Jim Morrison was born on December 8, 1943 in Melbourne, Florida. His father was a U.S. Naval Officer who fought in World War II. Jim eventually became so estranged from his parents that he would later claim that they were dead. Not much is known about his early years, although he claimed in interviews that he began writing poetry in sixth grade and filled his notebooks with writings throughout high school.
Jim moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s, where he enrolled himself in the film program at UCLA. He read books constantly and told friends that he planned to model his life based on the hedonistic French poet Rimbaud. In 1965, after Jim graduated from UCLA, he drifted into the hippie scene at Venice Beach, taking drugs (LSD was his favorite), sleeping under the boardwalk, and writing poems. One day at the beach, Jim ran into Ray Manzarek, a former classmate from UCLA who was a keyboardist in a struggling rock band. When Jim showed Ray some of his poems, he insisted to Jim that they should put together a band for him to sing his poems. Ray and Jim recruited Robbie Krieger as a guitarist and John Densomore at the drummer and began calling themselves the Doors.
In January 1967 the first album "The Doors" was released and immediately received universal acclaim. The song "Light My Fire" became the group's first hit single and projected them to number one on the top music charts. In 1968, the group made the top charts again with their album "Waiting for the Sun".
On July 3, 1971, Jim Morrison was found dead in his bathtub in his apartment in Paris at the age of 27. The local police listed the cause of death as a heart attack, although most assume that the heart attack was alcohol, even drug related. News of his death was withheld for nearly a week, which fueled rumors that he faked his death.
11%
31%
76%
