Themis was a hot spot. When the Rolling Stones were in town Mick Jagger stopped by and bought some clothes there.
One day I noticed a heavily bearded, bushy-haired guy in dark glasses in The Liquid Butterfly peering out our front window in the direction of Electra Records, watching people arrive in limos for some kind of swanky event. I thought he was a private investigator or a member of the paparazzi staking out the building. This was my introduction to Jim Morrison — the legendary “Lizard King,” the object of insane desire for millions of girls across the world.
Where he had once looked like the statue of a Greek god come to life, he was now scruffy, massively bearded, with a bit of a gut and rounded cheeks when he smiled, looking more like a cherubic lumberjack than any kind of rock icon. He had no interest in being recognized. No desire for fame. If anything, he struck me as a kind of fugitive. I don’t think he was writing or recording any music just then. Like Joni Mitchell who saw herself as a painter who’d somehow become a singer/songwriter, Jim saw himself as a poet who’d lost his way in the music world, lost his way in lots of ways I suppose. Jim reminded me of Elvis. He wasn’t all sex and sizzle up close. He was quiet, on the shy side, and really funny once you got to know him. His stream of wry observations about the people and situations all around made him a lot of fun to hang out with. We discovered pretty quickly that we had a couple of things in common — we both liked to drink and play pool.
Fortunately there was no shortage of dives nearby where you could find a dark corner, down a few beers, and shoot the breeze. Which we did often. I really liked Jim and I think he liked me — possibly because I didn’t want anything from him. His bullshit meter had become pretty finely tuned after years in the music business and he could spot a genuine from a fake without a lot of effort.
One night not too long after we started hanging out, Jim was dead drunk. I couldn’t leave him in the bar and wasn’t sure what else to do so I got his arm around me, hefted his bulk into my station wagon and drove him over to my bungalow. There I tried to lug him out of the car without any success. I honked the horn and shouted “Delana, I need your help!” Moments later she appeared silhouetted in the front door. You have to get the full effect here. This was, in fact, a dark and stormy night. She comes out in the rain where I’m trying to haul a large hairy stranger more or less over my shoulder. She’s got to be wondering “What the hell? Has Charlotte killed somebody? Is she reenacting a scene from Gunsmoke?” But in good roommate fashion she helps cart this person inside and in the light realizes who it is. Her eyes nearly pop out of her head.
For a while I thought if she didn’t take a breath I’d have two semiconscious people on my hands.
“Oh. My. God! That’s really him!” she silently screamed.
Jim opened a pair of barely functional eyeballs just then and took in the Jim shrine in our entryway — Delana’s collection of drawings of him with horns and skulls, wings and reptiles that filled this part of the house.
I heard him gasp, “What is this place?”
With Delana’s help, I poured him into bed.
At the age of 27, Jim was as famous — or infamous — as anyone in the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. His music projected power, sex, and a kind of psychedelic mysticism that frightened a lot of older America. When he screamed, “Break on through to the other side,” it inspired a lot of kids to try doing exactly that with LSD, mushrooms, weed, whatever they could lay their hands on.
I got the idea that he felt so beaten up and bewildered by fame that the added weight and the mountain-man beard were ways of shielding himself. Not only was it a kind of disguise but being less physically attractive was its own kind of protection. The less you looked like Jim Morrison, the less attention you attracted — unwanted and even threatening attention. I remember reading later that during the time I knew him there were two or three paternity suits pending against him. And I know he very much wanted to avoid photographers, reporters, fans — anyone who wanted a piece of Jim Morrison the idol, rather than Jim Morrison the person.
Beyond the paternity suits Jim was in serious legal trouble. At a concert in Miami, Florida on March 2, 1969, he had allegedly screamed obscenities and displayed his manhood to the audience, which included young girls, and was arrested for indecent exposure and one or two other related charges. I asked him once if he’d done it. He said he didn’t know. He’d been drinking for about three days prior and had no memory of the concert. “I probably did,” he said, resigned to it.
