Mr Mojo (2 page)

Jim Morrison lives downtown. It's not difficult to find his grave, because there are hundreds of signposts, all handwritten in chalk: ‘Jim this way', ‘Jim 200 metres', ‘This way for the lizard king' – dozens of tiny arrows to help the hordes of visitors on their pilgrimage. The graffiti is overwhelming: ‘Anarchy', ‘Jim's not dead', ‘The Doors are closed', ‘Jim, I love you for ever – you will always live in my heart', ‘From Italy for Jim
Morrison for ever', ‘Jim, love you two times', ‘Death give us wings, but he is out of reach', ‘Jim, if you leave me, must I come too?' The immediate area surrounding his grave is covered with lyrics from his songs, scrawled in spidery writing or blunt block capitals.

And though it's easy to find, Morrison's grave is quite difficult to see, hidden behind a cluster of narrowly spaced tombs. All that's left is a large block of stone, covered in the inevitable Doors slogans and decorated with a couple of plastic plant pots. For years an alabaster bust graced this box, but it was stolen in May 1988 by two young bandits trying to preserve Morrison's dignity. Disrespectful visitors had chipped away at his face, making him look like a bewigged ghost. For years there were plans to replace the bust with a more fitting tribute.

The grave seems to smell of whisky and nicotine, and the earth surrounding the stone box is littered with bottle tops and cigarette butts.

The tombs on either side of Morrison's grave are constantly cleaned, and most of the graffiti is only a few weeks old. All around, his legacy lives on in badly rendered slogans: a few graves are so damaged that it's difficult to decipher the carved inscriptions, and the trees which line Morrison's avenue have all been carved with knives. Charles Gondouin (died 24 December 1947) must be turning in his grave, as it's his headstone which has suffered the worst abuse. It backs on to
Morrison's grave, and has been tagged so many times it looks like the side of a New York subway train.

Decades after his death, Morrison is still pulling in the crowds. Two local boys in leather jackets, T-shirts and blue jeans are sitting on opposite sides of the grave, passing a bottle of beer between them. They smoke cigarettes and stare at the ground. In their own way, they're paying homage to the hedonistic ‘Lizard King', letting him know they're on the right course. An upturned whisky bottle has been embedded in the earth and two empty bottles of tequila and Jim Beam Kentucky bourbon have been left on the stone slab – it's these as much as Morrison that the boys seem to be worshipping.

Three Swedish girls wearing backpacks and walking boots stand behind the grave smoking weed as a lone Belgian flips the plastic cork from his bottle of cheap red wine. Gesturing with their hands, they pass the beer, wine and joints between the six of them. Like Morrison himself, his fans are indiscriminate drinkers. Every few minutes someone else arrives, joining the crowd around the tiny monument. They examine the graffiti, take photographs of themselves on the grave (usually wearing sunglasses), and bask in the strange air of reverence. More people arrive, another joint is passed around, and the day rolls on.

Every twenty minutes or so the security guards pass by. They shoo people off the graves and retrieve the
discarded liquor bottles and food wrappers, like any disgruntled park keeper. Occasionally the gendarmes pay a visit. They frisk undesirables, confiscate any alcohol and move people on. On the twelfth anniversary of Morrison's death in 1983 the police had to use tear gas to break up a group of mourners. A few years ago Morrison's grave was the focal point for Parisian juvenile delinquency, a popular place for wild parties and debauchery. People would gather here during the day and at night after the cemetery closed, to play guitars, have sex, buy drugs or just hang out. But the police stopped all that, and regularly patrol the graveyard in the hope of rounding up any suspicious characters who haven't got the message.

Père-Lachaise has become just another stop on the backpackers' tour of Europe, like the Pompidou Centre, the Eiffel Tower or the Grande Arche at La Défense. There are still those who make the pilgrimage because they are Doors fanatics, or because Morrison is their idol, but usually the visitors are there out of idle curiosity. If you're ‘doing Paris' then you have to visit Père-Lachaise. The grave is still a shrine, but it has become a meeting place for tourists, like London's Carnaby Street or Covent Garden.

