love member, he was a British citizen with no personal or political issues against the American government—unlike John Lennon, the bane of the Nixon-era administration—and not factored into the assassination conspiracies; however, many believed Jones’s bad personal choices resulted in his murder.

It was the deaths of Jones, Hendrix, and Joplin, along with the eventual demise of Morrison, in just over a year, which birthed the infamous legend of rock ‘n’ roll: The 27 Club.

THE conception of this elite club for the musically privileged occurred prior to the death of Brian Jones. According to those who relish darkness mixed with their rock ‘n’ roll, this musical guild of evil formally began when it claimed its first member on August 16, 1938. In the ensuing years, rock critics added Sao Paulo, Brazil, musician Alexander Levy, dead in 1892, along with the American Ragtime, St. Louis, Missouri-born musician Louis Chauvin, dead in 1908. As the new freshman and sophomore members of the 27 Club, they pushed the club’s infamous inaugural member to third on the membership rolls.

Regarded as the father of the blues and the grandfather of rock ‘n’ roll, that bronze metal holder, Robert Johnson, perished at the age of twenty-seven—either by pneumonia, or possibly murder as result of strychnine poisoning via drinking from an open whisky bottle passed around a roadhouse after a gig. Johnson earns full credit for blessing—or cursing—rock ‘n’ roll with images of darkness; he made numerous claims that he learned to play guitar from Old Scratch himself. In fact, Johnson’s mentor, Ike Zinnerman, was a blues musician who allegedly learned the blues by banging on an acoustic guitar while spending time in graveyards. These Johnson tales fueled the Crossroads legend about Johnson selling his soul to the Devil in a typical Faustian, Daniel Webster-style. (The Johnson tale served as fodder for another rock ‘n’ roll flick, starring Ralph Macchio as a musician searching for Johnson’s rumored lost songs— 1986’s Crossroads.)

Just as Robert Johnson’s claim of consorting with the Devil shrouded his death in mystery, Jim’s fascination with the occult brought about speculations as to his death. There are numerous occasions when Morrison confessed his interest in black & white magic, the occult, and Voodoo and Vondun philosophies. In fact, his moniker of Mr. Mojo Risin’—from the Doors’ L.A Woman—is an anagram (a word or phase made from another word by rearranging its letters) of the letters in his name: Jim Morrison. While the term mojo serves as an African-American cultural and blues-music slang for sexual prowess, the true meaning of a mojo, for Jim, lies in his fascination of religious strangeness and the occult. For Jim, a mojo is a black magic term referring to a shaman’s power icon—similar to Christianity’s use of a cross or the use of a medicine bag in American Indian cultures. The prefix of mo is an African idiom meaning darkness. Thus, Morrison’s self-styled, anagrammed nickname is rooted in the African-based religions of Voodoo and Vondun.

The basis of Morrison’s other nickname, the Lizard King, slithers in the dark arts Jim relished: snakes, lizards, reptiles, and serpents equate with darkness and the occult. These scaled ground crawlers additionally served as the underpinnings of a social and political organization dating back to the 1400s: the Order of the Dragon, a monarchical chivalric order founded in Hungary that adopted the symbol of an ouroboros—a reptile incurved into the form of a circle with its tail winding around its neck. These serpentine images of scaled creatures appear in Morrison’s cover of Big Joe Williams’s version of Crawling King Snake from the Doors’ final album recorded with Jim, L.A Woman.

Morrison also expresses an obsession with Native American cultures of the American Southwest—evident on The Soft Parade’s Shaman Blues and Indian Summer on Morrison Hotel—a fascination that began, Jim believed, when the spirit of a shaman entered his body as a child while on a stretch of a New Mexico highway during a family trip.

Twenty-three years transpired before the 27 Club claimed its next, best-known and infamous member—a member who also joined under mysterious circumstances. As with Morrison, this member also served as a reluctant voice to his generation—Kurt Cobain. The Nirvana leader earned enrollment into the elite group as the result of the wild speculations circulating in the underground media regarding his suicide-by-shotgun—actually an artfully concealed murder. In the early stages of Cobain’s demise, some believed Cobain’s wife, Courtney Love, hired an underground punk musician, El Duce (Eldon Hoke) from the Mentors, to carry out the murder. El Duce, in turn, perished under mysterious circumstances by train, after taking a drinking binge-induced nap on a set of railroad tracks near his home.

