Legacy Matters

How the Fire Went Out

The most popular grave at the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris is that of an American.

Jim Morrison, the lead singer for the Doors, was only 27 when he died, supposedly in a bathtub of natural causes.  But a recent book says Morrison died of a heroin overdose in a hot Paris club, the Rock ' n Roll Circus.

How Jim Morrison died
"There was foam coming out of his lips," the former nightclub owner told TIME. A doctor who was in the club that night concluded that Morrison had overdosed, and "said Jim was dead," he says. "I wanted to call the police or rescue people to help. They [Morrison's drug dealers] said no," and instead had the body driven back to the apartment the singer had rented with his girlfriend, Pamela Courson. It was then soaked in the bathtub.

This might sound like a juicy tale concocted to sell books. But Bernett isn't the only person in Paris who remembers that night 36 years ago, although it appears to have taken the publication of his book to prompt them to finally speak up. Patrick Chauvel — now a renowned war photographer — told TIME he was 19 and drunk that night, when he was dragooned into helping load Morrison's body into a car. Since he had just returned from photographing the Vietnam War, Chauvel was deemed especially suited to dealing with corpses. "We carried him in a blanket and got him the hell out of there," recalls Chauvel, who was a friend of Morrison and did not cooperate with Bernett's book. Explaining the cover-up, Chauvel says: "I guess if you have a nightclub and Jim Morrison dies in your toilet, it is not good p.r.