Word: morrison
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...line Sauls, a 31-year-old Parisian who emigrated to Orlando 10 years ago, was back to pay her respects. Just before she moved from France, one of the last things she did was to sit atop Morrison's tombstone, tell him about her plans to live in the U.S., and say goodbye...
Such heartfelt individual meditations have taken a collective toll on the cemetery. Vandals long ago dismantled the outsize bust of Morrison that once topped the grave. By then, the grave site had been covered in graffiti by fans. Other tombstones, vandalized with arrows labeled Jim that directed the way to Morrison's grave, have since been wiped clean. Cemetery staff blocked off the plot with metal barricades a few years ago. Asked for directions, a staff member sniffs: "We are a cemetery, not a tourist service...
...been a stage for grand episodes of French history for centuries. Originally a country retreat, it was named after the confessor of King Louis XIV, whose successor expelled the Jesuit priests living there in 1763. It became a cemetery in 1804. Then, in 1871--a century before Morrison's death--Parisian anarchists staged a pitched battle against their foes amid the tombstones; 147 survivors were executed against the cemetery wall and buried in a mass grave...
This French history is in direct competition with an industry of rock nostalgia. One block from the cemetery, a café displays old Doors concert posters in its windows. Florists near the site sell Morrison T shirts for $22, along with wreaths. "I listen to his music all the time," says Olesya Sergeeva, a 21-year-old student from Siberia who is in Paris on a summer work program. She had headed to the cemetery on her first day off from waiting tables at a restaurant in the Eiffel Tower...
...controversy hit this month with the release of a French book titled The End: Jim Morrison. Author Sam Bernett, former manager of the Rock 'n' Roll Circus nightclub, claims that instead of dying of a heart attack in a bathtub--the official police version of his death--Morrison overdosed on heroin on a toilet seat in the club. "I wanted to call the police or rescue people to help," he told TIME. But he was dissuaded by Morrison's drug dealers, he says, who instead had the body brought home to the apartment Morrison had rented, and staged his body...