Considered legitimate are the deaths of the low-ranking members of the 27 Club, since their crypt keeper filed the death certificates in the clubhouse morgue under death-by-misadventure and not murder. However, as discussed later, rock ‘n’ roll conspiracy theorists also consider some of the less prestigious members as murder victims.

Queued behind the Big 6 of Jones, Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison, Cobain, and Robert Johnson (was he murdered as result of his own womanizing misadventures?) are Alan Blind Owl Wilson of Canned Heat (September 3, 1970; drug overdose), Leslie Harvey of Stone the Crows (May 3, 1972; electrocution), and Ron Pigpen McKernan of the Grateful Dead (March 8, 1973; alcoholism).

Three more members enrolled in 1975: Dave Alexander, bassist for the Stooges (February 10, 1975; pneumonia resulting in pancreas failure), Pete Ham of Badfinger (April 24, 1975; suicide-by-hanging), and Gary Thain, bassist for Uriah Heep (December 8, 1975; drug overdose). By May 3, 1977, Helmut Kollen, the replacement bassist for Doug Fieger (later of the Knack, see Chapter 3: Mystery and Hype Sells Records) in the Germany progressive band Triumvirat, enrolled in the dead rocker’s society by accidental carbon monoxide poisoning: running his garage-parked car as he listened to a cassette tape of Triumvirat’s newly recorded music. By December 27, 1978, Chris Bell enrolled; the pop mastermind behind Big Star joined as the result of a car accident.

In the alternative music world, the club claimed D. Boon, the lead vocalist and guitarist for the Minutemen (December 22, 1985; car accident), and then the club enrolled Jean-Michel Basquait, an Andy Warhol confidant who fronted the Gray (August 12, 1988; heroin overdose), along with Pete de Freitas of Echo and the Bunnymen (June 14, 1989; motorcycle accident). In addition to Kurt Cobain, the Seattle music scene claimed two more members: Mia Zapata, the raped and murdered lead singer of the Gits (July 7, 1993), and Kristen Pfaff, of Courtney Love’s Hole (June 16, 1994; heroin overdose). Other deaths from the alternative-rock world include Richey Edwards of the Manic Street Preachers (February 1, 1995; suicide) and Jeremy Michael Ward of the Mars Volta (May 25, 2003; heroin overdose).

The most recent and infamously prestigious 27 Club alumna is Amy Winehouse, the British retro-soul singer who lost her well-publicized battle with alcoholism on July 23, 2011. As with some of the club’s members, Winehouse’s death remains shrouded in mystery. Her cause of death came into question after the female coroner who supervised the inquest into the singer’s death resigned after her qualifications fell under a review.

Then there is the first questionable death certificate issued to a 27 Club member: Jim Morrison.

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Chapter 2 — Paris Speculations

JIM Morrison’s membership in the 27 Club found approval two years to the day of the 1969 death of Brian Jones.

Jim Morrison passed away on July 3, 1971, at approximately 5 am, of an alleged heart attack. According to legend, a doctor attributed Jim’s heart attack in a Paris bathtub to an earlier fall he had taken in March 1971 from the second story of Hollywood’s famed hotel, Chateau Marmont. It was another of Jim’s mindless escapades: Jim climbed up to the roof via a drainpipe and attempted to swing into his bedroom window from a rain gutter. Losing his grip, he fell and broke his fall by bouncing off the roof of a storage shed attached to his cottage.

According to his wife, Pam, Jim experienced respiratory problems and coughing up of blood—the worst of the coughing attacks occurring on July 2, a day prior to his death. Pam claims she and Jim were out for the evening. Upon returning home, Pam went to bed and Jim decided to take a bath; upon waking, she found Jim dead in the tub, and then contacted the proper authorities. Police, along with a doctor, arrived at the scene; the doctor declared Jim dead: heart failure. The doctor surmised a blood clot from Jim’s respiratory ailment induced the heart failure—a respiratory ailment resulting from an injury Jim took to his lung when he fell from his Hollywood hideaway four months earlier.