He had rejected a plea deal and was appealing a fine and three-year jail sentence — all of which meant he’d have to go back to Florida to face the nightmare of a hostile criminal justice system and a salivating and just as hostile media circus.
A week or two after crashing at my bungalow, he mentioned that he wanted to get away and asked if I wanted to get out of town with him for a few days. In the days before cell phones you could simply get in your car and drive out of town and you were away. No one knew where you were. No one could reach you. It could be pretty therapeutic. I said sure. Why not? He picked me up at The Liquid Butterfly in a rental car on a Friday and we drove up Highway 1. As we were leaving Santa Monica, I noticed a marquee on the Nuart Theater advertising Midnight Cowboy, which promoted a thought-message to Jon Voight, “And no, I’m not going to call any columnists about my outing with this guy either.”
We didn’t get very far that first day, stopping off at a bar in Malibu that I don’t think is there any more. It had individual booths that opened out onto the beach and offered privacy while giving us a spectacular view of the sun disappearing slowly into the ocean. I ordered a vodka, he a Jack Daniels and we sat together mostly just watching the colors of the sky bleed into the water.
I really don’t know why Jim asked me to go on this getaway. All these years later I think back on it and realize that we didn’t know each other that well, though at the time I’m not sure that mattered much. We enjoyed each other’s company and somehow, maybe, he knew that I’d be comfortable with the silences he seemed to want, perhaps to crave. Maybe he sensed that whatever happened it would be simple and laid-back and lacking any kind of expectation.
After a few more rounds of drinks we checked into a hotel next to the bar and in the morning we headed out again, toodling up the coast stopping at bars and drinking and playing pool. We had no schedule, no agenda, no goals. We were just hanging out and it was glorious. That second night we made it as far as the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, staying in one of their themed rooms, though I can’t remember now which it was.
At the little seaside town of Cambria the next day we visited Peter Fels, a friend of mine who was a metal sculptor, who actually looked a lot like Jim if Jim had reddish hair — the same big beard and wild hair. Funny thing is Peter lived so completely with his art he had no idea who Jim was, much less what a superstar he was to the world outside of his artist’s studio. I made an introduction like, “Hi Peter, this is Jim.” And these two big-bearded artists padded off into Peter’s barn to look at metal sculptures together.
Afterward Jim wanted to see Hearst Castle, so we parked and took the shuttle bus that takes you up there. Throughout the trip I’d been shooting with my little 8 mm film camera and got normal goofy stuff like Jim driving or eating an ice cream cone at Hearst Castle.
Not surprisingly, he loved being out of Los Angeles, away from the music industry, away from lawyers, and all the associated pressures. He could breathe, could let go of all the tension built up inside. Not surprisingly after a taste of this, he started talking about wanting to really get away. Like out of the country, maybe going to Europe.
Jim and I were friends, drinking buddies, and we slept together and that was it. Everyone else in his life wanted something from him, which made me all the more determined to let him know that I wanted nothing. We were never going to have a relationship. I couldn’t picture myself going out on the road with him, being Jim Morrison’s girlfriend. It just wasn’t that kind of
thing. This book is the first time I’ve ever spoken of our friendship. After letting 40 years lapse, hopefully, I can speak of it now without cheapening the easy friendship we had together.
Our last night was at a hotel in Solvang and finally we had to head back south to the real world. I had a TV show to do and I know he had plenty to occupy his time. Among other things he was trying to decide what to do about the house he owned in Topanga Canyon, which I think he rarely used.
Back at The Liquid Butterfly I realized that a whole new group of people had moved into Elliot’s extra office space. Being the nice, welcoming person I am, I bounced in and asked if anyone wanted coffee. I was met with a roomful of suspicious stares and a dishwater-blonde hippie chick a couple of years younger than me said, “What do you want?”
