| Rainer: |
Patricia,
You are the only woman that was married to Jim
Morrison, and you own a certificate signed by
Jim.
Would you tell me what it meant for you and Jim
being married? |
| Patricia: |
Jim
and I were married in a handfasting ceremony
which is a Celtic religious ritual. It is not a
legal marriage and
I would hasten to say that I have never claimed
to be Jim’s legal wife, but it was very
valid and very binding
religious ritual. Jim took it very seriously,
contrary to the way he is portrayed as taking it
in the movie. It was his
idea and I think that he did it because he knew
it would give me great joy. |
| Rainer: |
Your
husband went over to Paris. Would you please tell
me something about your last meeting with him?
Did he
tell you anything about going to Paris? Did you
know he was going there with Pamela Courson? |
| Patricia: |
Yes,
I did know. The last time I saw him was late
February. The last week of February, 1971, and I
believe he
left for Paris on the 10th
of March, 1971. I was with him in L.A.for a week
or so. At the time I was staying with
him he did tell me he was going over to Paris
with Pam and it was basically to end the
relationship. He said they
had been together on and off for a number of
years, but that basically that he was ending it.
He felt that he owed
her this because she was completely dependent on
him. She had no resources of her own and could
basically do
nothing for herself. He felt he owed it to her to
end it that way. He also made it clear he
intended to come back
to me in the fall after he ended this, broke it
off with Pam. In fact I was getting this
information in letters from
him through April, May and June. I was hearing
from him on a more or less regular basis by mail
and in the
letters he made it quite clear. I was not the
only person hearing this sort of thing from him
at that time. Max Fink
was getting letters from him to the effect that
he wanted to be home before the 4th
of July and all of a sudden he’s
dead on the 3rd
of July. I think to me and maybe to other people
as well, it was very suspicious to say the least. |
| |
Patricia
Kennealy-Morrison.
Photo
© Rainer Moddemann. |
| Rainer: |
He
wrote some letters to you from Paris. Did he say
anything about what his feelings may have been in
Paris?
How did he feel about being in Paris? |
| Patricia: |
He
loved being in Paris. He thought it was a
beautiful, wonderful city, which of course it is.
The letters were mostly
about him and me. How he felt about me. You know,
how we’d get a loft together, we’d do
projects together, maybe
screen plays, maybe a movie. That sort of thing.
The sort of things you plan with somebody you
love and plan on
spending time with. As far as his own life was
going in Paris, he was very down. He was very
depressed. You could
see it through the letters. How they gradually
got grayer is, I guess, is the way you’d
describe it. Almost a kind of
despair wouldn’t be too strong a word. He
wasn’t happy with the way things were going
as far as his writing was
going. I think he was looking forward to getting
back to the United States and getting himself
back up to speed
as it were. |
| Rainer: |
Did
he write to you about how he was really doing on
his writing? |
| Patricia: |
Not
really. What he said he was working on was
notebook kind of stuff. I have seen some
notebooks at auction
which purport to be Jim’s. Paris notebooks
basically. They were much the same as all the
other notebooks. I have
seen some general scribbling, jotting down line
drawings. Things of that sort. Nothing of any
value or substance.
But I don’t know. I wasn’t there so
obviously I can’t say. |
| Rainer: |
Did
he tell you anything about the people he met
there? |
| Patricia: |
Not
really. No. |
| Rainer: |
Let’s
have a look at your book, 'Strange Days'. In your
book, you’re talking about your strong
belief that Pamela
Courson was responsible for his death. When I
read the book, I got the feeling that you are
saying that she
murdered him. What can you say about that? |
| Patricia: |
As
I said, I wasn’t there, so I don’t
know. I’m relying on what I feel and what I
heard at the time and what I’ve
heard since. A number of people have gone public
over the last few years about what really went on
and it
certainly appears as if she was responsible for
giving him the heroin that killed him. He was not
a heroin addict.
I want you to know. I want to make it very, very
clear to people that if it was heroin that killed
him, it was
probably the first time he ever tried it and it
would kind of tie into the fact that he was very
down and depressed.
It could be something as simple as Pam out of her
own guilt and being a heroin addict saying,
“Try this. It will
make you feel better”, or maybe concurrently
telling him to snort it up. Maybe telling him it
was cocaine. But in
any case, she was responsible for giving it to
him. If she didn’t actually fire the gun as
it were, she was the one
who put the bullets into the chamber and held it
out to him. He would have never gotten heroin at
my house and
I would kill her for this. |
| |
Patricia's
book 'Strange Days'. |
|
Signed page 4 of 'Strange Days'. |
|
| Rainer: |
I
read in your book that you did a special kind of
service because you thought there was no kind of
service done
for him. What did you do? Was there a priest or
something like that? |
| Patricia: |
I
did conduct a service for Jim. I’m a
priestess myself, so I conducted a service, a
rite in the same tradition in which
we were married to send him on his way, to speed
his passage, a kind of protection you put on
someone to see that
their soul gets to where it needs to be. I did
also take a Catholic priest with me to the grave.
Jim wasn’t a Catholic.
He was a Presbyterian by birth, but France is a
Catholic country, so to me it would be
appropriate for a Catholic
priest to do something, even though it was a
little after the fact. The priest was very
understanding. Very kind to
me. Not a formal requiem mass which is usually
done, but a blessing of Jim, a blessing of the
gravesite and a
blessing of me, which meant a lot to me and I
think to Jim also. As far as I know, it was the
only formal service
Jim was ever given. |
| Rainer: |
That
seems to be true. They gave me a photo of Jim’s
grave that you took. Would you please describe
the grave
and how it looked at the time you were there. |
| Patricia: |
When
I got to Paris, the grave was basically just a
raised mound of earth. There was nothing there.
Misérable,
as they say in French. Just raised dirt. I met a
fan at the grave who was very, very kind.
Pathetic to me. He said
he could outline the grave in white scallop
shells, which I thought was lovely and they
actually made a cross for
him which they wrote his name along with
'artiste, poète and compositeur' in French and
asked me if I would write
in the dates of his birth and death, which of
course I was quite moved to do. I thought it was
wonderful that people
who didn’t even know him would do more for
him in death than the people who claimed to be
his friends who buried
him. Whoever that person was, I never found out
his name. I want to thank him forever for that. |
| |
Patricia
Kennealy-Morrison.
Photo
© Rainer Moddemann. |
| Rainer: |
I
think that was great. Is there anything you want
to say in a film which is going to be about Jim’s
quiet days in
Paris? Is there anything else you want to add? |
| Patricia: |
No.
He did say he went to Paris to find peace. I don’t
think that eternal peace is what he had in mind,
but
unfortunately that’s the way it turned out.
I believe he was beginning to come to terms with
his own very real
problems. His alcoholism, his troubled past. All
of this was being put behind him, which was the
whole idea of
going to Paris. Pamela as well. Put all that
behind and to start again. Not that he’d
made a full step by getting
involved with The Doors albums because he loved
music and he loved playing with the band and I
think that
would have always continued to a certain extent -
being involved with music. There were other
things he
wanted to get into and in that sense, he saw
Paris as a first step - to being involved in
that, to leaving the past
behind 'Jim Morrison of The Doors' and going onto
these other things and it’s just a great
tragedy all of that
was taken away from him by someone that claimed
to care for him. |
| Rainer: |
Thank
you for the interview! |
| Patricia: |
You’re
welcome! |
| |
Patricia
Kennealy-Morrison.
Photo
© Rainer Moddemann. |