The assumption of an accidental death resulting from blood clots and respiratory ailments seems reasonable enough, but an unspectacular demise to a reptilian rocker slithering on starless perimeters, stoned immaculate. However, the Paris press reported Pam stated Jim was not dead—just recovering from exhaustion in a hospital. Then, Elektra Records, the Doors’ label, began a flurry of calls to the Paris police. Meanwhile, the American Embassy discovered no record of interment for a Jim Morrison—or anyone named Morrison—at the Paris city morgue, existed. What did exist: Jim’s profession listed as Poet on an expeditiously issued death certificate, with no autopsy confirming the cause of death, and the casket sealed. And while an American citizen—let alone a musical icon—died in a foreign land, Paris officials never advised the American Embassy, as is the political protocol when an American citizen expires in a foreign land.

The secretive measures taken by the Doors’ management compounded the mystery surrounding Pam’s actions. With a claim of wanting to avoid the same media circus surrounding the deaths of Hendrix and Joplin, the Lizard King’s wranglers allegedly decided to bury their reptilian god without notifying the media in advance, opting to wait until after burial. Of course, the initial rumors circulating as result of Pam’s impromptu dealings with the Paris press—in which Jim was only resting in the hospital—helped keep the burial quiet. Although it appeared as friends simply burying a friend with dignity, the actions left the words conspiracy theory hanging thick in the air.

In the days after Morrison’s death, on Thursday, July 8, those friends interred Jim at the most prestigious and oldest necropolis in Paris, Pere-Lachaise—the grounds serve as the final resting place for famed classical composer Chopin, and the poets Oscar Wilde and Moliere, with Jim fittingly interred in the cemetery’s Poet’s Corner section.

When the news finally hit the mainstream press on that Thursday, the conflicting accounts continued. At first, Jim was resting in a hospital for exhaustion. Then the stories surfaced that Jim died of a heart attack resulting from an alcohol induced respiratory failure that worsened after a bout with pneumonia. The alcoholism explanations made sense, as coughing up blood, which Pam claimed Jim did several times in Paris, is a byproduct of chronic alcoholism; Jim also had issues with pneumonia a year earlier. (Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain also suffered bouts of pneumonia, chronic stomach ailments, and coughing up blood.) Eventually, the details of the mysterious and hastily compiled death certificate hit the media: a certificate indicating Jim died of heart failure from a respiratory illness not related to alcoholism or pneumonia.

However, the rumors were already on the run.

The first rumors de-romanticized his death: Morrison simply got into a stash of Pam’s heroin and an overdose injection caused the heart attack. The other heroin story occurred at a French club located on the famed Left Bank, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus, where Jim scored heroin, then overdosed in a rest room. The alleged drug dealer who sold Jim the heroin—possibly with Pam’s help—took Jim back to Morrison’s apartment. In both heroin scenarios, Jim’s placement in the bathtub was a method of reviving him, as submerging someone in cold water is standard operating procedure to revive victims of heroin overdoses.

It is speculated that Pam simply did not want Jim to be remembered for dying in an undignified manner—by accident with heroin—thus issuing the exhaustion explanation, while deciding on a future course of action. Whatever did occur in that Paris hotel bathroom, it will never be known: Pam Courson Morrison died on April 25, 1974—in a tragic irony—also at the age of twenty-seven. (On June 6, 1974, in issue #162, Rolling Stone magazine published a full-page obituary for Pam, written by Judith Sims: Pam Courson: A Final Curtain on her Affair with Life.)

Thus, the conflicting stories about Jim’s death, and the three-day delay in reporting the death to the media—all compounded by the questionable actions of Pam and the Doors’ management—fed the theory fires of several conspiracies.

THE first theory was murder. This murder theory served as the plot device for Sorority House Party, a 1992 direct-to-video rock flick: kill the unpredictable, high maintenance, costly rock star to boost album sales. This murder theory was the direct result of Hendrix and Joplin doing great sales numbers after their deaths. Moreover, with Jim flaking out on the band and a split of the Doors proving costly to both the band and the label, knocking off the Lizard King does not seem like an implausible idea.

Other movies in the 1980s also tailored the mysterious threads of Jim’s death as cinematic narrative inspiration.