This fun bunch had moved over from Warner Brothers, where they’d just finished up the sound and editing on Woodstock, the documentary that would define the early 1970s. Elliot had invited them to house themselves at his office building as they were working together on their next project, a documentary about Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
They were East Coast intellectuals — snobby, suspicious, and prone to peg a freckled, blonde, easy-breezy California babe as someone who might be hiding an agenda behind that smile.
The young woman who’d questioned my motives was named Jeanne Field. And unbeknownst to either of us, this was the beginning of a friendship that would last through terrible ups-and-downs for the rest of our lives.
I responded to her skeptical question by saying simply, “I just wondered if anyone wanted some coffee.”
I’m really not that complicated. When I ask if you want coffee and serve up my brightest smile, there’s really no subtext.
Maybe they weren’t just being East Coast snobs; they were also a bit down in the dumps. While working on Woodstock, Warner Brothers had given them a house to live in rent-free and now they were casting about for a place to stay.
I shocked them by offering my little bungalow. I was going to be away shooting an episode of Then Came Bronson in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and said they could have the place while I was gone. They still weren’t quite sure of what to make of my flower-child generosity but the temperature in the room warmed up.
A day or two later Jeanne met Jim Morrison and their need to find a place came up again. He said they could move into his house in Topanga Canyon. He wouldn’t be needing it for a while because he and Pamela Courson were going to Paris.
He was happy to be getting away, really getting away this time.
On the evening of July 3, 1971, I was with a bunch of friends at a music studio with Johnny Rivers as he recorded an album. Someone came in with the news that Jim had been found dead in a bathtub in Paris.
There were some gasps and for a moment the room got really quiet. I just went numb. I don’t recall feeling anything. In the space of 11 months we’d lost Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and now Jim Morrison. All dead at the age of 27.
I’d never met Janis and Jimi but their music had been a force that defined this new world that our generation was creating. They were role models. Celebrities. Leaders. Artists. But Jim was different to me. He certainly occupied that same rarified space — his music had also given expression to who we were, how we felt, how we saw the world around us. But Jim had been my drinking buddy. We’d played pool from here to Cambria. We’d laughed and eaten ice cream together. We’d sung Elvis songs in the car. We’d been drunk, goofy, naked, and stupid together. He wasn’t a photo on an album cover.
I didn’t believe the stories that he’d died of a heroin overdose. I’d never seen Jim do drugs, never even saw him light up a joint. His vices were smoking and drinking. From having rheumatic fever as a child he had high blood pressure and his face was often beet red — none of which was helped by the booze and cigarettes plus the stress of his legal troubles. The long-term effect of rheumatic fever is often serious damage to the valves of the heart. My guess is he died of a heart attack although I wasn’t in Paris and there’s a lot I don’t know about medicine.
There’s nothing deep about death for me. Nothing grand. Nothing operatic. I’d learned that when my dad died. Death happens and it’s horrible, it sucks, and there’s emptiness. That’s what Jim’s death was. It was horrible and it sucked and the world felt changed and yet unchanged. And it was hard to know which was worse.
Chapter 6
Sex, Death, and the Rolling Stones
If you leave Santa Monica heading more or less north on Hwy 1 you’ll enjoy the sparkling Pacific Ocean sprawled out to your left. Waves come crashing in on delighted children in their bathing suits while couples walk or jog along the bright sand. You’ll see a few palm trees, kites, and wheeled ice cream carts. To the right you’ll see the base of an embankment of rugged, arid mountains covered in scrub brush and cactus. At intervals this is broken up with beach houses, taco stands, and surf shops. You’ll eventually come to a junction in the roadway that offers the chance to continue north into the tiny town of Malibu or you can take a right heading inland into Topanga Canyon.
If you head up this road, to the right, you’ll find yourself traveling between the dry walls of a fairly narrow canyon for a few winding miles until reaching not so much a town but an enclave. In 1971 you’d see the handiwork of Boxcar Bruce, who had wedged an old boxcar between the banks of a stream creating a bridge from the road to his house. Everywhere there are odd-looking patched-together houses, horses, rednecks, and hippies.
