Light Our Fire: My Wedding to Jim Morrison
3/5
()
About this ebook
Patricia Kennealy Morrison
Patricia Kennealy Morrison is a retired rock critic, a two-time Clio nominee, and the author of a memoir, a collection of her rock-criticism pieces, and 14 novels. In 1970, she married rock singer Jim Morrison in a pagan Celtic handfasting ceremony. Kennealy Morrison attended St. Bonaventure University and graduated from Harpur College; she has also studied at NYU, Parsons School of Design, and Christ Church, University of Oxford. She was the editor of Jazz & Pop magazine and a consultant on Oliver Stone’s film “The Doors,” in which she was portrayed by actress Kathleen Quinlan and had a cameo role performing the wedding ceremony between Quinlan as herself and actor Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison. In 1990, in Scotland, she was invested as a Dame Templar in a modern-day incarnation of the ancient order of Knights Templar. She lives in Manhattan.
Related to Light Our Fire
Related ebooks
Love Him Madly: An Intimate Memoir of Jim Morrison Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Memories, Dreams and Reflections Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mercury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Idol Truth: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cherry on Top: Flirty, Forty-Something, and Funny as F**k Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lizard King: The Essential Jim Morrison Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMarilyn Manson Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Angels Dance and Angels Die: The Tragic Romance of Pamela and Jim Morrison Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Becomes a Funeral Pyre: A Biography of the Doors Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Janis: Her Life and Music Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Storms: My Life with Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summer with Morrison: The Early Life and Times of James Douglas Morrison Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDandelion: A Memoir of a Free Spirit Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5We Want The World: Jim Morrison, The Living Theatre and the FBI Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLove Her Madly: Jim Morrison, Mary, and Me Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDream a Little Dream of Me: The Life of 'Mama' Cass Elliot Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spider from Mars: My Life with Bowie Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Even When It Was Bad…It Was Good Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPermanent Damage: Memoirs of an Outrageous Girl Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dark Journey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI'm with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dancing with Myself Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mr Mojo: A Biography of Jim Morrison Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Somebody to Love: The Life, Death and Legacy of Freddie Mercury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews and Encounters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Rock And Roll Book Of The Dead Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Artists and Musicians For You
The Long Hard Road Out of Hell Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Daily Creativity Journal Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Gary Larson and The Far Side Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Woman in Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5IT'S ALL IN YOUR HEAD Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1998 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Would Leave Me If I Could.: A Collection of Poetry Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Divided Soul: The Life Of Marvin Gaye Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Kids: A National Book Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Meaning of Mariah Carey Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Elvis and Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of The War of Art: by Steven Pressfield | Includes Analysis Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love & Death: The Murder of Kurt Cobain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Marathon Don't Stop: The Life and Times of Nipsey Hussle Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/550 Great Love Letters You Have To Read (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leonardo da Vinci Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5More Myself: A Journey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gender Madness: One Man's Devastating Struggle with Woke Ideology and His Battle to Protect Children Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Bowie: An Illustrated Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Violinist of Auschwitz Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frida Kahlo: An Illustrated Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oil and Marble: A Novel of Leonardo and Michelangelo Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sounds Like Me: My Life (So Far) in Song Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Autobiography of Gucci Mane Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Outsider Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Can I Say: Living Large, Cheating Death, and Drums, Drums, Drums Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5James Baldwin: A Biography Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Light Our Fire
4 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Light Our Fire - Patricia Kennealy Morrison
Introduction
2014
I went to work at a New York City music magazine called Jazz & Pop in February 1968, a 21-year-old girl. Less than a year later, I met, in a private interview at New York’s Plaza Hotel, a rock star whose work I deeply admired: Jim Morrison. He stood up to greet me and I almost fainted; then, when we shook hands, our touch set off a shower of blue sparks visible across the room. Jim just smiled. Portent,
he said speculatively, in that impossibly deep, soft voice, looking down at me. A sign,
I agreed, hardly daring to meet his eyes. We were both right.
Over the next two and a half years, we were caught up like the prince and princess of instant karma in a romance that was as astonishing and wonderful as anything I write about in my novels. He proposed to me under a flowering tree in Central Park, with a 20-carat solitaire emerald engagement ring, and we were married in a romantic Celtic ceremony called handfasting, on June 24, 1970, according to the rites of my Pagan Celtic religion (which Jim, a Scottish American, had begun to be interested in himself).
Sadly, all fairy tales don’t have happy endings: on July 3, 1971, Jim died in Paris of a heroin overdose, although he was not a user and had nothing but contempt for people who did use. He had gone to Paris to finally extricate himself from a relationship he himself described as half pity, half habit,
with on-again, off-again girlfriend Pamela Courson. He told me and others, including his lawyer, that he planned to end things with her gently, as she was not the most stable of individuals, to say the least, and he intended to offer her a one-time-only buyout to go away forever.
Her heroin habit and the drugs she kept around the house got to him first. Guilty and terrified of being blamed for his death, as in my opinion she deserved to be, she arranged a secret funeral in Paris’s famed Père-Lachaise cemetery and got out of Dodge as fast as she could, returning to Los Angeles the day after. She then commenced a life of heavy druggery, supporting herself as a hooker when she worked at all, and died of a heroin overdose herself in April 1974.
All this is well documented in plenty of other books besides mine. I had never planned on writing a book about Jim and me at all; it hurt far too much, and frankly, I considered it no one’s business but his and mine. Ten years after Jim’s death, I gave in and spoke to a couple of biographers, thinking perhaps it would be good to tell my story to someone, at last; unfortunately, my breaking silence resulted in a tsunami of hostility, viciousness, and vile accusations rivaled only by those unleashed at Yoko Ono Lennon and Courtney Love Cobain. It seems that ignorant fans don’t like having their tissues of lies contradicted by the truth.
In the end, it took Oliver Stone’s execrable movie The Doors
to get me to write my own book, Strange Days: My Life With and Without Jim Morrison, in which I could at last tell our story with minutest reportorial detail. Critics applauded it, true enthusiasts welcomed it—and fans still said I was lying. It apparently escaped them that I have proof of everything in Jim’s own handwriting: letters, poems, songs, even drawings.
In the end, it matters only what Jim said to me, how he felt about me, what he did for me; and I have ample proofs of all those things. So here is a small account of our wedding, from Strange Days, just to show people how he was and what he was and who he was. Not the self-indulgent, hell-raising Lizard King of popular opinion but a beautiful, intelligent, poetic, shy, vulnerable, generous, romantic soul: Jim. My Jim. Not Jim Morrison,
which was only ever a mask he put on to protect himself from the grabby and insatiable demands of the fanatics. The trouble was, in the end the mask started bleeding into him, and he into it.
People who