The second theory was a death hoax: Jim, tired of the dealing with the band and his Miami indecency trial ending in a possible jail sentence (like counterculture comedian Lenny Bruce), paid a French doctor to create a phony coroner report and death certificate. The cable movie favorite Eddie and the Cruisers played with this myth—no doubt inspired, in part, by the last chapter of No One Here Gets Out Alive, the 1980 best selling, first biography on Jim, which theorized Jim Morrison may have faked his own death.

In Eddie and the Cruisers, a Rimbaud-inspired rocker of the Sixties, distraught over band infighting and record company hassles, bailed out with an elaborate death ruse. In the eventual Eddie sequel, the rocking protagonist, Eddie Wilson, ended up as a construction worker in Canada; not exactly ranking with the romanticized rumors of Jim running away to Africa—then returning to music in 1974 as a mysterious rocker, the Phantom (or as the Circuit Rider; see Chapter 8: Heavy Metal of the 1970s).

The best of the Jim-inspired conspiracy rock films: Down on Us (1984), eventually reissued to video as Beyond the Doors (1989). Larry Buchanan’s film speculated Jim was not murdered, nor did he fake his death—he went underground to avoid assassination. The plotline: President Richard M. Nixon, despondent over the antiwar sentiments agitated by the hippie icons of Hendrix, Joplin, and Morrison, sanctioned the F.B.I to kill the trio. Morrison apparently caught wind of the plot and got out alive. The alleged F.B.I murdered Jim scheme has been in circulation since Jim’s death in 1971, cobbled in a basket with theories alleging the American government assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Marilyn Monroe, along with Robert Kennedy and his brother, President John F. Kennedy.

One of the earliest critics of the Warren Commission report regarding President Kennedy’s assassination, Mae Brussell, the late counterculture public radio personality of the Carmel and Monterey, California, radio stations KLRB and KAZU, most likely influenced Buchanan’s screenplay. The former host of the nationally syndicated Dialog: Conspiracy program compiled her government conspiracy theories in an unpublished November 1976 report (now accessible via the Internet): From Monterey Pop to Altamont, Operation Chaos: The C.I.A’s War Against the Sixties Counterculture.

This report, along with current Doorsphile conspiracy theorists on social media platforms, contend there was a coordinated effort initiated in 1968 by the F.B.I’s Counter Intelligence Program and the C.I.A’s Operation Chaos to undermind the counterculture movement. These theories point out that Jim Morrison knew Charles Manson, through his mutual acquaintanceship of the Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson and music producer Terry Melcher, and Morrison composed Riders on the Storm about Manson’s murderous followers (more about the Manson murders and it being influenced by rock music in Chapter 8: Heavy Metal of the 1970s).

Additionally, theorists opine the membership list of the 27 Club ties into the military service of the rockers’ parents. In addition to the high-ranking, classified naval service of Jim Morrison’s Admiral father, Lt. Col. Paul James Tate, the father of Manson Family murder victim, actress Sharon Tate, also served in the military. Theorists also point to Lewis Jones, the father of the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones, a PhD mechanical engineer, who served as a military aeronautical engineer for Bristol Aircraft . . . et cetera, one may read the extended theories online, but the point: the deaths of their famous children were assassinations. The theory concludes: Charles Manson and his family were either hired as actors for the plot, or Manson himself was a patsy—like Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald—set up to take the fall for the Tate assassination.

It all began, according to Brussell, with the 1966 death of anti-establishment comedian Lenny Bruce (1967 memoirs: How to Talk Dirty and Influence People)—the first victim of the operation. The critical and financial success of the Monterey Pop celebration in the summer of 1967 simply solidified the government’s resolve to snuff out the counterculture’s icons. Brussell goes onto state that, between 1968 and 1976, many of the most famous names of the counterculture movement, were dead: Mama Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, and Janis Joplin all participated in or attended the Monterey Pop Festival.

The report’s assassination roster also stars Duane Allman and Berry Oakley of the Allman Brothers, folkie Tim Buckley, Jimi Hendrix’s manager Michael Jeffrey and the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein, along with Graham Parsons of the Byrds, Ron Pigpen McKernan of the Grateful Dead, blues musician Jimmy Reed, and, of course, Jim Morrison, along with his wife, Pam Courson. All became victims of coordinated mind control tactics via Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD)—poisoning that altered the icons’ personalities and behaviors, encouraging their accidental deaths-by-misadventure.

