Rock memorabilia: Jim Morrison’s last notebook for sale

By Rachel Heisler

Amazing. 36 years after his death, Jim Morrison’s last notebook surfaces, and YOU can own it. The ebay bidding starts at $160,000 and for that little chunk of change the winner will recieve the notebook, which contains 20 pages of handwritten musings, finished and unfinished and reworked poems and lyrics, the above photo of Jim in Paris and the movie The Doors: 30 Year Commemorative Edition. Here’s the story about the lot that is currently up on ebay:

Jim Morrison, using the alias James Douglas, arrived in Paris in March, 1971, to take a break from performing and to concentrate on his writing. His long-time girlfriend, Pamela Courson, had travelled before him and arranged for them to rent the large 19th-century apartment in the Fuurth Arrondissement of model and starlet Elizabeth Lariviere, known as Zozo, where Jim planned to spend his days writing. Jim had a habit of carrying several spiral-bound notebook with him at all times to jot down notes, poems and ideas as they came to him. He took some of these notebooks with him when he went to Paris.

Throughout June of 1971, Jim carried a white plastic shopping bag from the ‘Samaratine’ department store with him wherever he went. It usually contained one or two of his spiral notebooks, some personal photographs, a tape of his 1970 birthday poetry reading, a pack of Marlboros, a lighter, a few ballpoint pens and some interviews and articles about The Doors. He found it increasingly difficult to write, became unsettled, erratic and ultimately ill, and resorted to his old ways of hard drinking. On one drunken occassion in June, he picked up a none-too talented pair of busker and brought them to a studio, insisting they record with him.

Jim felt one rendition of “Orange County Suite” produced during this ad hoc recording session had produced some interesting results, but he didn’t have the means to listen to his reel to reel recording. A few days later, he bumped into Zozo’s boyfriend, Phillippe Dalecky, who had the means to make a cassette from Jim’s reel at his home studio in his apartment on the Rue Chalgrin. Having made the tape, Jim listened to it and left in an excited hurry. Dalecky noticed that he had left his plastic bag behind. He ran after Jim shouting that he had forgotten it, to which Jim, halfway down the block, shouted back: “All right? Keep it? See you later! Bye!” The next day, Dalecky travelled to Saint Tropex with Zozo. He would never see Jim again.

Stephen Davis, author of The Last Days of Jim Morrison, has studied the notebook in some depth:

“Several pages are variants of older poems, such as ‘The Ancient Ones,’ ‘Winter Photography’ and ‘The Hitchhiker.” Other pages contain only one or two lines, but variation in the writing style indicate they may have been thought over for days. The notebook contais both wonderful new poems and scabrous jottings: ‘JERK-BAIT SCROTOM, INC.’ The profanities Fuck Shit Piss Kill. A previously unknown poem, ‘Impossible garden,” refers to a ‘beautiful savage like me; and ‘the most insane whore in Christendom.’ A new song lyric ‘Now You Are In Danger’ seems to sum up Jim’s Paris idyyll: ‘Let the piper call the tune / March, May, April, June.’ The next page contains short lyrics for a blues song: ‘We’re two of a kind / We’re two of a kind / You want yours, and I want mine.’”

Page 17 contains one line: “She’ll get over it.”
Page 18: “What can I say? What can I do? I though you found my sexual affections stimulating.’
Page 19: “UMHN / Glorius sexual Cool / I’m finally dead.’
Page 20: “In that year we were blessed / By a great visitation of energy.”

The listing can be found my going to ebay and searching for Jim Morrison notebook. While we understand why an individual would try to make a buck by selling such an interesting piece of history, we’ve asked the seller to donate the book to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It would be wonderful for all Morrison fans to have access to this, one of the most interesting pieces of music memorabilia to ever surface. Bidding is estimated to reach $160,000-$200,000.

Rock ‘n’ roll can never die. Jim lives.

Thousands of other pieces of rock memorabilia will be up for auction Saturday, June 2, at The Orleans Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, NV, from 5-9:30 p.m.