CIRCA 1970: Photo of Jim Morrison Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
50 years after his passing, Jim Morrison’s sister has collected and released his private journals in a collection called “The Collected Works of Jim Morrison: Poetry, Journals, Transcripts, and Lyrics.” However, don’t feel bad for reading these intimate thoughts, according to his journal this is exactly what he wanted.
When Jim suddenly passed away in Paris at the age of 27 his family wasn’t left with much since Morrison left everything to his girlfriend Pamela Courson. Though that would change when she passed away three years later, splitting the estate between Morisson’s parents and Courson’s family. Jim’s father was a military man who made his way up to an admiral in the U.S. Navy and never quite “got” his music career, while his mother collected all sorts of memorabilia. “They were paying attention, but they didn’t get it,” Morrison penned in his notebook.
From their passing in 2009, Jim’s sister Anne Morrison Chewning was given hold of their half of the estate. This came with access to Jim’s collection of notebooks and musings, all of which are kept in a bank vault.
As she riffled through with nostalgia she started to notice that Jim had a plan, a plan to release a book one day that chronicled all his poems, doodles, lyrics, everything. Upon the realization Chewning started to collect all 28 of his note books and approached a publisher to organize the mounds of precious material.
“I didn’t realize how much we had,” Chewning told The Daily Beast. “It was very exciting because I’ve been wanting to see them forever. Then, of course, we had to decide what we were going to do with them. What do you do with someone’s journals like that?”
Well, in following her late brothers plan, she did exactly what he would have done and released a almost 600 page, nearly unfiltered look into his thoughts and inner workings.
This candid picture of one of the most famous rockstars of our time brought to light a few interesting things to say the least.
One of the revelations was reading what he truly thought of his trial for indecent exposure where his journal reveal his thoughts on which zodiac sign certain jurors were, how he dug that one of them had grandchildren, and just in general how he felt the trial was an overreaction. “It’s an education in human nature. Funky old human nature,” he mused in his journal.
He even penned a poem in the courtroom.
“There once was a group called The Doors /
Who sang their dissent to the mores /
To be young they protested /
As the witnesses attested /
While their leader was dropping his drawers”
His journal however, showed that he had been drinking heavily and lamenting his music career in the moments leading up to that fateful concert in Miami. “Miami blew my confidence, but really I blew it on purpose,” Morrison reflected in his notebook.
“He actually said, ‘Maybe I was ready to be done,’” Chewning recalled his reaction after the jury found him guilty. “He was quite drunk and who knows what he was saying. But he said himself, ‘Maybe I wanted this to happen, so I could be done for a while.’”
Morrison admits to sabotaging himself as a way to step away from his music, which lead to his trip to Paris, and even reflected on becoming a “writer-filmmaker” and wrote of his “desire for family.”
“Doesn’t that break your heart?” Chewning said pointing out he had never mentioned wanting a family to her. “He was still so young. Where he was in his life, it wasn’t the time yet, but who knows.”
Though Morrison’s life was cut tragically short, his sister hopes releasing his journals not only fulfills his wishes, but also allows the fans to see all sides of her brother and feel even closer to him.
“There’s so many young people who just see him as a rock star,” Chewning explains. “I want to dispel the ‘Lizard King’ and all those things that you hear. We wanted the reader to see the complete Jim, to see that he was a full writer in multiple areas, thinking in lots of different directions. I didn’t want an interpretation. I wanted this to be Jim and in Jim’s words, talking about himself and explaining his words, not other people’s input.”
“You see his notes and his ramblings, but you also see the finished product,” she continues. “The repetition of some things and how things came to be, you know, his Hitchhiker and lyrics. I love seeing that. It’s intimate. It makes it closer to you.”