FOR the thirty-sixth anniversary of his death, a man who claims he was at Jim Morrison’s side when he passed away gifted Jim with a July 2007 book—The End: Jim Morrison. Widely reviewed in the L.A Times, Rolling Stone, and The Daily Mail U.K, in addition to various print, radio, and electronic media outlets, each publication questioned the motives of Sam Bernett, the manager of the Rock’n’ Roll Circus, coming forth after almost four decades of silence.

Bernett claims Morrison’s death was not the result of natural causes from any pre-existing medical issues or injuries, but from a heroin overdose taken in the restroom of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus. Bernett alleges Morrison visited the club to score heroin for Pam Courson; Bernett discovered Morrison about a half-hour later, slumped over a toilet, foam and blood running from his mouth as result of snorting heroin—Morrison had an aversion to needles.

Upon discovery, the two drug dealers who sold to Morrison—employed by Jean de Breteuil, a French playboy and drug supplier to the stars—transferred Morrison’s body from the club to Morrison’s apartment in Rue Beautreillis, disposing of him in the bathtub. Then, the club’s owner, in fear of bad publicity—the club served as a famed hangout for members of the Beatles, Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd, and the Rolling Stones—ordered Bernett never to speak of the event. Bernett, in turn, also swore singer Marianne Faithful, who partied with Morrison that evening, to secrecy.

Bernett alleged he located a doctor who was a club regular to check on Jim; the doctor assessed Jim perished of a cardiac arrest. However, the drug dealers insisted Morrison simply passed out and they, along with Bernett, would take care of Jim.

Eventually, a French doctor, Max Vassille, filled out an official death certificate listing Morrison’s death as natural causes resulting from the singer’s past sufferings with stomach ulcers and asthma attacks. Thus, Dr. Vassille determined an autopsy unnecessary, since there was no evidence of foul play.

WHILE the American government chemically altered the rock ‘n’ roll elite, an undiscovered 21-year-old musician in Detroit (once home to Fort Pontchartrain du Detroit in the old North American French territories) would see his career path altered by a drug more deadly than LSD. PHMM, the chemical cocktail of promotional hype and media manipulation, devoured by an addicted music industry, would alter that Detroit musician’s musical dreams, and his life—forever.

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Chapter 3 — Mystery and Hype Sells Records

THEN there are the rumors concerning the Phantom. This scored-through chapter in the Doors’ legacy began in 1974 when Capitol Records released Phantom’s Divine Comedy: Part 1, an album which featured a band comprised of an unidentified lead singer and guitarist, aka the Phantom, along with a drummer, bassist(s) and keyboardist known as W, X, Y, and Z.

The pre-Internet, vinyl denizens of brick-and-mortar record stores and hotel conference room-sponsored record swap meets traded numerous speculations as to the identity of the PDC band over the years; repeated conjectures that intensified as the tale of the Phantom moved to the Internet in the mid-to-late Nineties.

The first speculation: The Phantom was Jim Morrison, incognito. The two-fold theory: Jim recorded this solo debut in Paris prior to his death—aka, the lost Paris Tapes (examined in Chapter 5: Opening the Door to the French Connection). On the other hand, Jim recorded his solo effort after he died and ran off to Africa. In both scenarios Hollywood soundtrack composer and Morrison confidant, Fred Myrow, along with Elektra production employees John Haeny and Bruce Botnick, assisted Morrison with the writing and production of the PDC effort—the same trio that allegedly worked on the recordings for Morrison’s proposed Paris-based, spoken-word poetry album. Meanwhile, the remaining Doors struggled as a trio, issuing two failed albums: 1971’s Other Voices and 1972’s Full Circle.

The second speculation: Phantom DC was an Iggy Pop solo album cut in the wake of Iggy and the Stooges’ 1973 classic album for Columbia, Raw Power. The theory: Iggy cut his solo project as a demo tape with castoffs from the MC5, the Quackenbush brothers from SRC, and other Detroit bands—as Iggy’s bid to be Jim’s replacement in the Doors.

The third speculation: Iggy Pop fronting the Doors. The Iggy solo album or Iggy and the Doors scenarios seem unlikely, as the Doors were the property of Elektra