Twenty-year-old Jacqui is from Sydney. She's here because to her Jim Morrison represents the ideology and the freedom of the sixties. ‘And', she says, ‘he was a pretty cool guy. Very sexy. I'm surprised by the grave,
though – it's very bare, very poor. I thought it would be much more elaborate. The bottles on the grave are very symbolic. I've just had a drink sitting on the grave – that felt very cool! I'll definitely come again if I come back to Paris – you know, pay my respects, have another drink, and another smoke! They say he's still alive, making music with Elvis in Africa, but I don't know . . .'

Lee Demelo, twenty-two, is from Ontario, touring Europe for the first time, stopping off in Paris for two weeks. ‘Basically we've seen all the sights and we wanted to take a day off to come here, because it's the thing to do. It's not what I expected, you know? You walk in here and there's all these humungous tombstones, and you walk up to Jim Morrison's grave and there's nothing, really. I suppose it's not important, right? It's just the mental concept that this is where he's buried, or supposed to be buried, right? All the people at the youth hostel have been here. It's great – I'm the only person out of all my friends from Canada who's been to Paris, and I'll be able to go back and brag about how I went to Jim Morrison's grave. That's cool. We've taken some pictures to prove we've been here.

‘He means so much to people, you know? The Doors' albums still sell, and they still mean a lot to people. They're not like one of those groups that come and go . . . they'll always be there. I'm not really a Top-40 kinda guy, and the Doors mean a lot to me.'

Blue is an ageing French teacher who lived in Paris at the same time as Morrison. She has brought a single red rose to adorn his grave. ‘I've been about a dozen times since he died – whenever I'm in Paris I make a point of coming here. I come because to a certain extent he represented our generation. I was never a fan of his music but I liked his poems – and I could see he was trying to do something new with his poetry. But no one ever understood him, and he started to manipulate people when he didn't become appreciated. I know a girl who knew him closely, and she said he was more concerned about his poetry than he was about anything else he did. When he got them published he was happier than when he got his first record release.

‘It's a pity he became so manipulative, because I really think he had something, but he turned into quite a monster, I think. A shame.'

By now there are twenty people mingling around the grave, swapping stories, drinks and telephone numbers. There's Adam from Iowa, Jim and Sheila from Birmingham, England, Bruce and Mikey from San Francisco, and a gaggle of college students from Los Angeles. Three middle-aged Parisian women sit on a nearby grave, sharing a bottle of cheap cognac and talking about nothing in particular. No one there knew Morrison, but this is the place to be. Two boys and a girl sit opposite, collectively rolling a joint. They finish a packet of Camel filters before smoking it. Natalie,
Fred and Oliver all live nearby, and come to the cemetery every day. They always meet at Morrison's grave, because, they say, ‘We like his history, he was a rebel.' They're thinking of not coming any more, because the place is always swamped by tourists. ‘And the police come every five minutes,' says Natalie, ‘it's getting to be a drag. I'm not sure if it's cool to hang out here anymore.'

A frail-looking couple dressed entirely in black amble up to the throng. The boy holds a bunch of flowers. They stare for a minute and then start to walk away. ‘The flowers are for Oscar Wilde,' says Jeremy, a nineteen-year-old from Manhattan. The girl, also from New York, is called Kris. ‘Jim Morrison gets all the attention,' she says, ‘so we thought we'd visit Wilde. Anyway, it looks like we're gatecrashing a party here.'

Photographers and backpackers come and go, cautiously approaching the grave in case they're intruding; some scan the cemetery guide, perhaps wondering why Morrison's name is misspelt Morisson; the security guards drive past again and the day draws to a close. It seems like Morrison's grave is the longest running open-air nightclub in Europe.

As the wind gets up, Blue slowly turns to say goodbye. ‘I don't think I'll be coming again,' she says. ‘This place is like a garbage tip now.'

There are as many rumours about Jim Morrison's death as there are about his life. Not only are the circumstances in which he died incredibly suspect, but so are the many things which are supposed to have befallen him since. You can take your pick: he is still alive; his body was stolen by friends soon after his death and shipped back to California; he was cremated and his ashes eventually smoked by Morrison's Parisian heroin dealer; his ashes were scattered over the Seine. One journalist was even told by a guard at Père-Lachaise that Morrison's family came and collected the body at the beginning of the eighties. Graffiti near the grave states, ‘We came to see you, Jim, even though we know you're not there' – but this is wishful thinking. By keeping their options open Morrison obsessives can perpetuate the myth, which becomes dramatically less mysterious if you believe he is buried at Père-Lachaise. But there seems little doubt that he is.

