The DOORS

Morrison moved to Paris in March 1971 with the intention of taking a break from performing and concentrating on his writing. Hoping to get his life back on track, Morrison lost a great deal of weight and shaved off his beard (although his last photographs show a considerable amount of bloating -- a classic symptom of congestive heart failure). By all accounts he became very depressed whilst in Paris, but he admired the city's architecture, saying 'When they built this city, they threw away the blueprint' in an interview with a Los Angeles journalist in summer 1971.

He died on July 3, 1971, at age 27, and was found in his bathtub by Courson. According to Stephen Davis' biography of Morrison, it was reported that he had dried blood around his mouth and nose and large bruising on his chest. This suggests Morrison might have died from a massive hemorrhage caused by tuberculosis. Many fans and biographers have speculated that the cause of death was a drug overdose, but the official report listed the cause of death as heart failure. Pursuant to French law, no autopsy was performed because the medical examiner found no evidence of foul play. The lack of an official autopsy left many questions unanswered and provided a fertile breeding ground for speculation and rumor.

In his autobiographical novel Wonderland Avenue, Danny Sugerman recounts that he briefly met with Courson when she returned to America in the mid-1970s. According to his account, Courson told him that Morrison had in fact died of a heroin overdose when he inhaled copious amounts of the substance, believing it to be cocaine. Sugerman added that Courson had also given numerous contradictory versions of Morrison's death, but the majority of fans seem to have accepted the mistaken heroin overdose account. Courson herself died of a heroin overdose a few years later. Like Morrison, she was 27 years old at the time of her death. Morrison was quoted to say that when he returned from Paris he was going to let "bygones be bygones" with his father. Also, a few weeks before his death he called bandmate John Densmore and asked how the newest album had been received, and when Densmore replied that it had been doing well in the charts, Morrison replied that "if they like this, wait'll they hear what I got in mind for the next one." In Densmore's own autobiography, Riders On The Storm, the drummer reasoned that Morrison had taken heroin with a strong liquor, climbed into the bathtub, and committed suicide.