I rented a two-story, four-bedroom house on Observation Drive in Topanga Canyon. You couldn’t feel farther from Hollywood though the neighborhood included actors such as Dennis Hopper, Dean Stockwell and Russ Tamblyn (who all eventually worked with David Lynch either in Blue Velvet or Twin Peaks). Neil Young and Jim Morrison both owned houses there as well. A young Oliver Sacks lived somewhere in Topanga’s crooked streets in the 1960s, where — surprise, surprise — he experimented with mind-altering drugs, which he wrote about in his 2012 book Hallucinations.
Will Geer, who would play Grandpa on The Waltons lived here and ran Theatricum Botanicum, a little playhouse that put on various shows. Will, whose film career went back to the 1930s, was a great old beatnik and a much-loved Topanga guy.
Daniel Ellsberg, the former military analyst who’d given the famous Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, was holed up nearby. I visited him twice. Once with my friend Peter Butterfield who give Ellsberg guitar lessons, and on another occasion when someone handed me a package of papers to deliver to him. Without a thought in my head about what I was transporting, I showed up at his house and he plucked the fat envelope from me, opened it up, and seemed very pleased with its contents, showing no interest in revealing what they were.
What had I delivered? State secrets? God knows.
We also had a nightclub of sorts called The Topanga Corral, where you could hear some incredible music. And we had The Elysium Institute, our very own nudist colony, though tromping around outdoors in my birthday suit never held much appeal.
If I remember right, I got the idea to move to Topanga because Jeanne Field was now living there on a commune with what she called “The Gang from Rome.” This was a group of actors and crew who’d worked together on Fellini Satyricon, the film by director Federico Fellini. One of the actresses, the wonderful and zaftig Mickey Fox, also became a dear friend of mine.
As I mentioned earlier, Jeanne, her boyfriend Larry Johnson, and others from the Woodstock film had taken up temporary residence in Jim Morrison’s house. After Jim died one of his attorneys called Jeanne and offered her the house for a ridiculously low $17,000. She said to him, “You know, I’m a hippie. I’m not even sure I believe in owning things.” And with that she went to live on the commune. When commune life lost its shine, she claimed one of my bedrooms for a while.
I had a real kaleidoscope of people moving in and out of the house, mostly friends who crashed on a couch for a few days. My official roommate was Doreen Small. Jeanne like
d to say that you could not find two more opposite people — I, the “farm-bred, blonde, California girl” and Doreen “the Brooklyn intellectual with lots of dietary restrictions.”
Even with the always-changing cast who slept on my floors, couches, and spare bedrooms, I still managed to see a fair share of interesting guys.
I’d met the phantasmagorically good-looking Gardner McKay in the early 1960s — pre-Tim — when he was the massively popular star of a show you’ve probably never heard of called Adventures in Paradise. From about 1959 to 1962, it seemed like this guy was going to be Cary Grant-fabulous and Brad Pitt-famous. The opinion that I formed of Gardner at the time, which was based on not much, was that he was a bimbo. How could anyone that porcelain-gorgeous be anything but a hairstyle in tight jeans?
After Adventures in Paradise ended Gardner left town. He hated being famous — the stress, the loss of privacy, the constant unwanted attention — and he moved to Paris for a while until he started being recognized there too.
He came back to Hollywood, bought a house in Beverly Hills on a huge lot and installed a Jaguar in the front and back of his house — not the car, the actual exotic South American cat. He also started writing plays.
My friend from the Playhouse, Josh Bryant, was cast in one of his plays called Sea Marks, which went up at The Actors Studio in Hollywood. I went as a favor to Josh not anticipating much, only to be blown away; it was haunting and beautiful. When the play was over and the applause was over-the-top, I turned around and saw Gardner sitting by himself and thought, “I have seriously underestimated this guy.” One of his plays called Me was eventually turned into a TV movie, which Josh also appeared in along with his buddy Richard Dreyfuss.
Little House in the Hollywood Hills Page 9
