Love Her Madly

A new book sheds some more light on Jim Morrison's character and early death

It was in 1979 when I had an evening newspaper delivery job that took me around the burbs on bike, slipping a copy of the paper into the mailboxes of the many houses on my route. One spring day during the round, I was invited in by my friend Ron who happened to live on my route and offered me, as fifteen year olds do, a drink and as I recall it was a pretty potent rum and coke. As we sipped our beverage, Ron took me through his eclectic music collection and suggested I listen to The Doors. I had never heard of Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, John Densmore and Robby Krieger. Somewhat dazed after the more than one drink I continued my newspaper route with the ‘Absolutely Live’ record in my bike bag so I could tape it on my cassette player when I got home. That day started a lifelong love affair with The Doors, Jim Morrison, their music, poems, stories and enduring legacy. It also included a deep and ongoing fascination with Southern California and its culture of extremes.

Now many years later, Morrison has raised his head again last month when I heard that Canadian Bill Cosgrave - who is a brother of another friend here in British Columbia - had written a book about his friendship with Jim Morrison and his then partner, Mary Werbelow. It is said that Mary was Morrison’s one and only true love and that the classic Doors song ‘The End’ was essentially Jim’s lament over Mary walking away from their relationship. Cosgrave was there at the time and his book brings the 1960s in Los Angeles alive. At times it reminded me of John Fante’s books that were set in the same city, you are drawn into the heat and madness of the city and see it through the eyes of the less fortunate that live there. Werbelow and Cosgrave held marginal jobs and Jim Morrison was pretty much penniless. Cosgrave and Morrison palled around in the Venice beach area during the pre-Doors period of 1965 when Jim had wrapped up his studies at UCLA, filling his days with partying and writing poems. Cosgrave stayed with Jim’s girlfriend Mary and continued to hang out with Morrison even after the affair had ended. It was a carefree world, a ‘bohemien’ type lifestyle with no real plans, drinking all the good things life had to offer. In SoCal that meant girls, alcohol, drugs, sun and beaches. Nothing foreshadowed the emergence of one of them as a major rockstar who would prematurely die at the age of twenty-seven in Paris, only six years later.

In the book we get to know Morrison as a laid back, considerate, calm and polite guy who marvelled at the world and did not have a real clue as to what to do with his life. This image of Morrison stands in stark contrast to what Oliver Stone delivered in his Doors movie where the focus was on the singer’s violent and self-destructive behaviour. Looking back in his book, Cosgrave notes that there were some early signs of Morrison’s ability to self-destruct, the rockstar career being what pulled the kind poet into the abyss.

Like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, the Doors were heavily influenced by blues, and Manzarek’s musical talent turbocharged Jim Morrison’s poetic side. The music will forever be intertwined with America in the 60s: Vietnam, the Kennedy murders, Martin Luther King’s killing, the slaughter of Sharon Tate, the emergence of Richard Nixon (who makes a brief appearance in Cosgrave’s book) and the race riots in Watts (which also feature in the book). Morrison was said to have been fascinated by America’s culture of violence, a theme that would recur in his poetry and songs. You do feel the outer edges of society in the songs and Francis Ford Coppola’s decision to have ‘The End’ as the opening soundtrack for ‘Apocalypse Now’ made it clear how Morrison and the Doors were often probing the outer reaches of sanity. That of course was also their attraction and the themes are as relevant today as they were in the late sixties.

Back in Canada and working on a new career, Cosgrave must have sensed that edge of normalcy when Jim Morrison offered him a job working for the Doors: after careful deliberation he turned his old friend down. The last time he connected with the rockstar was after a concert in Toronto when Jim had already started his descent, it was impossible for Cosgrave to connect with and talk to the deeply intoxicated singer. The writer’s return to Los Angeles some forty years later to track down Mary Werbelow wraps up the book, but it does not seem to give Cosgrave the peace and closure he was looking for. Like Morrison he was in love with Mary, and like Morrison the summer of 1965 was a package of unfinished business that could not be laid to rest in peace.

Jim Morrison once explained that the success of the Doors was the result of “… an intense visitation of energy“ and whenever we listen to their music and lyrics we plug right into that. And we create our own cultish behaviour around it. During a family road trip in 2007 when we were cruising through SoCal’s Mojave Desert I told my wife and kids that it would be impossible to really experience the desert without hearing Morrison’s voice. And so we all listened as we rolled through the barren landscape around us. Bill Cosgrave also picked up on some of the raw ingredients that animated Jim Morrison and the Doors. By capturing them in his book he’s made our journey on that wave of energy a lot richer.