Monsieur Forestier, the custodian of the cemetery, was shocked when asked whether Morrison was buried there. ‘Of course he's there, he's always been there. Only the bust has been removed.' He even refutes the story about the family retrieving the body: ‘Even they can't take away the body, they're officially not allowed to. You can't just pick up bodies and move them somewhere else. He's here.'

Should we believe this? Certainly the custodians of Père-Lachaise didn't have the same qualms when they
moved Molière, Beaumarchais and Abelard to attract attention to their cemetery; and bodies are moved from cemeteries all the time (often to make way for real estate). It's also possible that Admiral Steve Morrison's contacts allowed him to secretly move his son's body back to the USA.

But if Morrison's body isn't there, why do they claim it is? One of the most densely populated cemeteries in the world, Père-Lachaise is not starved of tourists, and the graves of Oscar Wilde and Edith Piaf alone would keep it full of visitors. It's not as if the authorities need Jim Morrison. The surrounding graves have to be regularly cleaned, and the guards could find better things to do with their time than patrol Morrison's tomb on the lookout for deviants. Monsieur Forestier simply doesn't need the trouble, so why should he lie?

Two hours later the grave is littered with flowers: small bunches of tulips and individually packed red roses. Pinet Fleurs, the florist next door to the entrance to the cemetery in Boulevard de Ménilmontant, say they sell flowers to Morrison-mourners every day of the year.

As you leave the cemetery the graffiti continues: ‘The Doors are for ever, not some fast trend', ‘I ask this of you, Jim, is this the end?', ‘Fuck it all', ‘Jim, dead but not gone', ‘Some oysters for you, Jim', ‘Jim, we party for you for ever', ‘Jim, Becky from Crystal Lake, Illinois,
Loves You'. There is graffiti from all over the world – cryptic little messages in Italian, French, German, Spanish, personal pleas from Australia, America, Canada and Britain. The final message, scrawled on a plastic rubbish bin opposite the Métro, is written in thick black felt-tip: ‘Jim stinks', it says.

2

The New Californians

Today in Los Angeles, the sixties are still very much alive and kicking – if you know where to look, that is. Laurel Canyon is often written about as the place that gave the world Crosby, Stills & Nash, the place that inspired Joni Mitchell's ‘Ladies of the Canyon', Danny Sugerman's
Wonderland Avenue
. It is a neighbourhood of benign bad behaviour and clandestine misdemeanours. Everyone from Clara Bow and Christina Applegate to Frank Zappa and Marilyn Manson has lived there, and it retains a genuine local feel – almost impossible in LA. This being Los Angeles, the area has also had its fair share of dark moments, not least the Wonderland murders, which happened in 1981, when four people were bludgeoned to death with striated steel pipes in a drug-related plot that involved the porn star John Holmes.

Despite being the subject of standard-issue gentrification, the Canyon has kept the funky, rainbow-coloured charm of the Love Generation, something that is most apparent when visiting the Canyon Country Store, still the neighbourhood's social hub. Wedged along the twisting Laurel Canyon Boulevard in the Santa Monica Mountains between West Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley, this is the place mentioned in Jim Morrison's ‘Love Street' (‘I see you live on Love Street, There's this store where the creatures meet'). In fact the song was completely based around the store; Morrison would spend days hanging out there, loafing around outside, sitting on an orange crate, staring at girls and drinking from a bottle of Scotch. For years the graffiti MR MOJO RISIN' graced the front of the store. The wooden-floored grocery shop/café is still the place to go for canyon dwellers with the munchies, or for those in the industry who aren't working, and who need somewhere in the morning to stop for an espresso having spent all night partying in the Valley. Here they'll find Dandy Don's ice cream, Dave's Kombucha (fermented tea), bespoke sandwiches, hearts of palm salads, and the almost-but-not-quite-legendary decaf almond-milk latte. Run out of Californian chardonnay, Heinz baked beans, Daddy's Sauce or patchouli incense? Look no further.